Actually... it was because people saw, years ahead of time, that there was a potential problem that the programmers were able to avert the problem. All the Y2K doom-and-gloom scenarios would only have been plausible had those programmers NOT been busy. My husband worked as a contractor at the time--he updated many computer systems at major companies to avoid that problem.
What we're dealing with now is completely different. We're being told that we face disaster if the politicians don't continue the same bad policies that made this situation so bad in the first place.
Needs to be emphasized.