The world has become unpredictable

Economists are often asked to give an opinion on what we predict will happen in the economy, especially in light of the events we are experiencing. For my part, I usually answer that the correct answer is that I have no idea, but that out of courtesy to the asker I can anticipate, more from experience than from certain knowledge, that... I will not make jokes about economists' forecasts, but in our defense I will highlight the complexity of a moment in which geopolitics is the cause of uncertainties, in which what intervenes is a set of interdependent factors and, even more so, driven by the character who today leads the White House. This geopolitical framework has as a forecast more than a single economic variable, to which an element of risk can be associated. And when risks are chained, the probability of each forecast, which we obtain by multiplying by a value less than 1, becomes very low. Everything depends on everything! So that, despite the fact that today we have, unlike in the past, better forecasting tools and more reaction instruments than ever, these situations, increasingly complex and interconnected, are more difficult to anticipate. The safety net falls, logistics or the transport of goods breaks down, the value chain is lost and everything is paralyzed at once.This generates a certain frustration: economic science cannot anticipate, avoid, or sufficiently correct cycles or their effects on people's well-being! In the Middle Ages, science in general had less to say than today to set the world aright. Today, there are more things that were previously considered exogenous, which could not be influenced, that are no longer so. The world's misery, lack of water, hunger, loss of health, inequality: we know they are treatable and we can act on them. And even though we know we can, we don't. This cannot leave us with a clear conscience.We live in a world of exciting progress in the field of technology, but which frightens us later, seen up close; they generate as much hope as fear. Innovations that question many jobs, assets — as it has settled in. MAGA already has roots.

Integrity and ethics as a supplementary guide to uncertainties no longer hold sway in the face of the liberal individualism of "Me first," even among proponents of meritocracy. No one seems willing to redeem themselves for a higher cause anymore.Despite the automatism of the algorithms with which we move, context continues to be an ungraspable value for AI, and ChatGPT can never replace the how and why of things. For this reason, before seniority was the best asset of knowledge, gained by accumulation of age and work. Now it is the innovation of precocious talents, in search of "He who arrives first gets it all". For this objective, the technical specialization that appears to be so necessary becomes a form of humanistic impoverishment.The range of key decisions for the future of humanity is expanding. It includes sustainable food, land and solar space, global health, the diversity of species to conserve, the limits of inequality due to polarization that can break social coexistence. We live in a kind of evolution that first creates problems to apparently solve them later, and that creates more inequalities when accessing the proposed solutions. International immigration and how to understand solidarity between countries become the "white elephant".In the past, unforeseen events were local, orographic: fires, earthquakes, epidemics. Now they are global, pandemic, of general economic recessions, of paralysis of world trade. Faced with various catastrophes, the doctrinal principle of "first, precaution" does not seem to be applicable. So that the future of humanity is increasingly in danger.