REVITALIZATION

Challenges and Opportunities

We are not alone, today there are over 30,000 small rural communities that have been losing most of their ambitious young to the cities, where they can earn more money. They move sacrificing friends, family and a quality of life for one thing more money.

Urbanization 1900 to 2000

    Thousands of revitalization projects have failed to reverse this world wide trend. Yet there are a few exceptions! For example, there are small communities in North Dakota that have been revitalized and are now exciting and dynamic places to live. Their secret is, you guessed it, money, lots of money from oil and gas development. It’s not just oil, Havre, MT.  sprang to life when the Burlington Northern Railroad chose to centralize their management in this once dying farming and ranching community.

    A few other small communities have brought back ambitious young people when they created pathways to riches. Fortunately, there are now more pathways to riches today, than at any other time.

    History teaches that the most opportunities happen when there is great change. Like the industrial revolution which created many new opportunities for the adjil and adventurous, and yes it also devastated many tradition bound people. Today we are entering a period of change as profound as the industrial revolution. The big difference is speed for our changes are being condensed into a much shorter time frame.

The AGE of EXPONENTIAL PROGRESS

    Let me start with a little futuristic story about Tammy and Bill, two rich people, who bought new airplanes. Bill’s bought a fast jet powered plan that could average a bit over 1000 miles per hour. Tammy’s plane was powered by a new untested exponential wa-wa drive. The salesman told her that it would outperform all planes and even some rocket ships. When Tammy told Bill what the salesman said, he laughed at her plane and the silly sounding wa-wa drive. So she challenged him to a distance contest with the looser paying $10,000. This was to be a week long contest with each plane flying for 8 hours a day for a total of 40 hours. They agreed to keep in touch reporting progress over their smart phones.

    Day 1: after one hour of flight, Bill called and said, “where are you? In the last hour I have flown 1000 miles, how far have you flown”.

   Tammy answered “well I haven’t flown at all I’m still on the ground and in the last hour my wa-wa drive has moved my plane only 1 inch”.

    Bill said, “ya, ya quit teasing me, I know you can’t beat me but 1 inch is too silly to be even a joke”.

    Tammy replied, “No Bill it is no joke my plane has only move one inch”.

    Bill in disbelief said, “well if that is true you can pay me the $10,000 prize money now. What do you say?”

    “No Bill I will stick it out for the day, then I’ll give you my answer.”

    An hour later Bill reported another 1000 miles and Tammy reported 2 inches of movement.

    Next hour was Bill did another 1000 miles and Tammy’s wa-wa engin move her plan 4 inches. By the end of the first 8 hour day Bill had flown 8000 mile and Tammy’s plane still grounded had move a total of 21 feet.

    As Tammy’s plane was being towed back to the hanger she loaded her spreadsheet program into her laptop. Then she started putting in the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, … on up to the 40 doublings. Looking at the result she shouted, “damn, I’ll beat him I’ll really beat him. Once she was climbed out of the cockpit and met her friends and reporter people started consoling her on her obvious defeat.  

    She shook them off saying “I’ll beat him! Yes I’ll really beat him!”

    Her friends said, “Tammy you're crazy anyone with a little bit of common sense can see that it’s impossible. Just ask some of the old timers they will tell you the same thing. Just give up”.

    Tammy replied, “Common sense and tradition are the two worst sources of knowledge and opportunity. Common sense told us the world was flat, that the sun circled the earth, that this table is solid when in fact physicists have proven that it is 99% empty space, held together by atomic forces. There are many thousands of other example where traditional beliefs and common sense have totally failed us. It would be stupid for me to rely on them when I have science, technology and mathematics as guides they have been tested and proven far more reliable.  I’ll bet you any amount of money you want that I’ll win.”

    Seeing an opportunity for easy no risk money several people bet on Bill winning. Some of them even betting their life’s savings.

Day 2: Bill total distance travel  16,000 miles. Tammy still on the ground total distance 1 mile. Many more people get that Bill would win.

Day 3: Bill total distance 24,000 miles. Tammy still on the ground total distance traveled traveled 132 miles. Many more people get that Bill would win.

Day 4: Bill total 32,000 miles. Tammy Airborne in first hour at 264 mph, She passes Bill in the 7th hour traveling at 16,946 mph, her total miles at the end of the day was a winning 67,786 miles.

Day 5: Bills ending total was 40,000 Miles. Tammy who flew into outer space so that her plane would not melt from wind resistance, ended the day with a total miles traveled of 17,353,403 miles. Thus beating Bill by over 17 million mile.

She collected million of dollar in wagers from all of the traditional common sense faithful.  

