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In his keynote presentation "An Age of Instability?" Peter Schwartz, president of the Global Business Network and world-renowned scenario planner, began by asking the audience how many thought their children's lives would be better than their own. A scant 10 percent raised their hands--a very different picture than would have been the case in past decades. This overwhelming pessimism is grounded in one of two disparate scenarios Schwartz outlined as likely for the year 2000. The hopeful and pessimistic signals driving these two scenarios are shown in Exhibit 1.
Descent into Anarchy
In the first scenario, which he calls "Descent into Anarchy," the United States and Russia are in crisis over the conflict in central Asia. The developing world is a mess with drug lords controlling vast: areas, ethnic conflicts abounding, "small" wars everywhere, and terrorism becoming a frequent occurrence in the United States (which Schwartz predicted before the Oklahoma City bombing). All is not lost, however; these conditions co-exist with a booming global economy, although the widening information gap makes it an increasingly bifurcated economy with the information "have-nots" losing out on both an individual consumer basis and a country basis (with the former USSR, Africa, and Mexico being particularly hard hit).
Very pessimistic, indeed. Many commentators believe that this is a continuation of the natural state of affairs, that the last 50 years of relative peace was the aberration. But Schwartz is not among them. He believes the cause of the growing pessimism is not because things are getting worse, but rather because they are becoming less stable. He outlined a number of factors producing this instability, including:
* Economic struggle and change. Trends include lowering labor costs in the developing world; moving to...