USA – The End of an Empire

“What? The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!” – Zach de la Rocca, 1992.

Let me back up a little. Growing up as a child in the 1980s, America was the land of milk and honey, where dreams came true. I just assumed one day I’d move to America. Saccharine sitcoms like Happy Days, Family Ties, Growing Pains and The Cosby Show led me to believe that everyone lived in double story houses, had professional parents without money problems, enjoyed excellent health, were well-educated and that racism didn’t even exist. That was until I peered behind the curtain and saw the reality. Pre-internet it wasn’t that easy to work out what was happening in other countries, because TV, advertising and imported products were our only windows to the world. Oh how little I knew. While it seems the perpetual decline of the US is inevitable, I sometimes wonder if it were ever more than a Hollywood prop.

We are collectively viewing the end of the shortest empire in history, the United States of America. Granted, it was at one point probably the most powerful in history, yet now is crumbling before our eyes. We are witnessing a modern day fall of Rome, live.

To perpetuate an empire, three things need to be maintained:

  1. People need to become a little bit smarter
  2. People need to become a little bit healthier
  3. People need to become a little bit richer

The US is not performing well against these three criteria. It’s the only developed economy in the world where this is the case.

Smarter: It’s clear that the US has some of the world’s greatest thinkers and innovators. However, in recent decades, simple markers of intelligence and collective understanding of the world have declined. It’s astounding how many US citizens deny facts which are indisputable and learned in grade school. Thirty percent of millennials in the US are not convinced the earth is round. This number is only 4% for the rest of the world. In the mid 1970s at the peak of the space race, the proportion of ‘Flat Earthers’ in America was less than two percent. One third of Americans cannot name a single branch of their own government. A quarter of Americans believe that the sun orbits the earth. Twenty percent believe that humans were created 10,000 years ago.

I’ve chosen facts like these, because they should be universally agreed upon. Acknowledgement of these facts frame a viewpoint of society where basic knowledge is important to shape government policy and to address vital issues like climate change. (Coincidentally, of which a quarter of Americans deny.) It also is unlikely that the US can educate its way out of this mess. Access to education in the US is bad and getting worse. Student debt as of April 2022 was US$1.75 trillion dollars. The average debt to education costs per household is US$57,520. The cost of higher education in the US has outpaced inflation for 4 decades. Before anyone even gets to college in the US, they need to fight their way through an incredibly difficult K-12 system, where the amount of money the government spends on a local school depends on how much the houses in the areas are worth. The higher the real estate prices, the more funding local schools attract. If you think this sounds like something from a Black Mirror episode, trust your instincts.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how and why the US, once the bastion of global intelligence, is experiencing such a decline. I can’t help but think that the past two decades where, from Fox News to Facebook, the spread of misinformation in the media has significantly contributed to the dumbing down their society.

Bonus: if you want to get smarter – Catch up on The Rebound TV here.

Healthier: For the first time since the industrial revolution, America has witnessed a decline in life expectancy. They lost 2.26 years in the past year alone. This is at a time when medical advances (and terrific things like vaccines) have never been more advanced and available. They suffered more deaths due to Covid than any other developed nation, which is now pegged at more than one million people. They have the lowest vaccination uptake of all developed nations, currently ranking 64th in the world. The crazy thing is that they spend more on health than any other developed nation. They spend US$4.1 trillion on health annually – US$12,530 per person – which is increasing at 9.7% per year, yet for the worst health outcomes. (Most of the spending goes to insurance companies.) They are the most obese nation in the world, with 42.4% regarded as clinically obese. In the year 2000, this number was just 30.4%. For the first time in their history, children are not expected to outlive their parents.

The opioid crisis in the US is at such epidemic levels that it killed over 100,000 people in 2021 and it is getting worse (in 2020 the opioid crisis was responsible for 78,000 deaths.) In contrast, over 45,000 people died last year from gun-related injuries. (Yes, you can still buy guns at Walmart.) It’s ironic that the Supreme Court is allegedly considering overturning Roe v. Wade (the right to choose abortion). It seems like protecting lives is only important before they exit the womb.

Richer: The minimum wage in the US is currently US$7.25 per hour. If you think that sounds bad, it’s worth noting it hasn’t increased since 2010. When adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage in the US is lower than it was in 1970.

