Part of me wants to say that the Covid supply disruptions and mass money printing are not that extraordinary, at least if you look at things on a long enough sc

Part of me wants to say that the Covid supply disruptions and mass money printing are not that extraordinary, at least if you look at things on a long enough scale. We've had pandemics, world wars, and social upheavals throughout history, and usually fundamentals assert themselves eventually. In other words, the inflation we're seeing was expected, and eventually the system will return to some sort of normal, as consumers and businesses adjust to price changes and change their behaviors. On the other hand I can't help but wonder if exponential population growth is now starting to influence things in a way we haven't seen before. I remember the analogy they used to explain exponential growth in middle school - most have heard something similar - where 1 bacteria is in a jar at 11am, and it's doubling in quantity every minute and will fill up the jar by noon. Students are asked to guess when the jar is half full, and most believe it would be around 11:30. They're shocked to discover that it hits the halfway point at 11:59, and by then it's too late to fix. Roughly, it took from the time of Columbus arriving to the new world 'till the Civil War to go from a population of a few million Europeans to 30M, and we had a whole continent to expand and extract resources. We'll increase more than that in just the next 10 years. What was normal for even lower class Americans historically - single family home, couple kids, fossil-fuel burning car with big, open roads and lots of high-energy consumption may just not be possible anymore for anyone but the wealthy. And that new normal is being manifested by massively rising home, car, food, etc. costs that won't necessarily cool off, even when the money supply is constrained. There's just too much demand, and not even natural resources to supply it. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5OYmRyfXBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5OYmRyfXBY