Dana Blankenhorn

The 2020s: A Future in Three Parts

Moore’s Law accelerates change. Aging accelerates time.

Hard as it may be for me to believe, the 2010s will be over in less than 5 months.

In technology the last decade has been a Golden Age for clouds and devices. So, too, in business and in politics. The refusal of cloud companies to lock-down their technology elected Donald Trump. The result has been a march toward civil war, global war, trade war, the biggest crisis since the late 1960s.

But you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Moore’s Law of Health means I may live much longer than my parents did, long after history should have rolled over me. At least that’s true in those places where people can afford medical care. The likeliest replacements for Donald Trump are both older than he is. Al Gore is younger than either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders. We’re still debating Woodstock, 50 years on.

We’re going to start turning the page on the current era in 2020. The hold of the autocrats is weakening. It’s weakening in Russia. It’s weakening in China. It’s weakening in Texas.

Moore’s Law continues marching onward, better and better, faster and faster, reaching further and further afield.

In this decade it has made Africa accessible to global markets, made India as well as China an economic power. Over 1 billion people have entered the middle class this century – they have homes, some material comforts, and they have hope.

What might the next decade bring? If I make it to the end of this decade, I’ll be 75, so this may be my last shot at predicting the future.

But here goes.

The Twilight of Nationalism

If mankind still exists in 2119 their historians will write about this era as the Twilight of Nationalism.

Nationalism was essential when economies were based on resources, machines or muscle. In the era of clouds and devices it’s increasingly irrelevant. The global nature of our existential crisis makes nationalism an outright impediment to the survival of mankind.

Thus, it’s no coincidence that nationalism has been a rising force in the decade now ending. Just as it concentrates the mind to know you’re to be executed in the morning, so it is for leaders and political movements. Seeing sunset in the distance you do what you can and ignore the consequences you know are coming.

The Trump election acts as a midpoint and permission slip for all this. Nationalism was already on the march, in Europe, in the Middle East, and in Asia, through the agency of Russia, when Trump came to office. But Trump has given nationalistic impulses around the world permission to act. There is no American opposition to ultra-nationalism anywhere, no alliance worth protecting, no counter example to follow.

Thus, nations push their boundaries outward, fearing any force that might threaten their power, and ignoring the natural internationalism essential to economic growth and climate action.

That’s why Brazil is going after its rain forest. That’s why India is going after Kashmir. It is why China is going after Hong Kong. That’s why England wants to detach from Europe, why Eretz Israel is a thing, why Saudi Arabia seeks dominion over its whole peninsula. If you can afford it, nationalists think, seize the day. The window is closing.

Fall of the House of Oil

There is no energy shortage. The sun shines. The wind blows. The tides roll. We live on a molten rock.

At the start of this decade, when I first began covering the War Against Oil, and changed the sub-head of this blog to reflect that, I believed the key to victory was bringing enough investment to the space, public and private, so that the cost of renewable energy would fall below that of fossil fuels.

It’s happened.

Crossover happened just as I expected, in 2016. The cost of energy from solar panels is now lower than that from burning coal. The cost of energy from windmills is now falling below that of burning natural gas.

The only thing keeping fossil fuels alive in the big utility model is the sunk cost of infrastructure. When that proves unreliable, as it did in Puerto Rico a few years ago, it’s replaced by solar power, batteries, and micro-grid technology, just as Al Gore predicted two decades ago. 

Making Local News Great Again

A quarter-century ago, when the Web was being spun, I asked local newspapers how hungry they were to sit at the Internet’s banquet.

They weren’t hungry at all.

They took none of my ideas. They laughed at me as an outsider (I was writing online even then) and thought they could “repurpose” their existing print effort to win the online game.

Frankly they deserved what they got. When I read whinging about how local newspapers are failing, or being taken over by politicians for propaganda purposes, I have no sympathy. While I’m a journalist, I was trained as a business journalist, and I have always seen journalism itself as a business.

Human Capital and the 1980 Game

In 2020, we will be 12 years removed from the first political triumph of technology, the generational election of Barack Obama. All his progress is now being undone, much as a generation ago oil’s gains were threatened by Jimmy Carter and his cardigan sweater.

As we prepare to play the 1980 Game the question becomes, who is Ronald Reagan now? (It’s usually phrased, “Who Can Beat Trump?”) The answer lies in what drives our economy today, and in what drove it then.

I remain confident in the ultimate triumph of Democracy because, today, human capital is the gating factor to economic growth.

