Forbes writer Stephen McBride says these three industries will be wiped out for good, not because the COVID-19 pandemic will last forever, but because the contagion sparked change that will endure. How will creative destruction reshape your life?
Bill Whittle Now with Scott Ott is a production of our Members who enjoy backstage content, and exclusive access to communication features that allow them to tap into a network of like-minded liberty lovers. Join us now.
30 replies on “Three Industries Wiped Out: How Pandemic Will Change Your Life Forever”
“The Man Who Traveled In Elephants” happens to be a Robert Heinlein short story.
I suspect the reference was not deliberate…
I think a fourth “industry” just might be grade school. Hoover Institute shared an interesting Bloomberg article about this today and it’s an interesting concept that education may be forced to change completely moving forward.
If it ends the insanity of Common Core, it could hardly be anything but an amazing change for the good. Especially if that also meant Obama wouldn’t get any more money for “his” book than the $65+million he reportedly has already received from the corporate group for whom he approved the purchase of Common Core (initially $32+ million, IIRC – lord knows how much they have made off of the sale of their books).
Stores will start making a comeback once shipping costs start to increase, which they are bound to do if the USPS is to stay in business. There’s also a general lack of customer service in online shopping, it’s inconvenient to wait and the screw-ups are often monumental.
Movie theaters have participated in their own slow demise. Most lack customer service and the cost to value is abysmal. On top of that, chains like AMC have renovated reducing the number of seating in favor of reclining seats that are still on the small side, and you have to pre-order and select seats (which can make going out spontaneously difficult). You can’t forget that Hollywood and the movie studios favor blockbuster movies that make hundreds of millions opening weekend, over original stories and quality stories, especially when the movies are just stopping here briefly before their lucrative Chinese releases. China is where the movies make their real money. My friend Alex Hollings has written pieces about this- the studios cater the story and visuals to China’s audiences and censors because a movie can break even here but make billions in China.
I dislike so many actors/actresses anymore that finding a movie for which I’m willing to shell out megabucks, are few and far between.
A significant side-effect of more folks working from home will be the impact on services geared towards office workers – coffee shops, sandwich shops, etc. Many investments will be impacted as well as commercial real estate declines.
Have a friend who opened a food truck a few years back and made most of her money doing lunch trade and then weekend events.
I believe many food services will adjust by adopting delivery at home services when people start working more from home. You always adjust to the circumstances if you are to survive.
I’ve been connected to Sears my entire life. My grandfather started working for Sears in 1946 when he got out of the Navy. My grandparents met because they both worked at Sears. My parents met because *they* both worked at Sears. Sears was my first job from 1995-2001 and I worked there for a year an a half during my fieldwork semesters for grad school during 2006 and 2007.
Sears so came to typify capitalism and the American way of life, that President Eisenhower had thought to airdrop copies of the catalog over the Soviet Union. By 1965, Sears had captured the middle 80% of the American market, and by 1980, they had pretty much driven all their competition out of business.
The problems for Sears began when their business took a downturn in the Carter years, but they took it personally and hired consultants who conducted a lengthy study and recommended a complete change to the corporate culture.
The Sears tower was an ill-advised boondoggle (back in 1973), and they were already looking to sell it by the early 1980s. But it was the consultants that did the real damage. We saw Sears concentrate on “The Softer Side” and start to ignore its traditional strongholds of well-made tools, furniture, and appliances. Department managers no longer worked with buyers but merely received shipments and put out the product according to corporate planograms. Land’s End was brought in, along with several other non-Sears “concessions.” Sears began “competing downward” with lower-quality stores like K-mart and Target, and so its reputation for simple Good/Better/Best quality gave way to one of cheap crap and “deals.” Discover and the Sears Card were spun off, and, perhaps most tragically, the catalog was discontinued.
Sears, which had been Amazon a full century before Amazon was Amazon, thanks to its catalog, simply ceded all that and retreated to brick-and-mortar instead of using the catalog to transition into what would become the burgeoning internet commerce.
In the internet age, the company was late in setting up a website, and when it did, the website failed to function well. Some items were web exclusive that could be sent to the home or sent to the store for pickup, but which could only be returned through the web (even though they were virtually identical to versions sold in the stores). The website was a failure on pretty much every level, but I won’t belabor that point.
As the consequences of its bad decisions caught up with it, Sears and K-mart merged, but while the new company was called Sears Holdings, it was really the K-mart side that had the whip-hand. Eddie Lampert was able to suck it dry like a vampire as he administered the company’s “managed decline.”
I highly recommend Donald R. Katz’s book “The Big Store,” which is a history of the company from its founding to its centenary in the late 1980s. Seeing what became of it (and knowing that it didn’t have to be that way) is a little like contemplating the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
Why would you want to inflict Californians on Oklahoma? Arguably, Oklahoma is more Conservative than Texas. Put up those signs you mentioned on New Mexico!
I live in central TX. I got attacked by two rat snakes in my backyard last weekend and this morning had to kill a coral snake trying to come in my front door.
If you like poisonous, aggressive snakes in your home, TX is the place for you.
Sadly, I have not seen a snake since we moved to Texas…even now that we live near a lake and do lots of fishing. I miss snakes, and I’d pay money to see a coral snake in the wild. That’s a boyhood dream come true.
If I’d known I woulda saved it for you.
Let me know next time, and we can video chat…the three of us.
Best I can do now is send you a pic of the carnage. Coral or rattler, your choice.
Guys, as someone with a degree in Economics I very much agree with you that most Economists are full of (guano). Look no further than Gulag Barbie up in New York with her Econ degree from Boston University. Yeesh….
As a former retailer I once looked at opening mall locations – rent was unaffordable and mall management runs the show. They tell you when to open and close and participate in the profits of your business. I have seen a trend of consumers going to local brick & mortar retailers, inspecting the merchandize previously researched on line and do one of two things; They offer the retailer the opportunity to match the price, or they go home and order it on line for less money and have it delivered to their door. Many traditional retail businesses hire minimum wage employees who know nothing about their products & services and the turnover in staff is a revolving door. Good help is hard to find the old saying goes and it’s not getting any easier. Price is only an issue in the absence of value and until consumers figure that out and retailers start, hiring, training, paying and retaining the people interacting with the customer, the internet will continue to win the day.
However, those local shops who sell products about which they know and provide good service and value will do pretty well. Clothing retailers who can actually help you with style can thrive. But maybe that is more of small city/town thing. My wife has two shops that she goes to. the “clerks” own the store and give quite a bit of assistance. My local hardware store is similar. If I have a question, I go there not Lowes.
I believe there are quite a number of us who are willing to pay a bit extra to keep our local businesses going.
What’s likely going away is the free/low cost internet. With all the economic damage a lot of people are going to have a lot less money to spend on all the goodies that advertisers hawk. That’ll likely cause the value of advertising to crater and all the devices and services that are supported entirely or partially by advertising dollars will be slammed hard.
I don’t think I would call my internet free. It’s basically a monopoly in my area. Now that I have to have it to work it will probably go up.
You pay to get to the web, but virtually everything on it is either paid for or subsidized by advertising.
Except Bill, Scott and Steve!!
But you are correct. though I find their algorithms funny. Any time we buy something on line we get ads for the thing we just bought and ones like it. I already bought it. Too late.
But the spy network of Amazon and Google is impressive.
Milking the movie Cow gives mostly sour milk. Why bother paying for it? Most movies aren’t worth watching for free let alone spending good money to watch it with several hundred other people.
In the past decade, I actually paid a movie house to watch three movies – all Star Wars episodes. The rest of the time, it wasn’t worth the trouble, expense, or time.
I seriously doubt that I will ever go to another movie house. Mostly because what they show is not even entertaining. It is mostly propaganda about the regressive/progressive sacrifice of all to all morality which I know to be anti-mind and anti-life. In other words, I am not buying what they are selling either financially, philosophically, emotionally, or intellectually. I don’t give a damn if they slowly or rapidly go out of business. They contribute nothing to the quality of my life!
Funny that you should mention Star Wars – I used to love seeing them in the theaters. I thought Episode VII was OK, and Episode VIII left me sick of the franchise. As one commentor put it, “Star Wars movies have become more of an obligation than an event.” Even though we have Disney + I still haven’t watched the last movie. Frankly, it was more fun watching Overlord DVD & Critical Drinker YouTube vids ripping on it than the movie itself.
That said, Rogue One was the best movie since Empire, Solo was flawed but fun, and we enjoyed The Mandalorian. Hopefully the massive losses from their theme parks being closed will prompt Disney to start making Star Wars movies that are watchable again
I watched all 5hrs of Mauler’s take down of Last Jedi. I feel I’ve seen the movie.
Maybe, maybe not. Seems that commerce today is built to satisfy the middle 80%. Those of us who have interests or needs outside of that 80% are SOL. Yet, computers, the internet, and streaming of music and movies allows a much wider range of things with a much lower overhead costs. Hence, the 20% who don’t go along with the crowd represent a huge unsatisfied market. Admittedly a bit fragmented but that can be satisfied at a much lower cost than ever before. I won’t hold my breath waiting for Disney et.al. to wake up before they enter their ultimate collapse into oblivion.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, more and more of us are making our own entertainment and leaving the world of mass produced visual/emotional/intellectual garbage.
That’s kind of my point – Disney seems to be making movies only for 5% instead of 95% like they used to
When I heard the other day AMC was in talks with Amazon for a purchase my first though was whether we’d be able to go see Amazon Prime exclusive movies or shows at the theater. That would be one way to rejuv the industry… streaming longer format shows on the big screen in a communal experience.
A number of years ago when the last of the Peter Jackson LOTR movies came out a theater did a special 3 movie package. You got tickets for all three movies, popcorn, soda and a sub sandwich, plus something else food wise. There were breaks between each movie and the last was the usual midnight showing but you’d already been there maybe 6 hours and watched two movies.
I wonder if 3-4 part TV Miniseries style show/movies could be done the same way. I would envision something more in the hour to 90 minute length with a partnership with a local sub or pizza shop to cater in food once a week or once a month for a meal somewhere in the middle maybe.