Crisis opportunity

It’s been my experience that crisis inevitably leads to opportunity, and opportunity, to betterment.

Although he has fallen off the radar for many economics enthusiasts, Julian Simon really was on to something with regard to the above.

In his narrow articulation, a crisis was most potent when it came to population boom (or heck, sweeping immigration, for that matter). His exact thesis: the more a resource is used, the more it becomes available. As it plays out with population booms: the more a population of people draws on their land, the more they innovate as those initial resources dwindle. In the end, the population is better off than if the crisis had never come.

In the micro, this tends to happen, as well.

When a problem arises, we are quick to plug the hole with some chewing gum, or something hacky. And that hack remains. But all the while, passerbys — and maybe even the hole-plugger himself — mulls over this hack and says to themselves: ‘It would be better if this fix went more like this and that…’

But this stopgap never warrants action, as most the time, coping is easier than optimizing.

This sets the stage for the real upgrade in the world…

Inevitably, crisis revisits the same problem area, and there is an explosion of inertia to fix and improve upon that initial hack with something more thoughtful and cunning. In no time, this hack has been replaced with a piece of innovation that can be shared and studied.

Make no mistake, this is a human phenomenon. We are the ones special enough to turn crisis into opportunity. Whether it be population stresses, or a leaky pipe, in the long run, we always rise to the challenge with innovation that makes it all the better.