The Efficient Consumer Worldwide

My son and I were realizing that one of the reasons there are so many now unemployed in the western world is simply that consumers are much more efficient than they used to be before the internet and globalization.

Let me give you an example: When I was a little boy in the 1950s my mother and I would always be very wary (uncomfortable) around salesmen in particular in some of the stores we went into. Though there were mail order business like Sears Roebucks and Penny's they were mostly used by very remote farmers who lived 25 to 100 miles from the nearest town or city where they could get good prices on things to buy. So, when I lived in Glendale and shopped with my mother and sometimes my father at night after he got off of work salesmen and sometimes sales women could be a bother and talk my mother or me into things that when we got home we realized we not only didn't want but also didn't need it either.

Now, compare that to shopping online using your computer where all you have to do is to click in the name of any item imaginable (literally) and you will often see not only the price 20 or 30 different businesses will charge you for it but also with a 5 star rating which is the best item to buy, which is the best and least expensive place to buy it etc. Because of this internet the customer (the consumer) has become king and much less of a victim than before. Though you can still be disappointed with what you buy it is much less likely now ordering over the internet because you can now spend as much time as you want looking at pictures and researching whatever you want to buy and have it always delivered to you front door within one day to 2 weeks depending upon how much you want to spend for shipping it to your home or business.

In fact, my son was telling me that because Amazon.com now sells food in addition to almost anything else you could literally never leave your home and just buy from either Amazon only or if you added EBAY to the list you could probably never leave home to buy anything as long as you have a credit card or ATM card that you don't mind putting online. And even that isn't a problem if you want to use Paypal or some other business like that to protect yourself even more. So, the consumer in the last 20 years just became 100s of times more efficient in buying everything. No wonder there is less made of everything because people now can research everything they buy and only buy what they really want online. The spend less on gas and diesel and less time driving etc. Now I will admit it might be a lot less fun not getting into your car or on the bus to go shopping at the mall. But all of you have to admit it is a whole lot safer buying online just not having to worry about getting mugged or getting into an accident on the way to the mall.

So now, imagine this is happening worldwide and turning businesses worldwide upside down. They either have to learn to compete online or most of the big ones simply eventually go out of business like Circuit City, Mervyn's and possibly now Blockbuster (the stores at least) and many others. The latest that is really upsetting my wife and daughter is Borders because they both like to buy a lot of books and putting every book on Kindle just isn't the same as a paper book you can hold in your hands unless you are traveling long distance and want to take a lot of books electronically for convenience on your Kindle.

So, welcome world to a 100s of times more efficient consumer that has put the old model of buying everything through stores on its head. What will it all mean besides more and more big box stores closing around the world? I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.

So, the point about how this affects employment worldwide can be best summed up this way. How many stores in the U.S. did Mervyn's, Circuit City, Blockbuster, and now Borders have? How many employees worked at those stores and in the administration and supply chains to those stores? How many families don't have a job now from management on down to supply clerks and truck drivers and delivery people? Then how many people did each one of those people support that now have to collect unemployment compensation? How many of those became full time alcoholics or drug addicts because they lost their job and can't get another? How many turned to crime out of desperation to take care of their families rather than have them live on the streets? This goes on and on and gets worse in each reiteration. So, the efficient consumer combined with the home loan crisis a couple of years ago and the crash of Lehman Brothers all brought us to where we are now. And I'm only bringing in a few factors there are many many more that you can also ferret out to fully understand the full magnitude of the shifts worldwide to society going on now. Governments the way they are presently designed cannot survive internet globalization. None of them can without being modified greatly. My thought is that we might at the end of all this wind up with something resembling the European Union of Earth or The United States of Earth where all countries become like the individual states of Europe or the United States. Likely it will look more like the European Union with the United Nations at its head. Though in the end the whole thing might be just too big and unwieldy to work at all. However, this is just a thought.

So for those of you who saw:

Nim's Island (2008) - IMDb

The part that Jodie Foster played of a writer (or telecommuter) who was an agoraphobic(afraid of leaving one's home and going into the public) was of someone who could literally LIVE from what she obtained from Amazon.com and Ebay and the like until she went to rescue Nim on her Island in the Pacific.