Don’t Worry, Be Happy: The Bots Are Coming

Readers can be forgiven for wondering how long the ‘topping process’ I’ve alluded to over the last several months will drag on. As you will have long since concluded, no one can answer that question with confidence. For all that we supposed experts know, the bull market that began in 2009 could still be chugging blithely along two years from now when Trump’s successor takes office.  But this will be the last you’ll hear from me about a topping process, even if the bear market for which it will set the hook is as likely as tomorrow’s sunrise. It will be a doozy, catalyzed by the unwinding of an Everything Bubble that already owns us, up to and including M&A superstars and real estate tycoons. The implosion will inflict hard times on most Americans, especially Baby Boomers who went all-in with Nvidia shares, private equity schemes and rental properties mortgaged to the eaves.

How worried should you be?  I’d suggest taking doomsday predictions in stride if that’s your style. Speaking as a die-hard permabear who has been predicting a Second Great Depression for longer than any of you can recall, I’d be the first to concede there is no reason why the Dow Industrials and the S&Ps could not continue to ascend, possibly doubling or even tripling over the next 5–10 years.  Just realize that any reported gains in the standard of living would be largely illusory, even as quality-of-life amenities we took for granted in the 1950s continued toward extinction. Things like doctors making house calls, and mothers being able to stay home with their children. That was America’s Renaissance, even if no one knew it at the time.

Science to the Rescue!

Technology will come through for us as it always has, right?  AI wizardry, huge productivity gains and millions of robotic workers are about to make life’s necessities plentiful for everyone, including baristas, down-and-out middle managers and college grads with useless degrees. If Elon Musk is right, savings will become optional, or at least less important, as thinking machines attend to our needs. They will help us navigate the shoals of daily life, sleeping with the homeless in doorways and keeping them warm with space-age blankets made from discarded styrofoam cups.  They will cure cancer and extract diesel fuel from spent cooking oil if an energy shortage should strand yachtsmen.

Impossible? Not if you believe Musk, who says the robots will be smarter than we are in five years.  So deep and sincere is his faith in technology, AI in particular, that we must assume he believes bots will be even smarter and more capable than he is.  If such a world is coming, why worry about the stock market and the economy? Why worry about anything, really?