Meanwhile, CEO wages have increased exponentially. The average CEO wage in the US is now 320 times more than what workers earn. In 1970, it was ‘only’ 21 times more than the average worker’s.

Unfortunately, this isn’t just about the disparity between CEOs and people working for minimum wage. The general rate of income inequality is increasing rapidly. Five families in the USA now have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the population. It’s insane, and a lot of it can be tracked back to the narrative proselytising lower tax rates. Lower taxes, it was claimed, create jobs and growth, but all it really does is transfer wealth to the owners of capital. Few people know that the highest tax rate in the US was 94% in 1945. Today it is 37% and you need to earn over $500,000 before you hit that rate. Meanwhile, corporate tax rates are a mere 21%.

The effect of this isn’t just the hollowing out of things like education and healthcare. Income inequality is exacerbated which then creates a spiralling down effect. People can’t access resources for health and eduction, while the wealthy can, so the gap grows bigger.

All of this is happening at a time when the cost of living is increasing and the country is becoming more socially divided.

When the core tenets for a stable society of health, wealth and education are eroded from the bottom up, it rarely ends well. History says that it causes instability, infighting and eventual civil war. TL;DR: people come with pitchforks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the USA splits like the USSR did. Never before have we seen such an economic powerhouse so divided on both beliefs and the foundations that actually hold it together.

Keep Thinking,

Steve.

Changing Shape & Big Tech

In 2019 I wrote a manifesto on what we need to do to fix ‘Big Tech’ because I was concerned with how powerful the top six tech firms were becoming. At the time Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet and Tesla had a collective Market Capitalisation of US $3.9 trillion dollars. It is now US $8.9 trillion (28/5/21).

Since then we’ve had a global pandemic stretching 18 months. Peoples lives, health and economic circumstances have been torn apart. Businesses the world over have pulled down the shingle, people have lost their jobs and yet these same six companies forge ahead. While the world went backwards, their size more than doubled. We need to talk.

It’s hard to conceptualise how big a number is – especially a trillion. So let me provide a couple of comparisons to show how big $8.9 trillion dollars is:

  • Bigger than all but two countries GDP (USA & China)
  • 40.5% of the USA’s GDP
  • 6.5 times the size of the GPD of Australia (where I live)

Visually – 1 million dollar stacked in $100 bills, would be 3 feet high. While a trillion dollars would stack 1015km high or 2.5 times higher than the international space station.

In Time – If a person spent 1 million dollars per day, since the birth of christ, they’d still be under the trillion mark, coming in at a cool $737 billion dollars spent.

At some point we need the wisdom to know when something has fundamentally changed. Often things change long before we realise it. The lag between reality and social sentiment can be dangerously long. But once we do realise something has undergone a metamorphosis – it’s vital we treat it differently. In my view, some of the the large scale technology firms (on this list I’d place Alphabet, Facebook and Apple, maybe Amazon in USA) – are now so important to our daily lives they’ve become utilities – critical Infrastructure. Elon is even building a private global satellite network. They’ve changed. They are no longer the quirky little tech darlings we once loved.

We simply cannot participate in the modern economy without their services. While I think we can all agree the digital revolution has been a net good for society, and we all love the products, try to live a week without your smart phone, search or tools of social connection – it would be extremely difficult. In the past when firms have become indispensable we’ve tightly regulated, nationalised, or broken them up into smaller parts. We need that to happen again to avoid our world morphing into a techno-feudal state where corporations literally, usurp nations.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve.

Mega Trends – COVID-19 series

This week you can watch my blog for 5 mins instead of reading it! In the first episode of #SteveFeed – Protein for the mind, I explore the #5 Mega Trends emerging from a Post Covid Economy. The five things every business, brand and individual needs to be aware of as we attempt to navigate our way out of this crisis.

In summary the trends are:

  1. Digital Sovereignty 
  2. Automation At Distance
  3. De-globalisation
  4. Essentialism
  5. Market Recalibration

Some ideas I’ve touched on in recent posts. I’d love for you to make a comment on Youtube and even subscribe to my YT channel here. Join another 10,000 peeps on the Sammatron wagon – safety in numbers I say. Get on it!

