A Review of Predictions and Prophecies for the Year 2000 Excerpted from Dr. Steven Hayward’s remarks at the Pacific Research Institute’s 20th Anniversary Policy Workshop, San Francisco, October 30, 1999

Steven Hayward, Senior Fellow, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy

Prediction is always a hazardous business. The movie producer Sam Goldwyn once remarked, "Never prophesy—especially about the future."

Of course, the failure of predictions to come true sometimes doesn’t deter true believers. It is possible to walk down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and hear graying leftists remark that "It is proof of Trotsky’s far-sightedness that not one of his predictions has come true yet!"

The new millennium offers the opportunity for a reality check on predictions made over the last several decades for the year 2000. I will venture a few predictions of my own toward the end, but even worse than offering predictions that will likely be wrong in one way or another, I will begin with an even more hazardous gambit—generalizations.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once remarked that all generalizations are wrong—including this one. But in summing up our century, generalizations have been flying fast and thick. So here is mine: The most signal change of the 20th century has been the decline of the idea of progress, a widespread shift from a giddy optimism about the future to pessimism and anxiety about the future. In his 1980 book History of the Idea of Progress, the distinguished sociologist Robert Nisbet predicted that "when the identity of our century is eventually fixed by historians, not faith but the abandonment of faith in the idea of progress will be one of the major attributes."1 The contrast between the beginning and the end of the 20th century is as stark as day and night.

To be sure, there has always been profound pessimism available at the wholesale and retail level, from thinkers such as Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West, 1918), down to the streetcorner preacher warning sinners of the imminent apocalypse. And indeed, the persistence of apocalyptic visions throughout history and across cultures suggests that human beings are endowed with eschatological chromosomes. The year 1000 was marked by widespread anxiety that the world would come to an end. Thousands of people awaited the coming of the year 1000 on mountain tops—rather like Californians did for the harmonic convergence back in 1987. The decline of religious consciousness has not ended this deep tendency in human social thought; rather it has secularized it. We now find many sources of apocalyptic portents, as we shall discuss in a moment.

This is what makes the outlook of the year 1900 so striking. In a nutshell, social thinkers of every variety, and in every modern nation, thought the 20th century would experience the full flowering of the moral and scientific promise of the Enlightenment. The year 1900 was, after all, the cusp of the age known in America as the "Progressive Era." The German philosopher Ernst Haeckel published a book in 1899 entitled The Riddle of the Universe, in which he argued that science would soon solve all of mankind’s most pressing problems, and, most important, eliminate war. In America, President Theodore Roosevelt predicted that the 20th century would be a century of "moral progress" to match our rapidly advancing material progress. He had lots of company. A few far-sighted thinkers even tried to envision what the year 2000 would be like.

One of the most popular and best-selling futuristic visions of the late 19th century was Edward Bellamy’s futurist novel Looking Backward. Bellamy predicted a benign socialist world would exist by 2000, and it seemed very plausible at the time. Looking Backward sold millions of copies when it was published in 1888, and was translated into more than 20 languages. Hundreds of "Bellamy Clubs," a precursor of the Fabian Societies, sprung up all over the United States. In form, Looking Backward was an updating of Rip Van Winkle, in which the narrator, Julian West, awakens to find himself 110 years in the future, in the Boston of the year 2000. There he describes the utopia of a hierarchical society in which the entire population is organized like an army, all means of production are state-owned, and there is complete equality of income. Most astonishing of all, in the utopia of Looking Backward, private transactions of any kind are frowned upon. "What if someone wanted to buy something from someone else?," West asks his host. "Before the nation could even think of honoring any such transfer as you speak of, it would be bound to inquire into all the circumstances of the transaction, so as to be able to guarantee its absolute equity," he is told. "Human nature must have changed very much," West concludes.

