The 2020 pandemic is quite possibly the maximum amount of “out of pocket attention” that us humans could, or will ever need to, allocate to pressing distractions in every corner of our periphery. Is it possible to consume more headlines, feeds, stories, or Netflix originals than we can consume during a long lockdown?
If only a small percentage of a consuming population claws back some portion of their day-to-day attention, whether it’s replaced by some curiosity of their own, or simply the burden of re-starting a commute, we will see that the businesses which boomed during lockdown be penalized to some degree. If there could be a renaissance of attention, we would hopefully see even greater shifts in our economy. All of us spending more of our attention on creative endeavors makes competition stiffer and choice greater.
Competition and choice is terrible for equity markets.
In the future, will robots be attending to most of what’s important, for us? Are they already doing that?