2020 has been an insane year. So much has happened, is happening and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future.

But the pace we are moving at is very fast, and it is shocking how much is changing each day in regards to not only the devastation of the pandemic itself on societies, but the implications of the pandemic and the speculation of the implications which are playing out in such a complex fashion where it is hard to know really how to process the present as well as the forseeable future.

That being said, there are key trends and transformations that everyone needs to prepare for sooner than later because these transformations will not only affect all of us in the short-term but also for the coming years and decades.

There are a lot of structural changes that have been brought out and will continue to evolve at a fast pace for the rest of 2020, accelerating into 2021 and going forward into this decade and beyond.

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Economy

The Economy is the big one. If you take away everything and all the noise, drama, pain of 2020 and that covid has brought out, I would say that it has shown us the divides in our society across socioeconomic lines. Now I have many opinions and beliefs about this because of my personal journey and experiences and have a mixed outlook on how I see this going forward.

In the short term, I believe that politicians in the US are and will continue to pass stimulus which will even move into a potential Universal Basic Income. I have mixed thoughts on this but will elaborate. At first glance, these things seem great. And it is completely necessary. We do need to support lots of people who have been and are being dislocated economically at a brazen pace.

There are people who are either losing their jobs in which they depend on for a weekly paycheck because of the lockdowns. There are also people who are being forced to work because they don’t have other options and many of which are front line workers as nurses, grocery clerks, gas station employees, food delivery workers etc.

And there is also tremendous strain and pressure on working parents as well as millennials in the service economy or who are self employed as remote working goes full speed ahead and the digital economy expands blazingly fast.

Now I believe that the second order effects of increased stimulus and a UBI however will be potentially very bad in the long-term and I believe it is a short-term bandaid but we are going to need some very serious solutions to a few problems that will be further exacerbated by increased stimulus.

These problems are increased inflation, debasement of the US dollar and other currencies perhaps, and increasing debt problems.

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Technology Markets

This pandemic has also proven increased reliance on digital technologies and an expanding digital economy. It is far from perfect however and we are seeing problems with this even. The problems we are seeing are related to the economy.

A fewer amount of people in our economy control larger swaths of economic activity through equity, investments and ownership in various asset classes such as real estate, stocks, commodities etc.

And this brings me to how I believe technology markets need to be used to solve the problems we will see in this decade, and hopefully we can leverage technology to allow individual freelancers, solopreneurs, startups, technology entrepreneurs compete and have a healthy shot.

A few areas that I am excited about, and knowledgeable about as I am finding my own path in all of this include e-learning. The quality of resources online that are almost ultra low cost if not free for learning everything is very high.

And as a college degree holder, I say that college degrees are now completely irrelevant. People will compete on skills and curiosity and passion are what will differentiate the winners from the losers in the coming decade and beyond. Because now there is no excuse not to learn or chase your dreams. The internet is making it more and more possible and expanding the horizon as well as the scope of jobs and income-generating activities.

However it takes alot of curiosity, passion, discipline, and cross-disciplinary skills to leverage these skills into creation. More and more digital creators, solopreneurs, freelancers, startups represent a thriving digital economy where we can all achieve freedom of what we work on, where we work, when we work, with whom we work.

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However, there is a caveat and something I am cynical of here. And that is the ability of monetizing digital creation. Because more and more of the value of the digital economy is being sucked up by large monolithic tech giants, monopolies, and conglomerates.

However, I have hope in free markets and that through creative destruction, things will balance out for the most part and we will be able to achieve more and more wealth creation this decade than ever before in human history so I ma very excited for that.

I believe that the democratization, digitalization, and decentralization of online learning, particularly in STEM skills, digital entrepreneurship, online business, the creative economy, and even philosophy, and other areas will create the utopian future that we all want rather than what it seems like now.

I am excited that we don’t need to live in a world controlled by the top 0.001% of capitalists, bankers or monolithic technology companies for much longer as our economy becomes more and more digitalized, decentralized and democratized.

Geopolitics, Politicians, Central Bankers vs Tech Entrepreneurs

I don’t believe that politicians or central bankers are the future. I believe that entrepreneurs are the future of the US and of the world. I don’t have too much faith in politicians or central bankers. Politicians serve their lobbyists for the most part whom serve their mega corporations. Central Bankers serve Wall Street who serve large corporations and bankers.

Because entrepreneurs don’t care about bureaucracy and bloat, but about eliminating barriers, friction and designing world-changing products and services. Don’t get me wrong. Free market capitalism by itself is not perfect but it is the best thing we have so far.

It’s just that we need to invest more in upskilling, reskilling, and transition from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. And we need more entrepreneurs and startups to compete against the technology giants we have today and create a healthier economy.

However short term, and especially in this next election cycle, we can not have Donald Trump reelected. I believe that populist leaders are corroding our political order and showing the broken system for what it is. I do believe we need to elect Joe Biden and have better leaders to bring about social and political stability and respect in the oval office as well as around the world.

However, we also need more modernization and to be honest past this election cycle, I believe that politicians will have a decreasing role in our society, but entrepreneurs will have an increasing role in our society.

The problem is when entrepreneurs get too large, they also become what they once didn’t like as well so I am always rooting for the small guy or the small business or small entrepreneur because it is him/her who will continue to disrupt the world order, the economy and the way things have always been done in the past for a better future.

I believe that better goods, services and products and the accelerating pace of change will bring about a great amount of material abundance this decade (although things seem very dire in 2020 and the very near short-term), the technologies we have available at scale now from mobile computing, to artificial intelligence, and cloud are changing society at a legendary pace.

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Climate Change

We need a few things to tackle climate change and the environmental problems which we are facing and which will only worsen this coming decade.

Although much of the damage is irreversible, we need to invest in clean energies, renewable energies, electric vehicles, vertical farming, carbon capture, geoengineering and even artificial intelligence and quantum computing which can help us build better technologies for the surveillance, management, maintenance and cleanup of the environmental mess we have.

We are in a tricky spot. And my view is that we are very entrenched in the digital economy so we need those technologies I mentioned above, many of which may be heavy polluting industries, products and companies. However, many of them are investing in clean energy technologies at a faster pace and trying to make their supply chains better which is more and more promising.

After all we need to balance out economic growth and climate concerns, however we need to be much more careful and look at the full spectrum of technologies which we can use to research, invest in and deploy at scale.

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