Got a nice note from a reader overnight, Eleen’s her name.
“George, yet more confirmation that your prediction that technology will undermine any job growth in the future. I actually have you to thank for pointing me in the direction of Leap. I had never heard of them before going to a link you posted on your site more than a year ago…”
The site she refers to is the Global-Europe Anticipation Bulletin which offers this most interesting little bit confirming job destruction is going on wholesale thanks to…yes – the Net:
” The death throes of local business: 2.5 million jobs cut in Europe by 2015 LEAP/E2020 anticipates that the combined effect of the rise in e-commerce and the crisis will force the closure of 10% to 15% of small local shops in Europe by 2015, especially in the culture (music, books…) and household goods (electrical appliances and white goods, high-tech…) sectors but also, to a lesser extent, in many other sectors (clothing, food…)… (page 7) Subscribe ”
Trust me on this…at some point world governments will come to an ugly fork in the road: They will either need to radically reform how the whole field of economics (stored value, trade, and finance all work) OR they will need to strictly control how much ecommerce will be allowed in the world because left unchecked, it’s the all-time job destroyer.
One of the key reasons why I wrote Broken Web was to outline the mechanics of how this is screaming down the pike at us and it is doing more damage than even Congress with its budget-bungling or the Prince of Executive Orders. No one’s talking about it yet.
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An unabashedly/shameless bit of self aggrandizement? So far the book has gotten ‘all fives” on its Amazon reviews….so go read it, if you haven’t already.