Dearest readers, we are living in unprecedented times. Or, we live in times that feel unprecedented but that is just because we have not lived through two world wars, the Great Depression in USA, hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, Black Death in Medieval Europe or the great volcanic eruption that essentially ended the Graeco-Roman period (not a history buff, but I do enjoy nerding out over interesting history YouTube videos). So, yes let us say that regardless of what the facts are (haha), we feel that times they are changing and many old ways of making money, actively and semi-passively, are just not as valuable enough as they used to be in order to generate high enough income for people to live properly so they can spend and make more people so we do not end up collapsing unto ourselves like a neutron star. So, while I understand that most futurist books, videos and shows are generally terrible at predicting what a future world would look like and how it would function (except Black Mirror, hat off to that one), we nevertheless keep trying because, well, sometimes we get it right and we can benefit from it.
The first one is something I heard about recently and it seems plausible to me. Many of you know that, in the stock market, there are growth stocks and dividend stocks. As a company grows, you speculate on it and hope it will go from a low-cap to a blue chip stock and your initial modest investment will grow like crazy over the years or even decades to come. Then, there are established companies, industry juggernauts that have blue chip stocks and pay dividends for each share of stock. Now, with investing becoming cheaper and easier, more power and money will be concentrated in the valuation of these large companies. All the while, automation will decrease the number of employees they need (One cashier to six self-checkouts, anyone?). Some people believe that this could result in governments pushing for new and higher taxes to institute some sort of universal basic income; this, dearest readers, would sooner push corporations to flee tax-heavy countries than anything else. Another solution would be way, way higher dividends for stock owners than anything most of them currently give out to shareholders. It is true that, regardless of how big the dividends could become, the caveat is that you will still need what most people consider to be lots of money in order to get enough dividend income to make some difference in your life. In addition, in this scenario there will be less jobs due to automation. However, if you are successful, you will be able to get a decent amount of passive income that can be reinvested, diversified or simply spent for life needs. So, in order to to make this more widely available, how big would the dividends have to be? Well, I leave that to you because the amount might end up being doable in the near future, yet mind-boggling to us today.
The second idea relates to crowd-funding taken to the next level. So far, crowd-funding as we know it has been done a few different ways. You either have companies with a product idea that they want to realize and offer perks, discounts and priority treatment for those who back the project. Sometimes these are total duds, other times we get gems like Pebble smartwatch, Oculus Rift, and Star Citizen. Then, we have crowdfunding pages for medical treatment, surgeries, people whose lives were forever changed by accidents... heartbreaking stuff and I mean it. However, on a lighter note, the idea of having way more things crowdfunded and an online platform that will collect money, help evaluate and rate the follow-through and promote campaigns is something I have not been able to find. For example, you want a neighborhood park cleaned? How about all parks in a town? Create a campaign, set objectives and goals, and if people care about it, they will contribute what they can. Once the goal is reached, it gets done. Or... ever tried to slip someone $50 to flash a bunch of college guys or rip a wet one in public (the latter might be worth $20 max). There should be a platform for that, but on a larger scale. Finally, what about the adult industry? Instead of creating adult content, teasing it on socials and then gatekeeping it on a platform like OF, you could promise to deliver a certain amount of certain types of content, structured in a certain way over a certain period of time, and then deliver once a funding goal is reached. If you do not deliver, the money is taken away. If you do a bad job, you do not get easily funded for the next round or at all. The rules around this could be created by people who are funded and/or hired to do so, but the idea seems solid.
The third idea is for companies to have a tender system for way more jobs in way more industries than they do now. According to Google searches, "a tender system is a process whereby organizations can solicit bids from potential suppliers and contractors. The organization defines the scope of work or project to be completed, and potential bidders submit their proposals." A system like this one would need to have measures in place to prevent abnormal downward pressure on compensation and other abuses. If this can be done, more people could be employed and employment gaps could be smaller. On the other hand, employers would be compelled to clearly define the duties and goals of each job, the metrics and expectations as well.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. Some of these ideas could put a downward pressure on earnings, especially earnings of top performers because of diversification of consumer spending, more competition from people willing to earn less and still do a good job and other factors. For example, Netflix is great (arguably so, haha) but create the right conditions for more subscription services of all sorts to arise and people will start cutting some in favor of keeping others. Well, dearest readers, true as this may be, we might have to accept after all that we do live in a zero sum game after all. You can either have top performers and gigantic companies paying for others who have zero chance of greatness through dividends and taxes, or you can create a fertile soil for everyone to be kinda great- but we simply do not know how to do both yet; we have not unlocked that achievement yet!
