Optimism always wins in the long term: Brad Slingerland

"The successful path has always been one of optimism... cynicism sounds smart, but it’s never beautiful, and optimism always wins in the long term. If optimism doesn’t win, then it doesn’t matter what happens, so always bet on optimism. There is an extended arc of 800 years of interest rate declines resulting from the simple math that one person’s debt is another person’s asset, and it’s unlikely to reverse because of an 18-month policy misstep. There are some things humans need to address that could cause structural inflation and rates to stay higher for longer. Declining birth rates and anti-immigration policies are inflationary. The moral panic against investing in real infrastructure (disguised in many instances as “ESG” investing) that we need for the energy transition and the future of the planet is damaging and inflationary. The heating up of planet Earth will be inflationary. Yet, as has happened for hundreds of thousands of years, human innovation and spirit will invent a deflationary way out of whatever crises we face. But, we don’t need to join hands and plead for collective salvation or pretend things are ok – because our world is already ok on balance. Social media platforms and their leaders have worked out ingenious ways to take advantage of our brain’s shortcomings to convince us that our social, political, and economic structures are failing us. They’ve convinced us we hate each other. They’ve convinced us we need to burn it all down in order to build it back up again. But, we’ve already built civilization, and we will continue to adapt and evolve alongside it as we make it better. Sometimes it feels slow, and sometimes it feels like we are moving backward; but, if you consider the bigger picture, it’s clear the long arc of human progress always has been, and always will be, moving forward."