40 Things That Were Popular At The Beginning Of The Decade That Aren’t Popular Anymore

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From Global Guerrillas

"The introduction of outsourcing platforms that makes worker productivity portable and portable global capital leads to global labor arbitrage (which neatly guts the theories of comparative advantage upon which belief in the beneficial effects of modern trade theory is based).

In short, exploiting the differences between the wages of the western middle class and those in developing economies is now costless and risk free (which makes it an arbitrage opportunity). Arbitrage opportunities, once found, typically reset to zero quickly (the differences in prices are brought into parity).

The result in this case will be a globally normalized wage where the same price is paid for labor no matter where it is located geographically. Almost certainly, given what we are currently seeing right now, the biggest shift will be in the collapse in the incomes of the Western middle class instead of upward movement among low wage competitors. The income stasis of the last three decades is already being replaced by rapid decline.

One potential political result of the collapse of our short experiment with financially empowered individuals (a rising tide lifts all boats scenario in Western democracies) is likely a creeping global neo-feudalism of indefinite duration (decentralized and autocratic stasis held in place by fluid globalized markets).

The lesson: the ability to bootstrap resilient communities, and a new social contract, using locally derived resources will decline rapidly over the next decade."

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