Author Archives: Futures Broker

Colorful vs Beige

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This is my prediction for the “western world” 10 years from now, politically.

Existentially it will still be left v right, woke v bigots. But the lefties will need to keep things fresh, become better defined, and have more fun.

The woke left already embrace the queerest of people, and the rainbow is pretty much their symbol. Meanwhile, especially with Trump, the direction is clearly Handmaid’s Tale, a lack of color. In South Africa (and the US), famously, non-whites have been called colored. It has been hard for woke whites and blacks/coloreds to join as one, but I reckon calling myself colorful (I am white) and giving them the opportunity to do the same, could work.

Meanwhile beige has long been a bit condescending, so that works well as a new insult.

We already know the left/right divides of opinion and policy. But there are some grey areas that the colorfuls can aim to claim.

Crypto – let the beige folk have NFTs and memecoins, while we claim the coins that do not waste electricity to create, and have at least a spirit of non-profit.

Climate Change – take active measures of preparation, and let the beiges feel inadequate when the worst comes. Same for taking vaccines and not getting sick.

Clothing – let’s make what you wear to be unambiguous, starkly so. Colorfuls can claim colors, given the rainbow precedent. Incorporating minor aspects of the rainbow, like a multi-colored stripe that is in the corner like a logo, can mean ownership of color. The beige folk could/should end up being afraid of wearing anything with multiple colors. We can have men wearing kilts, body piercing, dyed hair, and footy umpires wearing pink. They can retreat into the murk of boring.

Cash – Trump et al will want to control people. We can be the leaders of anti-surveillance and pro-cash.

New Age – lots of MAGAs are getting into natural therapies and yoga. We need to have our own varieties that are differentiated. It will at least confuse them, and disenfranchise them.

Vaccines – easy win. Colorful schools can simply require full vaccination.

Fossil Fuels – easy. Be 100% off them, be loud about it. Force the beiges to try and be different. See them give in, embarassed, when it costs more and is less fun.

Sponsored Events – because most actors/musicians/artists are colorful, then they can flaunt that, and make the beige folk feel unwelcome at their displays of artistry. Sponsorship from a prominent colorful brand should be enough, you know, like Bud Light.

Clubs and Themes and Identity and DEI – laws forbid exclusion based on race, gender, sexuality. The Beige will adjust laws so they can get around this. To go the other way, exclude the Beige, is already legal, if you are clever. You can have a private “smokers club” to get around laws regarding smoking in a bar. A gym can be only for anyone without a penis, instead of “women”. (Freebie for the Beige). You can have a school where scholarships are given to people who demonstrate a passion for queer culture, or black culture, or writing about feminist history. That is not discrimination. But nearly is.

Simply Being Us – a cinema (for example) with overtly colorful staff will scare away beiges. They don’t want to be infected. But a colorful won’t care as much going to a beige cinema, and having popcorn from a beige container. We can make them, here and there, feel like the oppressed.

Democracy – even if the federal democracy becomes one-party, there are other levels, especially in the US. States and counties can bring in new ideas like mixed-member-proportional voting, and anything else progressive.

Drugs – all psychedelics are cool, and marijuana. Own them. Flaunt them. Let MAGA do coke and oxy.

Media – presume that the authoritarian government will try to shut down consenting voices. And fight it ahead of time. That will scare them off and let the colorfuls feel empowered.

Have numerous methods of accessing the liberal media. For example, hosted in overseas territories beyond the control of your government. Launch a satellite service that bypasses terrestrial interceptions. Make it possible to 3D print receivers. Start a culture of peer-to-peer offline data sharing (basically copying thumbdrives and distributing)

Ultimately this is counter-culture and hippies, 50-60 years later, a new cycle of rebellion.

Cash5

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Businesses offer 5% off for cash for anyone carrying the Cash5 card. That person also gets points and bragging rights.

The business itself saves 0.5-2.5% in transaction fees, but incurs cash handling costs.

Plenty of businesses are happy to pay a 5% reward fee for anything that gets customers in the door. But also, regular customers might take advantage of it.

All Cash5 transactions are recorded, so no tax dodging is possible. However individual businesses could offer it “off card”.

Why it works:

  • Doing so makes a statement against the digital now
  • Keeps cash alive
  • Like-minded people will frequent the same businesses

The last point is pertinent. Such businesses become venues where counter-culture folk can meet. A lawyer offering Cash5 is perhaps more likely to understand your situation.

It has real world value but ultimately is a way of connecting people, not unlike the African-American barber shops.

Luxury Tax on Travel

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Australia has a luxury car tax. Once a car (not a truck or commercial vehicle) costs over $80K (or $90K if they are fuel efficient), then a 33% tax applies. So you can’t really buy a car for $100K or $110K, there is a big gap.

People still buy those cars.

It should be consider for more items, in countries around the world. Luxury, by definition, in an unnecessary splurge. It is hard to argue that those people are being treated unfairly, as they already pay way more for the product that its functional value. They are paying for exclusivity.