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Keep thinking,

Steve. 

Perception and Your Career – COVID-19 series

Perception is a powerful thing: What we do, where we live, which school we went to, which company we work for and who our clients are paint a picture of where we belong in people’s minds. Rightly or wrongly, perception is reality. Perception also informs finance.

A thought experiment: You meet someone at a function and ask the obligatory question of what they do for a living. You get the following answers:

  • I work for a large warehousing and logistics firm
  • I work in the energy industry, primarily focused on electricity
  • I work in consumer electronics sales
  • I work for a large taxi services firm
  • I work at a very large information indexing firm.

Some people (not us) nod politely and move onto the next conversation. But of course, the above statements could also read like this:

  • I work at Amazon
  • I work for Tesla
  • I work at Apple
  • I work at Uber
  • I work for Google.

Same job, different description, entirely different perception.

If someone works at a ‘hot’ company, surely they must be smarter, better, more competent. A possibility few people consider is that they might just be lucky to have ‘a seat on a rocket ship’ – simply riding the success of what happened before they got there. Maybe the more competent person is working damn hard and smart in a failing firm with fewer resources and a worse brand perception. Reality is rarely as it seems.

The economics of perception: Perception doesn’t only change minds – it also influences the economic value we assign to something. People, careers and especially corporations. If a firm seems ‘futuristic’ enough, the market can be incredibly irrational. Uber has lost $38 billion since 2013 and yet still has a market valuation of around $60 billion. As I discussed on The World on ABC News, I don’t believe Uber will ever recoup investors’ money and I still stand by this. But the reason Uber is valued so highly has little to do with reality and more to do with perception. In the short run, perception is more profitable than reality.

Now let’s compare Tesla with its closest competitors. The figures below represent the market capitalisation of the biggest car companies in the world, divided by how many cars they sell per year.

– Tesla $ valuation per car sold = $302k
– GM $ valuation per car = $5k
– Ford $ valuation per car sold = $17k
– Toyota $ valuation per car sold = $15k

Even though Tesla makes terrific cars (and has a wider portfolio) – its valuation is seriously inflated. Tesla plans to make 500,000 cars this year, while Toyota will ship around 10 million. Even if Tesla sold 5 million cars (10 times more than it does today), it would then have a valuation of $30,000 per car sold, which is still double that of Toyota. It just doesn’t add up. We must also remember that Tesla’s advantage in electric cars is quickly being eroded. You don’t have to be a maths major to understand that the economics of this will eventually drag their share price down. Likewise, it’s a lesson in the importance of brands, and being seen as technologically competent and future-centric. It’s one of the things our economy values most highly today.

Here’s the kicker – this isn’t just important for companies, it’s vital for you.

The Economic Perception of You: Being seen as future-focused and technologically literate in your career is a bankable asset. In uncertain times, people want to back those who have a handle on the future. It gives them confidence in you and gives you outsized opportunities. Being good at what you do today isn’t enough. People need to believe you’ll be good at whatever they’ll need tomorrow. This is a perception game – a matter of personal brand. How ‘Elon Musk’ are you? Our work lives used be based on qualifications, experience and competence. Increasingly, having a personal brand is becoming a core competence for everyone.

The World Just Got Flatter: Twitter, Facebook and other large technology firms have just announced their staff can work from home ‘forever’. Once we start to work from home, employers can hire staff from anywhere globally. It’ll be harder to build relationships, so having a personal brand will be even more vital. What we know from consumer culture and technology is that the most impressive brands command the highest price, not the most functional ones. This means that the marketing we do for ourselves might even be more important than the marketing do we do for an employer.

Keep thinking,

Steve. 

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P.S – My Post-Covid-Economics briefing is getting rave reviews. I’ve now done with Fortune 50 firms and Governments in the USA, India, China, Singapore & the UK. I have a few corporate slots left for the month of June. Details here.

What the Fork? Strategy for 2020 – COVID-19 series

Never has business been so open-minded to change. While humans are the most innovative species on earth, we’re inconsistent. If things are cruising along nicely in life – then don’t expect much change. We’re creatures of habit and naturally risk averse. Currently it is riskier to not change, hence the embrace of change.

