China - I agree with Krugman

Paul Krugman says that China keeps him up at night, pointing a number of reasons for that:

1) The need to transition from an investment to a consumption economy, and how difficult that will be

2) A shrinking work force - to which I would add its low qualification

3) And poor quality of data


To these, though, I would add just 2 more:

4) Low return on investment in many of Chinese investments, that are poorly linked to an effective economy. Let's just think about the huge amounts that are being spent on real estate projects that are then left empty or on the incredible percentage (30%?) of wind power generators that are not connected to the electric grid.

5) The rigid and extremely uncertain ability of the current Governmental regime to actually manage the transition from a capital extensive economy to an intensive, imaginative one.


Yep. China also keeps me up at night.

Elite

A world in which a elite possesses more than 50% of the wealth and dictates norms and laws to 100% of it is a nightmare that we should all the be fighting hard. Even that elite should be massively worried about it - this situation is not sustainable and will lead to a social rupture, in which everyone will lose too much. The clock is ticking.

3D printing & copyright

The predictions that 3D printing will disrupt the economy are not new. Typically, they focus on the shift of manufacture from lower production costs' countries to anyone who owns a 3D printer and knows how to operate it. Everybody could do their own objects, based on files it would upload to its 3D printer.

Now, this poses a different question - how was that file acquired. And it is here that the play will be over the next 2 years. The strength of copyright will play a key role in the 3D printing industry, as file ownership and availability to use will be central. If the industry can own files (and prevent their usage from anyone who didn't buy them), then a market will arise on objects blue-prints - and probably Apple, Google, Amazon and Alibaba, who operate major digital stores will dominate the industry especially after an initial period where hardware development will still be the focus. Now, if such a copyright strength is not enforced in the files themselves, the industry will be mainly a hardware oriented one.

This will have major implications and is not a straight forward play. Just think about points such as files' standards development (remember the VHS vs Beta fight?), hacking (just think about the European countries where political parties advocating the free usage of entertainment files, like movies and music, and their role on this ground) and personal creativity. This will be an incredibly interesting market to look at over the next 2 years. Stay tuned!