Although Americans are justly proud of the heroic way President Lincoln kept the South in the United States, it is interesting to speculate on what would the nation look like today if he had let the rebels secede from the Union? Think of this as a thought experiment that attempts to explore an alternate path of US development.

The first difference would be that the lives of many millions of men who died in the Civil War would be spared.

Yes, the Southern slaves would not have been freed. But how much longer could slavery persist after seeing the North free their slaves and with the nation modernizing in the Industrial Age that was taking off then?

The major difference would be to divide the United States into two very different nations stressing very different values. The “Northern States of America” (NSA) would likely have been distinguished by their adherence to democratic ideals of community, human welfare, and the role of government, much like the Democratic Party today. The “Southern States of America” (SSA) would have valued the right of property, free markets, and limited government, like the Republican Party. These 2 cultures may not be quite so neatly divided, but please bear with me as I use this distinction to make an important point.

The two nations could have worked together on common issues, possibly, and they might have fought occasionally, but they could have co-existed rather nicely out of necessity.

The interesting question is, how would the paths taken by the NSA and the SSA have taken these nations in different directions and to different places?

The NSA could have created a more equitable and just society that works together well. They probably would have taken better care of women, the young, and other needy groups, and they would have addressed the climate change crisis. Favoring the use of government to pursue these goals, would the NSA have grown over controlled by Federal regulations and mounting debt, as conservatives warn? Or would they learn to temper the need for control to allow enterprise to thrive?

The SSA would have thrived economically for some time with cheap slave labor, and they likely would have been inventive in their freedom to be entrepreneurial with minimal government restrictions.  The social costs of this laissez-faire capitalism would likely have fomented slave rebellions, and social decay would have taken a heavy toll.  With no interest in dealing with climate change, the South would likely have become near uninhabitable due to drought, sea level rise, and extreme weather.

There are other paths that could be explored, but I suggest this little thought experiment illustrates the perils of ignoring the concerns of either the left or the right wings of politics. Both positions alone would lead to extremism, and they need each other to provide balance and tempered policy. When we become tired of the endless debate, the specter of either an extreme NSA or SSA would be a valuable lesson to remember.

          As a scholar, forecaster, strategist, businessman, American Catholic, and all-around know-it-all, I wondered what I would advise the Pontiff to say in his speech to the US Congress.  I give talks myself, and I think I would suggest the following to help Americans realize their potential.   

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Dear American Friends:

          I am delighted by the warm embrace I have received from Americans, and honored to be with you in this seat of great power. This is especially fitting because I wish to speak with you about the use of American power.

          America is a great nation because it professes ideals of democracy, freedom, human welfare, and other virtues that move us toward the transcendent. Your marvelous technological ingenuity, creativeness, zest for knowledge and adventure, and economic advancement are holy attributes that express the sacred power of life and carry it forward.

          I must caution you that there are signs of illness in the American spirit that do not live up to your God-given ideals. The gap between your wealthy and ordinary citizens is beyond reasonable standards, and it harms your society gravely for many reasons. The extravagance of American life and the market push for consumption is a serious failing when much of the world struggles with poverty, and while the planet’s life itself is threatened.

          I understand many of you do what you can to alleviate these harms, but I think the basic problem is that American institutions celebrate self-interest and money rather than the society they should serve.  Your business corporations are dominated by Wall Street and the bottom line, while your political parties are supported by the moneyed class.

          Money is an essential part of any economic system, of course, but it cannot be the dominate purpose of a society.  I urge you to reframe your political system, business corporations, government agencies, and other institutions to serve others. You will be rewarded manifold.

          Take your great American spirit and use it for good. Please free your politicians from the burden of raising campaign funds so they can do their jobs and do them honestly. Ask your business leaders to include their employees in the conduct and rewards of their work. And please also ask them to work for the welfare of their communities. American business can help the developing nations prosper, and they will be rewarded in turn. Saving the Earth from climate change will challenge us all for decades, so addressing this problem will produce a large and sophisticated green economic sector with good jobs and solid returns on investment.

          I humble advise you that this is the path to the fulfillment of your great American ideals. Turning your energy to others is what we all need to find the Lord’s peace. That is what I am inviting you do with me. Let us recreate our institutions to serve others, and thereby help us all find a better measure of happiness. I know this is very difficult to do, and I am asking much of you. That is why I also ask you to do this by working together.

          Your conservatives and liberals have polarized the nation, but this can be resolved with honest collaboration to satisfy both sets of interests. Nobody today doubts the creativity of free markets, and we all know how essential strong communities and governments are to a healthy society. Other nations are exploring how they can integrate both philosophies into a more powerful whole, and I know you can lead the way. The same polarization of societies is happening around the world, and America was born to take us into a new global era.

