For a Futurist, 50 Years isn’t so long ago

A quick note for the history buffs among us – in this month of August fifty years ago, the first components of the Berlin Wall were constructed with rings of barbed wire severing Berlin into visually distinct west and east Berlin. Russia’s main challenge at that time was the 10,000 or so East Germans each month who’d been departing their homes looking for a better standard of living and individual freedoms in ‘West’ Germany.

And I wonder, given the readjustment in current financial markets and Countries, what sorts of ‘walls’ are being considered to deal with the potential influx of people looking for a better standard of living? Certainly in the Africa’s, large people movements have been common in the past decades for all sorts of reasons. But in Europe and the Americas, things have been arguably more stable. What might history tell us, about a future in times of economic strain and stressed living conditions? Time will tell