After having studied the possible futures for three weeks, Lucy looked up at the display at the front of the room with a smile. She pressed a key on the keyboard and the tree illustrating the possible futures remained, but the colors of the lines, the style of the lines, and the legends changed. She pressed a different key with a similar result. She pointed to the one line and, while looking over at William, asked, "Is this the one?"
"I believe that is the one I'm pursuing. I see them differently in my mind than up there," William answered. His vision didn't show lines on a monitor, but sequences of images of stereotypical people and lifestyles. There was far more detail in what he could see.
Lucy used a pointer to select that particular line. A complete description of the line appeared on the display. The line was now captured as a set of graphs for each independent variable. She scanned the values of all of the variables for that particular line. A lot of the predictions weren't pretty. She sighed and said, "There will be a lot of unhappy people for a while if we pursue this future."
"Yes," William answered walking up to the display. It was now lit from the back so that they could approach it and discuss aspects of each line without blocking the projection. He walked along the line pointing to various features while he walked. He said, "The cost of living is increasing throughout this time period. The values put on real estate are going to inflate beyond their actual worth starting about this time. There will be a lot of speculation going on and the values will climb a lot higher.
"At this point, the trend is going to end when there is a normal market correction. Some of the more aggressive speculators will lose everything. Even though they will constitute less than half a percent of the people buying real estate, they will have driven the market prices to more than double their actual value."
"Wait," Lucy said with a frown. She double-checked the values on the screen and then said, "You're telling me that less than half a percent of the buyers can inflate property values that much?"
"Any time you have aggressive speculation in a single market the speculators exaggerate a trend. Buying and selling property becomes their livelihood. They are always on the lookout for deals. They kill the lower end of the market forcing others who are interested in buying property for use as a home to have to pay a higher price. They take a low end property and sell it as a higher value property. Everything gets inflated," William answered.
"I still don't see it," Lucy said with a frown. As far as she was concerned, there were always deals that could be found.
William said, "Let's say that the average home purchaser buys a house once every twenty years. When they are ready to buy a new house, they sell their old house. A speculator might buy and sell twenty houses a year. That makes them equivalent to four hundred regular buyers. Even though they may constitute a small percentage of the buyers, they are effectively as much as a quarter of the actual market. That has a big effect when the goal is making money rather than buying a nice home."
"I didn't think about it that way," Lucy said.
"They will also account for a major portion of the bad debt because it really isn't backed up by much beyond the properties they owe mortgages on," William said.
"Depending on the size of the debts, that could really put a squeeze on the banks," Lucy said.
Nodding his head in agreement, William said, "We are going to see a collapse of the credit companies when people can't pay their debts. Right about here, one of the major credit card companies is going to fold. Stocks will plummet, real estate prices will fall, and a lot of small businesses will fail. Medium sized companies will shrink. The very large companies will have to fracture into hundreds of smaller companies in order to survive.
"Several dozen rather well known billionaires will file bankruptcy when their total assets fall under a billion while their debts remain well over a billion. They will bring down a lot more billionaires and multimillionaires when they fail.
"The average person is going to suddenly realize that they have lost almost all of their investments. Nearly a quarter of them will become unemployed. That will further drag the economy down despite the actions of governments all around the world."
Lucy stared at William open mouthed. After a few seconds, she said, "That's horrible. What are people going to do?"
"There will be soup kitchens just like in the great depression. There will be more homeless than ever. The Fusion Foundation will step in and save millions of people from total economic destruction. This isn't going to be limited to the United States, but will have international impact. The Fusion Foundation will have to reach out worldwide in order to help," William said.
"You stepped down from the board of directors," Lucy said thinking that it was the worst time possible for the Fusion Foundation.
"That's right," William said.
Shaking her head, Lucy said, "I hope it steps up to the challenge."
He smiled and said, "One of the saving graces will be that a lot of people will own cars that can take them to where the work is. These are cheap cars that last forever."
"Your car company?" Lucy asked.
"Yes and no," William answered. He said, "My little car company won't survive as a major economic force, but it will force car companies around the world to adopt a longer term perspective on the automotive market. They'll come to understand that their corporate goal is not to grow but to maintain a basic healthy bottom line that comes from having a consistent market share and to maintain a good profit by maintaining a low operating cost."
"How?" Lucy asked.
"They'll stop coming out with a new model every year," William answered with a smile. Too much of the market was driven by fashion rather than function. A major economic crisis would put a lot of that market drive back on track.
"Ah," Lucy said. She wondered how much money was wasted every year doing nothing except changing the body style a little here and there.
He walked a little ways down the display to another point. He said, "Four years after the first major effects of the fall are felt, the economy will start to recover. Local small scale manufacturing will be the first economic sector to recover. They'll produce low cost high quality products that everyone needs. It will be a matter of making necessities rather than luxuries."
Lucy frowned and asked, "What kind of products?"
"Nuts, bolts, screws, nails, wire, replacement parts, fusion cells, light bulbs, and other standard household items," William answered.