May the Lord bless you all. Francis    

The amazing rise of Donald Trump to lead the Republican race for president is a highly symbolic event, and I think it signifies that American conservativism is in crisis.

At a time when trickle-down capitalism has failed and the wealth gap dries up market demand from a squeezed middle class, why would the GOP support a multi-billionaire who advocates more of the same pro-business policies?

With climate change threatening the planet, a hyper-consumer who brags about his extravagant lifestyle seems exactly wrong in an age of limited global resources and mounting environmental costs.

And now that the Nation supports gay marriage and cultural diversity, an aging white male who insults anyone he dislikes sounds like a prescription for political disaster.

Trump has great strengths, mainly his ability to take on big real estate projects successfully, and he has support among rank and file Republicans. A recent focus group thought him “one of us,” “tells the truth,” and is “like Reagan.” But the odds are strongly against him winning a general election, so this rage for Trump doesn’t make much sense, and one wonders what’s really going on?

I study economic cycles to better forecast change, and I think the Reagan Revolution of 1980 has run its course. The deregulation, privatization, and business tax breaks that stimulated the boom of the 90’s are over and Reaganism is in decline.

The overhyped booms and busts of 2000 and 2008 lost Americans trillions of dollars and still spook markets around the globe. Middle-class wages have been flat for decades while the 1% thrive, ironically fulfilling Marx’s prediction about the “immiseration” of the working class. In a world growing to 9 billion people, the single-minded focus on money is almost blind to the exploding need for good jobs, community services, environmental damage and climate change. These disparities in wealth in the face of mounting social concerns provoked Pope Francis to call capitalism immoral.

In the face of such daunting limitations, one would think new principles are in order. But the lure of “a self-organizing market economy with minimal government” is so great that the GOP can’t forsake Reagan’s legacy. Yes, Trump draws on the public’s anger at politics, but it’s a lot more than that. They like Trump because he exemplifies their free market ideals, even though he’s a caricature of a rich capitalist.

By celebrating this outdated ideology, Trumpmania could produce a conservative disaster. It gives Trump great appeal for the nomination but a likely defeat in the general election. Yet a “President Trump” is entirely possible. Remember, Reagan was considered a buffoon up until he took office,

Let’s strategize this issue using scenarios. The three most interesting possible outcomes are outlined below, along with my estimate of the probabilities:

Normalcy Returns – 60%     Trump blows it by becoming too insulting on a sensitive issue, so Bush or another normal Republican run against Hillary Clinton.

Trump Wins GOP Nomination – 40%   Trumpmania gets the Donald over the top, and Trump runs against Hillary or other Democrats.

Trump Wins the Presidency – 40% X 30% = 12%   Trump convinces conservatives, independents, and angry democrats that he can be presidential, while Hillary implodes.

Trump Loses the Presidency – 40% x 70% = 28%   Trump can’t pull it off, and is revealed as incapable of being an effective politician.
These are just my estimates of course, and I invite you to provide your own and do the math. You are likely to come up with roughly similar numbers. If Trump were nominated (40% probability), I think there is a 70% chance he could not beat a Democratic, so the probability of losing the electron would be 24%. To win, Trump has to beat a Democrat (30% probability), producing a 12% probability of winning the election.

A Trump Presidency may be a wild card, but it is entirely possible, and even plausible. By supporting a comic capitalist who appeals to their outmoded ideology, the GOP is likely to suffer a historic defeat that ends Reaganism.  And there is a small but realistic possibility that Americans would have to accept Donald Trump as president. 

 The North Korean attack on SONY raised the issue of America’s vaunted “freedom of expression” to dizzying heights as the company withdrew the offending film. There is intense concern over yielding to this cyber-attack because that would encourage other attacks, and they could become more frequent and damaging. If a backward nation like N. Korea can bring down a major corporation, we are in new territory of “cyber-feedback” where angered leaders can impose damage on enemies at will.

While it may be reasonable for Americans to see this as an assault on basic freedoms, it can appear very different from a broader perspective. At the symbolic level where we all impute meaning, the offending movie is seen as a poke in the eye of N. Korea. Yes, the movie’s criticism may be valid, and comedy has always been used to promote change. But that’s not how N. Koreans see it, and the result is to provoke conflict.

Americans have a habit of speaking truth to power, and our independence is the source of robust creativity and enterprise. But we often overdo it badly. When Westerners mock the Prophet Mohammed, for instance, this incites violence among Muslims around the globe. If we really want to insist on total freedom of expression, we should also expect a lot more retaliatory violence.

From this broader perspective, America seems more like a rowdy teenager than a global colossus. Issuing offensive media in an increasingly emotional and connected world looks not too different from the way teens attack one another on Facebook. What’s worse, those who favor showing the offending movie are like parents who tell their child it’s OK to continue the eye poking.

