Top Risks of 2023

Every one of these risks will represent an opportunity to somebody. There's a cartoon of a group of people huddled around a post apocalyptic fire and one person in pin-striped rags says "we created some spectacular wealth opportunities for a while there" (or similar)

I personally see the oil thing as more upside than not. Diversification of economy by OPEC in the ME is underway and will help them and everyone else make more viable longterm economic choices, which tend to go hand in hand with liberalising social policy longterm. Sure, it takes many women's destroyed lives to finally arrive at women able to drive and own their own future, but it may yet happen inside my lifetime without a war.

Moving to solar and wind and batteries is a good all of its own. Net jobs creating, reduces direct and indirect pollution, encourages resiliency in the design of power networks which in turn makes resilient local communities.

My personal threat model focused on the methane release from tundra permafrost melt, and the persistence of covid like disease worldwide with a long tail. I don't know how we can fix the methane risk and the other one demands a retreat from routine free movement of people worldwide. We're not yet ready to give up liw cost international travel for everyone. Building out quarantine stations and making people use them was tried (Australia) and kind of failed. Maybe it can be done better but it's not sellable right now.

The refugee problem is both opportunity and risk. Merkel recognising German hunger for labour was a lesson other cultures have been reluctant to seize. Instead we have rising racism in British (and other) immigration policy and waves of economic migrants washing around instead of being useful productive and happy labour. Australia's cynicism about demanding highly skilled labour for visas when what it lacks is people to pick fruit, and it's return to (at least this time mostly beneficent) predation on pacific Island economies is worrisome.

Inflation and stagflation is scary. House prices are scary. We need to get back to big government, social housing and useful taxation. A lot of people shout this down. I still don't know why when high tax economies like Finland and Norway are doing fine (admittedly with a high language barrier and high social cohesion)

FAANG salaries have to drop 2-3x and the super rich should be formally divested of most of the billions. Again, untenable to many in the land of the free. But it's making an overclass and underclass emerge again. We're heading back to domestic servants at scale (they never really went away)

The worldwide 15% corporate tax agreement is a floor not a ceiling.

No mention of North Korea. Unwise to dismiss them. Very unwise to forget about them entirely.