Great Recession of 2020

[Farm Boy]

The United States Asylum.

We do have sketchy friends.

 

[EnglishEdward]

@Birdjaguar

I understand your logic and that is certainly the way it has worked up until now.

But Covid-19 is a Black Swan and the established paradigm may collapse.

At the moment the USA and UK governments are still firmly in the
pockets of the financial capitalists and are desperately trying to keep
that system running by providing previously unimaginable loans.

In the UK when a retail chain goes into a loss, almost the first thing it does
is tell its landlord(s) to reduce its rents, or it will close the outlet and the landlord
will likely get nothing or have to reduce the rent for a replacement tenant.

Now it is a little harder for families and individuals, particularly those with significant
possessions to adopt that line, but what happens if a significant number of
tenants say; halve the rent or we quit and go live with Mum and Dad etc.

The way I see it the current rentier system, which in the UK includes many zombie
companies, is only being kept going by central bank and government intervention.
The government does that because, apart from being in their pockets,
it is afraid of a collapse in the real economy, but as Covid-19 is collapsing
that anyway, that additional reason evaporates. And sooner or later the general public
may tire of a system that increasingly seems to protect the plutocratic class.

The established rentier tactic of dealing with each tenant individually and
sending in the bailiffs may work for a while to deter others from defaulting
but if the tenants don't have the money, default is inevitable and if a great
many tenants do not have the money, they may perhaps act collectively.
A question is will the police intervene to support bailiffs and break rent strikes.

 

[Hrothbern]

@Birdjaguar

I understand your logic and that is certainly the way it has worked up until now.

But Covid-19 is a Black Swan and the established paradigm may collapse.

At the moment the USA and UK governments are still firmly in the
pockets of the financial capitalists and are desperately trying to keep
that system running by providing previously unimaginable loans.

In the UK when a retail chain goes into a loss, almost the first thing it does
is tell its landlord(s) to reduce its rents, or it will close the outlet and the landlord
will likely get nothing or have to reduce the rent for a replacement tenant.

Now it is a little harder for families and individuals, particularly those with significant
possessions to adopt that line, but what happens if a significant number of
tenants say; halve the rent or we quit and go live with Mum and Dad etc.

The way I see it the current rentier system, which in the UK includes many zombie
companies, is only being kept going by central bank and government intervention.
The government does that because, apart from being in their pockets,
it is afraid of a collapse in the real economy, but as Covid-19 is collapsing
that anyway, that additional reason evaporates. And sooner or later the general public
may tire of a system that increasingly seems to protect the plutocratic class.

The established rentier tactic of dealing with each tenant individually and
sending in the bailiffs may work for a while to deter others from defaulting
but if the tenants don't have the money, default is inevitable and if a great
many tenants do not have the money, they may perhaps act collectively.
A question is will the police intervene to support bailiffs and break rent strikes.

I guess, also with digitalising, the online and the home office change, that the financial value of a lot of real estate will go down anyway... electrons to replace part of the physical demands of our economy:
How many shops in streets will survive on-line shopping ? I guess also big supermarkets in and near big cities. Home office means also that you are more at home to receive deliveries during day-time.
How many office space will not be needed anymore (for at least 10 years or so) with permanent partial home office work ?
How many people needing only to be once a week in office in a city will move to smaller cities-towns and decrease demand (and price) for housing in and near the big job providing cities, ?

 

[innonimatu]

As far as letting Real Estate companies go bankrupt to force them to liquidate assets, think it through. Future rents are a major issue in determining the selling price. For the most part existing rents are fixed at any given moment and can only be changed at the end of lease terms. If bankrupt owners must lower the price to get a quicker sale, the rent roll won't change and new owners can't just throw out all the tenants to get new lease rates.

As if the tenants would refuse to renegotiate a lower rent?

Bankrupt owners will go bankrupt because rents are not being paid. People renting homes and companies renting commercial space are unable to pay at 2019 levels. If property owners cannot pay mortgages, because they have reduced rent income, their the creditors will seize the property and will have to liquidate for whatever it can sell for, which will be a lower price. Unless the Fed supports property prices by buying mortgages from these creditors at face value. Then the creditors can simply place the mortgage parked at the fed. The fed can also intervene, and has intervened, by lending to banks or outright buying commercial paper to place liquidity into these real estates funds, letting them take up debt instead of defaulting and having to sell property.
Whatever the channels the effect is the same: keep the value of financial assets high, preventing defaults and this property amassed by funds from being sold at lower prices.

