Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity

View in Browser   Key insights from Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity By Scott Galloway

What you’ll learn In an economic upswing Bloomberg Businessweek called “The Great Disconnect,” US stock market indexes ascended despite the devastation of a quarantined Covid summer. With hundreds of thousands dying, losing jobs, and learning to navigate the narrowing space of life, how could this be? Renowned professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business Scott Galloway argues that the Covid pandemic simply advanced already present trends percolating within the American economy, demonstrating how big tech broke the market mold and how the US can glimpse the economic silver lining in a cloud of cultural chaos.   Read on for key insights from Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity.

1. The economy was already looking to jump into new territory—the pandemic simply pushed it over the edge. If you’re keeping track of those fluctuating red and green numbers of the market indexes, you may think the market is doing well post-corona. You’re not wrong, but fewer companies than it seems are actually making a profit as the world eases out of its health conflict. Instead of raising new economic trends, the Covid pandemic simply pulled already existent market leanings to the surface, rocketing our economy into a future that was more than a few years away. According to the S&P 500 market index, only the 500 top companies are bucking the downward turn and accruing capital. Meanwhile, the 400 middle companies or mid-caps and the remaining 600 small-caps fell by 10% and 15%, respectively. Not to mention, the more obvious market victims of the “BEACH” stocks, which comprise those nonessential businesses and services we were all sad to see go (bon voyage to cruise lines for a while), plummeted by 50-70%. What do these patterns say about underlying market trends? A handful of factors propel previously successful companies to market survival and dominance. One of these includes a company’s image (think Tesla, which carries an image of novelty and sophistication that is propelling it to success above other automakers). Cash value, sector, and adaptability to a society in which all things must move online for health and convenience purposes factor into a company’s success as well. The two most prevalent market trends surfacing now include the economy’s movement toward “dispersion,” or the delivery of one sector’s goods by way of another sector, and the advancement of remote work. Companies like Zoom, Peloton, and Teladoc Health stumbled upon a potential economic boon—the loss of public space and the necessity of cyberspace. The market is online, and the companies positioned for success are those equipped to incorporate this trend. Riding the wave of this tech-tramping market economy is the final turn of “The Brand Age” into “The Product Age.” According to the author, the summer of 2020 knocked the Brand Age off its throne, replacing it with the Product Age, an evolution introduced years ago by the creation of the TiVo recording service. Once TV-viewers were able to fast-forward through commercials, the resonance of the brand started to lose its sway. During the pandemic summer, as brands rushed to affirm ethical value in the eyes of buyers following George Floyd’s death, their carefully-crafted advertisements failed, proving that the power of the brand really is obsolete. Now within the Product Age, consumers use platforms like Google or Amazon to search for better-priced or higher-quality products, rather than simply fall back on popular brands. Meanwhile, advertising dollars dropped dramatically across the board, with digital advertising the sole thriving survivor. The remaining percentage of digital advertising rests in the few, though mighty, hands of two tech giants—Google and Facebook—and both are projected to comprise an overwhelming 61% of the market. Danger lurks within this trend as the author notes that both companies operate on a business model that employs inflammatory content to fuel engagement and draw more advertisers to its platform. Put simply, conflict is capital. In our post-corona economy, already prosperous individuals and companies are growing stronger, creating an even deeper divot in the American market and cultural consciousness. Covid was simply a stimulus.

