California post-pandemic? Looking bleak.

Professor Joe Mathews examines the Institute for the Future’s projected scenarios for California post-COVID. The four scenarios are sobering. Some envision a “fractured” place of never-ending chaos. Yet all four offer hope: We can (and must) transform failing economic structures.

Earlier this fall, the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto-based think tank produced four post-pandemic scenarios. The visions are pretty dark.

The only ray of light comes from the “Transformation: Social Solidarity” scenario, and it feels improbable. Under this scenario, systemic breakdowns during the pandemic inspire a renewed public commitment to broad social agendas, and to greater collective well-being. The mutual aid arrangements of today evolve into new income and health supports, and society begins to transform and redesign its broken systems. Public education is reinvented around experiential learning, while new digital governance structures, including data unions, protect privacy and marshal digital power for civic purposes.

By 2030, a Global New Deal has emerged around “universal basic assets—every human’s right to the core resources that are essential to well-being.”

All four scenarios suggest that the future will turn on how we address our broken systems and faltering institutions. And the Institute for the Future argues for replacement over repair of systems. “Whether we simply shore them up as best we can or make major structural changes, will largely determine whether we see a decade of renewed growth or collapse, a reckoning with long-term limits to growth, or a deep shift in both economy and culture,” reads the Institute’s map of the scenarios.

This article originally appeared in Fox & Hounds Daily. Read the whole thing here.

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