Today, the largest opportunities arise from people living in the past. Obvious trends, like the exponential advancement of solar PV or electric vehicles, are irrationally badmouthed. There seems to be a longing for bringing back nuclear power, for bringing back manufacturing, for bringing back workers into offices, for bringing back military dominance. People still believe in college degrees, in standardized testing, credentialism in hiring, pension funds, the list goes on. Politicians try to compete with China, want to bring back supply chains, want to revive 40+h workweeks originating from the industrial revolution. This conservative nostalgia seems to be a large trend; or perhaps it has always been.
What has worked 20 years ago will not miraculously come back. Politicians are selling “the good old days” to people not aware of current reality – of how incredibly fast exponential technologies and societal changes are evolving.
The opportunities of today and the future are not in chasing the resurrection of the past but in identifying which underlying needs from those eras remain unmet in modern forms.
For example: People don’t want manufacturing jobs back. They also don’t want to out-manufacture China. Who really wants to labor in a factory? Who wants to work 10 hours a day on a farm? The answer is: nobody really. What people do want is economic security and a trade balance that doesn’t feel like losing. They want protection from foreign economic coercion, and the dignity of creating tangible products the world needs.
Another example: People don’t want coal plants or nuclear plants back. Who really wants polluted air or nuclear waste in their neighborhood? Again, the answer is: nobody really. What people actually want is affordable energy independence – which means electricity too cheap to meter – and a reliable baseload and a reliable grid during crises and days where the sun isn’t shining.
The pattern is always the same: the surface demand is to reverse time; it is nostalgia. The underlying need is mostly emotional and social: security, dignity, control, identity.
The opportunity is satisfying these needs through forward-looking solutions that people haven’t yet recognized as substitutes. It is in building for a world as it is, not as people wish it were. It is in accepting current reality the fastest and having the longest runway to build what’s actually next.