2. The Covid pandemic created the ideal environment for big tech to flourish. With jobs moving to home offices or living room couches, restaurants closing, and grocery stores offering limited hours, it’s no wonder that big tech’s business flew to even greater heights during the Covid pandemic. Apple hustled a staggering 42 years before it acquired $1 trillion, but in the age of widespread shutdowns through the months of March and August 2020, the tech giant doubled its revenue to $2 trillion. This economic success is similar to society’s other most prominent tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, PayPal, and Shopify. Big tech has proven itself as this era’s most lucrative sector, creating $1.9 trillion in market value. At the core of big tech are “the Four”—this group isn’t as “fantastic” as the beloved superheroes, though. The author expounds upon the market dominance of four market giants: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Comprising the top of the big tech pyramid, these companies accrued over $1.1 trillion during the Covid pandemic, and the author pins their success upon three simple steps: “innovate, obfuscate, and exploit.” The author calls these companies “unregulated monopolies,” and they each got started with a novel insight by an unexpected player. Think of the stereotype of the dissident, hoodie-toting genius flunking out of college to dream up a new tech gadget or media outlet and shaking the world out of its standardized slumber. Once a company reaches the echelons of the four, they use those provincial roots to hide the fact that they are indeed lucrative monopolies. And finally, they exploit this influence within the market. These four monopolies were poised to attack when the pandemic struck, because they had been positioning themselves stealthily beneath the seemingly stable economic surface. While these monopolies push non-tech companies to participate within the tech sector, they also expand beyond the confines of their industry to take over that of others. Either you, your neighbor, or the house down the street probably received some kind of delivery this week, perhaps one ordered on Amazon, maybe even with the added benefit of free delivery per a Prime membership? Prime is Amazon’s flywheel, or a mechanism monopolies use to drive profit at little to no added cost, and it’s dwarfed the business of other delivery services like FedEx. Amazon swallowed a large portion of the delivery sector, ringing the doorbells of 82% of American homes and earning the monopoly $17 million a minute. On the whole, in the second quarter of 2020, Amazon gained $89 billion, which the author notes is even greater than the Department of Education’s budget. When the physical world shut down, the online world rose to life. In an age of Netflix series, Zoom calls, and Amazon deliveries, what should we do next?

3. Don’t pay attention to the hoodie—our government should treat monopolies as monopolies. If a few outlying giants consume a disproportionate number of industries, we have a monopoly on our hands. Yet the likes of Amazon, Google, and Facebook are sugar coated by the appeal of genius, enabled to move past antitrust laws and regulations with ease. These government statutes are outdated in the age of big tech and must be reinvented to protect people and businesses that want to stay afloat in the post-pandemic world. Big tech leaders have become our neighbors, and not the friendly bunch either. Due to their size, companies like the big four are positioned to exploit the market and take greater risks regardless of the impact their actions may have on the consumer or progress within the market. In the absence of competition, discovery dies and big tech powers are encouraged to do what they’ve always done—hijack dopamine to make a dollar.  In an age in which the number of Amazon lobbyists exceeds that of US senators, change at the top will be a hard-won dream. Our current antitrust laws are not equipped to regulate big tech firms that put the consumer’s health at risk instead of her wallet. A profile on Facebook may not cost a user money, but it may cost a user her data and mental wellbeing. Additionally, the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was proposed during a time in which information didn’t travel as far and quickly as it does now. These laws couldn’t have foreseen the damage unregulated big tech can wreak upon the lives of its users and US culture. This summer saw encouraging action on the part of the House antitrust subcommittee, though. House representatives questioned the practices of some of big tech’s most notable (and prosperous) figureheads, and the author speculates that officials plan to enact new antitrust regulations to limit big tech’s isolated power and reinfuse the economy with competition.  Another way to monitor monopolies is through government regulations like that of Section 230, which maintains that online platforms are not legally responsible for the content users post. Clearly, there are some gaping holes in this regulation. In 2018, in an effort to block the harmful though legal content spread by sex traffickers, Congress enacted the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA-SESTA). Unfortunately, its efforts proved unsuccessful in abating the growth of this detrimental practice, which simply continued offline. Regulations that diminish harmful practices instead of merely displacing them are difficult to craft and will take more time for Congress to compile. Despite this failure and the incredible difficulty government officials face in the realm of big tech, progress is slowly easing its way into federal law, one antitrust act at a time.

