Lockdown and then?
Less office – more online
Environmental concerns together with the Covid 19 experience will start a rethinking of old truths regarding production and distribution of products. And thereby how we do business. It may not be as obvious that it is cheaper to produce in China than in Europe if applying new risk models for “just in time” and “comparative advantages”. Even without Corona a change of economy, change of work life, employment models etc have for some years been waiting behind the corner to take advantage of the new IT environment (5G is one) and combine it with a new and still developing approach to work, where to work and how to be paid for it. .
Will the world economy collapse?
Do we need to see a dramatic change in living standard? No, I don’t think so, neither due to Corona, nor due to environmental concerns. Yes, we will see changes but rather of how to measure living standard than how to experience it. But if the world economy will collapse? It will not, it will change and as all changes it will temporarily cause problems but also ignite new thinking – and this is exactly what is needed to adapt to the time we are in already. This is why I see the present pandemic as a TRIGGER for a change, not the driver for a change.
Changes will come – 2020 Contract Management goes online!
2020 is the year we will realize that Contrat Management will move online. 80-90% of the work can be done online, little travel but the whole worlds expertise available at your PC/Smartphone.
All tools are there, for instance blockchain technic, to make the whole process from offer to fulfillment of Contracts online. But don’t forget, human meetings cannot be totally replaced by faces or words on monitors. We need to meet face to face to understand the phsycology of business. Most of the Contract Management however, don’t require physical meetings more than occationally. “Hybrid solutions” can do it. Advice online to persons meeting physically.
And the Stock Markets, up or down?
Today’s Stock Market is not only driven by fundamentals, it is a AI (or as I have called it in an earlier post, AS) controlled play where the overall moves in the day trading is rather a function of the big “Market Makers” co-operative and controlled efforts rather than the underlying values. If trading or even investing in the stock market can produce a higher revenue than other investments, the general move will be up. This is valid as long as we have no other view on what is profitable than the revenue measured in money. Environmental concerns will perhaps help finding changes to this.
An important question is whether the world economy will go down, up or being stable. Not easy to find an answer to that because it depends on how we define it. And as we are entering a new era(?), old definitions may not be relevant any more. If for instance all countries in the world will support their businesses with new printed money, will this make the economy to go up or down? How about inflation? If USA print USD to a value of 10% of its GNP to support the society and all other countries do the same, this must in reality mean that the balance between the countries economic systems will remain the same and thereby a Dollar have the same relation to a Euro as before. And there is no absolute price on anything so what?
It would be very exciting to hear our economic scientists discuss this very simplified view of the world economy after Covid 19 and into the next decades.