I’ve never had as many large corporations and government bodies contact me as they have over the past two months. What’s refreshing is the desire not just to understand possibilities, but their willingness to implement – immediately. A timely reminder of how quickly we can mobilise when needed.

While I have been doing many post-COVID economic briefings, the strategic template I’ve offered is not just for large institutions, but also for startups and individual careers. Most COVID-related shifts are falling into 2 specific patterns: Acceleration and Forks.

Acceleration: These are the trends that were already happening, but slowly. They are long-term trajectories. However with COVID, they got on the fast track – accelerated. Things that might normally take years are transformed in mere months. This list under this shift is long, but here are some examples:

  • Work From Anywhere (WFA)
  • Biometric Surveillance of Citizens
  • Tele-Labour and Telemedicine
  • Transition to Ecommerce
  • Dominance of Technology in our social and work lives
  • Nationalism – re-localisation of core supply chain

Forks: These are changes in direction that would not have occurred without COVID. Sometimes they are additional requirements that need to be added to a process and sometimes they entirely replace how we used to do things. In this list we could include the following:

  • COVID-safe supply chains
  • Social Distancing in retail / entertainment environs
  • Travel restrictions – reduced human mobility
  • Exo-labour
  • Off-campus education

A key task today is to make a list of the relevant accelerants and forks in your business and personal life.  Some will be the same for everyone and some are industry specific. Categorise the changes that have impacted you into either Accelerant and Fork buckets, you’ve got a strategic template of how to go forward and build tactics for implementation.

Though fortunately not all of us have been affected physically by the virus, it’s likely we all have been affected in other ways. Personally, I’ve had to pivot. I practice what I preach and I’m happy to share my forks and accelerations.

A big chunk of my non-passive income came from keynote speaking and consulting. This involves being in front of large audiences, in closed rooms or prolonged face-to-face contact with clients, as well as interstate and overseas travel. That all went to zero. I’d also been working on some longer lead projects – the Future House, a new TV show and a new book – these have been my accelerants. Lately I’ve focused on writing (doing around 2,000 words a day) – scripts and segments for the new TV show, articles and more media interviews, as well as some post-COVID strategy briefings. Luckily, this can be done online.

I haven’t tried to replace lost income through doing cheaper online versions, simply because the value of my advice is not determined by how it is delivered. So, rather than offer discounts, I’ve decided to design a cathedral. When the sky clears, I’ll come out and share it. This is a core principal for freelancers. We have to be very careful not to cheapen our brands and discount them, because it can be very difficult later on to reclaim the true value.

The truth is the change has been really refreshing for my mind – I’ve never felt so prolific and stimulated exploring new possibilities and new ideas.

We should all remember this: the openness to innovation will only survive as long as the instability does. Stability usually results in stasis for the large majority. So take your chances now while the world is open to it, when everyone’s plans are kiboshed and their budgets are blown. We might just have a chance to invent something new.

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Keep Thinking.

Steve. 

Globalisation vs Nationalism – COVID-19 series

Last week I was invited by TED to lead their live Circles event discussion. The topic was Nationalism versus Globalisation. As preparation, all participants had viewed this TED talk on how nationalism and globalisation can co-exist. I then led a discussion to take a deeper look at the subject, in the context of a post-COVID-19  world.

These are my conclusions, which I think provide a solid template for examining the global economy:

The False Dichotomy: We don’t live in a world that is either strictly global or national. It’s a false viewpoint to assume there can be only one or the other. Both co-exist and have done so for a very long time. Instead, it is a pendulum that swings back and forth over time and it often backtracks when we’ve gone too far in a particular direction. The direction of the swing is largely determined by politics and social sentiment. It is fair to say that things are swinging back to the nationalism (or more accurately, de-globalisation) side, as can be evidenced by Brexit, Trumpism and divergent national policies in tackling COVID-19. However, we can expect to see government interventions to secure supply chains and manufacturing returning to high-cost labour markets, facilitated by automation and increasingly protectionist policies. However, it won’t stop the culture of globalisation. Many of the things we regard as local actually have more global origins. For instance, the languages we speak and the number systems we use. Even tomatoes weren’t used in Italian food during the Roman Empire – they arrived much later from South America!

