2030 is around the corner. 2080 will happen 50 years from then. For all of us who remember the 80s of last century as yesterday, it is valid to ask now: how will the new 80s look like?
Keep walking my friend! But first, let's think together... How come we seem to be repeating the steps humankind advanced from 1920 until 1980? How are we supposed to arrive in 2080?
SOME INITIAL QUESTIONS BEFORE HEADING TOWARD THE NEW 80'S?
A. The history of the 20s seems to be repeating itself?
B. Will we need to live 60 years (more) of global adjustments until we reach the new 80s?
C. Can we expect freedom as we desired it in the times of the emergence of pop culture?
-1. 1920-1940: THE SEEDS OF THE OLD 80'S
The monarchical crises and the advance of the central state led to the Great War and the increase of power of old democracies in Europe. After the Great War, the "Roaring 20s" showed how the American Dream was a new viable wish for freedom and modernism. Later, the Great Depression in the USA and its weak stock markets revealed the need for more realism in the global sphere. The European War against National Socialisms marked the path that Humankind had to walk until the fall of the Wall in Berlin.
0. 1940-1960: THE FIRST SPRINGS FOR THE OLD 80'S
During -and after- WWII, inflation, socialism, and comparative systems analyses abounded in the public arena. Debates covered everything, from seeing the US Dollar as the new global currency to energy crises that led the Dollar to fall into a great crisis. All that before the times of "Petro-Dollars" when we all learned the value of producing economically under a politically democratic model for reaching social welfare at maximum. The American dream got linked to raw materials scarcity, high prices, and last but not least, the need to work a new diplomatic approach where Asia and Latin America were equally important for the USA. The deviation of the attention above the continent received a name in the south: "Guerrillas". War started early in America. As a result, pacts of public spending and human rights took the space as a badly needed new continental social agreement (New Deal). Kennedy was the last voice that made us all think of the possibility of a peaceful future for America as the continent of the future for humankind.
1. 1960-1980: THE COLD WAR THAT LASTED UNTIL THE OLD 80'S
South of America became less and less important in the global agenda as inflation and monetarism occupied more and more room in the debate. Neo-Liberalism vs Neo-Structuralism was the name of the fight in academia. While intellectuals debated in the classrooms and elite forums, multilateral credits occupied the governmental territories under the flag of another war: the war on poverty. Conditional credits were made available from global and regional banking systems, creating a forced path for a new, or neo, liberalism which followed a not so much liberal approach, as it forced policies emerging mainly from the authorities of the economy than following links of social dialogue with communities. Creating consensus over public policies got left as a second tier in the public agenda; therefore, hundreds of impractical debates about the moral crisis of modernism resulted to become the dominant culture of non-economists thinking uneconomically in the evolution of postmodernism: rights movements became fancy, and among all of them, the 80s showed the first appearance of environmentalism.
2. 1980-2000: THE NEVER-HAPPENING REIGN OF THE YUPPIES OF THE OLD 80'S
By the end of the last century, Generation X started to get offset by millennials (Y-gen) and now by their own (Z-gen) children and grandchildren. The old rule of the 20th Century was replaced slowly by new rules available in times of peace and abundance: scarce poverty, and strong trends towards relativism and new spiritualities. Western societies entered into a new (unknown) crisis and new radicalism gained space via social outbreaks and generational revolutions that weakened the pillars of developing countries. In America, that social process created the perfect storm: Institutional crisis. It was a matter of time until the "Latin Spirit" would win that "fight" over the American Dream and Globalization as THE "anglo-saxon" libertarian flagship. During those years, and in the midst of all that, COVID-19 was a 20-year distant possibility. In Y-2000, no one would have dreamt or bet over the final triumph of digital technology and the Internet as a source of virtual navigation for human people.
3. 2000-2020: FORGETTING THE OLD 80'S AND GIVING SPACE TO COVID-19
During 2000-2020, the debate on Social Assistance was replaced by the debate on Social Protection, and later, it turned towards the Guaranteed Minimum Income. The obstacles, as 2020 showed, were three: 1) Inflation, 2) Production, and 3) the need for a new framework: post-modern social protection (or neo-neo liberalism). Climate crisis and logistics: food, water, and oil scarcity have gravitated heavily over markets, states, societies, communities, media analysis, and international investors. Political, economic, and social crises have run together like athletes running a relay race having zero answers for the key debate: food, water, and the agricultural challenge. While hunger starts to show face, migration, crime, and insecurity reveal what we all know now: there is the need for a new dialogue to get to the new 80s sooner. Otherwise, we will have to struggle for 60 years of lack of peace until we solve the failed concept of the state as THE "solver".
