Some people call the 21st century the 4th social revolution: “digitalization”.
We’ve seen disruption to politics, banking/investing, education, healthcare, and many more sectors of the economy.
But we’ve also seen an uptick in abuse of these technologies and the harm they post to our monkey brains. The smart phone is not the same disruptive technology as the cell phone was.
So what does this mean for our world? There will continue to be tech winners and losers, but in general, the value added to markets will increase. As everyone becomes connected, we should slowly see less inequality, as the world becomes more accepting of others.
On the downside, it is possible for identity politics and online echo chambers to stifle productive conversation, and create more inequality instead of less.
New marketplaces will open up to replace stale bits of the economy. Take lending money for instance; new technology could disrupt how easy it is for loans to be made, killing high interest alternatives, and extending the reach of commerce beyond country borders.
We’ve seen a surge in the marketplace for human resources, aka, the gig economy. Jobs continue to come, and go.
However, for all the changes our digital era will bring, cities will remain cultural hubs of food, events, and general human flourishing. We are social beings, and we cannot thrive completely alone. Cities will continue to grow, as fewer hands are needed to work the fields.
The bright future of cities is partly responsible for the high market value of city housing. The safest investments are therefore in large cities, but with safety comes low expected returns.
A riskier, and potentially more profitable investment would be to bet on cities with the most potential for growth.
Or you could always invest in the tech revolution, but might that be irrational?