So:

  • handbags
  • clothing + shoes
  • furniture
  • art
  • whisky + wine
  • and travel!

We have many cities now trying to reduce the number of tourists that are visiting. Tax can help that easily. We leave alone public transport and regular hotels. We tax 1st class, business class, tours costing more than $x per night, and expensive hotels. At the least, the rich keep spending and the state or local government gets income. Or better still, we get fewer travellers and a saner and greener world.

Social Content Moderation Solved

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First of all, there needs to be a fork, where we have social media that verifies the users (photo ID or the like) and socials that don’t. The verified one will automatically be a safer place, because there are laws against bullying, doxxing, slander and so on.

For the unverified, community notes is doing fine, but it needs to be able to respond faster.

For the verified, aside from the general law, we can greatly reduce misinformation with one extra step when posting – source URL. The network you are on will prompt you to add a source URL – where you got the info from. You can also select offline options like print media or radio. The network will point out that if you do not share the source, then you will legally be considered to originator, and any repercussions come beck to you. Nobody will be punished (socials or legally) if they share the source, we are allowed to be morons.

Reducing Homelessness: The Spartan Network

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Stupid name is just a placeholder…

But it comes from thinking about what stops people from letting the homeless take shelter in unused rooms, spaces and buildings. A key concern is that they will steal or do damage. So naturally you provide the barest of minimums. Potentially just a foam mattress on the floor.

There are other concerns obviously, so this is just the beginning of an idea…

In reality, few homeless people would bite the hand that feeds them, with the strong exception of drug addicts. So while the fear of theft or damage is real, it won’t happen very often.

The idea: participants are covered by an insurance of sorts – if the person you provide shelter for does such a thing, you get fully compensated.

The cost of covering such events will be minuscule compared to other solutions.

Free Insurance from the Federal Government

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I cannot find any reason why this is not a widespread thing. It comes down to the simple premise that nobody sets fire to or otherwise deliberately damage their own home. All insurance does is return it to its prior state, but with lots of paperwork, delays and annoyances.

Those that do not get house insurance, typically it is because they cannot afford it versus other things like food and electricity, so they take a gamble. They need help. Everyone else, well the value of the house is probably vaguely connected to what you earn, so increasing taxes by 0.05% would cover everyone’s insurance. Whatever the figure, it will be low. The net result will be the same – what you save from insurance you pay for in tax – but we cut out the middlemen and “loss adjusters”.

Hand in hand with this comes preventive measures, like making sure roofs are well attached. This interesting paper goes in depth about how housing resilience agencies (HRAs) would work. The state will spend on fixing up homes proportional to the risk and cost of bailing them out. Everybody wins. And it is a great election bribe.

Woke 2.0

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Woke went too far, but that is not surprising, left and right politics either go moderate to get elected, or go radical if they feel daring. Society ends up with a balance between the two. The right sold off government assets (Reagan, Thatcher) which was extreme, and woke went too far:

  • going light on crime like shoplifting
  • letting children make gender decisions
  • DEI

But let’s look at DEI for a moment. It is ultimately a decision to raise the earnings and potentials of peoples who are historically marginalised and suffered from racism, and to a degree still are today. The goal was equality.

DEI only did wrong in racist terms. While it is logical to say everyone should have equal chances, that is the equivalent of “all lives matter” which ignores that some people don’t start from the same place.

DEI has been shut down for targeting races. So, all they need to do is change the definition of who they help. This is not new. Want to smoke in a bar? Form a “cigar club”.

Woke 2.0 will simply refine the criteria. Instead of giving scholarships to Hispanics, you simply make them available to people who show a deep understanding of Hispanic culture. And then only award them to Hispanics. Very defensible, because we are talking about the opinions of academic admins, not something measurable.

I can envisage a DEI-esque scoring system.

First, get someone to write a paper proving that diversity in the workplace equals greater success and profits. Then come up with a multimodal scoring system that looks at 100 criteria, including such things as:

  • economic background
  • non-typical ethnic and cultural backgrounds – these are non-typical relative to the current school or workplace make-up, and not defined specifically
  • non-typical gender and sexual orientation. Again, not specified. so if there are too many gays it will go the other way
  • height, weight, hobbies, family structure, age, good preferences, IQ, EQ, etc etc

The idea is that the overwhelming factor is a mixing bowl of characteristics, but nothing on its own. That will rend it immune from any Supreme Court decisions. As long as it is backed by one piece of science. Schools and employers can use their own judgement around which studies they trust.

Common-sense will fix the transgender issues. Children under 18 won’t be able to get anything done physically, but they will get all the help, care and consideration possible.

And with crime, hopefully the US looks at typical sentencing in other advanced economies and learns. Too much or too little doesn’t work.

Black Lives Matter can be reignited with just one atrocity. So expect it to return. The only solution is that (hopefully) America standardises hiring and training across all of law enforcement and gets rid of the crazy idea of voting for DAs and sheriffs.

