Boom and Bust Cycles
Somewhere, right now, an asset class is booming and another is busting. The question is who's just watching — and who's steering.
There's a recurring idea in books about generational wealth: "Old Money" understands something most people never stop to notice — there is always a boom or bust cycle running in one or more asset classes at any given moment.
The cycle never really stops — it just changes which asset class is riding it.
Pro-Cycle Efforts
“We don't see hard times coming, we see soft times leaving...”
— Attributed to Groucho Marx. Published attribution; the original occasion has not been verified.
Most people experience booms and busts as weather — something that just happens to them. But not everyone waits for the cycle to arrive. Procyclical strategies actively lean into the cycle already underway — piling on leverage during the boom, pulling out fast as the bust begins — which has the side effect of making both the boom and the bust more extreme than they would have been on their own.
That's the difference between watching a cycle and amplifying one. The first is investing. The second starts to look like engineering the outcome.
Disaster Capitalism
There's an old saying that gets at the same idea from a different angle:
Taken to its extreme, this becomes disaster capitalism — the practice of treating crises not as tragedies to respond to, but as opportunities to buy low, restructure fast, and profit from the disorientation before anyone can organize a response.
How People React to Times of Trouble
Trouble comes one person at a time. A society may appear calm while, behind closed doors, one person loses a job, another loses a home, and another reaches the limits of what they can endure. Because hardship is scattered among individuals and families, it can seem as though everyone around you is doing fine—even while a growing number of people are quietly falling into crisis.
As economic and social pressures increase, mental-health facilities—where they are available—and jails begin to fill. Homelessness, theft, addiction, domestic conflict, and suicide may increase. People who once felt secure become frightened or desperate. Some lose their sense of integrity and do things they would never have imagined doing under ordinary circumstances. This does not excuse harmful behavior, but it reminds us that prolonged insecurity can change how people think, choose, and survive.
“Trouble comes one person at a time, long before it appears as a national emergency.”
At the same time, people who still possess money, property, influence, or other resources often take greater measures to protect what they have. They may increase security, move to safer communities, withdraw from public life, or place more distance between themselves and those who are struggling. The result can be a dangerous cycle: suffering becomes less visible to the protected, while fear and isolation deepen throughout the rest of society.
A humane response must begin before private trouble becomes public collapse. Stability depends not only on policing emergencies, but also on preserving housing, mental-health care, opportunity, dignity, trust, and believable paths back to security.
When We Stop Missing Our Integrity
Integrity means being honest and acting consistently with your moral principles, even when doing so is difficult or no one is watching. It means keeping your word, taking responsibility for your actions, and trying to make what you do match what you say you believe.
I was talking with a friend about hard times and how people can lose their integrity. He said:
"My integrity is very small. Sometimes I lose it and I don't even miss it." — A Friend, In Conversation
It is funny and sad at the same time. Funny because he makes integrity sound like a small object that slips out of a pocket. Sad because the most troubling part is not losing it—it is no longer noticing that it is gone.
Hard times can put our principles under pressure. That does not mean everyone who struggles loses their integrity; many people show extraordinary honesty and generosity when they have very little. But the joke leaves me with a question: when we make compromises to get through a difficult day, do we still recognize what we have given up?
Perhaps integrity needs care most when it feels least convenient. We need to help one another survive hard times without becoming indifferent to the people we hurt—or to the parts of ourselves we lose.