In addition, most new owners finance their purchases and will have to carry a big debt load. They are not inclined to lower rent rates even if they find an opportunity to do so. The opposite is more likely: rents go up as new leases are created. To lower the rents charged to tenants, demand for the space has to go down. Things that drive down demand tend to be things like these: fewer tenants, more crime, repairs needed and not done, changes in neighborhood, loss of area jobs, etc.

The owner's choice is either a lower rent or no rent. Those who cannot pay will not pay.

But the social (political, really) choices either property in use (with lower rents), or property closed and useless because owners are getting financing through the fed and refusing to admit losses in their balance sheets by lowering recorded property valuations (derived from the 2019 rent values).

 

[El_Machinae]

It's not reeeeaaaaaally a Black Swan. We just chose to be unprepared

 

[innonimatu]

I guess, also with digitalising, the online and the home office change, that the financial value of a lot of real estate will go down anyway... electrons to replace part of the physical demands of our economy:
How many shops in streets will survive on-line shopping ? I guess also big supermarkets in and near big cities. Home office means also that you are more at home to receive deliveries during day-time.
How many office space will not be needed anymore (for at least 10 years or so) with permanent partial home office work ?
How many people needing only to be once a week in office in a city will move to smaller cities-towns and decrease demand (and price) for housing in and near the big job providing cities, ?

These can survive, and in fact decentralized everything is a good idea, in terms of public health. Not be big mall/big supermarket, but many smaller stores. Amazon's warehouses and other such e-business need people to work there, whatever they say about robots, and have proven hotbeds for virus spread. Likewise for office space: we need individual offices, not shared workspace with people on top of each other. Those require more office space, not less.

The one thing necessary for these street shops to survive is the rentier class must be clobbered big time. they've been charging exorbitant rents, absolutely out of line with the historical trend: those must go down.

Killing the rentier class was seen as a matter of social justice, not it is revealed as a matter of social survival. Many of those funds will go bankrupt, so what? Their only "service" was holding property, charging rents and doing some maintenance, new owners can take over - at lower prices. Preferably the actual users of those properties.
Only be ending the structures that allow for income to be appropriated by a small group of owners of property (landlords in the old sense and new lords such as Amazon, the landlord of online platforms...) can the rest of the business activity, the people who do the actual stuff, good and services, keep their businesses viable. The most important of those structures has been the "cheap financing" offered preferentially to these predator funds and businesses. An example coul be Wework, a corporation that managed to last years despite losing money every year, but in the process inflated property prices. But there are bigger fish, hedge funds that have since the previous crisis amassed huge holdings of properties...

 

[Hrothbern]

These can survive, and in fact decentralized everything is a good idea, in terms of public health. Not be big mall/big supermarket, but many smaller stores. Amazon's warehouses and other such e-business need people to work there, whatever they say about robots, and have proven hotbeds for virus spread. Likewise for office space: we need individual offices, not shared workspace with people on top of each other. Those require more office space, not less.

The one thing necessary for these street shops to survive is the rentier class must be clobbered big time. they've been charging exorbitant rents, absolutely out of line with the historical trend: those must go down.

Killing the rentier class was seen as a matter of social justice, not it is revealed as a matter of social survival. Only be ending the structures that allow for income to be appropriated by a small group of owners of property (landlords in the old sense and new lords such as Amazon, the landlord of online platforms...) can the rest of the business activity, the people who do the actual stuff, good and services, keep their businesses viable.

That location indeed now in the grip of money, but do you really need that much shop locations, that much floor space ?

Where is the need for a local shop per category as location of advicing, choosing and buying transaction ? why not the core value of a "shop location" being only picking up at that locality ? Internet provides advices, choice and transactioning the order and payment
A traditional local shop also bears the risk of rent or ownership of the location, the storage risk of volatility in demand between goods, the inefficient use of space. The quality of local advice hardly there unless a real specialist shop.

For village and neighborhood...
You can also have a storage adjacent-near your "pub" (as traditional commercial bar-cafe AND also public community house incl the local cards club, the gathering room for other local clubs-associations whatever) where you can pick up the goods that you did choose and pay on the internet from various providers. Trucks supplying that pub storage.

