There’s nothing like a deadline to get you thinking. I think it was Douglas Adams who said something along the lines of loving deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they rush past.

As usual Leonard Cohen has got the words right. I’m off to take a few pictures and have a conversation with a few of the people camped out by St Paul’s…

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said repent repent
I wonder what they meant

I rather like this. It’s from Taylor Young and is a model of what’s hot and what’s not. If you are not familiar with thematic investment this is a way of using certain emerging social, demographic, economic and technological trends etc to imform investment strategies. If you look at some of the broad themes I write about you should immediately notice a number of these themes ranging from ageing and resource scarcity to mobile connectivity. (See this blog,  What’s Next, my trend maps or Future Files for more on this).

So, for example, if you buy into the ageing trend (and it’s hard not to) this immediately throws up some investment opportunities ranging from healthcare and food to retail and travel. Mix in another trend such as connectivity and you have a potential sweet spot of remote monitoring technology that enhances quality of life, reduces healthcare costs or allows people to live at home for longer.

Of course, the problem is not so much recognising particular themes, but in working out which companies in a particular sector or industry will be the winners over a long period. It wouldn’t take a genius to highlight clean energy, for example, but which of the thousands of companies, big and small, that are involved in this area will come out on top in the longer term?

BTW, this is general information and in no way represents any specific investment recommendation or advice as my lawyer friends would say.

James has just sent me an email:

“You mention on one of your Timelines “Middle Class Revolution” With the recent situation in Greece and other European countries could this scenario occur, and what could happen if such a scenario happened?”

I usually find it easier to ask questions than answer my own questions, but let’s explore this. Firstly it’s not my idea. Some time ago I noticed a wild card developed by the MOD that was more or less this. The idea being that instead of a working class revolution coming from Marxist ideals you get a middle class revolution coming from elsewhere.

Specifically (and I’m making this up now) the middle gets fed up with the fact that those at the bottom of society are protected economically in the sense that they have lost everything already (they are already unemployed and on benefits so how much worse can it get?). Similarly, the elite at the top (1%, 10% who can say) are protected in the sense that they have enough money to avoid tax or physically move if things get really nasty. Hence, the much talked about middle class squeeze where the normally quiet classes get rather angry about the fact that they can no longer afford certain things (decent schools, hospitals, houses and so on).

Is this what’s happening right now with the protests? Is this a middle class revolution? No. What’s happening now is largely youth based the aims of which are rather fuzzy. What ties the protests together (and I think this does link with feelings elsewhere) is a kind  of general dismay and disappoinment. People know something is wrong, but they are unsure what it is and what should be done about it. There  is certainly a link between  austerity and unrest too, but I can see very little linkage with the Arab Spring.

So in general this is more of a re-birth of youthful socialist ideals than any revolution from a broader middle-aged, middle-class base as far as I can see.

One point I would like to make is that I think this whole issue is largely about fairness, but the thing that many people seem to have forgotten is that it takes two sides to make a bad loan and the bankers (a few not all of them) supplied the money, but someone, somewhere, took it. Many of the people complaining about austerity are precisely the ones that borrowed too much money and saved next to nothing and they are equally to blame when it comes to greed.

What is more interesting to my mind, and potentially a trigger that turns mild protest into something much nastier, is that what is now dawning on a few people is the idea that things could be getting worse permanently. What I mean by this is that people got used to the fact that one generation lives better materially than the last. This went on from about the 1960s onwards. But the rise of the East and decline of the West means that this may no longer be true.

It could be that living standards are now going to decline over the long-term and that infrastructure and services start to crumble too. Add to this weaker labour unions and stronger corporations and…

When things go wrong people often look for someone to blame. At the moment the anger is directed at bankers and government and I guess the aims of the protesters is some kind of replacement for capitalism (what the aims of protesters in Greece are I really have no idea). Will they succeed? No. Not unless something happens externally. If the global economy does go into meltdown then this will, I believe, trigger a major re-think about how the entire system operates (something that didn’t happen last time because things didn’t collapse enough).

This could result (but I doubt it) in nice cuddly capitalism. Or, more likely, anger starts to be directed externally and it is globalization that collapses in the sense that it’s every nation for themselves and we see a rise of isolationism and economic protectionism.

Or perhaps we get a bifurcation where the West (and North) move towards a decade or more of austerity (shades of Japan in the 1990s) whereas the East and South boom. Personally I find this a little unlikely due to our newly connected nature, but it’s possible.

So could a middle-class revolution happen? Certainly.  But I can’t see one coming quite yet. As to what would happen if there were one that’s a good question.  To answer that one would, I guess, have to define middle-class and then dig into the values and ideals of this group, if indeed such a coherent group exists.

One final thought. What really worries me is not austerity per se but the level of youth unemployment in some countries and the widening gap between the haves and the have nots. A lack of social cohesion and resilience (strong in the 1930s) is are also areas for concern and is perhaps why it is difficult to believe that the current protest will endure.

So in summary the protests are not about ethics per se but about what happens when rising expectations meet declining opportunities.

The most interesting thing of all is perhaps the fact that people feel the need to physically occupy a space to make some kind of point. People Facebook and Twitter alone but they still protest together it seems.