Staring at the chart, Lucy asked, "Where is the capital for all of this going to come from?"
"I've been shifting my investments from stocks, bonds, certificates of deposits, and real estate into ownership of small companies across the country," William answered with a smile. It was going to take him over ten years to transition his investments so that his actions wouldn't trigger an early crisis. He added, "I've been spending the money on purchasing buildings, machines, and farms."
"Farms?" Lucy asked.
Nodding his head, William said, "No matter how bad the economy gets, people will need to eat. For a while, the biggest purchaser of agricultural products will be the Fusion Foundation. Of course, I'll sell it at cost."
"You've got it all planned out, don't you?" Lucy said staring at William.
"Yes, I do. This is the only future that I've found that changes the basic consumer driven economy in what I view as a good direction. The current economy is based on planned obsolescence. That doesn't really move the standard of living forward. In fact, it holds it back. Sure, some improvements are made here and there in products, but the economic cost on the average household is tremendous and the stress on resources is phenomenal."
"What do you mean?" Lucy asked. Like many people, she had assumed that the standard of living had improved tremendously over the past thirty years.
William answered, "Take a common household item, let's say an iron. There's not too much that can be done to an iron. It is used to press clothes. It is a utility item in just about every household. You buy one and use it for an hour or so a week. Most of the time, it is kept in a closet somewhere. Why should a household have to buy a new one every four years or so? There's no reason. The style of the iron isn't all that important."
"An iron costs thirty dollars or so," Lucy said not seeing what the big deal was about it.
"It is just one of many household items like that. There are mixers, vacuum cleaners, telephones, and other things. Sure it is just thirty dollars, but ten such items a year is three hundred dollars. Let's take a slightly more expensive item like a DVD player. They last about three years before the plastic gearing dies," William said.
"I see your point," Lucy said. Lots of money was getting spent just to maintain the status quo rather than improve the standard of living.
"The cost of these little items will increase, but you won't have to replace them every three or four years. Improving the quality of an item does cost a little money, but that money goes to people who do the work. It does require extra people, but they are consumers," William said.
"So the market for cheap poorly made items will disappear. Won't that mean that companies will experience slower growth?" Lucy said.
William smiled at that and said, "The only way for a company to grow will be to come up with new products. These will be products that represent a real improvement over the current generation of products. It won't just be a matter of changing the color of the buttons, but a real substantive improvement in functionality. It has been decades since there's been real substantive improvement in household products."
"What do you mean?" Lucy said with a frown. She considered the computer and all of the major improvements that have occurred over the years.
"Look around the house. How many items are actually improvements over what was on the market thirty years ago? You'd be surprised at the answer. Furniture? No. Kitchen ware? No. Hygiene products? No. Take a good inventory of what is in the house and ask yourself if there has been a real improvement in utility, quality, or value of that product. All that has occurred is that the majority of those products have become disposable," William said.
"Oh," Lucy said. She hadn't thought about all of those hidden costs.
"The whole world has to go through an economic crisis to realize the waste of money that use of disposable products has come to mean. Spending the ten dollars more to get an item that lasts three years instead of one use will start to make sense," William said. "There won't be the endless cycle of buy and replace that has developed over the past thirty years. The demands on resources will diminish as well."
"That's a vision," Lucy said coming to appreciate the full scope of his plan for the world.
William said, "We've become a world of self-service businesses. That's not going to survive this economic crisis. When you can't afford the quantity of food that come pre- packaged, you'll stand in line to get the quantity you can afford. When you can't afford to buy the wrong part to fix something around your house, you'll expect a knowledgeable person at the hardware store."
"I can see where you're going with this," Lucy said. She asked, "What about crime?"
Nodding his head, William said, "A lot of criminal activities will flare up during the economic downturn, but the new economy with long lasting high quality goods will change things tremendously."
Looking back at the period of economic stress, Lucy asked, "What about prostitution and drug use?"
"You have to be able to afford drugs to use them," William said. That was going to be a major issue during the early days of the economic crisis. There would be a lot of addicts in dire need of cash to get drugs and cash wouldn't be easy to get.
"That will cause a lot more crime," Lucy said.
"In the short-term," William answered.
Lucy shook her head and said, "I don't know about that."
"Prostitution will become legal," William said.
"What?" Lucy asked surprised by that.
Nodding his head, William said, "It will become legal. Cities, counties, and states will need the tax revenue."
"I wouldn't have predicted that," Lucy said.
"The tax boost will be transient, but the legalization will last," William said. A major change in the criminalization of the citizenry would take place over the next few years. A lot of laws that made individuals who were basically law abiding citizens into criminals would be repealed. Even little things like registration of vehicles would change. The need for annual registration was an income generating activity more than anything else.
"Why would the tax boost be transient?" Lucy asked. She didn't imagine that the demand for prostitution would go down.