In the Netherlands this was the old "winkel van sinkel" shop principle in a small village (only more labor and transactional intensive): that shop had "everything" in smaller choice and smaller amounts or did order what you needed (which was outside the standard range).
Also the postal point for mail in the old fashioned small village.

Today there is instantism and electrons... upgrading needed and possible.
And delivering to a house the direct way.
Delivering to a "pub" storage in lockers (password in transaction) still an option.
Delivering by local (selfemployed) workers, or a neighbor-family member, from that storage still an option.

And by this you can still break the semi-monopoly Amazon empire, who owns too many links in the chain.
Just the transport part: agregating from short distance---long distance transport to another hub---delivering to multiple homes, is under heavy competition, and needs to happen as well to supply traditional shops.
By controlling as well the links in the chain of choice, paying, delivery-transaction reliability, Amazon gets the total control and semi-monopoly.

The basic change to the good old time, eroding away the existing shops is that the variety of choice in goods is so much more, needing more floor space and dead stock at high price and risk.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Birdjaguar

I understand your logic and that is certainly the way it has worked up until now.

But Covid-19 is a Black Swan and the established paradigm may collapse.

At the moment the USA and UK governments are still firmly in the
pockets of the financial capitalists and are desperately trying to keep
that system running by providing previously unimaginable loans.

In the UK when a retail chain goes into a loss, almost the first thing it does
is tell its landlord(s) to reduce its rents, or it will close the outlet and the landlord
will likely get nothing or have to reduce the rent for a replacement tenant.

Now it is a little harder for families and individuals, particularly those with significant
possessions to adopt that line, but what happens if a significant number of
tenants say; halve the rent or we quit and go live with Mum and Dad etc.

The way I see it the current rentier system, which in the UK includes many zombie
companies, is only being kept going by central bank and government intervention.
The government does that because, apart from being in their pockets,
it is afraid of a collapse in the real economy, but as Covid-19 is collapsing
that anyway, that additional reason evaporates. And sooner or later the general public
may tire of a system that increasingly seems to protect the plutocratic class.

The established rentier tactic of dealing with each tenant individually and
sending in the bailiffs may work for a while to deter others from defaulting
but if the tenants don't have the money, default is inevitable and if a great
many tenants do not have the money, they may perhaps act collectively.
A question is will the police intervene to support bailiffs and break rent strikes.

I guess, also with digitalising, the online and the home office change, that the financial value of a lot of real estate will go down anyway... electrons to replace part of the physical demands of our economy:
How many shops in streets will survive on-line shopping ? I guess also big supermarkets in and near big cities. Home office means also that you are more at home to receive deliveries during day-time.
How many office space will not be needed anymore (for at least 10 years or so) with permanent partial home office work ?
How many people needing only to be once a week in office in a city will move to smaller cities-towns and decrease demand (and price) for housing in and near the big job providing cities, ?

There are five basic commercial real estate groupings:

1. Apartments (high income, low income, city center, suburban, etc)
2. Retail (malls, strip centers, stand alone, including restaurants, etc)
3. Office
4. Warehouse/distribution
5. Industrial

And within those lots of hybrids and subsets. The dynamics of each are very different. For the most part the general population is not very affected by rents in the last three. Also, ownership can get very complicated for any private company and many stock companies. Small business owners in the US often own their buildings, but under a different corporate entity. Their company A pays their company B rent providing additional family income and lets the real estate portion appreciate independent of the company success. Rent changes are a family affair. Multi location restaurants have their own dynamics too. A Wendy's franchise may have 10 restaurants in a city. Wendy's corporate may own the land under 7 of them and the Franchise owner only own the land under the remaining 3.

To have a useful conversation we might have to focus on particular groups for whom we want/expect to see benefit from economic disruption.

Neiman Marcus has filed for bankruptcy protection. As is typical, debt is the problem. Having high debt levels when confronted by revenue drops is deadly. The creditors will soon own NM and they will be looking to find a buyer for the company as soon as they get things looking better. Cutting a deal for lower rents will certainly benefit the new owners, but it will do little for anyone else.