Looking Backward was entirely typical of the confidence and optimism about the future that pervaded popular and elite thought in 1900. What shattered this optimism is obvious: wars (not just colonial wars or clashing armies, but "total war," involving the entire populations of nations); economic collapses, the failure of socialism to deliver on its promise of growth and abundance for all, and especially its descent into "totalitarianism," a new phenomenon in the 20th century); the use of "perverted science," as Churchill called it, by totalitarians; political failure among western democracies (the "deadlock of democracy"); and the fear of nuclear apocalypse. None of these trends had been foreseen by even the most pessimistic observer in 1900. By the mid-20th century utopian novels such as Looking Backward had given way to anti-utopian novels such as 1984, Darkness at Noon, and That Hideous Strength. The most striking thing about the late years of the 20th century is that there are no compelling or even superficially plausible visions of a utopian future, and no imaginary literature comparable to Looking Backward.

Above all, in recent decades there has arisen a deep strain of environmental pessimism. This is thought to have originated with the rise of the environmental movement in the late 1960s, but in fact it is much older. In 1949, Fairfield Osborn wrote Our Plundered Planet, warning that environmental disaster loomed unless there was a "complete revolution in man’s point of view toward the earth’s resources and toward the methods he employs in drawing upon them."2

These surprises and the rise of technology in the 20th century have led to the new social science of "futurology." Mankind has always tried to predict the future in various ways. Once upon a time shamans used to predict the future by reading chicken entrails. Today, we still read entrails, but we call them computer printouts.

In one sentence, the trouble with computer models, or any other kind of dynamic model, is that they are vulnerable to the GIGO problem—garbage in, garbage out. In other words, models predicting future behavior are only as good as the assumptions that go into them.

Most of the doomsday predictions are based on a very simple fallacy of assuming that current trends will continue unless something dramatic is done about them, by the ubiquitous but never defined "we" or "they." This neglects Herb Stein’s first law: If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. This is true of population bombs, energy crises, budget deficits, crime rates, and so forth.

As recently as 1993, for example, the best forecasts called for growing federal budget deficits as far as the eye could see. Suddenly, before the decade was out, we had huge back-to-back budget surpluses. How did this happen so quickly and dramatically?

If you go back further, the margin of error begins to reach orders of magnitude. Consider Paul Ehrlich’s famous book, The Population Bomb, published in 1968. In it he predicted:

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate."

We kinda missed that one, didn’t we? Here are the facts about what has
taken place: Between 1961 and today, world population doubled, but world cropland increased only 10 percent. Doesn’t this mean lots of people must
be eating less, if not starving? In fact, food supplies per capita grew every-where except sub-Saharan Africa, from 2235 to 2699 k/cal per day per capita,
a 20-percent increase.

Ehrlich also predicted that England would cease to exist by 1980; but we might forgive him this—who could have predicted Margaret Thatcher?

Another great example is the Global 2000 Report to the President, which was published by the Carter administration in 1980. The Global 2000 Report predicted that the price of oil would rise by 50 percent in real terms in the 1980s, reaching $100 a barrel by the year 2000. In 2000, the world was expected to be 20 million barrels a day short. In fact, the price of oil is now below $20 a barrel in current dollars, and under constant pressure to keep from falling back toward $10 a barrel.

Global 2000 had lots of distinguished company. A team at MIT predicted in 1977: "The supply of oil will fail to meet increasing demand before the year 2000, most probably between 1985 and 1995, even if energy prices are 50 percent above current levels in real terms."(In fact, real prices are almost 50 percent lower in real terms today.)

The first Secretary of Energy, James Schlesinger, predicted in 1979: "The energy future is bleak and is likely to grow bleaker in the decade ahead."

National Geographic magazine predicted in 1981: "Conservative estimates project a price of $80 a barrel for oil, even if peace is restored to the Middle East." Peace in the Middle East is, of course, a relative concept, but we have cheap oil from there anyway. Here is a bit of trivia: Two nations in the Middle East did not participate in the original 1973 oil embargo that set off the "energy crisis," and continued to sell oil to the United States and Europe—Iraq and Iran. This is just another ironic example of how the future can surprise you.

The best predictions come not from dynamic models that can never be dynamic enough, but from good, old-fashioned imagination, which can’t be taught or redacted into a computer program.

One of the best prognosticators was the late Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute, the fellow who pioneered "war games" about nuclear weapons, which won him the distinction of being the role model for the title character of the film "Dr. Strangelove." (At least it wasn’t "The Wrath of Kahn.")