Change – it’s what happens after we were born: Often there is a fear response to change. But change, as I define it, is something that happened after you were born. Everything around us was new at some point, but it’s only scary if it arrived after you did. Whether this is food, language, work, industry, technology or social norms, the things we fear most are things we must learn about beyond childhood.

We’re all suffering from Future Shock. The future is arriving so fast that we are having trouble coping with it. A natural reaction is to hunker down, fight change, push back and develop a nationalist viewpoint to protect ourselves from the unknown. It’s a rational response for those who are hurt economically by the changes. Remember the word economics means ‘management of the home’. For example, if I lose my job to a factory that is moving to a low-cost labour market, it becomes very difficult for me to manage my home. To me, it matters little that my country’s GDP grew. While the narrative of change is often sold as positive by those pushing for it, it always has winners and losers. Even if we are the losers, the most constructive response is still adaptation – mainly because we don’t get to choose whether or not the world will change.

Relative Advantage: Globalisation itself is the natural evolution of basic trade. In its simplest form, it can be explained by the relative advantage different geographies have. Warm climate economies trade bananas for potatoes with cold climate economies. Now they both have bananas and potatoes – they are both better off through exchange. This is also true for commodity materials, expertise and production capacity. In recent decades, relative advantage has been usurped by a singular relative advantage – cost of production. It has become less about which country or region can or can’t do something and more about who does it cheaper. It’s true for industries at the bottom and the top of the technology stack. This is why we have oranges imported from Mexico being sold in Australian supermarkets. It’s not that we can’t grow them here – it’s that we can’t do it for the same price. It’s also why our car industry closed down. This is part of the reason we have a financialisation of developed economies.

Globalisation in Established vs Developing Economies: Given the shift toward low-cost labour as the driving force behind globalisation, it would appear that developing economies benefit more than developed economies from globalisation. As production shifts from high-cost to low-cost markets, a larger percentage of the developing economy’s population tends to benefit. In the high-cost markets, a smaller portion of the economy – largely the owners of capital – tend to win. In this instance, it is incumbent upon governments to ensure displaced workers find a place in the new economy. They must move their populace up the employment value chain as industries wind back. If this doesn’t happen, the net result tends to be increasing income inequality – a trend that has been well-documented over the past few decades.

Two Places at Once: Globalisation is at its best when it allows something to be in two places at once. This is the case with international cuisine, language, skills, expertise, products, machinery, procedures and techniques. When globalisation expands horizons, access and capability, we all benefit. Often though, it’s a zero sum game when jobs in industry X leave one place and go to another.

The Substitution Effect: If an industry can only be in one place, then we need to pay close attention to the substitution effect. Who will be the primary beneficiaries of the shift? Consumers, producers or both? Where will the former participants in industry X go? Will the benefits of something changing places be shared or hoarded by a fortunate few? Something becoming cheaper doesn’t make the economy better unless the new efficiency gain has a multiplier effect.

Co-operation or Competition: We need a stronger co-operative effort when it comes the global economy. The shift towards global competition has lead to increased nationalism and radical actions in home states. If people feel as though they have to compete in a rigged game, they often arrive with pitchforks. A global economy will need to have rules that all participants abide by if globalisation is ever to be the utopia economists claim it to be. The most important issues of our time don’t require competition, but instead co-operation. This is a hard thing to do when sovereign countries have competing objectives and incentives.

The Matching Principal: The most important thing we must consider when it comes to nationalism or globalisation is that we must match the issues. National problems need to be solved with national policies. Likewise global issues, like the climate crisis, require an international effort to succeed. Trying to solve issues with a mismatched geographic boundary are doomed to fail.

Closing Thoughts:

We are often told we can’t compete against other markets because we’re not efficient enough. This is not really true. What is true is that overseas countries have lower costs, because they don’t have to abide by the same rules. How can we expect a countries like the UK, USA, Germany or Australia to compete with lower-cost countries like India and China when we have higher wages, stringent occupational health and safety standards and environmental regulations that they do not? Of course we can’t compete.

We are all playing the same game. With different sets of rules.

