Some of my futurist and economics posts from the last 4 years...

This video about automation an globalization replacing human jobs is now over 5 years old.  I was the taxi driver in this clip who lost his job to new technology, before Uber and Lyft.  I known what this feels like.  I also put this video in a blog post in June 2017.  I've been writing about the "crazy times ahead," for over 4 years now, trying to give a few people a heads up.  Now it's October 2021, is it crazy enough for you yet?  I hope not, it's going to get A LOT crazier.

Disclaimer

I've been writing about a major economic downturn, and crazy period of massive cultural, businessm and political change that I've seen coming, since at least mid-2017.  The Big Freakin' Transition is one of the main underlying causes, but not the only one.  Here are a bunch (but not all) of my blog posts from mid 2017 to late 2019, all pre-Covid era, on the economic downturn and massive period of change we are now two years into (with lots more to come).  This first one is my personal favorite blog post title:

Our economy is powered by unicorn farts- March 2019 (Here's the missing video)

Now starting with the beginning of my Steve Emig: The White Bear blog (not racist, it's a nickname from my BMX days) in June 2017:

Looking at a world beyond jobs- June 2017

Art is an industry... no, really, it is- July 2017

The jobs picture right now, in 2017- July 2017

A whole lot of facts about rural poverty in America- August 2017   Ideas for small towns and rural areas struggling right now- August 2017 You'll notice "TV/Film studios" on this list.  Right now in 2021, with the popularity of streaming, they TV/ movie industry can't build sound stages to shoot TV and movies fast enough, there are at least 6-7 major projects nationwide, most $100 million projects or more, across the country, right now.  Told ya so, people).

Work is changing... FAST- September 2017

Creative Scenes in today's economy- October 2017

What are Creative Scenes?- October 2017

Richard Florida and the New Urban Crisis- October 2017

A funny look at economic development- November 2017

The student debt ball and chain- November 2017

The FCC repeals Net neutrality, despite 22 million Americans petitioning for it- December 2017

A 4 billion dollar reason why your city's Innovation District needs a skate (and bike) park- December 2017

What will we do with all those empty buildings?- December 2017

Larry Kudlow's wishful thinking- January 2018 (This is the first post where I mentioned the stock market crash I saw coming- it took a bit longer than I thought to happen, but the Dow dropped 10,000+ points in 2020)

The Retail Apocalypse is expected to expand in 2018- January 2018

Davos 2018: A good look at the future- January 2018

States with the worst student loan debt- February 2018

Would you live in a town that Google built?- February 2018

Toys-R-Us: Another chain bites the dust in the Retail Apocalypse- March 2018

The Rise of the Warrior Sports- 20 years later- March 2018

Recession zine coming- March 2018

Great Recession II: Trump's Dump- has begun- April 2018- OK, I was a little ahead of the curve on this one.  Just for the record, the Dow peaked on January 26th, 2018, and was basically flat until October 2020, which is when The Fed began pumping billions into the Repo Market to prop up the banking system.  It is STILL being propped up by newly created money, and THAT'S WHAT it causing this crazy inflation (which will get  A LOT higher next year).

A video for businesses and civic leaders who hate the internet, social media, and obscure bloggers who get more page views than their websites- April 2018  Not surprisingly, looking back, a bunch of guys with baseball bats came out to the tent where I was living (in central NC) about two weeks later and threatened to "kick my tent in a teach me a lesson I should have learned a long time ago," if I didn't stop blogging.  My response was, "Hoke hey, it's a good day to die... go for it."  Not the response they expected.  After much deliberation on their part, they just left.  That blog, which had about 35,000 page views then, has over 128,000 now.  What can I say, The South is still The South.  Free Speech bitches.  It's in the Constitution.  

The cities that get most of the start-up business money (venture capital) in the U.S.- May 2018 

Retail Apocalypse- May 2018- Sears closing 72 more stores- May 2018

Mallpocalypse leads to a new kind of Mall Rats- June 2018

Why I think Creative Scenes are a key to our future- July 2018 

What I do IS work- August 2018

Why HUGE businesses (and towns and cities) die- September 2018

Crazy sounding, but actual financial news headlines today- October 2018

Are you ready for the economic collapse?  Gary Vaynerchuk is- October 2018

Spooky!  The stock market lost $2 trillion this month- October 2018

I told you to watch the FAANG stocks for signs of trouble- October-2018

Economic Rehab revisited- November 2018  My favorite quote in this little post is "... because former Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that they've figured out how to never have recessions again."  

