Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: economy

  • What happens when the power goes out?

    What happens when the power goes out?

    Cisco gave a media and analyst briefing earlier today on the Internet of everything looking at how various technologies can help with tasks ranging from reducing traffic accidents to improving productivity which I’ll write up later.

    One of the analyst’s questions though is worth pondering – “what happens when the power goes out?”

    For most of the industrial processes discussed by Cisco and the panellists, this would be a hassle but most of the systems would, or should, be designed to fall back to a default position should the power fail.

    On a much bigger scale though this is something we don’t really think through.

    In modern Western societyour affluent lifestyle is based upon complex supply chains that get the food to our supermarkets, fuel to our petrol pumps, water to our taps and electricity to our homes.

    Those chains are far more fragile than we think and few of us give any thought to how we’d survive if the power was off for more than a few hours or if the shop didn’t have any milk and bread for days.

    It’s one of the fascinating thing with the end of the world movies. When the meteorite hits or aliens take over then our power and food supplies probably have only 72 hours before they dry up.

    After that, you’ve probably got more to worry about your neighbours trying to steal your hoard than being ripped to pieces by zombies.

    Most of us probably wouldn’t cope without the safe, comfortable certainties which we’ve become used to.

    One thing is for sure — if the power does fail, then most of us will have more to worry about than whether our smartphones are working or whether our geolocating, internet connected fridge is tweeting our wine consumption.

    Similar posts:

  • Gen Y and the need for building new businesses

    Gen Y and the need for building new businesses

    The retirement of the baby boomers has been an demographic inevitability, but it’s interesting how policy makers and the population in general have ignored the ramifications of this despite the first boomers now aged beyond 65.

    One of the consequences of this is we may see an entire generation being forced to become self employed entrepreneurs.

    Illustrating this point are two stories from the US over the last few days; John Mauldin’s dissection of where US jobs are going and Zero Hedge’s 35 facts that should scare American baby boomers.

    The 35 facts really boil down to one thing, that an affluent, middle class retirement at 65 when average life expectancy is 78 is an illusion for most people – neither their bank accounts or the state treasury can support that sort of spending.

    Which is the point of John Mauldin’s column, that over 50s are taking most of the available US jobs as they can’t afford to retire.

    For those over 50 who’ve fallen out of the workforce due to unemployment or illness, getting back into the workforce is proving to be tough and for many of those folk their later years are going to be a struggle.

    Equally, as Mauldin points out, the younger generation is being locked out of the jobs being hogged by the over 50s.

    Another aspect to that is those employed Gen-X’s and Y’s hoping to get a crack at a seniors manager’s job or their name on the partner’s list are going to find a longer wait as the boomers hold on for as long as they can.

    Those young ‘uns need those high salary jobs too, a Westpac report on US student debt posits that crippling education costs are making it harder for graduates to participate in the workforce and affects their spending power when they do find a job.

    What’s clear is existing government, corporate and social structures are beginning to struggle with the realities of the changing workforce and its demographic composition.

    On a personal level, those Gen Xs, Ys and boomers who are locked out of the workforce have to find a new way to participate in the economy. It’s probably those locked out of today’s workplaces who will build the businesses of the future.

    Similar posts:

  • Airtasker and the future of work

    Airtasker and the future of work

    Tim Fung, the co-founder of Airtasker, has been previously been interviewed on this blog about micro tasking service’s mission to change the workplace.

    With the news that that Airtasker had gone into a partnership with employment site CareerOne it seemed Tim might be a good guest to kick off the first video for the Decoding the New Economy YouTube channel.

    During the interview Tim describes the motivations behind starting Airtasker, how he sees the relationship with CareerOne evolving and the benefits of operating out of a co-working space.

    The Tank Stream Labs working space is an interesting setup – based at the bottom of Pitt Street in the heart of Sydney’s financial centre, it’s not in the more edgy areas on the city fringes where the rest of the town’s workspace are located.

    Being away from the hipsters and grunge doesn’t seem to have hurt Tank Stream Labs as the space has now expanded to a second floor of the ten storey office block. The roll call of tenants is quite impressive too.

    For Tim being in the workspace has been a great benefit for Airtasker.

    There’s always the thing about sharing knowledge and more obviously there’s a lot of great contacts that everyone shares.

    Airtasker’s relationship with employment site CareerOne is an interesting development that sees the joint venture between News Limited and Monster move into the crowdsourcing field. It also gives job hunters an opportunity to find short term work while looking for a more permanent role.

    People are looking for more hours of work but equally businesses were coming to CareerOne and saying ‘hey, all you do is full time work’ and that’s only one piece of the employment puzzle.’

