Speed

this is what recovery feels like

What if things are speeding up?

A lot.

What if we are in the midst of an economic recovery that is far different than any we’ve ever experienced?

Imagine if we lived in a time when we had ubiquitous global computing power that had been improving at an accelerating rate for decades.

And there was a system of this computing power sitting there, somewhat utilized, but with the capacity to fly much more quickly…

But for years while this capacity was amassed, imagine that many people were moving in slow motion. Many of them were paused. Waiting...

Like they were in a post-traumatic-stress situation following an almost great-depression surrounded by an echo-chamber of dying old media companies trying to keep us scared that it might happen again.

In Europe. Or China. Or even here…but surely somewhere.

So imagine that all these years went by and all these great technologies kept getting better yet people were kinda twiddling their thumbs waiting for that next shoe when all the while things were slowly getting better.

And then somehow it was five years past the collapse and markets were at all time highs and people started looking around and realizing the tide had been rising all this time and it wasn’t-so-bad after all and man-there-is-a lot-to-do around here where-did-all-the-employees-go have we really been running-this-company-without-hiring people for all these years?

And then the system started to pick up steam because that lubricant of technology had been laid so well and connected so many things that as the perspective started to shift from one of fear to one of motion — from one of doubt to one of action — that these tubes of technology between us served as accelerants to the whole thing.

Not as much that they were fuel for a fire, but more like an explosion.

Like a fast one. A nuclear one.

What if where we are now is past that inflection point?

What if things just speed up from here?

What if our measures of things like inflation are just totally off and the money juicing this whole system is already doing strange things and that things might.

Just.

Get.

Bizarre.

Not bitcoin going haywire bizarre, or the yen imploding weird, or record setting auction prices or rising stock markets or record multi billion dollar private company valuations or record CLO issuances or record private equity and venture capital fundraises or record corporate cash balances or bank cash balances or fed balance sheets or anything ordinary like that.

I mean:

What if things really start to speed up in ways we can’t control or predict?

The flash crash took how long?

Imagine what might happen if all of us humans actually put our energy into moving this whole thing faster and then the machines take over.

Not even for a long time. But for long enough.

Imagine if we lived in a world like that. Things could get pretty weird.

For now, I think we might just get busier and busier.

Hang on.