This is the lead in to the recession I've been talking about- December 2018

My stock market predictions for 2019- December 2018  I was wrong.  I was over a year early, and didn't think The Fed would lower interest rates to near zero.  Even so, none of the markets dropped to these levels, because they had all gone up considerably before the 2020 crash.  Lowering interest rates how The Fed propped up stocks in mid to late 2019.  The they started throwing a ton of money (by 2019 standards, not 2021 standards) into the banking system because of the Repo Market crisis.  

Recession watch 2/6/2019- February 2019 

The Big Transition- How the Toffler's Third Wave is actually playing out in the real world- April 2019   Hmmmmm... this sounds kind of familiar.  Yep, I've been talking about this Big Transition idea for quite a while.

How I became interested in Creative Scenes- May 2019

The Unraveling- June 2019

We've just begun the prelude to The Great Recession of 2019- July 2019

The beginner's guide to the next great recession- August 2019

The economic collapse of our lifetimes will happen this month- October 2019  I wrote this post after looking up "Repo Markets."  The Repo Market had just seized about 10 days earlier, The Fed was saying they would have the mess taken care of in a few days, when I wrote this.  It is now two years and three weeks later.  Last night, 10/20/2021 The Fed loaned the banks $1.493 TRILLION in assets, overnight, in reverse repo operations.  The U.S. banking system had to borrow nearly $1,500,000,000,000 last night, to stay in business for a couple more days.  This is STILL happening every other night, on average.

The Phoenix Great Recession- October 2019- No one was ready to hear the phrase "great depression" then, so I used the word "recession."  At the time, October 2019, conventional wisdom was that there might be a minor recession in late 2020 or early 2021.  Maybe.  Guess what, they were wrong.

The Big Freakin' Transition in a nutshell

I'm going way back, for a classic comedic look at the factory worker's life in the Industrial Age.  Charlie Chaplin trying to get through the day in Modern Times, from 1936.

Disclaimer

The Big Freakin' Transition is my concept, an extension of The Third Wave idea put forth by futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and published in Alvin's 1980 book, The Third Wave *.  

This is a big idea, and involves a lot of different aspects of our society.  But at it's core, my concept of The Big Freakin' Transition is two basic ideas:

One:  We are not IN the Industrial Age anymore, but we are not IN the Information Age, either.  We are in an 80 to 90 years transition period where American society morphs from the Industrial Age into the Information Age.  This transition period began in 1956, according to futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and I estimate the end will be about 2035-2045.

Two:  To remain viable in modern society, EVERY business, industry, organization, institution, and individual must make the transition from an Industrial Age living and working model, to an Information Age living and working model.  When pretty much all of society has made the switch, then we will be fully in the Information Age.  The world seems so crazy these days because we are in this huge, long, major transition phase.  

There are tons of details and factors, but that is The Big Freakin' Transition concept at its core.  

To grossly oversimplify things, originally humans were tribal people that we usually refer to as hunter/gatherers.  The First Wave of civilization was the transition from hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural society  People began to plant crops and farm, stay in one place, and villages became permanent, and turned into small towns, and eventually into cities.  That began about 10,000 years ago, probably in the region that is now Turkey.  It took a couple of thousand years for agriculture to travel the Earth, and become the dominant form of human society.

The Second Wave of civilization was the transition from agricultural society to an industrial society.  This, the Tofflers tell us, began about 350 years ago, and took a couple of hundred years to circle the Earth, to become the dominant form of society.  The factory based Industrial Age continued well into the second half of the 20th century.  

The Third Wave, as the Tofflers saw it, is the transition from an Industrial-based society to an Information-based society.  As it's called now, the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.  Alvin Toffler's book on this came out in 1980, four years before the Apple Macintosh computer, the first personal computer for "regular people."  He also wrote it right as the thousands of American factories began to either outsource jobs to other countries, or replace human workers with industrial robots and other technology.  So most people who did read The Third Wave when it was knew thought, "OK, the factories are shutting down or moving overseas, we have Silicon Valley, high tech, computers and cell phones, we're in the information-based age now."    

Of the people alive today, the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and Generation X were born at times when the Industrial Age was still going strong.  The Millennials, Generation Z (you'll get a new nickname, don't worry), and today's kids, were born into times when the Industrial age was fading fast, and the Information Age was (and still is) coming on strong.  So to our older generations the Industrial Age is "normal," and to the younger generations, the Information Age is "normal."  That alone explains a lot in today's culture.