Sorry for the radio silence but I’ve been in Paris for a week doing some work and reveling in the joys of disconnection (i.e. I gave my ancient GF4 Powerbook to someone recently and I can’t decide whether to replace it with a Macbook Air or an iPad).

Anyway, two discoveries. First, my zero email tranquility was enhanced by the fact that I didn’t read any newspapers for the week either.

Second, I am totally in love with Paris (Sorry Greece). Something about the aesthetic pleasure mixed up with civility and pace. Anyway, if you are in Paris anytime soon check out a restaurant called Les Cocottes Christian Constant. It’s possibly the best little restaurant in Paris.

I’ve just been to New York and was lucky enough to get whisked through a private security channel at Heathrow. This was obviously so that I didn’t get caught up with the chaos elsewhere in the airport. I presume that somewhere in the airport – probably most airports – are routes that are more discreet.

I think this is to some extent analogous with the world these days. There are people that get whisked and there are people that don’t. There are the wiskees and the whiskers. One group zooms around barely noticing the struggle that’s going on. They don’t see – or choose not to see – the crumbling infrastructure, the queues, the overcrowding, the things that don’t work and the sheer cost of everything.

For these people (the whiskees) it’s a quiet, high-speed, interconnected world where money buys you time and space. For everyone else, life is loud, slow and constantly interrupted by everything from the weather to small incidents of rage.

So the question is, at what point do these small incidents turn into something bigger? At what point do you create a revolutionized economic middle class?

“Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time. 
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines. 
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way. 
The time is gone, the song is over.  
Thought I’d something more to say.”

When it comes to the adoption of new technology, (eg, robotics and digital money), Japan is usually ahead of other countries. It’s also leading the trend demographically. The rapid ageing of Japanese society is a sign of things to come for regions like Europe. Japanese firms are now fighting to keep hold of retirees as labour shortages start to really bite.

Another new trend in Japan – which is also emerging in the US – is the huge boom in emergency kits and so-called FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) products. These are products such as mobile phones and radios that can be manually charged (i.e. wound up) and emergency survival products such as cookers and water filters. For example, one of the big sellers in Tokyo currently is a series of maps to help you find your way home after an earthquake.

Why is everyone so angry ? Why is grim survivalism the current zeitgeist? To quote a leader in the Financial Times a few years ago, it might be that “The ‘nice’ decade – for Non-Inflationary Continuous Expansion – is behind us”. In other words we, in the West, are entering a nasty period where economic anxiety is becoming a catalyst for all kinds of attitudinal and behavioural shifts.

For example, the real issue might not be peoples’ anger per se but the increasing number of people and events that provoke the anger that lies under the surface. This can range from traffic jams and bad customer service to falling house prices, increasing food and energy costs and the economic rise of the BRICs. If the economy really turns sour people in places like London and New York will be screaming for protection from the likes of Dubai and Moscow. In other words, economic issues will bring nationalist attitudes to the fore much in the same way that racism and patriotism grew during the 1930s depression.

You can see this anger already in the form of ‘Wrath Lit’ on the shelves of your local bookstore (OK, those have gone so try Amazon). But is the world really getting more angry or is it simply that the likes of camera phones and YouTube are making more of us aware of incidences of anger?

Put slightly differently, the way to create an epidemic of something like anger is simply to use the word in politics or the media. Another explanation for the rage trend is that in many societies anger is a badge of honour. It is seen as a virtue. It is the individual being true to themselves and expressing their feelings. Well bottle it up buddy because you are making the rest of us anxious.

In closing it is probably worth mentioning Elizabeth Kuber-Ross’s five point model of how people deal with death. Stage 1 is disbelief, stage 2 is yearning, stage 3 is anger, stage 4 is depression and stage 5 is acceptance. Is it possible that societally (in the West) we are looking at what we think is an abyss (i.e. economic recession, global warming, the rise of China and so on) and are reacting in exactly the same way as if we were facing terminal illness or the death of a loved one. We are currently in the collective anger stage, falling into depression.

But soon we will adjust and accept whatever the new normal is.

Psycho what? Psychological neotency is a theory developed by Professor Bruce Charlton at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (UK) that says that the increased level of immaturity among adults is an evolutionary response to increased change and uncertainty.

This initially sounds like a ridiculous suggestion, but it does make a certain amount of sense if you stop to consider the argument. Humanity has long held youth in high esteem, originally because it was a sign of fertility and health, which were important prerequisites for hunting and reproduction. In ‘fixed’ environments, psychological maturity was useful because it indicated experience and wisdom.

However, sometime in the latter part of the past century, child-like youthfulness started to have a new function which was to remain adaptive to a changing environment. In other words, if jobs, skills, and technology are all in a state of flux it is important to remain open-minded about learning new skills – and the best way to do this is to retain a child-like state of receptivity and cognitive flexibility.

Previously the phenomenon of adults behaving like children has been seen as a negative trend, but it may not be such a bad thing after all. For example, retaining the adolescent attitudes and behaviour of youth (for example, short attention spans or novelty seeking) could be seen as essential prerequisites for innovators.

Equally, there is a significant amount of evidence to suggest that the most creative thinkers in modern society are ‘immature’ compared to historical precedents. Of course this theory also justifies lying around watching MTV and eating donuts, so perhaps more research is required. The only problem is who should do it – mature professors or immature students?