I need to say this clearly because a lot of people — good, smart, hardworking people — are still operating on the assumption that things will “get back to normal.”
They won’t.
Where we’re going will never be what we had. The old playbooks — the ones that worked from 2008 to 2020, that comfortable 12-year stretch of relative stability where you could set your direction and put it on autopilot — those playbooks are finished. If you think you can use them in the world that’s unfolding, please say hi to the dodo when you get there.
The rule books for what’s coming have yet to be written. They’ll be written as events unfold, but right now everything is up for grabs. Every model, every projection, every “expert forecast” that uses linear thinking to predict 2030 or beyond is delusional. I said it. I’m comfortable saying it.
The New Zealand Government recently published a report projecting superannuation requirements out to 2060. Thirty-four years from now. Using models built on assumptions about employment, wages, demographics, and economic growth that are already being blown apart. That’s not planning. That’s theatre.
Anyone telling you with certainty what to expect in 2030 — let alone 2060 — is either incompetent or lying. I’m good with pattern recognition but even I can’t see past 2030 with any level of confidence. And I’m at least honest about that.
This doesn’t mean the future is all bad. It means the future is genuinely unknown in a way it hasn’t been in any of our lifetimes. And that requires a fundamentally different approach than the one most of us have been taught.