Americans face a tough choice. If we continue pushing the freedom to say anything, regardless of how hurtful it may be, we should not be surprised if people fight back. Or we could temper our indulgence in being candid to avoid provoking conflict, and become a little more mature. After all, most adults usually withhold gratuitous insults simply because they want to avoid confrontations.

Eleven months into the world’s worst Ebola outbreak, there have been more than 9,200 suspected cases and 4,500 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 2.5 times that many have gone unreported and warns that there could be up to 10,000 new cases each week by December. At the current rate of spread, there could be 6 million infections by early April 2015 and over 6 billion by the following Halloween.

In Vietnam, Myanmar, and several major Chinese cities, health workers are screening international visitors for fever before they are allowed to leave the airport, though there has not been a single case of Ebola in Asia.

In the US, Congressional leaders are calling for a ban on travel to West Africa. President Obama found it necessary to warn that Americans “can’t give in to hysteria or fear” over Ebola and appointed a “czar” to deal with the crisis.

A few infectious-disease specialists have speculated that Ebola could mutate into a form that spreads through the air. “It’s the single greatest concern I’ve ever had in my 40-year public health career,” says Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota. If Ebola can be caught from a cough or sneeze, that would be a nightmare, and a catastrophic global pandemic would be all but guaranteed.

Is the global pandemic envisioned by TechCast’s Wild Card already at hand? Our forecasts offer some perspective on the odds for Ebola and other pandemics. The TechCast panel of experts estimates a 22-percent probability that “A new pandemic devastates a major region, destabilizing global society.” They also think the impact would be serious, measuring -4 on a scale of -10 to + 10.

Although an Ebola pandemic is possible, these estimates suggest that it is unlikely there will be 6 million infections. The Ebola outbreak spread because of basic mistakes. WHO experts in Africa downplayed the risks in reports to headquarters. Many countries were slow to react. Budget cuts at WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control impaired their preparations and hampered their response. In general, the world was unequipped for a major outbreak of a disease formerly limited to isolated villages in Africa.

This has changed dramatically. WHO estimated it would cost $600 million to end the epidemic. Governments and philanthropists have pledged nearly $2.1 billion. Funding for CDC’s work on Ebola has been restored. Experimental drugs from the U.S. and China are on their way to Africa, and development work has been ramped up.

As a result, there has been major progress against the epidemic. WHO has declared both Senegal and Nigeria free of Ebola. Success in Nigeria is especially good news. The slums of Lagos, variously estimated at between 15 and 25 million people, were considered the worst danger zone for a pandemic.

No matter how many new patients appear in December, the balance clearly is tipping. Ebola will be controlled long before infections soar into the millions.

The real danger comes from superbugs that develop resistance to antibiotics. It is widely believed that the excessive use of penicillin and other drugs for minor medical problems, and especially in livestock, is promoting the development of far more ferocious bacteria that could devastate modern societies. TechCast experts estimate a 38-percent probability that “Antibiotic-resistant superbugs become common threats to health.”

These TechCast estimates are just that—expert estimates—but they help give us a better basis for our judgments and actions. In the case of today’s Ebola outbreak, they suggest the dangers are manageable and there is no cause for panic. They also remind us there are far more likely and enduring health concerns, like superbugs, that deserve our attention.

For more forecasts, See www.TechCastGlobal.com

TechCast’s recent move from its 6th generation website (www.TechCast.org) to its new 7th gen site (www.TechCastGlobal.com) offered a rare opportunity to test the repeatability of forecast data.

As the move was approaching, we captured one of the last data sets from the old site on Jan 29, 2014. The extensive background data framing each forecast (research breakthroughs, applications, new ventures, adoption levels, etc. organized into trends) was transferred to the new site, but we decided to drop the old expert estimates and have experts enter new estimates from scratch.  Below is a summary of forecasts from the Jan 29 data (Before) and the most recent data (After) on Oct 13, 2014.

Note:  Forecasts are for varying adoption levels.

Results

This simple test is a good way to check repeatability of a research method. It is often thought that such results are “anchored” by the existing forecast data, which is another way of saying experts are “biased” by the present results. The resulting mean error of .38 years seems remarkably small, especially considering that the average forecast has a time horizon of at least 10 years out.

Repeatability is not the same as accuracy, of course, and that’s where our annual accuracy studies come in, We have found from previous studies that TechCast accuracy is on the order of +3/-1 years at about ten years out. That is, there is a tendency for experts to be over optimistic by about 3 years and under optimistic by about 1 year. This tendency toward optimism is well-reported in the literature on forecasting. We call this “forecast creep” – the tendency for forecasts to slowly creep into the future by about 3 years over a ten year horizon.

