LOOKING AHEAD FOR WHAT WILL LAST
Wednesday, January 6, 2021 - daily column # 6629
Some new things find their way to dominate our lives; others are on the trash heap.
I’m not talking about U.S. politics, not talking about the pace of vaccinations, COVID-19, or any other trendy news meme because lately, it’s not any of those, climate change, or the world’s shell-shocked economy. And we have crypto-coins of no particular realm, hydrogen, and rare-earth metals (for cell phones and batteries) are all the rage now. Cannabis products are big, but companies in that new industry are folding – magic mushrooms too, and the psychedelic drug/chemical companies are raising tons of cash.
Are these just the flavor of the month, the next hula-hoop, or the next dot-com boom?
Or a bust?
A few years ago, LNG was the rage. Governments were tripping over oil companies to facilitate the next high-tech, high-priced refrigerated boat-bomb to sail the seas with our natural gas. LNG is essential. Its proponents continue building ships, ports and customer relationships to sell gas cheap to waiting homes and factories across oceans. It’s just not front-page news …
Smart boys and girls in labs everywhere, and a new generation frankly, are taking over the world – we’ll soon be dominated by solar panels, electric bikes and cars, carbon-capture, zero-emissions on everything, and anything not already at zero needs to get there by 2030 or 2050, no matter what cost or carnage on older technologies (like plummeting values of marginal enclosed malls – unlikely to recover once we get through COVID-19 – look for redevelopments as housing projects, office parks, or Amazon fulfillment centres) …
New is rarely permanent or life-altering; it’s just new.
I’ve been on politics/pandemic/op-ed/binge-watch overload lately, so I took a break to watch some YouTube videos and Netflix documentaries on economics. Revisiting the Chicago School (Friedman and Thaler), Kahneman, and Tversky and re-reading Thinking Fast and Slow, and Nudge, and The Undoing Project (listened to it read to me on Audible) and in no time at all I was binging-economics.
I wonder, in a year or two, what behavioural economics gurus will say of us all; will we break new ground in terms of our collective behaviour to slow down, get more in tune with the outdoors, nature, and well there be a more-than-one-season golf boom?
My observation is that our speed of change has already exceeded anything Tofler or Naisbitt ever predicted. Whether we are adapting well without going crazy will probably take decades of therapists’ notes to decipher …
Online or off, we are like those schools of fish, it seems we all turn one way – and then the other, with no individual fishing knowing anything, but the large masses moving in unison.
To the chagrin of Las Vegas hotel owners, the Consumer Electronics Show is only-virtual this year. So how will we learn about that next new thangs?
What are you betting on?