To snap myself out of the current ennui that has swamped me, I’ve a few ideas for a crowdfunded project. I’m interested in what people think of them, the first two are Australian focused while the others are more international.
All five of them revolve around the changing global economy and its effects upon societies, communities and individuals.
These are the ideas and I’d be delighted to hear some thoughts on them.
True Australian stories
Australia is in a time of transition. The upcoming Federal election may well determine the nation’s development over the next half century.
The idea of this project is to get out into the regions and suburbs which aren’t being covered – if not outright ignored – by the mainstream media and talk to the communities, people and businesses about how their worlds are changing and what they are doing to deal with it.
Re-inventing Australia
After a quarter century of continuous growth Australia has to make decisions on where its economy goes next. Successive governments have identified resources, agriculture, tourism, finance and education as the ‘five pillars’ of the economy.
This project talks to the people trying to make Australia’s five pillars work along with looking at those trying to build alternatives.
The future workforce
How does the global future workforce look? Will we be all contractors for Uber or Upwork or are there other models developing around the world.
What does the next phase of the industrial revolution look like for workers in both the developed and emerging economies? This idea is inspired Sebastião Salgado’s work.
The Second City project
Every major city has a less prosperous neighbour – Sydney and Newcastle, Melbourne and Geelong, London and Birmingham, Beijing and Qingdao, San Francisco and Oakland are examples.
How are those second cities faring in a global economy that’s increasing the wealth of the rich? What are the leaders of those communities doing to reposition themselves.
The next Silicon Valleys
While we’re focused on today’s global centres like California’s Bay Area, London and Shanghai there are other emerging industrial centres that will be the next generation’s Silicon Valleys. Who are they and what do they look like?
I’d be delighted to hear readers’ thoughts on these projects and any other ideas for similar ventures.
I like ‘True Australian stories,’ and I kind of see it subsuming ‘The Second City project’ inasmuch as there is a common play with perspectives – how people see themselves and others within differently experienced economic frames.
The transition to the New Digital Economy needs to be based on a global solution that solves inequality, that is currently driving the world in the wrong direction.
It needs to have the solution to recover from global debt and put the world back on a major development trajectory that overcomes the issues around the aging populations and ‘automation’.
It does mean disruption to industries that are holding back ‘going forward’ for obvious reasons – the transition must take all these issues into account and provide a simple and fair way to involve the masses.
That time has arrived now that the mobile phone has made to into the hands of the masses and the computer leaps can now handle global ‘connectivity’ down to local economies.
Hope this following link to a site that has been developing the New Digital Economy for some time helps to show there is movement happening.
http://www.qwickpic.com
If you have any questions we will be happy to answer them – the site is an intro of what it will do, the main databases and engines are offline.
The Platform is opening up to interested and like minded people to get involved to take on the next stage.
Hope this ‘breaks you out of your ennui’
Michael
“..resources, agriculture, tourism, finance and education as the ‘five pillars’ of the economy” [snip]
resources: will always be an earner, but commodity prices will fall further. Bad for terms of trade!
ag: will always be an earner, etc, etc, but what can we do to ‘value add’? e.g., Tasmania produces the finest essential oils on Earth [no. of cool ‘degree days’ pa]. Why can’t we have our own fledgling perfume industry in Hobart?
tourism: ebbs & flows. Will never be a huge driver of the economy, and, even if it got to that level, it will ebb, as all fads do.
education: its 20% of AUS exports now. Do we really want to convert the universities to diploma mills, and take in ’00’s of thousands of MORE students? btw, popularity as an education destination can change surprisingly quickly, e.g. from India about 6 years ago when so many young students were getting murdered in Melbourne.
finance-a number of recent studies have shown that excessive financialisation is actually BAD for economies. In any case, all the proposals for ‘transforming’ SYD to a financial centre involve a ‘race to the bottom’ of regulation. Do we really want to be a speculator’s haven, aping the Cayman Islds?
What about ‘value added’ mfg? There’s a lot of this still in London [though its being driven out by the same scourge of property values].
Then, IT. Though I can’t see this burgeoning until there is a ‘significant decline in property values’.
I think the revenue line is going to be challenging, at least for the near future.
What about lowering Australia’s operating costs? Like, I’m fine with amalgamating councils, as long as we can eliminate one level of government. The most obvious is the States. NZ nor the UK don’t have them. Why does a small country of 25M believe that they’re necessary?
ps regarding the notion of ‘making’ SYD into a ‘financial centre’ – on point:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/why-growth-in-finance-is-a-drag-on-the-real-economy.html