Battery Charging, Personal Devices, in 2028

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You might not have noticed but the number of devices we charge every day is creeping up…

  • Phone
  • Tablet
  • Headphones / ear buds
  • Smart watch or ring

And soon a lot of us will be wearing XR glasses (a combo of VR and AR).

Meanwhile, as a large subset of the population gets relatively richer, travel will keep becoming more common, which means charging devices on the go.

Here are some ideas for how our charging protocols might change:

The Box – Think a shoe box. When not plugged in it is a box to carry stuff in, like socks and undies. When plugged in (it could come with a universal plug for different countries) it is a wireless charging device that works on anything inside it. Just chuck everything in. On the outside it could be a smart device itself, with a screen and speakers, so it sits bedside, you can talk to it, it can show the weather, time, play music.

Swappable Batteries – should not be hard to achieve. China is going hard on them for cars because it is more efficient, swap batteries instead of waiting for yours to charge. When you get home, or back to your hotel, you pull out the batteries of your devices and swap them with those in the chargers. It was a while ago but batteries in phones used to be very accessible. When you dropped your phone, the back case fell of and the battery fell out.

The Jacket – a 24 hour charging regime suits most users, but power users will always drain their devices quicker and might not be at home to charge them. There might be severe safety risks, and it doesn’t work in summer (you might need a backpack or fanny pack), but having a mega battery on your person, that can charge all of your devices on demand, could be a thing. To keep the devices operating (because you are a power user) it will require wires. Unless they can work out how to conduct electricity through your body…

More likely, given all the research and dollars up grabs, long-life batteries will turn up, that give us a week instead of a day. Or, some people will go for low powered devices. I’ve had (cheap, basic) smart watches that last 3 weeks on one charge.

Who Will Provide Maps for Meta?

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A very obvious component of AR glasses is mapping/GPS and businesses. That is where immense profits lie – basically McDonald’s offering you two hash browns for $2 when you walk by. It will literally pop-up on your glasses. Next level marketing.

Google and Apple already have mature maps operations. The upside of AR is so great that if a partnership forms between Meta and either of those, then it is very win-win.

However, Apple and Google own the phones. It is more profitable to buy staff from Meta and make their own AR glasses, and then use their own maps infrastructure.

There will be three plays, and a market for two. Apple and Google will be ready to pounce, with both quite possibly having products ready to launch ASAP. Meta is the runt in this scenario. No maps app of their own. No phone operating system. They are already spending mega-bucks on other things (metaverse, AI), and this could ruin them if they proceeded. But in theory they could create their own maps app, or buy some weird 3rd-tier app from Germany. They could potentially venture into the phone space, getting a Chinese company to manufacture the phones in the US, with a Meta-owned fork of Android. It would primarily be a brand play, hoping to leverage the brand equity of something that has already peaked, by combining it with the trust and assurances of an old friend. No tracking, nothing foreign. A solid phone (sold at a discount because AR advertising will be bank), with minimal branding. More like a Lexus made by Toyota than a “Facebook Phone”.

Apple will win. They will avoid the gimmicky miss-steps by being last to launch.

Too Big To Fail – A Rule of Thirds

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A recent tech outage – Crowdstrike bringing down Windows systems – showed us yet again how fragile we are with important infrastructure. Because of just-in-time processes and finely optimised systems, some failure that is truly tragic will only be noticed afterwards. To mitigate this, and improve redundancy greatly, and save society from monopolies and provide jobs and lessen inequality… we only need one rule.

In nominated critical industries (there will be many), no business and no system can have more than one-third market share.

An easy example is computer operating systems. They need to make sure they never have more than 33% share in any industry, for example airline booking systems. Neither can computer manufacturers, RAM makers, microchip makers, hard drive makers. At least 3 software companies must make the booking systems, and they cannot share code.

Bananas are mostly Cavendish in Australia – that needs to change.

Achieving this rule is actually very easy. Dominant players charge more, degrade quality or remove features until they lose appeal enough for some other to have inroads.

The problem we have today is industries are like a game of chicken, and the less resilient you are, the more potential upsides and downsides. It is risk for profits, and sometimes a race to the bottom. Recently some emerging car companies failed because interest rates went up. They were too finely leveraged.

There are industries controlled by a few (meat-packers in the US, supermarkets in Australia) which only has one advantage – market efficiency to enrich their owners. Every else about their duopolies (or whatever three players is called) is a negative to the rest of society.

With the rise of the machines/AI, we will need more jobs, and some inefficiencies will be good for us.

Back to the computer example – we can easily have Windows/Mac/Linux. Having multiple sources of microprocessors would be great! Instead of 90% coming from Taiwan. Having spaceships going to the space station using different computer systems will mean those astronauts have two ways to get home. When the airline booking systems go down, it only affects a third of airlines (per country). Or supermarket checkouts.

We could even perhaps extend it to money – as in state currencies cost enough of a premium that crypto alternatives become appealing.