There's also short-term vs long-term thinking that seems relevant here. Most of the bad things going on right now seem short-term to me. 

If I can say "It doesn't have to be this way." about something horrible, then I can also be optimistic about it getting better.

Undisciplined

yeah, I buy that-- a very Misesian view in that the contraction/collapse is the cure, the actually beneficial thing that lets us rebuild. 

Looking at observable empirics, however, is going to look very different. 

denlillaapan

BooksAndArticles

The March of Human Progress in 2024 (Marian Tupy, HumanProgress.Org)

I'm not opposed to the possibility of things getting worse, but that's not what I see. 

It's often hard to see the progress in a market correction, but we understand that unwinding resource misallocations is a form of progress.

Similarly, the last few years have been like the bursting of a technocratic cultural bubble. Things had to come to a head before the much needed correction was viable. Now, we can proceed on a sounder footing. (That's my white-pilled view, anyway)