Five Mega-Trends for Millennials to Heed
In response to my previous article Why are Millennials Depressed All The Time?, a couple of Millennials expressed confusion about career path. They haven’t had much luck finding the right jobs.
I am neither a job counselor nor a Futurist. But I think Millennials should look for opportunities in five already established Mega-Trends:
(1) The “DeFi” Movement is rapidly gaining traction.
More than anything else, the ever-widening 1%-99% wealth disparity is the direct result of “financialization”— the Financial Elite’s multi-decade effort since the 80s to have every transaction requiring monetary exchange be controlled by the financial “industry”. A plethora of exotic credit “products” have been created by various financial institutions to facilitate these transactions, with (often steep) interest charges and fees attached. This ecosystem is by design a machine to extract wealth from ordinary citizens who rely on monetary transactions to function in modern life, and transfer it to the Financial Elite. The most lucid and egregious example is making home loans to unqualified borrowers, then foreclosing their homes on payment defaults.
The brightest trail-blazers among Millennials, recognizing financialization for what it is, aim to bypass the control of monetary exchange by the Financial Elite with the use of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. This movement is labeled Decentralized Finance (DeFi). In reality, it will effectively de-financialize, — get rid of the Financial “industry” which extracts wealth from the physical economy via control by debt. Clearly, the Financial Elite won’t sit idly by and let that happen. How far DeFi will go remains to be seen. But the Financial “industry” will likely lose some of its choke hold on the populace.
What it means to you: If you are crypto-savvy, join the movement. If you are currently in the Financial “industry”, your job may go away. If you are an entrepreneur looking to raise capital, look to avenues outside of banks. If you are contemplating accumulation of paper “products” issued by financial institutions, think again. On the last point, kudos to Millennials for having learned from the 2008 global credit crisis (aka “Great Recession”) not to trust the predatory Financial “industry”. Sadly, a lot of Boomers still haven’t.
(2) Automata Will Be Everywhere:
This includes AI, robotics, and autonomous everything. The major impact of automata in the 21st century won’t be replacing human labor, but human decisions. It will thus degrade the status and income of many knowledge workers. The only way to get ahead is to be creative and innovative, — i.e. to come up with new ideas. Despite huge advances, AI and robots are still primarily rule-based. They can’t follow rules that haven’t been established yet. Imagination is how humans trump Automata.
What it means to you: If you are skilled in programming AI and robots (i.e. you teach them how to think and decide), you’re obviously in the driver’s seat. Use your power well and do no harm. If the knowledge content of your job is routine, repetitive, or algorithmically driven, start being a kid again and spend more time imagining. If you are a driver of any kind (Uber/ taxi, long haul trucks, even airplanes), beware you may be made obsolete any moment.
(3) Remote Everything Is Here To Stay:
Think of the 2020 lock-down as a dry run test that proved the viability of remote working, online shopping, on-demand delivery, etc. We are only seeing the beginning of these practices being adopted by enterprises as the “new normal”. To me, this portends more opportunities than meets the eye. Top of my list is quantum leap in Human Computer Interaction: To completely eliminate the need for in-person interaction (such as trying out a pair of shoes or a hat at a retail store), the User Experience in online shopping must achieve another level of sophistication. I can see rapid adoption of Virtual or Augmented Reality technologies. The same applies to Business-to-Business interactions in the absence of in-person meetings. So teleconferencing will have to go much beyond today’s limited Zoom experience. Elsewhere, I see the home building industry elevating the home office as a priority feature in their new offerings. A new wave of selling and buying of homes will result, creating a boom for realtors (themselves a service prime to be automated) and other ancillary business sectors.