The first one is something I heard about recently and it seems plausible to me. Many of you know that, in the stock market, there are growth stocks and dividend stocks. As a company grows, you speculate on it and hope it will go from a low-cap to a blue chip stock and your initial modest investment will grow like crazy over the years or even decades to come. Then, there are established companies, industry juggernauts that have blue chip stocks and pay dividends for each share of stock. Now, with investing becoming cheaper and easier, more power and money will be concentrated in the valuation of these large companies. All the while, automation will decrease the number of employees they need (One cashier to six self-checkouts, anyone?). Some people believe that this could result in governments pushing for new and higher taxes to institute some sort of universal basic income; this, dearest readers, would sooner push corporations to flee tax-heavy countries than anything else. Another solution would be way, way higher dividends for stock owners than anything most of them currently give out to shareholders. It is true that, regardless of how big the dividends could become, the caveat is that you will still need what most people consider to be lots of money in order to get enough dividend income to make some difference in your life. In addition, in this scenario there will be less jobs due to automation. However, if you are successful, you will be able to get a decent amount of passive income that can be reinvested, diversified or simply spent for life needs. So, in order to to make this more widely available, how big would the dividends have to be? Well, I leave that to you because the amount might end up being doable in the near future, yet mind-boggling to us today.
The second idea relates to crowd-funding taken to the next level. So far, crowd-funding as we know it has been done a few different ways. You either have companies with a product idea that they want to realize and offer perks, discounts and priority treatment for those who back the project. Sometimes these are total duds, other times we get gems like Pebble smartwatch, Oculus Rift, and Star Citizen. Then, we have crowdfunding pages for medical treatment, surgeries, people whose lives were forever changed by accidents... heartbreaking stuff and I mean it. However, on a lighter note, the idea of having way more things crowdfunded and an online platform that will collect money, help evaluate and rate the follow-through and promote campaigns is something I have not been able to find. For example, you want a neighborhood park cleaned? How about all parks in a town? Create a campaign, set objectives and goals, and if people care about it, they will contribute what they can. Once the goal is reached, it gets done. Or... ever tried to slip someone $50 to flash a bunch of college guys or rip a wet one in public (the latter might be worth $20 max). There should be a platform for that, but on a larger scale. Finally, what about the adult industry? Instead of creating adult content, teasing it on socials and then gatekeeping it on a platform like OF, you could promise to deliver a certain amount of certain types of content, structured in a certain way over a certain period of time, and then deliver once a funding goal is reached. If you do not deliver, the money is taken away. If you do a bad job, you do not get easily funded for the next round or at all. The rules around this could be created by people who are funded and/or hired to do so, but the idea seems solid.
The third idea is for companies to have a tender system for way more jobs in way more industries than they do now. According to Google searches, "a tender system is a process whereby organizations can solicit bids from potential suppliers and contractors. The organization defines the scope of work or project to be completed, and potential bidders submit their proposals." A system like this one would need to have measures in place to prevent abnormal downward pressure on compensation and other abuses. If this can be done, more people could be employed and employment gaps could be smaller. On the other hand, employers would be compelled to clearly define the duties and goals of each job, the metrics and expectations as well.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. Some of these ideas could put a downward pressure on earnings, especially earnings of top performers because of diversification of consumer spending, more competition from people willing to earn less and still do a good job and other factors. For example, Netflix is great (arguably so, haha) but create the right conditions for more subscription services of all sorts to arise and people will start cutting some in favor of keeping others. Well, dearest readers, true as this may be, we might have to accept after all that we do live in a zero sum game after all. You can either have top performers and gigantic companies paying for others who have zero chance of greatness through dividends and taxes, or you can create a fertile soil for everyone to be kinda great- but we simply do not know how to do both yet; we have not unlocked that achievement yet!
