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For the better part of 2022, I’ve read articles on the daily about how bad things will soon get for the economy. These warning bells have been blaring for months and getting louder.
Even still, I was taken aback when Jeff Bezos advised the public against buying things like TV’s and refrigerators – the kinds of things that Amazon sells. When the guy who makes his billions by selling stuff tells us to stop buying stuff, I’m intrigued. And I thought it might give others pause as well.
I was super curious about how Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales would be affected. Surely, the former Amazon CEO’s bad news bears announcement would put a damper on our consumer spirit.
Well, not so much. There were record-setting sales figures this year.
Clearly we didn’t listen to Jeff or anyone else warning us of dangers to come. Like at all.
It made me think about the reasons why humans ignore warning signs. Not just about the economy, but in general.
Do any of these explain why you personally ignore warnings?
The warnings don’t fit our world view – How you see and personally experience the world presently will shape what you think the future will look like. If things look good right now, the warnings just don’t seem to make sense. Unless there are signs in your own life, or of those in your community, that align with the warning, will you think there’s any merit to them.
Your beliefs and expectations based on your life experience – Rather than trust experts – who sometimes (perhaps often) get things wrong – you choose to go by our own understanding of similar situations. The mindset is: Eh, economists have no idea if there’s going to be a recession. There probably won’t be. Or if there is, it’ll be fine. The last recession didn’t affect me, this one won’t either. In other words, we trust what we went through in our past to inform us instead of other people’s opinion of the future.
You identify as an optimist – No matter what, you only see the upside. You hope for the best. You choose to focus on the positive. Warnings are negative, and an optimist doesn’t pay attention to negativity. That means if you heed warnings, you’re betraying your optimism. Optimists will dismiss or ignore warnings of danger ahead, or minimize the danger that the event will have for them.
My own outlook is that there are solid reasons to believe that the economy will be tough next year. So call me a pessimist but I’m preparing to weather a storm. And if no storm comes, that’s fine too. I won’t harm myself by preparing for one.
In fact, those who are prepared for a recession are positioned to take advantage of the opportunities. Those who don’t heed the warnings probably won’t be prepared to capitalize on the assets that go on sale. There tends to be deals on real estate, stocks, and other assets during recessions. I’ll be prepared so I actually look forward to a recession.
So really, who’s the optimist now?
