.Limits to Growth .Bad News Bears People wonder if stocks will rise. Goodness knows if there are not reasons for pessimism. Is there not the wisdom that what goes up, must come down?
We have come a long way up out of the primordial ooze. From whence we come seems obvious. Whither we go is less so. Where lies human destiny? Are we not destined to rule the cosmos? Plenty of growth opportunities there.
Ruling the cosmos will require Breakthrough Physics. How many golden eggs are left in the Scientific Goose? The Established consensus is that we verge on the Final Theory with no more golden eggs in sight.
This conforms with the Established wisdom there is no direction to evolution. We are no pinnacle, we are a natural aberration. Our vaunted brains are like nothing more than the overweaned antlers of the Irish Elk, and we are about to be hoist on our own petards. We have outsmarted ourselves with our technologies, but we have not outsmarted nature. Our supposed glories are a flash in the cosmic pan.
This conforms with the evidence that we are alone in the cosmos. As very latecomers to the evolution scene, the denizens of Earth should have already been visited/colonized by our technological forerunners. If there were to be a cosmic population explosion, then the chances of our being here as fortunate witnesses to that ignition are minuscule, compared to the much more likely prospect that we inhabit the fat middle of the population curve, before the fall, as the statistical doomers cogently observe.
Stocks rise because investors are self-selected optimists, never mind the greed, until the next panic of pessimism takes over. Then they look for the next free lunch. The cosmos is not long on free lunches.
So much for hard headed realism.
Yet, we are in the throes of unprecedented global economic expansionism and optimism. What gives? This sense of optimism remains inarticulate under the glare of the steely-eyed realists.
She who fathoms this optimism will know the nature of the beast. She alone will know when to short and when to go long.
She who can articulate this optimism will know from whence we came and whither we go. She will lay the golden egg that scientific objectivity refuses. She will unveil the Invisible Hand. She will have the gnosis that what comes down must go up. Let us anticipate this advent.
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rev. 5/27/00