You might think a society with an economy featuring bursts of growth halted by sudden drops in the price of a key commodity would become psychologically equipped to handle the effects. The opposite seems to be happening in Alberta. Growing prosperity, vast government programs, valuable real estate, high education levels, economic diversification and, not least, plain historical experience should make Albertans more resilient. But it doesn’t look and sound that way.

If anything, the lower the actual effects of a downturn, the more intense the public frenzy. World crude oil prices dropped from around US$105 a barrel last summer to less than US$48 per barrel in mid-January. That looks almost like a free fall. But it’s nothing new, in absolute dollar or even percentage terms. Way back in, oh, 2008, the price went from more than US$145 per barrel in summer to slightly more than US$30 per barrel by Christmas – a 79% drop.

I have lived through six major cycles in Alberta that were driven mainly by oil prices as high as US$150 per barrel and as low as US$2 per barrel. Add in the price of natural gas, another key commodity that, at times, is more important to our economy than oil, and you have almost a dozen such cycles.

In my childhood, the worst downturns threatened disaster. There wasn’t much fat in the system. Society had less “design margin.” There were still thousands of dirt-poor farm families. Welfare, food banks and homeless shelters hardly even existed. Unemployment could mean real hardship. And being laid off sometimes meant years of unemployment. There were thousands of tradesmen in that situation.

And yet, people coped. It took a lot more to move the average person outside their “comfort zone,” a silly term that would have been considered laughable back then. Even during boom times, people in general had far less money, owned fewer things and lived in less material comfort. And almost everyone remembered what it was like to have virtually nothing. Living under genuine stress, people back then seemed to feel less stressed.

Today? News of even one major energy company cutting its capital spending or laying off staff sends jitters throughout Calgary. The ubiquity of news means you can’t even get from your office to a meeting without an elevator screen shouting out the latest in bad news. You walk into the meeting rattled, and encounter people who seem ready to turn off the lights and lock their company’s doors, even though the oil price remains 60% higher than at the bottom of the previous downturn.

Instead of equipping us for hardship, prosperity seems to breed a sense of entitlement and invincibility. When that over-inflated psychic balloon is pricked, the mental universe collapses. Merely hearing about layoffs at a dinner party moves people outside their comfort zone. The idea of making do with less induces panic.

And all because a commodity that has always gone up and down in price refuses to remain perfectly in place – and could be back up in eight to 10 months.

More of Koch’s writing can be found at www.drjandmrk.com.

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