Didn't
- Religious heresy in ancient times didn't cause plagues, natural disasters, or the end of the world
- Communism didn't fix things for poor people
- Communist governments didn't transition to a "classless society"⁴—in which the government "is expected to "wither away.""⁴—after the revolutionary class struggle was sorted out
- World War I wasn't the war to end all wars
- The Cold War didn't end in an all-out nuclear armageddon, or nuclear war at all
- Neither movable type, reading books, radio, films, television, cell phones, nor the internet resulted in societal breakdown. Honorable mention to the internet for getting us pretty close though.
- Neither television, films, social media, the internet, nor certain genres of music (e.g. rock and roll) have made people dumber or increased crime. IQ has, on average, been increasing for decades worldwide ("the Flynn effect"¹¹). Crime has, on average, been decreasing for decades¹².
- Vietnam becoming communist didn't result in the entire region turning communist, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's so-called "Domino theory" claimed it would
- Overpopulation didn't destroy the world, leading to horrible famines, as Professor Paul Ehrlich predicted in his 1968 book titled The Population Bomb¹³. Ehrlich lived long enough to see his predictions be incorrect, but that didn't faze him:
Paul [stated] in 2009 that "perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future," despite having predicted catastrophic global famines that never came to pass¹³.
- Japan didn't become the permanent number one world economic superpower sometime in the early 2000s (or ever)⁷. Nor was there an intense head-to-head showdown of some kind between the United States and Japan, as was predicted in the book The Coming War with Japan by George Friedman and Meredith LeBard. Japan is really a cool country though.
- Killer bees didn't kill everyone
- Violent video games didn't cause violent real-world behavior, despite numerous claims to the contrary⁵. Two separate United States congressional hearings, in 1993 and 1994, were held under the premise that they do⁶. The hearings were kicked off after the son of Senator Joe Lieberman's Chief of Staff asked to get the game Mortal Kombat⁶. "Studies have shown no connection between video games and violent behavior."⁵
- The world didn't run out of copper around the year 2000, as Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, predicted it would in 1970⁹. Also in 1970, Harrison predicted that "Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990"⁹.
- Y2K didn't crash computer systems all over the world. It turns out computer programmers just updated almost all the world's computers beforehand to handle the date rollover¹⁴. "[R]etrospectives on the event typically commend the programmers who worked to avert the anticipated disaster"¹⁴.
- A lack of "net neutrality" didn't torpedo an openly accessible internet
- Artificial intelligence didn't take everyone's jobs within 6 months of the release of ChatGPT. Artificial intelligence didn't take everyone's jobs in any of the subsequent 6-month periods, either. AI has replaced neither computer programmers nor radiologists. Self-driving cars have replaced neither truck drivers nor taxi drivers.
Sources:
¹: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich
²: https://mises.org/mises-wire/marxs-economic-forecasts-over-150-years-failure
³: https://fee.org/articles/how-marx-got-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/
⁴: https://www.britannica.com/topic/classless-society
⁵: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_video_games
⁶: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993%E2%80%9394_United_States_Senate_hearings_on_video_games
⁷: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn (see the notes on his book "The Emerging Japanese Superstate")
⁸: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_with_Japan
⁹: https://reason.com/2000/05/01/earth-day-then-and-now-2/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
¹⁰: https://alor.org/Storage/Library/PDF/Packard_V-The_Waste_Makers.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com (page 121, "It is clear that vanishing copper reserves will constitute a formidable barrier to world development.")
¹¹: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
¹²: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop
¹³: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
¹⁴: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem