Five Mega-Trends That Will Shape the Next Decade
We're on the edge of a new decade, so it's a good time to identify the "mega-trends" that will influence the business world in the years to come. This post contains five trends that I believe will shape our culture (especially in the U.S. but elsewhere, too) and greatly influence what people buy and how businesses must operate.
Be forewarned, though. I'm not going to pull any punches, and I'm not going to restrain myself from telling it like it is. So here goes...
Click to see the first mega-trend »
MEGA-TREND #1: The Great Stupidification
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"There's an online sucker born every minute."
When pundits originally started yammering about the Internet creating a "democratization of information", they talked as if this were a good idea. They forgot the lesson of history, which is that true democracy (as opposed to a republic) quickly devolves into mob rule. While the Internet has its advantages, it's having the unintended consequence of raising the credibility of thousands of goofball theories.
Most people are pretty gullible anyway. (For example, more people in the United States believe in ghosts than believe in evolution.) However, because the Internet makes screwball "authorities" seem as valid as real scientists, it's spawning innumerable jackass theories, which are now held as gospel truth by a large segment of the population.
Since a large segment of the public can't differentiate between reality and Reality TV, they glom onto whatever theory makes them feel comfortable, and then, due to confirmation bias, resist any attempt to extract them from their fantasy. With a increasing frequency, such theories (e.g. the "birthers") penetrate into the mainstream, where media whores like Glenn Beck use them to goose up ratings.
This trend impacts business in several ways. Sales of books and videos about conspiracy theories is already a billion dollar business. The craziness can also drive B2B buying behavior. For example, the Internet-spawned Y2K disaster hoax resulted in companies purchasing hundreds of billions of dollars of unneeded computer upgrades.
Overall, the trend results in a public (including to a lesser extent, the professional class) who are LESS informed about what's going on because there will be so much BS floating around and no way to differentiate between what's real and what's totally absurd. To paraphrase H.L. Mencken: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of the American public."
Click to see the second mega-trend »
MEGA-TREND #2: The Porking of America
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"There's no such thing as too thin... or even kinda thin."
Improvements in food production, combined with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle is rapidly creating a society where being grossly overweight is considered normal. There are now parts of the U.S. -- mostly in the South -- where thin people are almost non-existent. It's like a plague of pudge, and it's spreading faster than the waistbands at a fast-food chain.
There's plenty of tut-tutting going on, particularly in government circles (e.g. Michelle Obama's healthy eating program.) However, while the government gives ample lip service to healthy eating and exercising, they put their money where your mouth is by subsidizing the production of corn syrup, milk products, red meat, and so forth.
The truth is that food suppliers (and the government agencies that are in thrall to them) want the public to get fat, because then the public eat more, and thereby increase revenues. From the perspective of the entire food chain business, the fatter the populace, the more money they'll make.
The healthcare industry, of course, also pays a lot of lip service to nutrition and exercising, but because healthcare is a for-profit enterprise, there's really no incentive to keep people thin. Quite the contrary. From the perspective of a doctor, hospital or pharmaceutical firm, a fat customer is a good customer. Same thing for the dieting industry, which depends upon repeat business for continued revenue and growth.
Meanwhile, the entire country is undergoing a massive retooling of seating, bedding, and transportation in order to accommodate a world where the average person will takes up significantly more space than in previous years. And that is creating all sorts of business opportunities. For example, the world will need thousands of plus-sized clothes shops, ever more massive automobiles, large and comfortable commodes, reinforced ramps, and so forth.
Click to see the third mega-trend »
MEGA-TREND #3: The New Gilded Age
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"The rich get richer and the poor get bupkis."
About three decades ago, a fever of deregulation created a wealth-creating system that massive favored the rich. In an early example of "stupidification", a large swath of the population accepted the idiotic notion of "trickle-down economics" which said that giving more wealth to wealthy people would improve the lot of everyone else. That, of course, runs completely contrary to thousands of years of human history, where the exact opposite has always been the case.
As anyone with an ounce of historical perspective could have predicted, enabling the super-rich to build up and control even more of the country's wealth has resulted in a situation where (surprise!) all economic gains go to the super-rich.
The Great Recession has simply made the rich even richer, especially the ones responsible for it. Even as the middle-class is vanishing, sales of private jets are skyrocketing, and at least one financial mogul has attempted to hire his own performing dwarf. The super-rich are laughing all the way to bank... in their gold-plated Ferraris -- while the rest of us are wondering if we'll still have a place to live.
This trend will continue to snowball because -- as evidenced by the government inability to reign in the financial sector -- there is no way to put a brake on the upward accumulation of wealth. Unfortunately, many people are simply too stupid to see what's happening and instead have let politicians convince them that, insanely, the solution is EVEN MORE deregulation.
This is not to say that there aren't some opportunities here. There's going to be a BIG business growth in products and services that appeal to the super-rich: private jets, luxury cars, diamond-encrusted bras, steaks from endangered species, "speciality" hookers, performing dwarfs, and the like.
There's also going to be a growth in the servant class. Think about a new career as a personal assistant or maybe a butler. If you get a job as a groundskeeper, you may be able to make some extra money poaching off his lordship's private zoo. And don't forget the traditional careers serving the aristocracy: there will be a BIG demand for assorted dogsbodies, toadies, lickspittles and congressmen.
Click to see the fourth mega-trend »
MEGA-TREND #4: Totally Weird Weather
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"It never rains, but it floods."
The scientific evidence for climate change is overwhelming, but anybody with an ounce of sense (and a memory that goes back more than a decade) can see that the weather is getting stranger all the time.
Of course, due to the great stupidification, there are wide swaths of the public who are in denial about this, but it really doesn't matter, because the process is clearly so far gone that it's going to continue regardless of what half-assed "Kyoto" treaties get put on the negotiating table.
Essentially whatever weather was "dangerous" for your region will become disastrous. So-called "hundred year" events will happen every decade for a while, then every other year. Floods, ice-storms, heat-waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, and so forth will become so common that they'll barely get any play on the news.
Forget about all that crap about fixing it. Not gonna happen. There will, however, be plenty of business opportunities in "green" products, not because they'll have an impact on the environment, but because that's a good marketing message when the weather is going to hell in a handbasket.
As for your personal life, the smart folk will move to someplace where the worst that nature dishes out doesn't usually kill many people. For example, if you've got property in coastal Florida, there's a good chance you'll end up underwater sometime during the decade. On the other hand, if you live somewhere that the worst thing that ever happens is a blizzard, your property will look mighty attractive to the wealthy refugees fleeing the once-balmy south in their borrowed rowboats.
Click to see the fifth mega-trend »MEGA-TREND #5: Endless Religious War
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"Do unto others before they do unto you."
Description: Much of the world is now involved in a religious war, similar to the cold war, but rather than fighting over economic systems, people are fighting over whose imaginary friend is bigger and stronger. Just like with the cold war, there are fortunes to be made, so don't miss this chance to take advantage of other people's insanity.
History shows that religious wars last for centuries, because they have no solution. Once people are convinced that God wants them to kill each other, there's no talking sense into them, since (let's be honest here) they're already totally off the twist.
Business-wise, you need to keep your head about you and figure out how to make money on other people's insanity. Investing in military equipment and military supplies is a good idea. Short term, investing in companies that make replacement parts for military equipment. Pretty much everything will need to be replaced and upgraded after a decade in the desert.
Long term, plan on a minor apocalypse. Given that there have already been several close scrapes, it's a good bet that there will be eventually a major terrorist act perpetrated in the United States. To make money on this, simply look what happened after 9/11. Stocks plummeted, then recovered fairly quickly.
So sell high and buy low and repeat as necessary and... Who knows? Maybe YOU can join the ranks of the super-rich! If so, I've got a performing dwarf that I rent out by the hour. Call me!
READERS: Any trends that I missed?
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