    For CareerOne it really allows them to build up the full spectrum – all the way from tasks to part time to full time and be a one stop shop for employment.

    How that works for CareerOne remains to be seen, but for Airtasker and Tim it validates their business model along with exposing their service to a wider audience.

    With the workforce evolving and the trend to informal, casualised employment; services like Airtasker and the US Task Rabbit will take a more prominent role in workers’ careers. While it’s debatable on how desirable or stable such employment is, it’s the reality of a process that started in the 1970s.

    Tim takes a more sanguine view of the challenges facing workers in an informal employment market.

    What I’m sharing on Airtasker is my free time. Currently we have this pool of literally tens of thousands of hours of people sitting around saying ‘I’d love to have a job’ and that’s an underutilised resource.

    Airtasker in many ways is one of the new breed of middlemen creating markets where one didn’t exist before. The service is an example of how new ways to communicate create opportunities to connect buyers and sellers.

    Services like Airtasker are part of the future that’s very different to the world we or our parents grew up. It’s going to be interesting to see how society and governments evolve around the realities of today’s workplace.

    Similar posts:

  • Can governments save declining cities?

    Can governments save declining cities?

    Following yesterday’s post on comparing the relative problems of Detroit and the Chinese ghost city of Ordos, The Fiscal Times has a somewhat wistful description of Motor City’s decline by one of the city’s sons, Eric Pianin.

    Pianin’s story charts the various attempts to revitalise the city following the disastrous 1967 riots that triggered the middle class and white flight from downtown.

    As last week’s events show none of these efforts worked, which begs the question of what governments can do to save cities and regions facing structural decline.

    Every city has an economic reason for existing — it could be transport links, natural resources or an industrial cluster. When that reason fades the population moves on.

    For Detroit, the high point was the late 1960s as the US motor industry reached its zenith. Through the 1970s the sector languished and was then displaced by smarter, better Japanese competitors.

    In the face of this there was little local, state or Federal governments could do. Detroit’s importance, wealth and population were destined to decline as industry left regardless of how much money was spent on grand schemes to revitalise the town.

    Perhaps sometimes we just have to accept there are limits to government power and the predicaments of cities like Detroit are the natural course of history.

    Over time, it may be Detroit manages to reinvent itself however the city will almost be very different, and smaller, city that it was in its heyday.

    View of Detroit Central Terminal Station by Jason Mrachina through Flickr.

    Similar posts:

  • Ordos and Detroit – A tale of two cities and two economies

    Ordos and Detroit – A tale of two cities and two economies

    This week bought news that that two cities, one in China and one in the US, had fallen into deep financial trouble.

    While the bankruptcy of Detroit is very different to the developers of the Ordos new city failing, there is a strange symmetry between the two stories.

    Detroit is the biggest US city ever to enter bankruptcy with an estimated $20 billion in debts, dwarfing the previous record of Alabama’s Jefferson Country’s $4 billion default in 2011.

    The fall of Detroit wasn’t unexpected as the New York Times tells.

    Detroit expanded at a stunning rate in the first half of the 20th century with the arrival of the automobile industry, and then shrank away in recent decades at a similarly remarkable pace. A city of 1.8 million in 1950, it is now home to 700,000 people, as well as to tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, vacant lots and unlit streets.

    Like most industrial hubs, Detroit grew became the centre of the US motor industry due to geographic and commercial advantages along with a few historical accidents but as the economy changed, the city’s importance faded.

    It’s sad for the people of Detroit but it isn’t the first industrial hub to fade away; Ironbridge, once the cradle of the English industrial revolution, is today an open air museum and a charming rural spot.

    Ordos on the other hand is an example of 21st Century government planning with the Inner Mongolian provincial leaders building the city of the basis of build it and they will come.

    They haven’t.

    The collapse of Ordos is going to be an interesting test of the Chinese economic model. Many of the country’s local and provincial governments – like Australia’s – have become dependent on the revenues from property sales. Now the market is  drying up, local councils are having trouble paying their bills as Bloomberg reports.

    Some Ordos district governments had to borrow money from companies to pay municipal employees’ salaries, Economy & Nation Weekly, published by the official Xinhua News Agency, said in a July 5 report on its website.

    So while Detroit illustrates the stresses in the US system, so too does Ordos tell us about the problems facing Chinese governments.

    The tale of these two cities also shows the difference between the US’ industrialisation of the early Twentieth Century and today’s economic development in the PRC and reminds why the results of ‘Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics’ may be very different to the modern American consumerist economy.

    For Detroit, at least there’s good news as one US city manages to works its way out of bankruptcy. For the developers of Ordos though, things must be looking very grim.

    Ordos image courtesy of Bert van Dijk through Flickr.

    Similar posts: