A Gauss Lens to discern catalysts of the next economic expansion cycle
We have participated in unprecedented consumer service expansion of a generation: what next?
We present our first Gauss Lens Research to try and guide to value creation opportunities of the next cycle while borrowing from the lessons of past ones.
The Goldilocks economy, expressed via low inflation and available capital sponsoring demand-side prosperity - is ending. Advancing rapidly and testing the ships in international waters are the supply side shocks, high inflation across a multitude of asset classes — and mandate for a major capital-intensive reformation.
The paradygm shift coincides with geopolitical tension, popular movements catalysed by unchecked propaganda, voiced by populist heralds, and falsehoods on social media. The globalisation, according to some pundits is in decline. Or is it?
On the (re)claimed foundation of a flat world — transnational commerce has been waged during the past 30 years: premiums collected by streamlined corporations via established routes of (1) capital flows, (2) real-time communication standards and (3) liberalised employment policies — all scaled across the globe.
All these elements are presently tested by more stringent capital availability in comparison with free reign of USD trillions issued first to cover for the malfeasance of big banking groups - and then to stimulate digital-aided consumption during Covid isolation. It is also tested by nationalist resurgence propagated through (unmoderated) media platforms that hundreds of millions glued themselves to.
The premium garnered via arbitrage of capital cost, cost labour and secure IP — is dissipating: some saying the process had begun long ago.
Others refute the notion, discarding for the shortsitedness vs. what is possible with new economical cycles that emerging technologies represent.
Rebuild impacts both the what and the how: manufacturing layered anew with smart machinery, sensors and data networking that enmesh the sensory data required for both input and output.
We will follow with a series of posts to identify the pre-conditions and changes that followed integration of inventions (new things) and innovations (change as to how things are done) — and perspectives on major challenges that often accompany them:
- A view on past waves and what technical and operational techniques aided them — looking at Florentine times of Middle Ages and the depth of US Depression of 1929–34;
- A view on integrating innovations in breakthrough moments of competition between nations in 16th century;
- A view from climate change perspective on the pressure to rebuild manufacturing and city service structure layers for a global population of 8 billion and counting.
We named the fund by the name of the Prince of Mathematics — in respect for his relentless pursuit to measure dynamics systems with breakthrough simple yet powerful advancements in math and (non-Euclid) geometry — with science.
It also imbues the organizational DNA and pushes us to study the past and peer into the void of the future.
We are publishing our first Gauss Lens publication — also named in his name — to figuratively allow the light of information that passes through the aperture, to present one crystal-clear image.
Gauss lens in particular, designed by Carl Fridrich Gauss, allowed to cancel an optical aberration effect and see distant objects in clarity.
So we strive to do the same in our representation of times past and the upcoming new economic cycle. To explain and prepare for the oncoming shift — by also looking in the past.
Here too, we are witness the peculiarities and beauty of physical laws: what we see as present while looking at distant objects that we dream of sometimes arriving to in the future — is in reality its past.
Hence our attempt to learn from the past to see the future.