Spoiler :

Neiman’s bankruptcy filing, in the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, seeks to eliminate $4 billion of roughly $5.1 billion in debt. The creditors will become majority owners of the retailer, which has been controlled by private-equity firms. Neiman isn’t planning mass store closings or asset sales as part of the restructuring.

Neiman has secured $675 million debtor-in-possession financing from creditors holding over two-thirds of the company’s debt. The creditors have also committed to $750 million in exit financing that would refinance the DIP and provide additional funding for the business.
But behind the glitz, Neiman Marcus struggled under $5.1 billion in debt, the burden of two successive leveraged buyouts. Servicing the debt consumed most of its operating profits in recent years, Mr. van Raemdonck said.

Customers defected to online startups, and luxury brands opened their own boutiques. The whole concept of spending hours in department stores lost its allure for many shoppers, even the wealthiest.

Neiman closed its stores in March and furloughed many of its 14,000 workers, while reducing hours and pay for the rest. Currently, 10 stores are open for curbside pickup, including stores in Texas, and an additional two are open for private appointments.
“The industry is changing,” Mr. van Raemdonck said. “Customers may or may not be comfortable to go to a store.” He added that digital sales increased by double digits in April, compared with a year ago.

The company operates 43 Neiman Marcus stores, two Bergdorf Goodman stores in Manhattan and 22 Last Call discount stores. It is already in the process of closing more than half of its Last Call locations. The company had over $4 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year.

The hope is to emerge in the fall from chapter 11 a stronger company with less debt. But it could attract suitors. One potential buyer is Saks Fifth Avenue parent Hudson’s Bay Co., according to people familiar with the matter. Saks has tried unsuccessfully to merge with its rival several times during the past decade. Analysts say there are good reasons for the two to combine, including cost savings and wielding more clout with suppliers.

The bankruptcy filing is a blow to private-equity firm Ares Management Corp. and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which bought Neiman Marcus in 2013 for $6 billion including debt. Much of that debt has been trading at deeply distressed levels. More than $1 billion worth of Neiman bonds was trading at 8 cents on the dollar earlier this week, according to data provider FactSet.

The company’s previous owners were private-equity firms TPG and Warburg Pincus LLC, which paid about $5.1 billion for the company in 2005.

 

[Birdjaguar]

As if the tenants would refuse to renegotiate a lower rent?

Bankrupt owners will go bankrupt because rents are not being paid. People renting homes and companies renting commercial space are unable to pay at 2019 levels. If property owners cannot pay mortgages, because they have reduced rent income, their the creditors will seize the property and will have to liquidate for whatever it can sell for, which will be a lower price. Unless the Fed supports property prices by buying mortgages from these creditors at face value. Then the creditors can simply place the mortgage parked at the fed. The fed can also intervene, and has intervened, by lending to banks or outright buying commercial paper to place liquidity into these real estates funds, letting them take up debt instead of defaulting and having to sell property.
Whatever the channels the effect is the same: keep the value of financial assets high, preventing defaults and this property amassed by funds from being sold at lower prices.

The owner's choice is either a lower rent or no rent. Those who cannot pay will not pay.

But the social (political, really) choices either property in use (with lower rents), or property closed and useless because owners are getting financing through the fed and refusing to admit losses in their balance sheets by lowering recorded property valuations (derived from the 2019 rent values).

It is not so simple. There are other choices for owners. Properties could be repurposed to different tenants serving different markets, properties could be sold, building can be razed and the land left fallow until times change. A property owner may have several buildings and might well be able to let one sit at 40% occupancy for a while during which time his other buildings pay off his mortgages.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Hrothbern all of your excellent points about the future may well be true over time and we will see real change in the way business is done. Retail and office has changed and will change more in the next decade. And when AI is added to the mix, lots of new pathways open up. The virus is just speeding up those changes. I certainly hope that the very fast cleaning of our metro areas air will leave an impression and people will not want to go back to the air quality we had in December.

I would not be surprised if "3D printing" capabilities and variety of goods possible will create local/neighborhood "manufacturing hubs" where custom orders of all sorts are made and can be picked up. Of course this would mean that nature of materials things are made of will change. Mass production within a five minute walk of your home. Who knows? We will just have to wait and see.