In 1967, Kahn and a colleague published a lengthy study entitled The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years. It was chock full of predictions of all kinds, some of them pretty close to being right, and others way off the mark. The worst predictions were the ones based on assumptions and computer models. Kahn predicted that U.S. population in the year 2000 would be 318 million (the actual figure is just below 270 million).

But his best predictions stemmed from his keen imagination. For example, he offered a list of "One Hundred Technical Innovations Very Likely in the Last Third of the 20th Century." By my count, 48 of his 100 have come fully true, with another nine very close to coming true, or certainly to come true before much longer. That is a good batting average.

Among the items on his list that are worth mentioning:

Number 20: "Inexpensive design and procurement of ‘one-of-a-kind’ items through use of computerized analysis and automated production." This is a good description of the trend of "mass customization" that is coming into being today.

Number 39: "New, more varied, and more reliable drugs for control of fatigue, relaxation, alertness, mood, personality, perceptions, fantasies, and other psychobiological states." Welcome, Dr. Kahn, to the world of Prozac and Viagra.

Number 72: "Practical home and business use of ‘wired’ video communication for both telephone and TV (possibly including retrieval of taped material from libraries or other sources) and rapid transmission and reception of facsimilies (possibly including news, library material, commercial announcements, instantaneous mail delivery, other printouts, and so on.)" Now this sounds like a tolerably good anticipation of the Internet, and remember that this was made two years before Al Gore invented the first node of the Internet at UCLA in 1969.

Number 81: "Personal ‘pagers’ (perhaps even two-way pocket phones) and other personal electronic equipment for communication, computing, and data processing." No comment required here.

Number 82: "Direct broadcasts from satellites to home receivers." Again, no comment required.

Kahn did have a few bloopers, such as number 26: "Widespread use of nuclear reactors for power." But then, who could have predicted Jane Fonda?

The absence of a compelling imaginary literature of utopia such as Looking Backward is actually a hopeful sign of our maturity at the end of the 20th century. That we no longer produce utopian or anti-utopian literature is a sign that we are moving toward a state of equilibrium, that we are all realists now. It is not necessary to embrace Francis Fukuyama’s thesis that the end of the 20th century coincides with the end point of human ideological development to see that the classical liberal ideals of individual rights and a free economy are in better shape than they were at the beginning of the century. However, while the overarching utopian vision is today blurred or encrusted with cataracts, it, nonetheless, persists in ways that still threaten classical liberal principles.

The radical egalitarian impulse that was always at the heart of utopian thinking lives on, but today it manifests itself mostly in the group-based politics of anger and resentment, and through narrow issues such as "comparable worth"—an idea that appears in Looking Backward. Instead of trying to move people with grand visions of utopia, the egalitarian agenda today is more akin to trench warfare, with small bits of ground being contested in the arena of public policy. As Hayek presciently reminded us in The Constitution of Liberty, the most potent threats to liberty come through small administrative measures. That’s why there’s still a lot of work for us to do, and why we must gird ourselves for the inevitable ideological contests of the 21st century.

Notes

1 Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980),
p. 317. See also Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History
(New York: Free Press, 1997).

2 Cited in Rudolf Klein, "Growth and Its Enemies," Commentary,
June 1972, p. 39.

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About the Author

Steven Hayward is senior fellow and director of the Center for Environmental and Regulatory Reform at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco, where he co-authors The Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, released each year on Earth Day. During 1997–98, he was also a Bradley Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and he is an adjunct fellow of the John Ashbrook Center at Ashland College, Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an M.A. in Government from Claremont Graduate University.

Dr. Hayward writes frequently on a wide range of current topics, including environmentalism, law, economics, and public policy. He has extensive experience as a journalist and writer, having published many articles in scholarly and popular journals. He writes frequently for National Review, Reason, and Policy Review, and his newspaper articles have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, and dozens of other daily newspapers.

Dr. Hayward has been a Weaver Fellow of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and a fellow of the Earhart Foundation, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1990 and 1992, he was an Olive Garvey Fellow of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international organization devoted to the study of political economy. The paperback edition of his business book, Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity (Prima Publishing), was released in October 1998. He is currently working on a major book, The Age of Reagan: A Chronicle of the Closing Decades of the American Century.