As the automation of American jobs proceeds apace… as jobs in our nation become increasingly ‘part-time’ and ‘temporary’… as the labor force participation rate among all age groups, and especially among young people, sputters along at its lowest level in decades…
We ask: What will Americans do for work? And perhaps more importantly, how will they pay the rent?
We’ve created a brave new world where many of our human needs and desires are being fulfilled by clever machines. Once upon a time, our physical and mental labor benefited our neighborhoods, our regions, our nation. But not so much, in 2019. At the same time, we’ve seen a slow but steady explosion in two areas of human activity…
- Tourism
- Digital communication and entertainment
Travel for purely leisure purposes — as opposed to, say, travel for business, or religious pilgrimages — evolved during the 19th and 20th centuries from an activity enjoyed only by the very wealthy into an activity enjoyed by the common folk.
Historically, leisure travel was reserved for royalty and the upper classes. The English word hospitality first appeared in the 14th century, derived from the Latin hospes, which encompasses the words guest, host, and foreigner. The word tourist first appeared in print in the 1770s, likely derived from the Latin word for circle and turn; a tourist is expected to circle away from home, and then return.
In 1887, Walter Brownell opened the first travel agency in the US — Brownell Tours — and led ten travelers on an archaeological tour of Switzerland, setting sail from New York on the SS Devonia, on July 4, 1887. Originally, travel agencies were focused largely on upper class customers, but the economic boom that followed World War II — often referred to by American economists as ‘The Golden Age of Capitalism’ — resulted in the proliferation of travel agencies catering to a working class clientele. That economic boom seemingly ended with the 1973-1975 recession.
But by the end of the 20th century, tourism had grown into a global industry. The World Tourism Organization reported that, in 1950, international travelers numbered about 25 million globally. By 1997, the figure was more like 613 million. In 1950, receipts from international travel were about $2 billion. By 1997, the value was closer to $444 billion. And these numbers do not include domestic tourism.
As our jobs have slowly disappeared, to be handled by machines and computers, and as more and more of us have moved into retirement lifestyles, we’ve learned how to fill the empty days with tourist visits to mildly interesting places for a few days at a time. Slowly, the world has become less exotic, and more familiar and ordinary.
And we’ve learned how to occupy ourselves with virtual visits as well — to Facebook, and Twitter, and Google, and YouTube.
We’ve come to understand that all our movements — whether physically traveling to a quaint little town like Pagosa Springs, or traveling virtually to our favorite social media or shopping websites — all our movements are being tracked and stored in massive data centers. Some of these data centers are operated by governments; some are operated by private businesses.
Which brings us back to that other part of the Big Picture. Digital technology.
In 2013, the Chinese government rolled out “One Belt, One Road” — an aggressive plan to build up land and sea trade routes connecting China, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Through the financing of sometimes-massive infrastructure projects in more 60 countries, the Chinese have sought to bolster their geopolitical influence globally.
Internet giant Huawei is a central participant in those projects.
On October 22, 2018, Huawei announced the ‘Peace Cable’ project — a 7,500-mile underwater broadband cable that will link Pakistan, South Africa, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Egypt, and France. The project is currently in the manufacturing stage, but expects to be operational next year. It will serve as the “New Information Expressway” between Asia, Africa and Europe.
Huawei is also key to China’s plan to roll out 5G technology around the world. According to a December 2018 report by US-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Huawei has become a market leader in manufacturing RAN (radio access network) equipment that is vital for 5G networks. From that CSIS report:
While American companies lead in making essential 5G technologies, there are no longer any U.S. manufacturers of core telecommunications network equipment. Four companies dominate the market for the core network technologies needed for 5G networks. None of these companies are American. The choices are between European security partners (Ericsson and Nokia) and China (Huawei and ZTE)…
…In the twentieth century, steel, coal, automobiles, aircraft, ships, and the ability to produce things in mass quantity were the sources of national power. The foundations of security and power are different today. The ability to create and use new technologies is the source of economic strength and military security.
Technology, and the capacity to create new technologies, are the basis of information age power.
We are developing new technologies here in America, but much of the development involves military technology. The US government has plans to spend about $989 billion on various military operations and programs between October 2019 and September 2020. If that kind of expenditure remains a pattern, the US will likely spend around $10 trillion on its military over the next decade or so.
The Chinese government plans to spend somewhere between $1 trillion and $8 trillion, over the next decade or so, building its complex “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure, connecting East Asia — physically and digitally — with Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Indonesia, and Australia.
While the US government continues fighting endless wars, China will be linking maybe 6.4 billion people (4.5 billion in Asia, including Russia and the Middle East; 1.2 billion in Africa; 740 million in Europe) with Chinese-financed trade route infrastructure and internet. Or so it would appear.
American leaders seem to believe that sending in military forces is an effective way to influence other countries, and maintain global power. China’s leaders apparently have rather different ideas.
Whether any of these Big Picture trends will affect the quaint, tourism-driven community of Pagosa Springs over the next decade, is anybody’s guess.