A new world is emerging.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Hrothbern

Spoiler :

Kindness of strangers, tech magic bring sisters together

She was ready for us, red gloves, white mask, gates and doors open so we wouldn’t have to touch them. Social distancing was still the order of the day at the home of Marianne Hamilton, but it was social distancing of more than 5,130 miles that had brought us together.
That’s how far it is from Hamilton’s Albuquerque home to her sister’s home in Vinkeveen, a small village south of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Hamilton, 82 and a native of the Netherlands, was supposed to be there. She would have been partway through a six-week visit. But COVID-19 dashed those travel plans. That was a bitter disappointment.

“I worry for my sister,” Hamilton said. “She’s had many medical issues.” Truusje De Fouw, 80, has overcome three bouts of cancer. She struggles with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Three times a week, she undergoes dialysis because of a congenital kidney disease that has been less merciful to her than to her older sister. “She has been in and out of hospital this year and misses her sister a lot,” Dutch acquaintance Simone Borgstede wrote in an email. Borgstede works as a planner of outings for seniors in the Netherlands. She met both sisters a couple of years ago after Hamilton contacted her to arrange social activities for De Fouw that didn’t
overtax her health. Now under Dutch COVID-19 restrictions, those activities are on hold.

Marianne Hamilton of Albuquerque lowers her mask to give her sister, Truusje De Fouw, a smile. Hamilton was supposed to visit her sister in the Netherlands in April, but the COVID-19 pandemic dashed those plans. They learned how to Skype with each other Thursday after not seeing each other for more than a year. JIM THOMPSON/JOURNAL


Simone Borgstede, left, and Truusje De Fouw chat on Skype from De Fouw’s home in the Netherlands to De Fouw’s sister, Marianne Hamilton in Albuquerque. Borgstede helped arrange the conversation.

But after Borgstede heard that the sisters’ visit was called off, she came up with a special activity for De Fouw: “I would like to enable a connection via Skype to her sister in Albuquerque,” she wrote. “They haven’t seen each other for more than a year.”

Technology and communication programs like Skype, however, were foreign to both sisters — Hamilton, for example, still has an AOL email. Borgstede was willing to download the Skype app on De Fouw’s computer, show her how to work the program, set her up with a new email address and set up WiFi at her home. But helping Hamilton do the same was another matter. So Borgstede sent an email to the Albuquerque Journal.

And that’s how we ended up in the home of a gracious woman with red gloves and a white mask.

On Thursday morning — Thursday evening in the Netherlands — two sisters who had not seen each other in more than a year, whose plans to visit were thwarted by a virus that knows no international boundaries, saw each other through the magic of technology and the mercy of a kind woman who reached out to a newspaper thousands of miles away.

And oh, how those sisters laughed. Deep, hearty guffaws punctuating the clickety-clack chatter of their Dutch language. You didn’t have to understand what they were saying to know it was a great conversation. While we in Albuquerque sat across the room from each other in our masks and our hand sanitizers, De Fouw and Borgstede sat close and without masks. The Netherlands is on the downward side of the pandemic since peaking around mid-April, their country of just over 17 million tallying 5,288 deaths and 41,774 cases earlier this week.

They are in what their prime minister calls “intelligent lockdown,” with most businesses still closed but with leaving homes to enjoy the outdoors allowed as long as social distancing measures are followed. Hair salons are expected to open next week, Borgstede said. It is better there now, they said. Depending on the wiles of COVID-19, Hamilton said she is hopeful she can travel to see her sister in person in August. Like everything these days, nothing is certain. But now they can see each other across the miles.

Hamilton sent us off with homemade Dutch coconut cookies and her thanks for helping her make that connection with her sister. “I still can’t believe that people are so kind to help complete strangers,” she said.

But in this new now of our COVID-19 world, kindness works both ways. Helping each other through these strange times makes us feel more human, more together, no matter how far away we are, when it is so easy to feel so alone. Do that, and we’re not strangers anymore.

 

[EnglishEdward]

It's not reeeeaaaaaally a Black Swan. We just chose to be unprepared

This is an interesting debate.

The way I see it the worldwide political class simply took the view that the scientists, having
cracked the DNA of viruses and bacteria, were well ahead of naturally evolving threats.

There was therefore no political perception of the particular risk of Covid 19 and therefore
they made no choice to be unprepared.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I was just notified by my state senator (distinctly different from my state's US senator) that the current projected shortfall in the state's budget is due to the governor's misguided fiscal policies.