Where Elizabeth Warren is Wrong

Like a lot of people, I admire Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, or as the great Charlie Pierce calls her Senator Professor Warren (SPW).

But, again like most people, I can’t vote for her for President.

The reason, in my case, is Warren’s attitude to the Cloud Czars. Warren is staking a big part of her candidacy on running against them.

Let’s set aside, for a moment, the fact that the Czars – Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook – now command a combined market cap of nearly $4.5 TRILLION. Never mind that they dominate the business world, or that democracy always follows the Golden Rule – he who has the gold makes the rules. Democrats aren’t going to win the White House over the objection of the Czars and the bulk of the technology industry.

My beef here has to do with her proposal to break up the Czars, starting with Amazon.

Her argument against Amazon is that the company can see which brands people are buying, then put an Amazon version into the market and wipe out the other seller. It’s like she never heard of store brands.

Store brands have been a feature of American retailing practically since brands. Kroger does it with food. Target does it with clothes. Walmart does it with both. Walmart calls their store brands “Great Value.”

Copyright Wars 2020

My #1 life goal is to be plagiarized. THERE IS NO GREATER ACHIEVEMENT OR HONOR.

                                                                                ---Tom Peters 

                I first wrote about the Copyright Wars in 1997, when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was being debated.

                I predicted, in my first version of Moore’s Lore, which came out in the year 2001, that “East Coast” laws like this would fall to the “West Coast Law” of code.

                This is not the way things are working out in 2019. The Internet’s ability to serve mankind is threatened as a result.

                As Tom Peters notes, there is no real value in an idea. An idea is only worthwhile if spreads, or if it’s acted upon. For this to happen it must be communicated, disseminated, and digested by many other people.

                The Internet, specifically the World Wide Web, is the means by which this now happens. The Internet lets any idea, from anyone, reach an audience and change people. Or not.

                But two things are happening. First, bad ideas are getting the same power to change people as good ideas, because no one can credibly tell everyone the difference. Second, the copyright industries have moved to stop the distribution of ideas, under the mistaken belief that there is value in them, and that anyone repeating them should pay.

                Trump illustrates the first point well, although anti-vaxxers and other idiocies would exist even without him. It’s in the nature of the Internet to eliminate gatekeepers, and those companies that have risen to that position, like Facebook, Google and Twitter, eschew the role, fearing it will let government prevent protest (which it can).

Aladdin’s Bank

Jeff Bezos doesn’t really have over $100 billion, not in the way you may have $1,000 in a bank. Amazon.com isn’t worth $900 billion, in the way your house is worth $250,000.

Both valuations are based on a lie, the idea that Bezos could sell out his stock, or that ready buyers would take out all shareholders at the current valuation. The value of a stock-based fortune, or a company’s market cap, is based on the price paid at the last trade.

So it is that we return to Aladdin’s Cave, which I wrote about in 2013.

Had Aladdin come out of that mythical cave, with all its gold and jewels, and tried to sell them, the value of gold and jewels in that town would have plummeted. He would have brought only a fraction of the value.

On the other hand, what if Aladdin were a Hamiltonian?

The Crash of 2019

Right now, in early April of 2019, the U.S. economy seems to be in great shape.

Inflation is minimal. Money is cheap. Unemployment is down. Wages are rising.

Here is why I think this is all going to collapse, and that right soon.

Deflation.

As I have said here many times, technology creates deflation. Deflation is the primary subject of my Moore’s Law book, which I’m getting ready to rewrite for 2020.

To understand deflation in action, look in your hand.

Technology’s Dilemma

There is a bug at the heart of innovation, of technology, and of capitalism itself.

It lies in the incentives we give innovators.

It lies in stock ownership.

What liberals have condemned is the fact that nearly all the profit from innovation is going to a very small number of people. The winners’ founders, and their venture capital partners, get fortunes measured in the billions of dollars. Their key people also wind up as multi-millionaires. Everyone else, whether they’re line staff or just ordinary schmoes, can pound sand.

Sure, we all get some of the benefits. It’s cool to have cat litter delivered. It’s amazing that I can learn anything I want to know within moments. I can call my kid in Europe free. The software and hardware my son accesses, to automate cutting-edge medical tests is amazing. As a result, we’re starting to understand not only the genetic code, but what lies beneath it.

Still it’s true. The rewards are all going to a very small number of people. Jeff Bezos will never be able to spend the $150 billion he has access to. Bill Gates will never be able to give away the fortune he has won. Philanthropists are taking on the role of governments, self-appointed boards deciding the priorities on the nation’s wealth.