William smiled and said, "Well, the tax laws are going to undergo some major changes as well. You see, the second economy is going to make a major upswing as a result of the primary economy taking a downturn. People will be paying cash for services rather than using traceable mechanisms to avoid the added cost imposed by the tax burden. There will be a lot of unreported income over that four year period and that will significantly hurt tax revenues. Deficit spending on the part of government will go through the roof."
"That's not good," Lucy said.
"That's right. So instead of taxing income which is very hard to measure, the government will turn to taxing expenditures on goods rather than services. Like I said, services will increase across all market sectors. The taxes on goods will be significant, but the tax revenue will be consistent across time and easily collected," William said.
"Okay," Lucy said.
William added, "That will also increase demand for high quality long lasting products."
"It all seems to fit together," Lucy said.
"It is even better than that. Healthcare costs will decrease significantly since healthcare is a human intensive service activity. More nurses will be on staff and the quality of healthcare will increase. The profession as a whole will have more human resources to throw at the problem of prevention rather than treatment," William said. His vision showed him a future without waiting lines at hospitals and clinics. He saw a future where healthcare turned more towards treatment of injury rather than chronic condition.
"I suppose," Lucy said doubtfully.
The changes he saw were at a more fundamental level than he was conveying. William said, "Look at it this way. A gym is predominately a service oriented business. When there are no taxes it becomes easier for a gym to stay in business despite offering lower cost memberships. They can afford to pay for more trainers. The customer value increases and memberships increase. People work out and lose weight. The incidence of diabetes goes down."
"You're saying that the lifestyle of the entire world will change," Lucy said uncertain that more people would make it to the gym. People were already stressed with more than enough demands on their time.
Nodding his head, William answered, "Yes. It will change at a fundamental level. Rather than cheap fast food, people will want inexpensive dining experiences complete with real service. Rather than walk through a grocery store pushing a shopping basket, they would rather use their computer to call in their order and pick it up. It will take five minutes to do the weekly shopping rather than an hour."
"All that will come about because of changes in the tax laws?" Lucy asked.
"That and more," William answered. Looking at her, he said, "Think about the changes in employment that will result. Hiring an extra person won't cost much at all once you take out the overhead associated with managing staff. You end up with no taxes to compute and an hour's pay for an hour's work."
"You're really pushing service," Lucy said.
Nodding his head, William said, "A lot of pundits are talking about this country becoming a service-oriented economy. They don't realize that we used to be a service- oriented economy. Service has almost disappeared in this country. Every transaction fifty years ago had a service component to it that has disappeared in the modern world of self- service. ATMs and automated deposit have replaced bank tellers."
"I hadn't thought about that," Lucy said. Self-service seemed to be the buzz word everywhere she went. Grocery stores now had self-service checkout lanes, even fast food places had order takers rather than waiters, and no one checked the oil at gas stations anymore. She wondered how all of that had disappeared.
William walked to a point well down the branch he wanted to drive the world. He pointed to the last point on the chart and said, "After this, the economic chaos that holds today will have quieted down. A world-wide improvement in the quality of life will take hold. The standard of living will increase, political instability will decrease, and overall health will be increased. The environment will have improved. Family planning will be the buzzword of the day. Population growth will decrease worldwide for the first time in history."
"It sounds like a utopia," Lucy said. She noticed that the degree of branching had quieted down significantly along that branch. It was just another sign of the stability that would come.
"We won't be alive to see it," William said looking over at Lucy.
"That is just fifty years from now," Lucy said with a frown.
Shaking his head, William said, "What I'm talking about is more than a hundred years in the future. Fifty years from now there will still be poverty and unequal living conditions around the world. It will take a lot of time for the standard of living in the third world countries to come up to equality with what is here."
"Oh," Lucy said.
William pointed to the last point and said, "The need for me will come to an end about here."
"And then what?" Lucy said.
"We will take a well deserved vacation," William said with a smile.
Lucy laughed and asked, "And until then?"
William looked over at his wife and lover. In a quiet voice, he said, "We will live here and watch the world. We'll nudge the world along the path we want with little actions taken well before the world even knows what is going on.
"We'll spend our days with a few friends, our family, and the staff. It will be a quiet life disrupted occasionally by those who want to resist the changes we are bringing about. The first twenty years will be rough, but it will quiet down. It will be a peaceful life despite the fact that we'll be isolated from most of the world."
"You won't get credit for what you've done," Lucy said stating what she believed to be a fact.
"That's right," William said putting an arm around Lucy.
Lucy said, "I think that is a shame."
He looked at the line on the display and said, "I don't need credit. Knowing what I've done is reward enough."
"It doesn't sound like a bad life to me," Lucy said giving him a hug.
William winked and said, "There will be a lot of time for you to do mathematics."
"Now that sounds pretty good to me," Lucy said with a laugh. She looked at him for a second and asked, "How many kids are we going to have?"
"I have no idea," William answered with a satisfied sigh. Even for a
prophet, some things in life have to remain a mystery.