2023: Deja Vu or a Fresh Start for Business Management?

Management

Greetings from Texas, y’all! I hope this belated New Year’s epistle finds you well … or, should I say, “well” with mitigating air quotes. It’s all relative nowadays. A decade back, we’d say that phrase and mean “I hope you’re healthy, happy, and successful.” After 2022, the sentiment has deteriorated to something like “Please tell me you’re not ravaged by disease, despair, or existential dread yet (because it’s only a matter of time and I’ve exhausted my meagre reserves of stoic detachment).” 2023 is already shaping up to be a cheap knockoff of the critically reviled “COVID years” trilogy and we haven’t made it to the year’s second week yet.

If you’re thinking, “That’s a bit dour, isn’t it? Did someone have a skinful and misplace their merry mood on the 1^st?” I have a confession: this is me being hopeful. I’m not grousing to ruin anyone’s mood. Looking at the trend lines, it’s pretty danged clear that 2023 isn’t going to be the year where major trends make a dramatic 180° turn in our collective fortunes. BREXIT isn’t going to bring back the Empire. Crypto isn’t going to make everyone rich through maths magic. Profit-obsessed amoral business weasels aren’t going to encounter three ghosts and decide to finally fix our health care system. As warming as those fantasies might be, they’re utterly unrealistic. 2023 is likely to carry on like its immediate predecessor: trundling resolutely towards the allegorical cliff’s edge.

That in mind, here’s my cynical prediction for 2023… and, for the record, I hope I’m wrong:

Our governments are going to stubbornly repeat the first year of COVID, sans change. Consider this passage published last week on The Guardian: “Covid infections started to sweep across China in November, picking up pace this month after Beijing dismantled its zero-Covid policies including regular PCR testing on its population and publication of data on asymptomatic cases…. Cumulative deaths in China since 1 December likely reached 100,000, with infections totalling 18.6m, Airfinity said …Airfinity expects China’s Covid infections to reach their first peak on 13 January with 3.7m cases a day.”

Why the surge? Because SARS CoV-2 continues to mutate. Last week the newest vaccine-evading variant was XBB.1.5 which now makes up come 40% of COVID infections in the USA (per this article by CBS news). I hoped that “XBB.1.5” was the name of a cute new droid from Disney+’s Andor series, but no. It another Omicron mutant.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Yeah, that one: the guy hooked up to a ventilator. Just pretend he isn’t there.

As such, KHOU News in Houston reported: “Hospitalizations for people with COVID-19 rose by more than 30% in two weeks. Much of the increase is driven by older people and those with existing health problems.” As you’d expect, the CDC reported here that while 68% of Americans are believed to be fully vaccinated, only 34% have received the Omicron boosters. One in three. *sigh*

Despite the surge, pundits are quick to insist that governments and businesses shouldn’t go back into lockdown. As this piece from Forbes warned, “A second wave of lockdowns in Chinese manufacturing centers, whether it’s full or partial, would stall the recovery of the global supply chain after more than two years of pandemic and give an additional upward push to prices paid by industry and consumers in the U.S.”

Meanwhile, the markets took a metaphorical beating in 2022. Per this piece from Axios, the US S&P 500 index lost danged near 20% of its value by the end of the year. The collapse of corrupt crypto exchange FTX, meanwhile, contributed to Bitcoin losing over 60% of its value, per this piece from NBC. That’s a lot of imaginary wealth gone up in smoke … Wealth that rich people had leveraged to finance their bloody stupid ventures which now doesn’t exist leaving debts that must be paid off with real money.

Sound familiar? When you zoom out, the composite picture these stories paint is just 2020 all over again with a skosh more magenta. The virus seems to have completed a Rocky IV-style training montage and came roaring back to reclaim its title. People are getting sick; people are dying. Again. The smart thing to do would be to lock everyone down – again – to deny COVID new victims and incubation time to create new variants. But that obvious and reasonable public health measure might negatively impact corporate profitability. Can’t have that!

Since we’re so enamoured with nostalgia, can we bring back the apocryphal tradition of bankrupt millionaires jumping out of skyscraper windows because they can’t live with their disgrace?

The increased cost of materials and services – thanks to out-of-control inflation – has companies spooked at the prospect of more supply chain disruptions, further decreased demand, and incessant wage pressure. The prospect of another lockdown threatens companies’ bottom lines. Politicians, tycoons, and financiers will – again – fiercely resist any solution that might weaken a financial recovery. That profit-over-people mentality in the USA is as predictable as rain in April. From what I’ve seen of British political coverage, I doubt things will be better for y’all.

All told, I expect to see the same danged drama play out again like a Greek tragedy. COVID will return, experts will urge common sense preventions, the wealthy will refuse out of fear for their fortunes, and eventually – after it’s too damned late for far too many people – we’ll grudgingly implement half measures that undermine hopes for an economic rebound while simultaneously doing too little to curb the pandemic. Too little, too late, as is tradition.

The only aspect of this scenario that’ll differ from the original script for 2020 is that we know this plan is stupid, but we’re going to do it all again anyway. It reminds me of nothing so much as The Asylum’s 2010 “mockbuster” Titanic II. Take the universally known setting, plot, and obviously bad decisions from the original movie, then repeat them beat-for-beat. Why do anything different now that you know how the original story ended? The first go netted someone a bunch of dosh, so doing it again ought to be just as profitable, right?

So, yeah. I hope y’all are healthy, happy, and successful as 2023 kicks off. I don’t have a lot of hope that things will remain positive as the year plays out. I recommend everyone brace themselves for another long and pointlessly stupid year and do what they can to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their communities. I hope I’m wrong, but … look around.

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