The Big Freakin' Transition is my idea that the Toffler's Third Wave concept is still playing out.  I think that we didn't jump right into the full blown Information Age when all the factories shutdown, or moved overseas in the 1980's, 1990's, or 2000's.  I believe we are actually in an 80 to 90 year long transition period BETWEEN the Industrial Age and the Information Age.  We have a lot of the technology of the full Information Age now, but a lot of our businesses, industries, and institutions are still working from Industrial Age models, and have not fully integrated their business or working models to ones that work in the Information Age.  The Tofflers put the beginning of this transition period at 1956, the first year "white collar" office workers outnumbered "blue collar" factory workers in the United States.  I believe this transition period will last at least until about 2040, maybe longer.  

Very simply, we are about 2/3 the way through this long, crazy, chaotic period of transition from one type of society and lifestyle, to another.  No other civilization has had to make this big of a social transition in the span of a single lifetime.  We are going from one way of life to another, and it's weird, scary, crazy, and chaotic.  We are in between the Industrial Age and the Information Age, and have aspects of both working in our world right now.  

That's the Big Freakin' Transition, in a nutshell. For the record, I've been referring to this idea as"The Big Transition" in my personal and online writing, for 3 years or so.  I figured that I'd come up with a catchier name at some point, but I never did.  When I decided to write this blog, and go into more detail on all that the idea ties into, I finally googled "The Big Transition."  There's one religious book by that name, on totally different ideas, and several other things that came up in my search.  So I added the word "freakin'" to set it apart, and to not make it too serious and boring.  I think this concept, as a context for the craziness of today's world, can help us explain and understand what's going on. 

In future posts I'll go into much more depth on this general idea, and into the details of the various aspects of it.  The basic idea to get right now is, yes, the world seems crazy for a reason, we're in a huge transition period that is crazy and chaotic, by it's nature.  It's OK to be freaked out by all that's going on.  I hope this concept can help other people understand this transition, and then find their own way to work within it.

* Not a paid link.

Where is our human society headed? A futurist is a person who spends time trying to figure that out

Here is the late Alvin Toffler, the futurist I most identify with.  He died in 2016 at the age of 87, survived by his wife Heidi, partner in life, and partner in figuring out where the world was headed, decades ago.  From his first bestselling book, Future Shock, in 1970, through Revolutionary Wealth in 2007, the thinking of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, in the series of books he wrote, and talks he gave, inspired and influenced tens of thousands of people around the world.  Leaders in China, notably, made Future Shock required reading for officials at one point. 

Disclaimer 

I believe their concept of "The Third Wave," first published in Alvin's 1980 book by that name, is still playing out, and can help us understand the chaotic world of the 2020's.  Like Alvin Toffler, I've spent most of my life, since childhood, thinking a lot about the future, and trying to figure out where society was headed.  I'll go into more detail in future posts, but the extension of the Third Wave concept, into today's world of 2021, and well into the future, is something I've been calling "The Big Transition."  Very simply put, I don't think we are in the Industrial Age anymore, but I don't think we're in the Information Age either.  I believe we are in an 80 to 90 year transition phase between the two, and I think we are the late part of that long transition period.  

With that idea as a Big Picture, the chaos of the 21st century world makes a lot more sense to me.  I've been able to see and sense a lot of trends coming, and I've made some financial market predictions, several of which seemed crazy when I made them, but later came true.  I've been writing on these subjects for over three years now, across several blogs.  But these posts from my brainiac side have been mixed in with posts about Old School BMX freestyle, the new, little sport I got seriously into while in high school, and which was the main theme of 20 years of my life.  And the reality is, most BMXers don't really give a damn about the future, although they've played more of a role in it than most "average" people.  More on that in future posts, as well. 

So this blog is going to focus on my thinking about where society is, why we are where we are, and where I think we are headed.  I've literally had my life and well being threatened over these ideas at times.  There are some people, more specifically, some political ideologies, that don't want ideas other then their own out in the world.  But I'm an idea guy, and I'll keep putting my ideas out there into the world as long as I'm able.  If you get something worthwhile from reading this blog, and my other work, that's awesome. If not, there are about 4.2 billion or more other web pages for you to choose from, and 129,864,880 books published, as well as other media.  I'm sure you can find something you like.

So that's the basic idea of this blog.  I knew I needed to find a slightly better name for my Big Picture concept than "The Big Transition."  There are a few other, completely unrelated things, that come up in a Google search of that phrase.  After thinking about it for a few minutes, "The Big Freakin' Transition" is what I came up with.  So that's the name of this blog.  Yeah, still not super creative, but it will do.  It's kind of a reminder to have fun with these posts, and don't take anything too seriously.  All of our best made plans get messed up, and the future always seems to surprise us sometimes, no matter how much we think about it.  Enjoy.