 

[Hrothbern]

@Hrothbern

Spoiler :

Kindness of strangers, tech magic bring sisters together

She was ready for us, red gloves, white mask, gates and doors open so we wouldn’t have to touch them. Social distancing was still the order of the day at the home of Marianne Hamilton, but it was social distancing of more than 5,130 miles that had brought us together.
That’s how far it is from Hamilton’s Albuquerque home to her sister’s home in Vinkeveen, a small village south of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Hamilton, 82 and a native of the Netherlands, was supposed to be there. She would have been partway through a six-week visit. But COVID-19 dashed those travel plans. That was a bitter disappointment.

“I worry for my sister,” Hamilton said. “She’s had many medical issues.” Truusje De Fouw, 80, has overcome three bouts of cancer. She struggles with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Three times a week, she undergoes dialysis because of a congenital kidney disease that has been less merciful to her than to her older sister. “She has been in and out of hospital this year and misses her sister a lot,” Dutch acquaintance Simone Borgstede wrote in an email. Borgstede works as a planner of outings for seniors in the Netherlands. She met both sisters a couple of years ago after Hamilton contacted her to arrange social activities for De Fouw that didn’t
overtax her health. Now under Dutch COVID-19 restrictions, those activities are on hold.

Marianne Hamilton of Albuquerque lowers her mask to give her sister, Truusje De Fouw, a smile. Hamilton was supposed to visit her sister in the Netherlands in April, but the COVID-19 pandemic dashed those plans. They learned how to Skype with each other Thursday after not seeing each other for more than a year. JIM THOMPSON/JOURNAL


Simone Borgstede, left, and Truusje De Fouw chat on Skype from De Fouw’s home in the Netherlands to De Fouw’s sister, Marianne Hamilton in Albuquerque. Borgstede helped arrange the conversation.

But after Borgstede heard that the sisters’ visit was called off, she came up with a special activity for De Fouw: “I would like to enable a connection via Skype to her sister in Albuquerque,” she wrote. “They haven’t seen each other for more than a year.”

Technology and communication programs like Skype, however, were foreign to both sisters — Hamilton, for example, still has an AOL email. Borgstede was willing to download the Skype app on De Fouw’s computer, show her how to work the program, set her up with a new email address and set up WiFi at her home. But helping Hamilton do the same was another matter. So Borgstede sent an email to the Albuquerque Journal.

And that’s how we ended up in the home of a gracious woman with red gloves and a white mask.

On Thursday morning — Thursday evening in the Netherlands — two sisters who had not seen each other in more than a year, whose plans to visit were thwarted by a virus that knows no international boundaries, saw each other through the magic of technology and the mercy of a kind woman who reached out to a newspaper thousands of miles away.

And oh, how those sisters laughed. Deep, hearty guffaws punctuating the clickety-clack chatter of their Dutch language. You didn’t have to understand what they were saying to know it was a great conversation. While we in Albuquerque sat across the room from each other in our masks and our hand sanitizers, De Fouw and Borgstede sat close and without masks. The Netherlands is on the downward side of the pandemic since peaking around mid-April, their country of just over 17 million tallying 5,288 deaths and 41,774 cases earlier this week.

They are in what their prime minister calls “intelligent lockdown,” with most businesses still closed but with leaving homes to enjoy the outdoors allowed as long as social distancing measures are followed. Hair salons are expected to open next week, Borgstede said. It is better there now, they said. Depending on the wiles of COVID-19, Hamilton said she is hopeful she can travel to see her sister in person in August. Like everything these days, nothing is certain. But now they can see each other across the miles.

Hamilton sent us off with homemade Dutch coconut cookies and her thanks for helping her make that connection with her sister. “I still can’t believe that people are so kind to help complete strangers,” she said.

But in this new now of our COVID-19 world, kindness works both ways. Helping each other through these strange times makes us feel more human, more together, no matter how far away we are, when it is so easy to feel so alone. Do that, and we’re not strangers anymore.

smile
I am happy for them
yes we are humans
no objects
and being able to look to each other, and do that, and talk-share some nonsense to hear a voice so important

@Hrothbern all of your excellent points about the future may well be true over time and we will see real change in the way business is done. Retail and office has changed and will change more in the next decade. And when AI is added to the mix, lots of new pathways open up. The virus is just speeding up those changes. I certainly hope that the very fast cleaning of our metro areas air will leave an impression and people will not want to go back to the air quality we had in December.