It’s an unfair game. Always has been. While the game of capitalism needs winners and losers, it’s all important we know which rules each side is playing by. We need to remember that in any game, we must protect our own players, pay respect to the competition, and know that players change and join new teams all the time.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve

Post Covid Possibilities – COVID-19 series

At time like these no one has all the answers as to what’s next. What is useful however, is asking a lot of questions. The art of scenario planning and being ready for a number of plausible trajectories and future realities. So I’ve bunched them into the of categories Data, The Economy, Work and Society.

So here it is – Post Covid Possibilities from the Sammatron. Consider, discuss and debate.

The Data & Surveillance:

Digital Sovereignty – Governments around the world (excluding China & USA) will realise that they don’t have digital sovereignty They’ve essentially been colonised by ‘Big tech’ – in that they don’t own or control the most powerful tools in the modern economy – Digital Infrastructure. Hardware / data / social / search – they’ve had to rely Big Tech (Alphabet / Apple / Facebook / Amazon / Microsoft) to gain access to data to control the virus. It will (should) facilitate nationalisation of digital infrastructure and or create a desire to build out and create their own versions.

Permanent Surveillance – A new era of digital surveillance will enter the economy and become very sticky. All our personal connections & locations and data will now be a permanent fixture in Gov. databases. Providing existential risk for overreach. Algorithms matched with other existing data sets will provide near perfect summaries of most citizens.

Biometric Scanning – Will be a new norm like scanning for weapons except this time they won’t be checking for weapons outside of our bodies, but the weapons inside our bodies – potential viruses and infections. Biometric testing will be present on public transport, stadiums, schools, universities and workplaces. We’ll walk through temperature sensors, breathe into analysers, look into iris scanners and be monitored by any other device you can imagine.

Big Tech Anti-Trust – Governments around the world will realise that they had to go cap in hand to big tech to use their resources to implement tracking and report on the covid situation. They are the only sector to have gained financial ground and market capitalisation during the crisis. This will further ensconce policy calling for their break up and or nationalisation.

The Economy:

Securing the Supply chain – There will be a push to have a stronger domestic supply chain and local production in most countries. Countries have realised how exposed they are if they don’t produce essential goods – such as food, medicine, health care materials, transport, energy etc. Local Manufacturing will make a comeback and be facilitated by new levels of A.I and automation.

De-globalisation – Married with borders being restricted and closed in many cases for an elongated period of time, we can expect a decade of de-globalisation. This shift already aligns with current US and UK political trajectories (Notably Brexit) and will accelerate the trend. Expect manufacturing and production to strengthen in home markets as a respond to supply chain risk and geopolitical and racial undertones.

Post-Efficiency Economics – Our obsession with efficiency of everything, and leaving no margin for error or ‘fat’ will be exposed as flawed. In the new economy we can expect a balance of safety to be built into systems which are inefficient on purpose so we can cope with Black Swan events such as COVID-19.

End of the Consistent Taxation Decline: The Ragan inspired era of reduced tax and trickle-down economics will be exposed as a lie that favours the rich and drives inequality. Due to necessity taxes will be raised globally regardless of what Liberal and Republican governments currently claim. We’ll realise that tax actually provides a base for economic stability and severely needed structural investment.

Nationalisation of Infrastructure – A new form of civic federalism will emerge. We’ll start to revalue to importance of infrastructure not run with a profit incentive, but the service incentive of the populace. Starting with Healthcare & Education, people will realise natural monopolies like Energy, Roads, Public Transport, Telecoms, may be better held in public hands. We’ll start to value access and control of critical infrastructure as the fabric of a civil society. A renewed respect for our trusted Institutions will also emerge.

A New Frugality – In both business and consumer spending. Financial fear associated with more frequent shocks will reduce the incentives to take on debt and aim for capital growth. This will impact corporate investment, consumer spending and house prices. The end of mass consumer culture could eventuate. A post-depression era style conservatism could emerge. The economy will be driven more by yield, than growth.

Bailout Pushback – Citizens will rally against the Gov. bailing out publicly traded stocks, and call it out for what it is Cronyism – or shall we call it – Corporate Socialism. This time the crisis has really hit street level and any bailout of a failed firm that isn’t an essential service will be heavily derided. This crisis jump start traditional two way capitalism, The take your wins, and swallow your losses – the antithesis of the GFC – where private profits and end up public losses via bail outs.

