Here is an excerpt from a guest post by Philip Kotler, author of Confronting Capitalism: Real Solutions for a Troubled Economic System, on how economic forecasters affect the economy. To read the complete article and check out other AMACOM resources, please click here.

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Over the course of my long business career, I’ve watched how economic forecasters try to predict the future. These forecasters fall into two distinct camps: optimists and pessimists. Now that we are entering the process of presidential candidate vetting, what’s at stake is more than just “perception.”

Since my training is in economics and marketing, I strongly believe that the optimistic forecasters are the better predictors. What’s behind the optimistic forecasters? A leading optimist is Peter H. Diamandis, founder of the X prize. The X prize is given when some individual or team develops a powerful solution to a major problem. No one has yet figured out how to drive a car 100 miles on a gallon of gas, but if someone figures it out, the prize will be $10 million dollars. Recently, an X prize was announced to go to a group that could double the speed at which an oil spill can be cleaned up. Thirty groups undertook researching this, and the winner found a way to improve the clean-up rate at six times the old speed. They won that X prize of $10 million dollars.

Besides X prizes, Peter helped found the new Singularity University in the San Francisco Bay area. Its list of advisors and supporters is striking: gifted individuals such as Larry Page (Google), Elon Musk (Tesla Motors and SpaceX), and Ray Kurzweil (all around genius), for example. According to Bloomberg TV, Singularity University is “where the world’s brightest minds convene to attack the world’s toughest challenges.” The concept of Singularity itself is that it is that time in history when a machine learns to think, now estimated by Ray Kurzweil as the year 2034.

It is no wonder that Peter and his peers see a bright future made possible by new technology and software and sensors. Peter and coauthor Steven Kotler published the book Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, which outlines how the world’s standard of living will inevitably improve. They argue that the planet can grow enough food and desalinize enough water for the world’s expanding population. “We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp.”

Now to the pessimists. Larry Summers, former president of Harvard and advisor to President Obama, recently said: “I think growth probably is going to be slower in terms of aggregate GDP over the next 50 years than it has been over the last 50 years.” He thinks that we are not going to get as much quantitative improvement to the labor force, let alone qualitative improvement until education gets better. He expects diminishing returns to innovation and a diminishing level of business investment.

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It is my belief that each type of forecast, whether optimistic or pessimistic, leads to a self-fulfilling outcome. If most of us are optimists, we will do things to bring about more economic growth. If most of us are pessimists, we will refrain from doing things to produce strong economic growth. Let’s side with Peter Diamandis and his team and give economic growth a chance. And let’s keep this in mind when choosing our presidential candidates. Our future depends upon it.

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To learn more about Kotler, please click here.

To check out my review of Confronting Capitalism and my two-part interview of Kotler, please click here.