Gig Economy

Automation and the Gig Economy

What has been termed the Gig Economy may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the estimated 40% of the world's population that works in agriculture. As Marc Andreessen famously wrote in the Wall Street Journal article "Software Is Eating the World," there are tremendous implications for software disruption hitting many traditional industries. Not all of this is good, however, especially if you aren't skilled in software. I believe a massive net negative is going to feed the growing global dystopia of income and wealth inequality.

Historically, technological advances have actually produced more jobs, i.e. the industrial revolution, but recent advances in distributed software have made many jobs borderline sustainable; who really needs (wants) a taxi driver when a car installed with autopilot can get the job done? Others like farming, which are extremely labor dependent, are ripe for full automation. The unemployment implications are particularly disastrous in countries reliant upon agriculture for sustaining the bulk of their GDP.

The automation trend is on the cusp of cannibalizing many traditional jobs. The prosaic answer to this disruption, espoused by the billionaire networked elites, is "education." But how many programmers do we really need? Or better yet, how many programmers can this world support? Even programing has become commoditized as the H-1B visa saga illustrates; why hire a USA programmer when one from overseas can be had at a fraction of the price? 

As readers of this blog know, we try to identify mass trends and tack our investment course accordingly. It is hard to believe the powers that be, i.e. Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists, will not pursue increased automation. It is a cheap solution to generating massive wealth without having to really create anything. By shirking existing laws, like occupancy taxes or taxi safety standards, software can leverage huge swarths of existing infrastructure, drive out the middle (wo)man, and siphon the profits upwards. 

The transition to a Gig Economy is very telling. Many existing jobs are eliminated and traditional employees are dropped into the Gig Economy like Neo in the Matrix as essentially economic mercenaries looking to fulfill increasingly more challenging positions that are not consumed by automation. Expect this trend to continue and invest accordingly; boring, monopolistic, dividend-paying companies that this blog traditionally espouses once again fit the bill. Software may be eating the world, but the installed base of commodity-dependent consumer staples (of which technology now can be considered a staple too) is winning the alpha race.

"Yeah, But Gold Doesn't Pay Any Interest!"

Courtesy of our friends at the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) division, pictured above is the Purchasing Power of the Consumer Dollar. Essentially from 1975, the US Dollar has lost more than 95% of its purchasing power.

As those who like to Invest Like A Farmer, we don't like losing purchasing power. It is a really bad thing; you receive less and less in terms of goods and services over time for each US Dollar you save. Traditionally this was offset by having FDIC-insured risk-free savings accounts that yielded interest. 

With interest now completely laughable, in some countries it is even NEGATIVE now (meaning you pay the bank for the pleasure of them then lending your money,) savers either have to chase risk in the hopes of getting a higher return on their dollars or seek an alternative asset class to hold their fiat currency.

Although having seed capital available has always been a good idea, the mechanism of value in which that capital is stored is very important. Holding cash money long-term has proven to be a big-time loser for protecting the purchasing power of consumers.

How Does Your Retirement Cashflow Stack Up?

Projected GDP Per Person over the next 5 years through 2020 gives an idea of what the average citizen in each of the following countries makes (either passively or actively) in income. Great snapshot of where investors should be targeting their returns in terms of local fiat currency. Interesting to see the effects of inflation even over a short amount of time in regards to estimated cost of living. Inflation is the enemy that never sleeps.

So You Say You Want a Revolution?

     Payments over the course of history have increasingly moved towards a digital ledger system, the latest entry into this evolution of Fintech (financial technology) is the newly coined...sorry minted...sorry invented...term "fintat," meaning a "financial tattoo," that is a truly wearable temporary tattoo. Yes that was all one sentence, and yes I tried one out at Dunkin Donuts (odd, but successful nonetheless.) The temporary tattoo is a Quick Read (QR) code and can be washed away with soap and water at any time or will naturally dissipate over the course of a week or so. If you ever forget your wallet or go for a run you can feel at ease knowing you have cash "on" you at all times!

The Case for Gold

One of my favorite asset classes is Gold. Old Element 79 is pretty interesting for many reasons; it is highly ductile, an extremely good conductor, and it has proven exceedingly difficult to create or destroy over time. But probably my favorite characteristic of gold is that it has been intrinsically linked to stored human toil (value) for over 5,000 years. In fact, Warren Buffet's father in 1948 wrote an excellent piece on this very subject. If you read one thing today (besides the ILAF blog of course), I highly recommend Howard Buffet's speech to Congress entitled: "Human Freedom Rests on Gold Redeemable Money."

A company I recommend and personally use to buy and store Gold for a flat 1% of spot pricing is aptly named Goldmoney. You can chose where you'd like to vault your gold and it can be redeemed for physical gold on demand. They've essentially reinstated the Gold Standard after an over 80-year absence.

As the world watches the Olympics in Rio this summer and the economic fallout from the United Kindgom's Brexit vote, it is interesting that once again all eyes are on timeless Gold as the metric of excellence and value.

Brexit

The United Kingdom becomes the first member of the European Union to voluntarily leave the group as a historic referendum pitted pro-EU loyalists against a rising wave of voter angst upset with being marginalized socially, politically, and economically from globalization. Last-minute attempts failed to unite the country and voters choosing to leave came in strong numbers.

The initial effects have been a massive sell-off in the global stock markets, with Asia, Europe, and the United State all down significantly. Almost every currency also fell against gold which enjoyed its best day in years, hitting a 2-year high in the wake of the Brexit vote.

Going forward the implications are ominous in that the EU itself may now face additional countries determined to leave. Time will tell, but the referendum results don't bode well for traditional establishment candidates and polices throughout the world.

