Farewell AirBnB

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This won’t happen everywhere, but in many cities that are popular with tourists, the rise of AirBnB has coincided with chronic housing shortages and low housing affordability.

These are not actually a coincidence, they are both the result of worsening economic inequality. More people with money are travelling, and that will keep getting worse with time, unless inequality is seriously and properly addressed.

Taxing or effectively taxing tourists will help. It will directly take money from the rich and distribute to the poor, if done correctly.

That means government taxes and tariffs on hotels, visas and the like, as long as it is redistributed to social housing. That means no AirBnB, or at least limiting it to leasing a single room within a residential home on a temporary basis.

Cruises are booming, so increase their port charges dramatically. Their appeal fades once desirable ports are off the menu.

Countries that do this first (yes countries, because it doesn’t work as long as individual destinations are vying for the tourist dollar and will fight to the bottom), will benefit soonest.

The Clusterfuck of 2024

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I reckon the media might call it the clusterfail.

At least 5 of these will happen before Feb 2025 (in my futurist opinion…)

  • 9/11-level terrorism (and retaliation). The Olympics is predictable but anywhere is up for grabs.
  • AI-crash (house of cards collapses)
  • EV-crash (not just a slump)
  • Some major financial ponzi scheme revealed
  • Tariff wars (isolation is in)
  • A new proper war (in an unexpected place)
  • A major twist in the US election (like someone no longer running)
  • Climate change ramps up (skeptics run and hide)
  • Space disaster (human casualties)
  • Volcano or earthquake (enough to affect economies)
  • Inflation shoots up again
  • Major civil unrest, almost unprecedented, in a western country (beyond the French having a little riot)

The Wegovy Backlash

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I hope not, of course, but there has never been a weight-loss pill that hasn’t backfired somehow. While the short-term safety of Wegovy seems to be understood, it is too new to possibly know of the long-term effects. There is definitely a psychological aspect to it, so conceivably that wears off, and our brains find new pathways to desire eating again.

Possibly, the long-term side-effect is not something that can be measured in a lab. Something like a loss of zest in general, a loss of appetite for life, and the myriad of ways that can present itself in our everyday lives. For example, a loss in the desire to have children, or complete tertiary studies.

The Future of Protesting

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Public protests are not new, and not uncommon. These days they are evolving, perhaps sparked by the Reclaim Our Streets happy protests who were very prescient in their anti-car advocacy. Rather than simply being seen and heard, protests are increasingly aiming to be disruptive. The Extinction Rebellion regularly makes the new in this regard.

The very nature of disruptive protests mean that costs are borne by many, from everyday folk having their progress through the city hindered, to business, and of course policing. Climate protesters would argue that the hindrances they cause are an important aspect, to make their point heard. Yet the same people would argue that a white supremist rally would wrongly interfere with their day.

In the western world, where protesting has been generously allowed (and rightfully so) in recent history, the trend is towards punishment for disruptions, especially those that are purposefully designed to affect business operations. I expect that in the near future there will be codified controls and regulations that allow protests but in a more restricted way.

In-situ protests, outside a particular location that is meaningful, would probably continue unchanged. But for marches, I can see a new way emerging, a compromise between visibility and order.

  • Dedicated march journeys, from A to B
  • The journeys are in prominent places, with many viewers, like inner city pedestrian malls
  • Permits are required
  • Minimum numbers are required. Say 100 named people of which 80 need to attend or will be fined.
  • Names are confidential unless a crime is committed.

Ultimately it would not be too different to how buskers are often regulated and controlled. Initially there might be a great increase in the number of protests, but in the long term mostly only the larger, important rallies would be occurring.

While this sounds overly bureaucratic, it can also codify the right to protest, especially in cities like London where public spaces are increasingly being operated by corporations who can issue trespass notices.

Palestine: The End Game

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The situation as I see it:

Israel and continually gone against prior agreements and keep taking more and more Palestinian land, because they think God said it was theirs.

Palestinians rightly are angry, not just about the land but by effectively being in a prison (Gaza) and a substantial number of them have lives that hinge on absolute hate of the Israelis (the Jewish ones).

Israel don’t want a two-state solution with an enemy right next door, who will continue (with the support of Iran) to keep attacking and terrorising them. Israel (half of the population) loves the expansion into the West Bank by “settlers”.

This is what Israel will bring to the table, and a future Palestinian leadership will agree to:

West Bank continues as normal. Any land without houses is free for Israelis to build on, and the West Bank will effectively be a part of Israel, and existing Palestinians can continue to live there, as they do now.