The Philanthropic Charade Exposed – billionaires who use philanthropy as a PR strategy will be exposed as the fraud they are. The tiny percentages of the wealth they offer up, pale in comparison to what they ought be paying in taxes, and the fact that philanthropy falsely allows rich people to decide where we need the money, (Choosing to give where it suits their business & political interests) instead of letting Gov. allocated their resources. All the while generating political favour for them.

Work:

Shrinking Offices – Companies will realise they don’t need as much office space. They’ll loosen the reigns on where office staff work, and take the financial advantage of having smaller offices people can come to for interactions and meetings X times per week. They’ll have collaboration spaces, not cubicles. This will negatively impact city real estate prices. The work from home revolution will accelerate.

Front Line Workers – Increased respect for healthcare workers has emerged, but sadly those in low skilled front-line work (grocery clerks, warehouse workers, drivers et al) continue to be put at risk with little safety considerations and zero financial recourse. We can expect logistical front end workers – the unsung heroes of COVD-19 – to push back hard and maybe even ask for danger money. Could unions re-emerge to protect gig workers?

Teachers, Nurses, Paramedics, childcare worker Revaluation – Social carers of the informed, young and sick might finally get the pay and respect they deserve, at a minimum they’ll have a stronger argument to their cases forward. We can live without many services, and these aren’t on the list.

Telemedicine Gets Real – Covid-10 will been seen as the long overdue birth of telemedicine. Our current necessity has provided proof that many of our healthcare needs can be performed remotely – firstly with GP consults going online– and eventually with robotic surgery becoming normalised.

Scientific Community – Expertise will start to get the respect it deserves. Even though some politicians have been working against their advice in many cases. Because this case is real, and has an immediate and direct impact (bodies piling up) – the truth will emerge that scientific advice must be adhered to in a modern society. We can hope that science will usurp the idolatry of celebrity and billionaire philanthropy. Throw us a bone why don’t ya Bezos!

Social Impact:

Personal Space – The handshake and kiss hello, and even the Bro Hug might evaporate from society. It’s already being espoused as a good time to stop it forever by healthcare experts. We can expect post corona social interactions to only be quasi-physical.

Increased Authoritarianism – Given the fear and solution authoritarian rule game to the virus, it opens a space for the acceptance of authoritarian rule. We’ll shift away from hyper individualism and the corporatization of society. We’ll revalue structure, control and certainty of risk avoidance.

Strengthened Family Units – Extended family lock downs will strengthen the value we put on the family unit and provide a war like and permanent bonding experience which will be generational and strengthen the value we put on the nuclear family. Historical evidence suggest that authoritarian regimes have stronger family units as a counter balance.

Digital Divide Exposed – COVID has exposed a digital divide amongst demographics. The most financially disadvantaged workers are also those who can’t work from home, and tend to be customer facing. Home schooling has also created a dearth for less well-off families whose kids lack access to basic technology to assist in home learning. This will become a focus of Gov. to ensure internet access and access to portable hardware such as laptops becomes part of the standard educational resources provided by Gov.

Re-Birth of Essentialism – Covid-19 have proven everything outside of food, housing, energy and healthcare are largely optional. By learning what we can live without a new era of essentialism will both be a cause and result of the new post covid frugality.

Decline in Celebrity Culture – The moved towards essentialism, will be a start reminder of the little value celebrity adds to our daily live. With a lack of production qualities in their covid-19 media output we’ve realised few celebrities have special talents – the celebrity herd will thin and influencers will see they are the most expendable as marketing budgets get cut.

Revival of Public Spaces – The increased usage of public parks and spaces will provide a new interest in protecting these resources and upgrading their facilities.

Cracks appear in Life Optimisation Movement – The idea of Life hacking and optimisations emanating out of Silicon Valley will become exposed as a flawed way to turn yourself into an economic robot. We’ve been reminded that just being and having freedom to move around is far more important than using digital tools to track how many steps you do, how well you sleep and counting other measures our bodies already track for us.

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Stay safe & keep thinking, Steve.