Gigonomics: Economics In The Gig Economy

By 2020 a recent survey estimated 40% of Americans will work in the "Gig Economy." In that same survey 89% of Americans did't know what the gig economy meant. What is the Gig Economy? It's more than just self-employment. Check out the seminal 2015 McKinsey Gig Economy Report!

Fintech

Esteemed readers of this blog aren't just savvy investors, but financial farmers willing to consider hip new innovations. Surprisingly, one of the biggest trends emerging is actually in finance! Financial Technology (Fintech) has increasingly become part of the lexicon as startups around the world attempt to disrupt normally staid banking, insurance, and financial institutions long-renowned for their complete inability to innovate. The Fintech runway ahead is long, especially in the development of new currencies which facilitate rapid, secure cross-border transactions. The banking monopolies are starting to look out of their frosted glass windows.

One of the most promising developments in Fintech is that of a "cryptocurrency," so termed because of the anonymity it provides in terms of transacting secure payments on a massive, instantaneous basis. Through the use of fragmented computer processing power, the most famous cryptocurrency has emerged named BitCoin.  It promises less friction (transaction cost), full global availability (on virtually any smartphone), and the signifiant potential to alter how "money" is stored.

The apt-termed label of "disrupter," for which Fintech has been associated, is uniquely interesting because it bucks convention in that Fintech upends the traditional banking model of "top-down" innovation. Banking centers like like London, Hong Kong, and New York have traditionally been at the helm of leading financial innovation, whether from a product packaging standpoint or the use of computers on exchanges. The rise of the new financial paradigm, however, is completely different; emerging markets are driving the adoption and growth of Fintech.

Fintech offers a parallel example of what occurred in consumer electronics; leap-frogging. Case in point, recently I booked a scuba diving trip to Papua New Guinea which is about as remote as it gets. Upon arrival after several planes, many hours, a bus, and a canoe, I was warmly greeted in the middle of the jungle by the indigenous population. Their first question? What model iPhone did I have? They had completely leap-frogged fixed transmission lines, cabe providers, and even satellite dishes! Papua New Guinea had literally gone from dense mountain jungles, living in extremely rustic and rural conditions, to using the latest version of the iPhone. This had multiple excellent outcomes in my view; they became connected to the outside world instantly, yet also retained and preserved their traditional environment. Fintech offers a similar promise.

The driving force behind Fintech is an underbanked and unbanked population that doesn't have access to a traditional physical branch network. Fintech will thrive for the very same reason ad-blocking software established a foothold and bloomed; consumers are price sensitive no matter where they live. Emerging market data plans typically charge for usage, thus in short order ad-blocking software won by common sense, so too will Fintech. Hence, a powerful force has coalesced; mass user need and mass user price sensitivity.

Given that the majority of the world's population does not have access to traditional finance such as banking, a mortgage, or life insurance, a stable cryptocurrency like BitCoin offers a compelling solution. Couple this with a developed world where hyper-regulation and declining growth has led to massive layoffs, billion-dollar fines, and exposure of incompetent politicians, the rise of Fintech, and especially a cryptocurrency like BitCoin, was bound to occur.

Two additional enablers of the Fintech revolution, in my eyes, are the rise of the Gig Economy, which is the ability for anyone anywhere to work remotely rather than in a corporate designated facility, and excess computing capacity. Andy Warhol would probably say today that: "Everyone in the future will work from home." While 90% of Americans still don't know what the Gig Economy is, it is becoming more and more of a generational shift from a corporate career to a flexible work profession. A dichotomy, with some third hybrid in-between, is arising from the Gig Economy members who are responsible for their own health insurance, retirement savings, and professional education and another cohort of unionized members of traditional employers. I suspect over time the employment picture will fully split into thirds; with one third being in the Gig Economy, another in the remnants of the traditional Corporate Culture, and the final third heavily Unionized. Fintech will play a role in all three.

If the Gig Economy and slack infrastructure are enablers, then ignorance of currency's history has to rank among the greatest challenges to innovation. Since the proverbial dawn of time, commodities in some form or another (sea shells, gold, gems, paper, or plastic) have facilitated the transfer of value in the form of portable money. There is no physical good, unless measured in computing power or keystrokes, that serves as the backdrop for a cryptocurrency like BitCoin.

The major innovations, value proposition, and success of Fintech, especially the use of blockchain technology, can propel the world into a more secure future as prosperity can be generated and harnessed by a greater numbers of people. The challenge, I believe, is backing these advances with true value, which I define as "portable toil." Toil is labor, work, energy, forgone capacity...all these things. (Personally I'm partial to using Element 79, aka gold, as the bedrock.)

The other great challenge for BitCoin, besides having no physical commodity linkage, is that BitCoin is finite. There will be a fixed number of eventual BitCoins. Successful currencies are "leaky." By leaky I mean that they are backed by a commodity, which preferably is difficult to obtain, and does not have a finite supply. Gold is a great example, and nugget size is particularly poignant. A nugget the size of a man's fist was seen frequently during the days of the Gold Rush in the Klondike, now a nugget the size of a peanut is increasingly rare. Extraction now focuses on smaller and smaller granules approaching the size of microscopic gold dust. There is even talk of mining asteroid gold! That's a good thing for a currency; difficult to add supply, but not impossible. It is leaky.

Ultimately, I believe the Fintech winners will unite successful elements of past currencies into a hybrid currency using blockchain technology with commodity-based backing to offer banking, insurance, and mortgages to the underbanked and unbanked while also driving a massive growth surge in the Gig Economy.