Events are moving so fast that we feel as if the future is being compressed into the present at frightening speed. Conservatives hark back to the golden age of stability and gradual change. Liberals hate the current inequalities, but cannot agree on how to effect change. But if technology is moving in accordance with Moore’s law of exponential growth, knowledge and complexity are expanding too fast for most of us to comprehend and decide how to cope. Sociologist Mauro Guillen, at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, argues in his book, 2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything, that the major shifts will be demographic – rich countries are ageing , the populations of poor nations are growing, and these numbers will push migration. At the same time, women will grow richer, and the Asian middle class will edge out the European and American middle class. Climate change will threaten cities through rising sea levels, and water and food shortages . While technology will help solve problems, job disruption will be a major political threat. We may no longer need to own anything, but will simply rent cars, houses and smart gadgets. Money will shift to digital currencies , and finance will be very different, with zero interest rates. These trends are well known. In 2017, two reports – the US National Intelligence Council Global Trends: Paradox of Progress, and the European Union’s Global Trends to 2035 – offered thoughtful reviews of the future from their perspectives. The rapid convergence of macro trends will make governing and cooperation harder, fundamentally altering the global landscape. Both studies recognise that conflict risks will grow, because the world is increasingly fractured between the ageing and shrinking rich sector, and the growing young, poor and unemployed, packed into overcrowded cities. The US study explores scenarios in which the world in 2035 splinters into national “islands”, regional “orbits”, and sub-state and transnational “communities” that interact to make global and national governance harder. Interestingly, it also predicted a global pandemic, albeit in 2023, that “dramatically reduced global travel in an effort to contain the spread of the disease, contributing to the slowing of global trade and decreased productivity”. In contrast, the EU study focused on four possible scenarios: “sick men of Europe: unstable Europe in stable world; “cold war: stable Europe in stable world”; “hollow foundations: unstable Europe in unstable world”, and; “Europe as global power: stable Europe in unstable world”. Europe knows it has to get its act together. What has the Covid-19 pandemic taught us so far? First, the pandemic was mismanaged globally, with the US, India, Brazil, Russia and Colombia having the highest number of infections. Europe and Africa are still adjusting; East Asia , the first to be hit, was the first to contain the spread of the virus and begin to recover economically. South Korea’s Covid-19 success highlights importance of digital resilience Second, the global system is now more complex and harder to govern. If a Rubik’s Cube has 43 quintillion possible permutations, seven or more key players interacting at “island”, “orbit” and “communities” levels means anything is possible, which is why we are in this mess. We have sick men running sick economies in a pandemic that is out of control. Both leaders and economies are surviving on steroids, reacting in the short term. With top leaders and their inner circle infected, new factors emerge every day that change the direction of the game profoundly. The pandemic has hastened existing trends, advancing the move online and killing off dying or obsolete industries. While hardware can be made obsolete, people must be made more resilient and adaptable to rising risks. In short, we should invest in people – their health and education – reskilling them to address technological, jobs, military and natural challenges. Covid-19 not only exposes US inequality, but may exacerbate it Two important studies show how investing in hardware is less effective that investing in people. In a 2017 paper , economists observed that, between 1870 and 2015, risky real returns on equity and real estate averaged 7 per cent per year, whereas safe returns averaged 1-3 per cent per year, and these have been declining with lower productivity. Financialisation has distorted the rate of return, favouring the rich and actually slowing productivity and the growth rate. Meanwhile, a World Bank study of 139 countries since 1950 showed that the average rate of return on education is 9-10 per cent per year, with private returns on low-income primary education as high as 25 per cent. Simply put, the best investment in these volatile times is to invest in people. The world is not facing a trade war; it faces a talent war. Because East Asia has invested more over the past four decades in its young, teaching them to act cooperatively rather than individualistically, the region has been able to handle the pandemic better than others. It’s not about democracy or freedom, but about inclusive education in common sense. If people and the planet are recognised as one, then the young will learn how to take care of others and contribute to our common home, as Pope Francis emphasised in his encyclical Laudato Si . Politics and morality are people issues. Throughout the ages, humanity has survived calamities because the community taught the young common-sense survival skills. That should be our plan for surviving and thriving beyond this pandemic. Andrew Sheng is a former central banker and financial regulator. The views expressed here are entirely his own