Hi Doc!
They probably felt similarly during the great plague and maybe even in 1917. I think we will get through it, though technology doesn’t allow us to get distance and work remotely like never before and that will have profound and economy shifting impacts in real estate values and cities, no doubt.
Pension plans and others are buying up entire residential neighborhoods in the suburbs. I think that will eventually backfire. There is so much land in this country and there are so many places one can go. Overpaying for a piece of the suburbs right now is a momentary blip. Lots of little bubbles that can’t last. People buying assets based upon momentary beliefs in things that may not be lasting or real.
We certainly are in insane times, but they happen about every 100 years. Our elders die before they see them again, so they can’t warn us. We have history books and documentaries, but we think we are smarter and different than past generations. Well, we are smarter, and we’re not smarter. We have more tech, often a big part of the cause of the challenges, we are not all that much more knowledgeable in any century, as humans in society. Every 100 years or so, people think they are experiencing something completely new... but the similarities of conditions and the human responses, are so similar, it’s ridiculous. And because people think it is all new, they mostly do the same things, over and over again. Let’s hope this time, we can avoid some of the same mistakes that would be more catastrophic this time, because we have far more destructive capacities and our existence as a species, with so many more people on the planet, using all the resources more completely, is far more tenuous.