Humanity is caught in a doom loop

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a biblical plague of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - Humanity is [caught in a doom loop](. - Amy Coney [Barrett may be full of surprises](. - Biden’s antitrust team [might kill an M&A boom](. - Should we [tap the SPR to lower gas prices](? That's Great, It Starts With an Earthquake Last week on the East Coast the moon turned blood-red. Birds are [dropping]( from the sky. Billionaires are frantically building rockets to flee the planet. It all feels a little apocalyptic, and maybe it should: The world is wracked with drought, floods, wildfires, [hunger](, plague, more [plague](, political upheaval and [jorts](, to name a few examples. You could argue the world has muddled through apocalypses before. The stretch that included two world wars and the 1918 pandemic probably felt pretty Armageddony. So did the Black Death in the 14th century. Then there was [whatever]( was going on in Egypt 4,000 or so years ago. Humanity does go through this stuff every once in a while, and Niall Ferguson notes [natural and man-made disasters feed on each other](. Today’s drought triggers tomorrow’s pandemic, which fuels Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol. Rinse, repeat, move to New Zealand. But the fact that we’ve been here before is no comfort to those of us living through it. And the feedback loop’s culmination could still be society’s actual collapse (currently [scheduled]( for 2040). Along with the human suffering will come the soaring costs of building back after every disaster along the way. David Fickling points out that reinsurance companies — which help bankroll the insurance companies that cover (maybe) your flood/hurricane/fire/jort trauma claims — [keep shoveling out more and more cash for mid-tier catastrophes](, delightfully known in the industry as “secondary perils.” A rough primer for the uninitiated: A secondary peril is when you lose your house. A primary peril is when I lose mine. Anyway, this will keep pushing insurance costs higher, dragging on the economy, further widening the gyre. Not that there isn’t reason to hope. Tim O’Brien recently tooled around Arizona in a tiny one-seater electric car, the ElectraMeccanica Solo, which looks like this: Not everything is terrible? Photographer: Timothy L. O’Brien This little thing, made by ElectraMeccanica Vehicles, is helping fight global warming while benefiting from a smart-manufacturing push in the state, Tim notes. Though it will take better infrastructure and education — not exactly American strengths these days — this could be [a model for how we innovate our way out of this mess](. Anyway, to further cleanse your palate of all this disaster porn, here’s a dog [pretending]( to be a windmill. Amy Coney Barrett Might Surprise Us Yet Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has long seemed like the left’s worst nightmare on the high court: She’s a young, ardent Catholic and a student of arch-conservative Antonin Scalia. But she hasn’t always agreed with her old boss. And in a recent case on religious liberty, Noah Feldman writes, she not only broke with Scalia but also [carved out a middle ground that disappointed some ardent Catholics](. She is still very, very conservative, of course. But there are hints she could be Sandra Day O’Connor conservative rather than Clarence Thomas conservative. Bonus Politics Reading: Donald [Trump keeps using the Republican Party’s strengths]( for his own ends, and nobody is stopping him. — Jonathan Bernstein Telltale Charts President Joe Biden has assembled a team of [Antitrust Avengers that is already starting to thwart M&A](, writes Tara Lachapelle. A couple of big deals, including one involving Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, have been eighty-sixed recently to avoid regulatory pushback. They probably won’t be the last. The U.S. might want to tap the [Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gasoline prices](, writes Julian Lee. They’ve gotten kind of high lately. Further Reading The Pentagon needs [more than just hardware to deter China](; it needs to invest in resilience. — Bloomberg’s editorial board The NSO spyware allegations show [how vulnerable even the world’s most powerful people]( are to privacy invasions. — Martin Ivens Even without lockdowns, new [Covid waves hurt the economy simply by changing]( people’s behavior. — Noah Smith [Defunding the IRS leaves far too much money on the table]( and keeps enforcement focused on the wrong people. — Michael R. Strain Hedge funds are [pouring cash into crypto companies regulators]( can always cut down. — Mark Gilbert [Ben & Jerry’s has created an ice-cream headache]( for parent company Unilever, while uniting politicians in Israel. — Zev Chafets  We [no longer lack safe-haven assets](. In fact, we may have too many of them. — Allison Schrager ICYMI This may be another [successful Infrastructure Week](. Tether may [have some legal trouble](. Amazon may [accept crypto payments](. Kickers Snake venom can [super-glue human wounds](. Jeff Bezos is [not officially an astronaut](. (h/t Ellen Kominers for the first two kickers) Florida man [washes up on a beach in a bubble](. A shimmering black rock is actually a [2,000-year-old exploded brain](. Correction: Friday’s newsletter said Iran’s Islamic Republic was 52 years old, confusing it [with J.Lo](. The Islamic Republic is actually 42 years old. Yuto Horigome. Photographer: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images AsiaPac Notes: Please send snake venom and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like Bloomberg Opinion Today? [Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more](. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. 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