4. Higher education creates economic inequality, and it must evolve to stay in business. Classes take place behind glass, and students attend lectures in pajamas: Covid influenced the life of the student in drastic ways. The pandemic unearthed various industries that needed a little pick-me-up, and higher education was just one of them. According to the author, higher education’s “disruptability index” hit all the marks of an industry at the cusp of major change. One of the most evident indicators of this trend remains higher education’s skyrocketing price, elevating 1,400% in 40 years, coupled with its failure to serve students a better education. While it seems that the pandemic thrust the world of higher education into dangerous, possibly fatal territory, it also presents the industry with the opportunity to upend growing issues.  Gradually, higher education has evolved into an image of status rather than an industry of truly equalizing and democratic learning. Universities pride themselves on dwindling acceptance rates and soaring tuition prices. According to the author, college has become an embedded “caste system” in which wealthier students attend better schools and receive entrance into the highest-paying positions in the nation; elite institutions have become machines that churn out inequality. In fact, higher education favors rich students over poor students at a rate of two to one, and this only increases in the echelons of the most elite institutions, where the well-off are more than five times as likely to enroll. The pandemic broke the chalkboard and replaced it with a computer screen. Considering the state of higher education, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. As universities polish their tech and create new tools to keep and draw new students, learning may return to its original democratic and equalizing roots. The implementation of technology services in higher education like Zoom, Blackboard, Canvas, and other improvements to be released in 2021 may actually transform the world of learning for the better. While online higher education creates more space for more students, meaning that elite institutions can loosen up on their microscopic acceptance rates, it also enables institutions to lower their costs of tuition. In a nation where only one-third of people obtain a degree, online higher education will make learning more available to those who can’t accommodate advanced education in their schedule or their budget. The author proposes that big tech join forces with higher education to offer vocational certificates like ones in engineering from MIT/Google. Education may never look the same again, but necessary structural changes might just shift society toward greater educational equality.

5. The post-corona world needs a makeover—one that doesn’t include a mask. Our faces are fractured, half-hidden beneath multicolored masks that reveal where our loyalties lie. Our national identity is no different. The author notes that the issue of whether or not Americans should wear medical masks embodies the culture’s torn consciousness. In a nation so fraught by disagreement and algorithm-fueled fury, how can we ever repair our culture and economy as the waves of pandemic chaos subside? Just as the nurses, soldiers, and everyday citizens did during WWII, we must recognize a common purpose and mobilize to recapture national harmony. To do this, we must shatter the spell of “cronyism,” a system that circulates power and wealth among the elite few under the belief that they’re inherently entitled to their status. The US economy favors shareholders and executives at the expense of the middle-class, as large corporations are perpetually bailed out and prized over the employees working within them.  Capitalism is the most lucrative means of economic, cultural, and market progression, but at the top of the financial ladder, this system crumbles into a form of socialism in which the wealthy bolster the wealthy. The pandemic relief package is evidence of this structural trend, providing a $90 billion tax cut to millionaires and allowing for billionaires to add a collective $637 billion to their bank accounts in August. Additionally, lower and middle class families have dropped in their national income share from 39% in 1983 to 21% in 2016, compared to upper class families who jumped from 60% to 79% in the same span of time. The pandemic simply unveiled these already existent economic inequalities that trap capital at the top and leave the middle and lower classes at a huge disadvantage. The market is perpetually inclined to favor the few, but the pandemic might be able to change that. The US must capitalize on the incredible opening the Covid shutdown has provided. Government is instituted to regulate a democracy that isn’t always democratic—US citizens must take elected officials more seriously through small acts like voting in order for officials to take them more seriously as well. Meanwhile, government initiatives should prize the individual worker over the corporation, allocating funds to people who will pour that capital back into the economy and stimulate financial circulation. Above all, the US must recognize that the country is in the grips of a demobilizing disease and a potential turning point in national history. To rekindle our sense of national fellowship and understanding, the author proposes that the government establish a force called the Corona Corps. This group of young people will work alongside each other under the unifying goal of tracking the spread and advancing the eradication of the coronavirus. The Corona Corps embodies the vision of cooperative goodwill and respect for others our nation has unfortunately fallen from, the mentality to which we need to return.  National dissolution calls for widespread reconstruction—a renewed identity hides beneath our masks. The pandemic slashed the nation in two, but in that gap shines a light and a beacon of something new. When we remove our masks, will we greet enemies or friends? When the world reopens, what will we do?