You Can Never Go Back
Prefer to listen rather than read? Pair this post with Deliberate Money Moves Podcast: You Can Never Go Back.
On October 4, 1957 an R-7 ICBM rocket lifted off from the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, reached space and left a 23-inch diameter polished metal sphere with four external radio antennae used to broadcast radio impulses. This was the earth’s first man-made satellite.
A month later, a dog named Laika became the first being to orbit the earth and just 12 short years later, Neil Armstrong actually walked on the moon.
At no point in this sequence of events did technology move backwards. It can’t because we build on previous technology, always advancing in sophistication and efficiency.
The space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union accelerated technological advances that benefit everyone in the world today. Over the years we saw creations such as battery-powered tools, Velcro, carbon monoxide detectors and virtual reality come to use in every day life.
Would these have been invented anyway? Yes, likely so, but perhaps not until now or even some time in the future.
It’s no coincidence that we had strong and mostly consistent economic growth as these two global powers battled for technological supremacy.
A successful invention creates efficiency and value. A series of successful inventions creates a global boom that cannot easily be slowed.
And while a slowing of such growth may be labeled a “bust” we never can go back to a time when such inventions didn’t exist.
You will never have to rush to a phone booth to make a call, you will never have to fax anything, and you probably don’t even know how to make a smoke signal.
So, when the “professionals” begin telling you how terrible things are and how so many people have not advanced in our society, and that we should take a different approach to how our economy works, ask yourself these questions: Are we more advanced than 10 years ago? What are the odds we will continue to advance and what will life look like 10 years from now?
If you want to participate in this growth financially, the best approach is through company ownership in a diversified fashion among industries, geographies, and sectors. This will help smooth the inevitable bumps that come with risky investments, while allowing you to participate in the global growth to come.
By the way, since November 2000, the International Space Station has been continuously inhabited by people from 15 different countries. It travels at a speed of 5 miles per second and orbits the earth every 90 minutes. Its crew of 6 spends a regular work-week researching and developing future technologies.
Our technological progress has only just begun.