Gaza becomes its own state. It will have full access to the outside world, via the sea and air. Land connections and workers crossing the border will continue as before. However, terrorism needs to end. An international task force will be there – potentially forever – to run democratic elections, co-ordinate aid, and to shut down any terrorism. No anti-Israeli sentiment is allowed. No murals of martyrs. All history taught in schools is carefully worded and monitored. The end result is peace and freedom with hate for their neighbours snuffed out. Any rebels are deported, somewhere.

Per Person Apps

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We have many ways of communicating with one person – email, SMS, calls, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and so on. I have several annoying friends who use multiple forms of chat to reach me, often one a few minutes after the other if I don’t respond obediently.

If all of these apps shared a common protocol, and gave permissions to the OS, then the OS could aggregate the communications on a per person basis.

On my phone screen I could see an app named Barry, and clicking on it will show all my communications with Barry in a single, uniform interface. Replying to any of Barry’s messages would default to the app it came via, but that can be changed if I want.

Most of us would have less than 10 people that need a per person app. For business folk, they could perhaps be in folders of type, like potential client, existing client, exec team…

Where It Came From: Attribution 2.0

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Deep fakes and the like are a growing problem:

Of course it will get worse, and new angles will emerge that are unheard of. Regulation could be the solution, although nobody will be a fan. If you want to have a platform where you are immune from having wrong content on it (as long as you police the content to a reasonable level), then you must also follow this one simple rule. All content has to have an origin, and that origin is posted with the content.

  • Music comes from the artist’s home page
  • Memes have an origin
  • Photos come from the page of who took the photo

Any authorisations, all types of rights, are stored at the source.

So, if I want to share a meme I found online, I have to go to the source, and maybe agree to something, and maybe get a link back to the source with my auth ID in it… and so on. We are talking Creative Commons for everything.

To post something from a particular source, the platform must have registered it. So to post a picture of King Charles, it must come from a news source, or his own website, or a registered source that will take the fall if they have acquired it or used it wrongly or illegally.

There are some downsides to this approach, obviously!

Posting content in social media will take longer, sometimes. Sharing a link from a registered source won’t take any longer. Reposting something that already cites a source, won’t take longer. Banging out a funny meme using content that is not yours, will take longer, and can only improve things for everyone – it will be a good opportunity to be a bit more serious, especially for topics that warrant it, like politics and anti-woke.

It is anti-freedom of speech. Er, no, it isn’t, but it will be seen that way. People misunderstand what those freedoms actually entail. Never mind though, because attribution regulations will only apply to social networks of a certain large size. Your anarcho-mischief collective will fly under the radar, although they will need to have a prominent message stating that they are non-regulated.

Off Season Boycott Club

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An online community spends 3 months discussing and eventually voting on which nasty corporation (or country?) is worthy of a boycott.

Members then, individually, by choice, pledge to not use their products or services for the 3 months of the next season of Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall. You go off them for a season 😉

If you cannot bear to be without them beyond the 3 months, that is sad, but OK.

The idea is to use the timeliness for publicity – who will be boycotted next? At scale.

To incentivise the boycott, direct competitors can be canvassed, seeing what they might offer to any member who switches allegiance. Such offers need to be above and beyond anything else they otherwise offer others.

Canvassing members first on whether they use particular brands is critical – it means the boycott can be meaningful and measurable.

Imagine the dread faced by corporations who are in the shortlist each quarter!

5figz – Amazon Bestsellers Go Rogue

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Every merchant wants to go off on Amazon. But when they do, Amazon probably makes more profit from the success than they do.

I’m imagining a platform where you can buy the verified hits of Amazon – products that have sold 10K+

  • Amazon hits are rarely rip-offs, the review system (mostly) looks after that.
  • People trust a successful Amazon product
  • Amazon cannot stop you stating a fact about your success on their platform

While Amazon has put superhuman effort into getting products to people quicker, price tends to trump speed. So the 5figz fulfilment system doesn’t need absolute speed. However, the nature of the products – high-volume – lends itself to efficiency.

I figure that the game plan is to out-Amazon Amazon. Run at a loss with their most successful products, until the public learn that 5figz is where to get the best products without Amazon taking a crazy cut of proceeds.

And it scales scarily well. Start with the most expensive products with 10K sales. And as the business grows, fold in lower price items. Obviously selling 10K execycles is better all round than selling 10K hairbands.

Drone drug delivery

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Illicit drugs are physical and require delivery, so al sorts of means have been deployed over the years. Most recently tunnels, submarines and drones.

Getting 1kg across the border in a retail drone is quite easy, and presumably it is done a lot.

But what about the last mile? How long before the end user gets their delivery by drone? We all know that drugs are often sold by the ounce, and a drone that can carry an ounce might be too small to notice.

A network of such drones could network drug delivery across a city. The transfer of the payload is what is needed, automation, no humans.

And less likely to get caught by the feds, if you start each drone journey and end it at a random place.