Chris TrottierThe Fediverse is too full of doomerism.
So let’s be honest—the track record for doom is awful.
Most of the time, betting on collapse is a losing game. Not only because it becomes self-fulfilling, but because history shows that progress wins out more often than not. I don’t say that as a naïve optimist. If anything, doom should appeal to me. I’m a contrarian at heart.
But history tells a clear story. Every generation has its prophets of collapse. Sometimes they’re right—but those moments are rare, and the people making them usually go broke waiting for vindication. The rest spend decades yelling “doom!” while the world keeps quietly getting better.
And even when the doomers do have a point, they still get it wrong. They underestimate how stubborn we are. Humanity is basically that boss fight you think you’ve beaten—until the health bar refills. We adapt, improvise, and claw our way out.
The Great Depression didn’t fix itself. People built safety nets, reformed banks, and rewired their economies. Inflation has flared up again and again, but institutions learned how to keep it from spiralling out of control. Energy crises forced innovation in how we produce and use power. Even the 2008 financial meltdown—supposedly the death of capitalism—ended up proving that markets can mutate fast enough to survive almost anything.
The doomers weren’t wrong about the threats. They just underestimated how fast humans learn under pressure—and how innovation always sneaks in through the cracks.
That’s the real story. Humanity’s defining trait isn’t blind optimism—it’s resiliency. We stumble, argue, and procrastinate, but when the stakes get high enough, we build, fix, and adapt. We don’t survive because the future is guaranteed—we survive because we refuse to stop creating it.
And that resilience isn’t abstract. It’s personal. It’s the person rebuilding after a layoff. The worker starting over when an industry collapses. The founder trying again after failure. Markets may crash, but people keep reinventing themselves. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it.
Still, zoom out beyond the latest crisis and the long-term picture is hard to ignore.
In 1925, most of the world didn’t have electricity or running water. Life expectancy was under 40 in many countries. Roughly 80 percent of adults were illiterate. Today, more than 90 percent of the global population has access to electricity. Over three-quarters can read and write. Global life expectancy is now over 70. And we carry supercomputers in our pockets with access to the sum of human knowledge.
Over the past century, humanity has endured the Great Depression, a world war, a Cold War, oil shocks, recessions, pandemics, and nuclear close calls. Every time, someone declared it was the end. Yet each time, we adapted, rebuilt, and moved forward.
Just within the past 20 years, more than 700 million people have escaped extreme poverty. Infant mortality has fallen by half. Deaths from infectious diseases have plunged. Despite everything—pandemics, wars, climate shocks—global living standards continue to rise.
And still, doom sells.
To those convinced the end is near, I’ll offer the same challenge. If you’re that certain, short the entire economy.
Most won’t, because unless you’re among the rare few who get it exactly right, betting on doom will ruin you.
Aral Balkan
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