What it means to you: If you are a seasoned Web designer or developer, start incorporating Virtual and Augmented Reality tools into your toolbox (that toolbox may look radically different in the coming years). If you are a decorator, furniture maker, etc., creatively think about retooling the home to also be an office (e.g. how to make a crying baby less disruptive to a dad working on the kitchen table). I can see “Old Techs” like the chip, computer, and smartphone industries come up with radically different products to enable an elevated level of human-computer interaction. That bodes well for employment in those industries. I can also see distributed office clusters sprout as centralized headquarters scale down. This will mean growth in remote areas and thinning out of Urban centers. Keep a close eye on signs of such change, think WIIFM (“What’s In It For Me”), and adapt.
(4) De-globalization/Localization is a Trend:
The 2020 global shut-down was a huge wake-up call about the devastating effect of supply-chain disruption (the world was screwed for its single-source dependency on China). Supply chains are rapidly re-configured across the globe as I write (hastened by heightened geopolitical tension, I might add). Some are moved to countries like Mexico and Vietnam. Others are being on-shored again back in the U.S. — particularly products of small businesses, ranging from machine parts to apparels. This is fantastic because small businesses are the backbone of the economy that was broken by predatory Big Business which outsourced in mass (with the aid of Big Finance and Big Government). Now the trend is reversing. Consumers are now willing to pay a higher price for a better product made at home. Even Big Government is singing a different tune, — a Teddy Roosevelt like monopoly-busting tune. I see a resurgence of domestic small businesses and that is downright exciting!
What it means to you: If you are an entrepreneur, start a small business! You probably won’t be opening a retail store on Main Street, — that era is behind us. But I see savvy online businesses sprouting up left and right. And they are not just reselling stuff on Amazon or eBay, like days old. People are actually conceiving and producing creative products and services, and finding ways of selling them online globally — unleashing the power of the Net as originally intended. It is up to your imagination to come up with useful products to be marketed in interesting ways. This is America at its best. If you are not an entrepreneur, go work for one! As a consumer, do your part and buy from one. (I bought a custom, hand-made Lazy Susan from an artisan clear across the country. I had to patiently wait because it’s not a mass produced item. When she apologized for her lateness, I encouraged her; my need was not urgent. It was a happy experience for the both of us.)
(5) “Social Engagement” Will Morph to Something Much Bigger:
I cringe when I hear about social media “influencers”. To me, most of them are influencing impressionable minds with frivolity. But their power cannot be ignored. Now, that power is being harnessed by Big Business up and down the supply chain — to influence their customers, vendors, and competitors alike. Already, we have to distinguish between Chief Information Officer from Chief Investment Officer from Chief Influence Officer.
The trend shouldn’t be surprising, though. Social Media is now Corporate Marketing’s wet-dream: One-to-one marketing instead of mass advertising and promotion (whose hit ratio is not all that high). Not only that, it’s a pull (of identifiable willing participants) strategy rather than a push (to a sea of unknown) strategy. Efficacy will be much higher, and cost will be much lower.
What it means to you: If you are savvy with Social Media and have a “influencer personality”, sell (not prostitute) yourself to Big Business. But PLEASE, do no harm. Don’t hook kids on crack. If you are currently a “Mad Man” (working on Madison Avenue in advertising), look to your industry to be of diminished prominence.
There are other Mega-Trends I can think of, but I am stopping at the Big Five, as I see them. I think the key takeaway is, your parents could prosper without much imagination, — just by keeping their “nose to the grindstone”. Unfortunately, You don’t have that luxury (if it makes you feel better, neither did your grandparents or great grandparents; Boomers just happened to have lived their productive years in “bubbly” times). You will witness major bubble burst and have to be part of the rebuild effort. To succeed, you will need to be imaginative. If you already are, unleash your power! If not, read more, — the more of others’ ideas you come across, the more likely light bulbs will go off in you.
Unlike most Boomers who happily settled just for paychecks, Millennials demand more out of life. For that, you’ll have to have more initiative, and be more imaginative. You are luckier than Boomers in this regard: They had to spend days in the library researching something. All you have to do is to Google the right key words or phrases to get at the answers in minutes.
