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alstry (35.70)

Few Can Handle Change

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February 04, 2010 – Comments (5)

WARNING:  Don't drive forward while looking in the rear view mirror.  Just because what worked yesterday does not mean it will work tommorrow or next week or next year.  What we are facing is the most incredible revolutionary change in human history....the progression from the Industrial Age to the Alstrynomic Digital Age.

Could you imagine being an owner of a buggy whip business in the early 1900s and talking to your fellow primates about how buggy whip sales were the best indicator of economic health for the last two thousands years......whoops, some guy named Ford put a damper in that perspective just a few decades later.

We are now moving in the Digital Age.....changes that used to take decades will be implemented in much more compressed periods of time.  You will have to completely tear down any preconceived notions of normal or past cycles....if you don't believe me, just ask Blockbuster's CEO....heck, even NetFlix may be replaced by some other digital delivery service in short order.

Perspectives on Real Estate will change dramatically over the next few years....real estate was a store of wealth in the Digital Age as matieral control was very important.....in the Digital Age Real Estate will likely play a much smaller role in importance and value.

I have never understood the concept of a larger population driving more growth.......it drives greater demand....but demand doesn't drive growth, it only drives destire......MORE MONEY and productivity drives more growth..........if you don't believe me, just take a trip to parts of Africa who have seen populations explode over recent decades....but relatively little growth in economies....sorry Economists, sometimes assumptions are the mother of major mistakes.

Real Estate is crashing and will likely crash much much further as we take it off life support.  We will not need manufacturing plants to make books, or 8 Tracks, or LPs, or CDs.......or libraries and bookstores as Kindles and similar devices will replace that need.....bank branches will move online.....and most current retailers will be etailers or extinct.  I know, this is what was being said in the Dot.Com days....the difference now is it is being implemented.

You think people were contemplating a 747 when the Wright Bros. took off at Kitty Hawk???  How about carriage drivers in 1910 contemplating the Model T in the late Twenties.  Your imagination should have no bounds.

How nations and governments are currently organized are products of an Industrial Age....expect massive changes going forward.  Same with money, taxes and revenue collection.  Also most most legal systems and the ways communities are organized will become obsolete in the near future.  Transporation and Energy methods and materials will change radically over the next decade.

Right now anything and everything is on the table for change.....the problem comes in the fundemental nature of change and man's aversion to it........governments and societies will struggle to maintain control and resist the change......in such environment, conflict is not only likely, but often inevitable.  Let's hope cooler minds prevail.

Becareful about thinking life is always a cycle....every once in a while a revolution comes along.  Few can see it in advance as it was never like it was before and so persective is cloudy at best....and an educated guess at its essence.

We lost another half a million employees this morning.........that is half a million people not paying social security taxes, income taxes and draining unemployment benefits........not including independent contractors and business owners who are not counted but falling off at dramatic rates.  The BIG difference now is few are hiring and more and more are shutting down.  It is simply part of the process of change........and this is a change that the world has never seen before...........and many will have a difficult time adjusting.

Yes my friends, the Industrial Age is shutting down......and we are moving forward with change....with or without you and whether you like it or not.  Don't look back.....start looking forward.  Welcome  to Alstry's Digital Age....the opportunities will be unprecedented for those that can seize them........those of you that are more comfortable in the Industrial Age...I respect that....I am more comfortable here too.

Carpe Diem.

The Modesto True Value Hardware Ca

The Southeast Branch of Lincoln Library IL

The River City Bank branch in Carrollton Georgia - Early May 

5 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On February 04, 2010 at 9:43 AM, miteycasey (91.01) wrote:

What we are facing is the most incredible revolutionary change in human history....the progression from the Industrial Age to the Alstrynomic Digital Age.

I disagree. 

Going from  the Agrarian age to the Industrial Age was much big.

People in the Industrial age understand technology is out there and coming. They've worked  beside machine  and have seen them grow in a few decades.

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#2) On February 04, 2010 at 10:16 AM, alstry (35.70) wrote:

Your mistake in analysis comes in with structural perspective and not emotional.  Emotionally you are correct.  However, our society today is much less structurally prepared for the change than it was during the last revolutionary period from Ag to Industrial.

Moving from Ag to Industrial is much less structurally convulsive than Industrial to Digital.  The prior change easily handled the population shift as it was labor intensive to labor intensive.......now we are morphing from labor intensive to labor efficient......what are we going to do with tens of millions of people with not much to do?????

You can only have so many people picking weeds..........maybe they can try to build housing communities in an oversupplied housing market?

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#3) On February 04, 2010 at 10:42 AM, chk999 (99.98) wrote:

Going from hunter-gatherer to settled agriculture makes this look like sunday tea time.

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#4) On February 04, 2010 at 12:07 PM, ralphmachio (24.64) wrote:

Something different here, and I must admit, I like it. keep up the good work. And as for the switch to settled agriculture, it did not happen as fast and at that time we depended on the Earth, not bank accounts, so we are much more subject to the whim of economic storms on a survival level.

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#5) On February 04, 2010 at 1:00 PM, miteycasey (91.01) wrote:

Your mistake in analysis comes in with structural perspective and not emotional.  Emotionally you are correct.  However, our society today is much less structurally prepared for the change than it was during the last revolutionary period from Ag to Industrial.

I completely disagree.

The structure is already there. 

1) the office buildings aready there.

2) the fiber optics already in the ground

3) The people already live in the city, close to the new jobs.

 

 

Moving from Ag to Industrial is much less structurally convulsive than Industrial to Digital.  The prior change easily handled the population shift as it was labor intensive to labor intensive.......now we are morphing from labor intensive to labor efficient......what are we going to do with tens of millions of people with not much to do?????

The same thing when we moved from ag to industry.

You train them. But instead of showing them how to push a button and move a piece of metal they push a button to move data from here to there.

You can only have so many people picking weeds..........maybe they can try to build housing communities in an oversupplied housing market?

You train them to do the new job, not a big deal. It's happened for centuries.

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