Since the elapsed time between our Before and After data is about 9 months (Jan to Oct), forecast creep probably accounts for significant portion of the .38 years error. We also note that another form of the anchoring likely accounts for this repeatability. In our system of collective intelligence, the background data provides an empirical foundation of knowledge which experts use to make their estimates, thus anchoring the results to an accurate knowledge base.

Conclusions

This simple test demonstrates that the TechCast system is remarkably repeatable and robust. The results also confirm other studies we have done comparing results from two different groups of experts, which also seemed remarkably similar. Considering that the expert panel changes over time, and the conditions affecting forecasts also change constantly, these results support the utility of collective intelligence forecasting. There may be a small zone of error, but pooling knowledge is a great way to get good answers to tough questions.

The dot.com bubble caused a market crash in 2000, a housing bubble almost brought down the global economy in 2008, and today’s gushing excitement over new US oil and gas discoveries could also prove to be a bubble that is likely to collapse about 2015 – a “carbon bubble.”

My TechCast Project (www.TechCastGlobal.com) has been cautious about the new energy discoveries, and the following trends suggest good reasons for thinking the bloom is off the rose. Yes, abundant optimism abounds, but that’s how it always looks at the top of a bubble – endless opportunity and other exaggerated promises. Our forecasts reported below suggest it would be wise to consider the prospect of a major oil shock to the global economy in the next few years, triggering a global downturn.

LIMITED     The new discoveries are a boon to Americans, but they only add a few percent to global supplies. The US’s 3 million barrels/day output pales in comparison to global demand of 90 million barrels/day, which. is increasing rapidly as China, India, and other nations industrialize. The new oil in the Dakotas, for instance, is considered the greatest find ever in the US, yet this is only 0.5 percent of global reserves.

DECLINING     It is also clear that the supply of carbon is declining. The International Energy Agency reports that four million barrels are being depleted every day, and the rate of loss is increasing. The US Energy Information Administration thinks oil and coal seem to be flattening and gas is likely to peak in a decade or two. (MIT Technology Review, Jul 3, 2013) Shale gas only produces about 1 percent of transport fuel, even while the first gas mines are now declining. Some think gas will peak in a decade. (Atlantic, May, 2013)

OVERSTATED    There is also evidence that energy companies are overstating the supply to discourage competition from alternative energy. Shell’s head of exploration stated: “I am sick and tired of lying about the extent of our reserves.” Because of low output, Shell’s $24 billion investment in unconventional oil and gas in North America has been disappointing. The outgoing CEO said “Unconventionals did not play out as planned.” (Guardian, Mar 28, 2014)

ENVIRONMENT BACKLASH   This imbalance between growing demand and declining supply is likely to worsen as environmental limits press back. With climate change becoming serious, our Social Trends cite dozens of major protests as people demand environmental protections, carbon taxes, and other changes to curtail carbon use. Economist Jeffery Sachs predicts the next spate of big hurricanes, droughts, fires, and sea level rise will foment a revolt against coal, gas, and oil. (Washington Post, Nov 17, 2013)

IN THE FOOTHILLS NOW    Other new carbon sources are coming online as fracking spreads to some nations, potential deposits in the Arctic Circle become available with global warming, and energy efficiencies keep increasing. But these are like foothills in the huge mountain of carbon we have exhausted over the past century.

The result is that a serious energy shortage seems to be growing. Consider the following conclusions by global energy institutions and authorities:

* The UK Peak Oil Task Force reported: “Global peak production for oil would likely occur within the decade, very likely by 2015.” (Markpg, Apr 4, 2013)
* The International Energy Agency finds “Global oil production will drop 1% a year from 2015 on… supply would fall short in 2015.” (IEA, May 12, 2014)
* Geologist and energy expert Dr. Jeremy Leggett thinks “systemic energy risks could trigger a global crash sometime between 2015 and 2020.” (Guardian, Mar 28, 2014)

If the carbon bubble were to burst, this new oil shock would likely coincide with an overheated stock market that is also heading for a major correction. Equity prices are reaching the same atmospheric price/earnings ratios that preceded the crashes of 2000 and 2008, and the piercing of this carbon bubble could serve as the trigger for the next global downturn.

On the other side of the bubble, what seemed an endless supply of oil and gas may be viewed more accurately as limited, costly, and dirty remnants of a fading energy past. The declining cost of alternatives is even now disrupting markets for carbon fuels. See our recent breakthrough Solar Taking Off. In our forecast on Alternative Energy, TechCast experts estimate that 30 percent of global energy will come from alternative sources in one decade, about 2025, taking renewable energy mainstream.