4. 2020-2040: PEACE VIA HEXAGONAL DIALOGUES FOR IMPACT INVESTMENTS: ACCELERATING THE NEW 80'S
Military crises and migration are creating new armed communities that need to institutionalize dialogue in order to make better use of scarce resources (canyons vs butter). Accelerating dialogues-as-culture will avoid people from running in the frontiers of "Military Havens" (the US and the European Union). Cooperation is key for the new-new western global-local village, where we all avoid what we have seen with horror in 2023: a run towards liquid savings: dollars, gold, and jewels, pre-war speculative capitalism, divestment, and last but not least, natural conservatism. Many governments in too many countries are only worried for themselves, creating corruption as a new endemic social sickness that obstacles real and sound impact investing. Honest Hexagon Talks between market players and communities first, seconded by civil society and international players, can allow entering -finally- via academia in the spaces of responsive decision makers (statal leaders). THE STATE GOES AT THE END, at the end, and only at the end. The alternative we have followed by circumventing civilized societal dialogue is clear: economic crises, ineffective public policies, private banks´ illiquidity, and risks of runs. The "Tech Bubble" and the "Swiss" challenge of the first quarter of 2023 are symptoms demanding attention to a new common-sense leadership reoriented towards a new multi-stakeholder green, yellow, red, blue, black, grey, and white pact focused on the economy of water, food, and oil. We need to go back to basics: cooperation and peace via multi-stakeholder dialogue is urgent, not dialogue with the state first, but towards new governance at last.
5. 2040-2060: ACCELERATE THE NEW 80'S OR DON´T LOOK UP!
We all are responsible for creating impact investing in our communities and local territories. We will all face high rates of interest for a while, not only via central and private banking policies for controlling inflation and risks but because of a more fundamental reason: poverty is becoming normal after COVID-19, the same as we are getting used to high prices because we are getting accustomed to the high private cost of producing, and the low political cost of not producing enough food. Lower general demand for luxuries is creating a struggle for European banks, and in other (less rich) continents, the lack of credit will come together with the increased value of water bills, as H2O will convert (for them) into the new monetary numeraire. The dystopia that is lived nowadays in the South of the World can be avoided as a time bomb via new pacts coming from the North via Public-Private-Community Partnerships for Global and Local alliances for financing public investment. That can create a drop in commodity prices in favor of producer countries without needing either to invest in an army (here, there, and everywhere) or having to pay tribute to another larger non-western country (or countries) with a currency not tied (at all) to the currencies of the western countries that can now only rely upon their large armies and their still best weapons.
6. 2060-2080: THE NEW 80'S AND THE NEW "AMERICAN" DOLLAR.
The "American" Dollar (not just the USA Dollar) is a neo-neo liberal dream. Nowadays Central Banks should not focus almost exclusively on how to use public savings for combating inflation and devaluation of Latin American prices and currencies against the ones in the USA and the US Dollar. Central bankers should analyze money supply in terms of the money demand and its real economic roots that are creating the fundamentals of the monetary problem: the impossibility of sustaining regional and continental currencies due to the lack of human capital producing value in their countries. Markets show tendencies for higher prices that derive (among other multiple causes) from the migratory crisis of the most skilled, who vote with their feet in search of life refuges in the 21st century. The local currencies' devaluation only shows the countries' devaluations for their citizens. The final result is the same old job crisis and mass layoffs that have grown before wars, regardless of the fact of how much or how modern the world uses more and more technology. Societies can choose between peace dialogues for raising the intrinsic value of their countries, and for making war a deplorable alternative, and a non-vital necessity. Non-governmental leaders are required in the investment industry instead, focusing their work on reaching the financial impact needed yes, but mainly on social profits gained via the success of benefiting communities in their real needs: for example, the full and total modernization of infrastructure, agribusiness industries, and circular energy economies, converting territories, community-after-community in at-least-hexagonal economies (if not circular ones).
7. 2080-2100: THE NEW 80'S AND THE NEO-NEO CAPITALISM OF THE 22ND CENTURY
The old 80s promised income and employment without inflation and made a reality the public works and investment not only by the state, under public-private partnerships. They failed to work under multi-stakeholders approaches that now are viable under the new possibilities of cross-sector partnerships that information technologies allow. The neo-neo capitalism and neo-neo liberalism can be accelerated for impacting between 2023 and 2030 instead of waiting until 2080-2100 by mainly providing total security in terms of creating a pact for the adequate distribution of crude water for solving conflicts between interests over drinking water, irrigation, water for energy production, water for mining, water for bathing, water for tourism (landscape water), and for all the other possibilities that science can create inside and outside of Planet Earth. If we live here, on Mars, or anywhere in the Universe by 2080, taxes and death will always exist. The new public debt will be happily paid to the new tax or regulatory authorities if the new local, global, or universal state gets basically oriented towards water distribution as a real value numeracy, with long-term benefits where energy is seen as a new global central currency under exchange rate, and where local governments get strengthened as the hubs for the new green water-energy deal, based in their new capacities reached by information technology that connects them as the brain of their local communities.
CONCLUSIONS
A. We rely already on technology for creating new governance via hexagonal pacts.
B. By using Hexagon Toolkits, we are in good shape and have good timing for avoiding war.
C. It is our duty to work under a network with public approach (not statal but hexagonal) for:
i. Having Dialogue virtually, in public, using tech (toolkits) for planning times.
ii. Having Dialogue together, in public, for programming resources usage.
iii. Having Dialogue locally, in public, for cross-sector "partnershipping" of investors.
iv. Having Dialogue globally, in public, for processing and creating new employment.
v. Having Dialogue dynamically, in public, for a global hexagonal pact on price flexibility.
ROBERTO F. SALAZAR-CÓRDOVA
CEO, HEXAGON GROUP
LAT-AM/UK-GLOBAL
All rights reserved:
(*) CSPInc.Tech, Hexagon Group, ADN@+, Hexagon Dialogue, Red Santa Cruz
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