I would not be surprised if "3D printing" capabilities and variety of goods possible will create local/neighborhood "manufacturing hubs" where custom orders of all sorts are made and can be picked up. Of course this would mean that nature of materials things are made of will change. Mass production within a five minute walk of your home. Who knows? We will just have to wait and see.

A new world is emerging.

yes
If I would be 25 again with a whole life before me I really would not know where to begin to engage with all these possibilities

3D local hubs would be great
You can follow courses... a market for cook-books, shareware for standard products, shareware or commercial software you can use to write, to design, your own products... and share on facebook etc.... a storage with differing materials in the next room.
For a user not that far away from the many excellent electronoc drawing-painting software available.

On that air quality and Covid
yes
I live beneath a landing lane much used by Schiphol airport (at 15 km distance). Planes I guess at some 1,000 meter high or so.
And what a difference !

For car traffic nearby your home even more important.
Electric and I assume followed up by Hydrogen cars will change a lot, but home office will I guess be a game changer indeed. I hope so at least.

A lot of available changes stuck in too high visionary and entrepreneurial inertia and lameness... the lazy risk reducing of beancounters and rentiers.... too much general pessismism... time to stir up things on many fronts

 

[EnglishEdward]

I was just notified by my state senator (distinctly different from my state's US senator) that the current projected shortfall in the state's budget is due to the governor's misguided fiscal policies.

You let him know you exist? You are a brave man.

I am confident that my MP doesn't know who I am.
All the mail shots I get seem to assume that I am a tenant
of a dodgy landlord, and I don't care to correct him.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You let him know you exist? You are a brave man.

I am confident that my MP doesn't know who I am.
All the mail shots I get seem to assume that I am a tenant
of a dodgy landlord, and I don't care to correct him.

Her actually, and I really have no idea how she locked onto my e-mail address. I do know that she is relying on the mailing address that I use to misdirect attention, since she isn't actually my state senator...but that is the address I used when I was testing my ability to register to vote. Perhaps I will commit me some voter fraud if my registration actually went through...

 

[Hygro]

I was just notified by my state senator (distinctly different from my state's US senator) that the current projected shortfall in the state's budget is due to the governor's misguided fiscal policies.

Criminal.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Criminal.

Seriously.

My state seems to be doing pretty good at not killing people, and this ding bat is trying to project that the budget isn't a casualty of an unexpected war. If I was actually her constituent I'd be embarrassed.

 

[Birdjaguar]

yes
If I would be 25 again with a whole life before me I really would not know where to begin to engage with all these possibilities

3D local hubs would be great
You can follow courses... a market for cook-books, shareware for standard products, shareware or commercial software you can use to write, to design, your own products... and share on facebook etc.... a storage with differing materials in the next room.
For a user not that far away from the many excellent electronoc drawing-painting software available.

On that air quality and Covid
yes
I live beneath a landing lane much used by Schiphol airport (at 15 km distance). Planes I guess at some 1,000 meter high or so.
And what a difference !

For car traffic nearby your home even more important.
Electric and I assume followed up by Hydrogen cars will change a lot, but home office will I guess be a game changer indeed. I hope so at least.

A lot of available changes stuck in too high visionary and entrepreneurial inertia and lameness... the lazy risk reducing of beancounters and rentiers.... too much general pessismism... time to stir up things on many fronts

I will get to watch the new world unfold and participate as I want to or not. Our grandchildren will be fully immersed in whatever comes. My grandparents were all born before 1900; they too experienced great change in how the world worked. I have too and am astonished at what we have accomplished in so short a time.

 

[innonimatu]

3D printing and AI are old tales by now, I'm surprised anyone still believes they're about to cause any big change. WE don't even need to joke about flying cars, where's my self-driving car?

Talk of AI is nothing more that glorified specialized systems. Expensive, complex, high-maintenance systems...
And 3D printing is good for a few odds and ends only. After decades it's still not used in industrial scale because for large-scale production it is more expensive than molds, or stamping, etc. I am seeing mechanical shops reequipping with relatively expensive CNC machines but having a 3D printer only as a toy... it's not ever worth the time having 3D printers.