Sketchpad: Why everyone is “emigrating”

The pace of change is increasing at an increasing rate.

There is no maintain-the-status-quo option.

Thus, in a sense, we are all migrants.

There are various global disruptors and would-be disruptors.

Sometimes the disruptors are iconic entrepreneurs such as Jobs or Musk. More frequently the individual changes are undramatic and the actors anonymous.

But companies in many sectors and most jurisdictions have had to adopt cultures supportive of disruption to remain competitive.

Technological advances will continue to alter how people work and live.

The current economic model is not sustainable.

The physical environment cannot withstand a continuation of the 20th century trajectory.

What is not showing signs of changing is that political power remains concentrated at the national level.

Nationalism also continues to feature prominently at the level of how people self-identify.

The European Union experiment is wobbling after many decades of expansion and Europeans continue to identify firstly as Italians or Germans or French etc, not as Europeans.

SA is an extreme outlier:

  • The ruling party openly puts the interest of the party ahead of national interests.
  • The national economic dialogue continues to dodge the implications of a disruption-focused global economy.
  • Instead, SA’s national dialogue implies there is innate national wealth which government must distribute to reduce inequality.
  • Many SA voters and public commentators seem to believe that the more people who leave, the more wealth there is to distribute among those who remain.
  • Global disruptors are most impactful when they undermine the pillars of the old economy and nothing is quite as vulnerable as resource endowments.