Exponentials Today

     The task of sequencing the human genome progressed exponentially, but the task was very big. After years of work and millions of dollar, only 1% of the genome had been sequenced. The doom and gloomers were saying I told you so, sequencing the human genome is impossible. Others were celebrating and saying yes, yes, we’ve sequence 1% of the genome so we are only 7 doubling from completion. And they were right for the completion came very quickly. Today, exponential progress has continued, the time and cost of sequencing has dropped from millions of dollars to a few thousand and still falling.

    Another example of exponential progress is IBM Watson that computer beat the two all time champions of the game of Jeopardy. This was a major breakthrough for it requires nuanced linguistic ability. People ask “is Watson intelligent?” We say no, Watson show only college level learning ability. In college one learns to read, remember and retrieve on exams information from books. Some college student attend their lectures other often skip them because  the content of lectures are generally available in a less boring and more condensed form in books. Watson is a master of this kind of learning.

    As society becomes more complex the number of jobs requiring massive amount of learning and memory are growing. Hundreds of thousand of medical research papers are published annually, no doctor has the time to keep up. Companies needing to comply with hundreds of thousands of government rules and regulation. Materials chemical engineers need to keep up the the properties of thousand of new compounds. In learning and analyzing these masses of verbal information Watson surpasses humans.

    Watson continues to progress In the three years since winning Jeopardy Watson has made a 2,400 percent improvement in performance, and is 90 percent smaller. As of 2013 Watson is able to read, memorize, and evaluate 200 books a second. Also Watson is now on the cloud, this lowers cost, and make it available to far more people. Watson is only one of many areas of exponential progress.

    Here is a clip from http://jobkillers.blogspot.com/ a blog that gives a quick over view of some jobs destroying technologies.

         Linda says, “I lost my job to a computer! After graduating from college with a masters degree I became a tax account, and earned good money. Then after working for the same company for 16 years I was let go because computer programs like Turbo Tax, cost less and do a better job. So today I’m stocking shelves at Wal-mart and I’m not alone. Bill a fellow worker was an electrical engineer for 11 years, designing and testing circuit boards.  Four years ago he was replaced by a computer program, which even Bill admits, does a better job, and at a fraction of the cost. Then there is Andrea a single mother, with a law degree, whose job was taken over by e-discovery software, and yes, it does a better job at a fraction of the cost. Today she’s a Produce Associate at Walmart stacking fruits and vegetables. She says “I feel defeated and helpless, how am I ever going to pay off $63,000 in student loans. And to make matters worse my x-husband has lost his job as the manager of a camera store. This is because smart phones are wiped out millions of jobs selling and manufacturing cameras, PDA's, GPS, and MP3 players. So today he’s delivering pizzas and only paying a fraction of his child support.”

    Not all jobs will vanish, but competition for those that remain will drive down wages. Already for the last 6 years real wages have not risen adding to the growing economic inequality. There has been a 40 year decline in the middle class.

    Before we look at local opportunities there is one more factor to take into account. As jobs that have traditionally been the providence of the college educated middle class shrink so will government tax revenue for the middle class pays 70% of the taxes. The government will be stretched as more people become unemployed and more needing food assistance. Already in the last budget passed by congress and signed by the president, 800 million dollars was cut from SNAP (formerly called food stamps). Also farm subsidies were cut which will mean increases in food costs. And even the military and homeland security budgets were cut as well as hundreds of other programs. We are like to see a significant shrinking of government resources at the very time when the demand will grow exponentially. Another pattern is that when economies shrink, and people become hungry crime increases.

Rural Opportunities

Already advanced technologies have wiped out 16 million entry level jobs. As a result according to the government there are over 11 million college graduates unemployed, or working at low skill jobs, like flipping burgers, delivering pizzas, or stocking shelves. If technology continues to advance millions more jobs will vanish. The good news is that technology is also creating thousands high tech entrepreneurial opportunities, and millions of low tech opportunities.

    Today there are a lot of entrepreneurial accelerators in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Boulder, and around schools like MIT. All of these accelerators are aimed at the high tech elite, what most people don’t realize is that it is the low tech support companies make more money and fail less often.

     Entrepreneurs themselves are a major source of new opportunities. When the Wright brothers invented the airplane they created opportunities for airplane manufacturers like Boeing. They also created thousands of second tier opportunities. These, for the most part are low tech, like food services, airport support, travel agents and manufacturers of airplane seats, etc.. It is in this second tier where historically businesses have earned the most money and created many new jobs. So, the more entrepreneurs there are, the more new opportunities there will be.

    These new low tech opportunities are ideal for the people who have lost jobs to technology. Dr Yunus has proven that average people can become successful self employed individuals. By loaning them small amount of money he and the Grameen Bank have help over a million most uneducated people succeed. Our experience in the more complex US economy is that people need more training and support then Dr Yunus's program provides.

BOTTOM LINE: There is a growing need for a low cost, supportive and intensive entrepreneur development program for average people, and especially for single parents who are in the majority today. Providing this training and support is the goal of the GREEN ENTREPRENEUR DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL.