MATTSPLAINED [] MSP127 [] The Bubbles Economy
Bubbles. Living in them. Working in them. Socialising in them. Travelling in them. Is our future one of hermetically sealed environments? One where the needs of the lucky few are met by an on-demand workforce that never goes home?
Photo by Unsplash. Glitching by Kulturpop.
Hosts: Matt Armitage & Jeff Sandhu
Produced: Jeff Sandhu for BFM89.9
TRANSCRIPT
Usually, when we talk about Bubbles in a business or economic context, there’s usually a negative association. But more recently - from tourism, to sporting events to business - bubbles have taken on a more positive meaning. Here to explain is someone who’s spent most of his life in a bubble, MSP’s Matt Armitage.
Won’t be the first time you’ve been blowing bubbles on this show…
I’ll take that to mean you think I’m blowing little bubbles of insight and ingenuity.
Sure. If that’s what your bubble tells you I mean…
Hmm. I’m inoculated from negativity today.
Your thoughts are but unformed soap suds.
And simply slide over me.
But yes, you’re right. When we talk about bubbles it’s often in a negative sense.
We talk about them in the sense of speculative markets and economic booms that have outpaced any rational measure of their expansion.
And we use the term bubble because it’s something that’s seen as fragile.
It’s something that we expect to burst imminently.
But now we’re reframing the idea of bubbles as something that protects rather than isolates us from reality.
And we’re seeing that idea being applied to multiple sectors of society as a way to restart economies, give people more freedom of movement and to kick start leisure activities.
The travel bubble is one that has had a lot of press…
Yes. There have been a few of these mooted.
And they’ve thrown some really strange collections of countries together.
The idea is that countries with low rates of coronavirus cases can form travel corridors with each other.
In some instances this reopens completely closed borders, or removes those travellers from very onerous travel conditions, like quarantines at both ends.
Are there any in operation or are they still all being discussed?
China started a corridor with South Korea in May.
Singapore launched one about two weeks ago between it and six provinces in China, including Shanghai and Guandong.
And it’s currently negotiating to establish corridors with Canada and South Korea.
New Zealand is set to establish a corridor with Australia any time now.
The Pacific islands are also lobbying to join the NZ-Aus corridor.
We’re seeing business organisations around the world pushing to at least start what companies see as essential business travel.
But we’re also seeing increasing pressure to set up these bubbles to facilitate international tourism as well.
How would these bubbles work?
Well, no point conjecturing. This is how the one in Singapore currently works.
You have to be sponsored by a company or government agency which makes the application for a SafeTravelPass on your behalf.
If your application is approved you then apply for a visa, if you need one.
You have to take a coronavirus test within 48 hours of travelling.
On arrival in Singapore you present your SafeTravelPass as well as undergoing further health screening and take another coronavirus test at your own expense.
Your company transports you to your declared accommodation and you have to wait there for your test results.
Presumably you go into quarantine or straight to a COVID-19 treatment centre if you test positive?
Exactly. And even if you test negative your movements are restricted.
Your company has to submit a detailed itinerary for your trip, which you can’t deviate from.
you need to have Singapore’s Track and trace app installed on your phone.
And you can’t take public transport.
So, it’s a long way from freedom of movement?
Yes, so the important factors there are track and trace.
They know where you are and who you come into contact with throughout your trip.
This is a lot more stringent than some of the tourism bubbles being considered.
Which include things like shortened quarantine periods, testing on arrival and freedom to travel within designated regions.
How would that kind of movement be enforced, exactly?
This is the issue. There’s a lot of potential for abuse.
Currently, there’s a travel corridor operating between the US and Canada that allows US citizens to travel overland to and from Alaska, a US state.
However, they aren’t allowed to stop for anything except gas and motels.
They have to eat takeout - drive thrus if I’m not mistaken - and aren’t allowed to wander around and interact with Canadian citizens.
there’s a great deal of trust involved.
And Canadian police have been called in instances where US families have come into restaurants to eat or been spotted walking around towns.
I hope there’s some point other than - Americans don’t follow rules?
It’s more that people in general don’t follow rules.
Especially when they’re on holiday.
And most countries have at the very least liberalised domestic travel.
Coming to a country like Singapore, your limits are automatically limited by geography.
It’s realistic to expect that host state to be able to keep tabs on you.
What happens once you land in London, Sydney, New York for example?
The UK is already and very publicly struggling to instigate any kind of track and trace measures.
And once you’re in the US or Australia, you have pretty much an entire continent to explore.
Massively increasing your ability to spread an infection you have or to pick it up on those travels and transmit it back home.
It doesn’t sound as though you’re in favour?
I am. We can’t stay wrapped up and isolated forever.
I’m trying to show how complicated this is.
Just at a simple human level...
Because you want to talk about an inhuman level?
I wouldn’t have put it quite like that but you’re not far wrong.
One of the assumptions we make is that infrastructure and technology are seamless and interchangeable wherever we travel in the world.
As many airport operators have indicated, we can’t even think about a return to the kind of air travel we had before.
At least while any risk from this disease remains.
There isn’t enough space. Cast your mind back to the last time you travelled during a busy period.
The queues for check-in, baggage, immigration, boarding.
Try and multiply that space by a factor of social distance.
You’d have to build entire new hangars so that people could check-in and safely distance.
Presumably it would require a lot more automation as well?
Absolutely. You now have to health screen each passenger.
Possibly multiple times at different points through their journey through the departure and arrival airports.
But at the same time you don’t want frontline staff to take that risk of getting sick and the consequences of that to the staff members and society at large.
As much as possible you’re going to want people interacting with machines
Hence the reason you called this the inhuman level.
But adoption of these technologies is spotty at best.
For example, when I travel back to UK I use an automated biometric passport control machine that scans my face and passport.
Did they detect any biology?
Very funny. The machines recognize me as their friend and envoy.
Many airports don’t have that kind of tech and that’s just a baseline.
Even with automated check-in there’s often a human at the baggage counter.
We would probably want to see all of those people removed - at least for the time being.
You’d probably want health screening to be done by robots.
But what about the baggage and detectors.
Again, you probably want that largely automated - large scale body scanners on walkways that you stroll through and the human screening staff separated in another room.
Complicated but it sounds like it’s doable...
question is: how long will it take and how much money will it cost?
We still don’t know what the long term impact of COVID-19 will be.
Will we find a cure in the next 12 months? Will the virus dissipate or widespread immunity lessen the risk.
Could it mutate into an even more dangerous form?
Because the cost aside, it will take time, months or even years to buy and install this kind of equipment and to retool airport systems.
Especially the invisible ones...
Invisible ones?
Airports are a bit like icebergs.
Most of what happens in them isn’t visible to travelers.
There’s the huge ecosystem that provides baggage handling, catering services, cleaning, maintenance.
We’re just the herd animals being put into the pens.
All of the people that work there have to be kept safe or replaced with machines that don’t get sick.
So there’s an enormous element of risk in committing to this kind of scale and pace of automation when we don’t know how long these changes will be necessary for.
I could have sworn he promised to be positive today. After the break, an MSP first. Matt Armitage talks about sports. Game over, after the break.
BREAK
Matt, the last time we heard you talking about sports on this show was...
Never.
I know many many things.
And one of the things I know is that I don’t know enough about sport to even bluff about what I don’t know.
But sports are an area we’re seeing the idea of bubbles being discussed in?
Yes. In some countries sporting events have restarted.
By which I mean televised sports.
Because I’m reliably informed that those are the only ones that matter.
South Korea, again, which seems to be leading the way in many areas relating to living with COVID-19.
Have you ever belonged to a sports team?
I use to play in an amateur pétanque league.
That’s French bowls, in case isn’t the primary live feed on your sports subscriptions package.
So, that would be a no then?
I think you’re probably insulting our Francophone listeners.
But yeah, by and large, I don’t really see that there’s anything less ridiculous about Quidditch than there is about soccer.
Golf is probably the ideal sport for this new age, although I’d insist that each course include an impenetrable labyrinth containing a Minotaur at the end of the 18th hole.
That way supply and demand could achieved quite quickly.
Plutarch Matt, organiser of the 75th Open Golf Hunger Games...
That would be such fun.
All the things I could do with nature. Especially given that Tremors is one of my favorite films.
But, we’re talking about real sports and not the blockbuster, Matt-made events of the future.
Obviously, sport is big business. Clubs in major sporting leagues can have market valuations of billions.
Players sign multi-million dollar contracts.
And spectators pay top dollar for tickets to games and to watch on TV.
To give you an example - ESPN - which is the market leader in sports broadcasting brings in somewhere between USD3bn and USD11bn a year in revenue.
It’s a large divergence but the way cable packages are sold and structured is complicated and fragmented.
But anyways, sport is worth a lot of money. And people who are paying for sports broadcasters who have no sports to broadcast are asking for refunds.
Not to mention the sponsorships and advertising that keep the actual clubs and teams in various sports running.
In other words, there’s a lot of pressure to get these sports restarted safely?
Exactly. One sport that has already resumed in the US is boxing.
And as we see everything from UK premier league to football and basketball in the US looking for ways to reopen.
They are probably looking to that model for success.
Presumably the first thing is: no fans?
Yeah. At some point I think we’ll see socially distanced stadia.
But I would imagine it will only be for the very wealthy.
It’s not only the seating areas, it’s the entrances and exits.
I imagine - if this continues - we’ll see the first VIP only stadia in a few years time.
Rows of endless sanitized boxes.
But yeah, back to boxing.
There’s a really interesting series of articles at the not-so-failing New York Times looking into the many ways that sports are being restarted.
So check those out if you want more depth than I’ll be going into here.
But the boxing interested me...
Because you’re a wannabe Plutarch?
No, because boxing is a limited sport in the sense that there are two participants but it’s still high contact.
So the organisation behind the restart in the US is Top Rank, which is planning to stage two fight cards a week throughout the summer months from the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Vegas.
Because we come back to that parallel about airports and icebergs.
We see the fight event and a couple of people bashing each other.
But in order to stage the fights safely, the entire reboot needs to exist in a bubble, isolated from the outside world.
Because we’re talking about fighters and their trainers.
We’re talking about all the people who support them.
Health professionals. Make up artists for the pre-fight stuff.
Lighting technicians. Producers, directors, camera crew.
Potentially you’re talking about hundreds of people...
Who all have to be sequestered?
Yes. So you have this bizarre scenario where the casinos are actually operating more or less normally.
People sunning themselves by the pool - that kind of thing.
While entire floors of the casino hotel are isolated to allow the boxers and the crew to train but not to leave or move around public areas of the casino.
So it’s very much a gilded cage?
Even meals are served to the boxers and crew from behind plexiglass.
Anyone who leaves the bubble has to go through quarantine.
Everyone wears barcoded wrist tags and security guards escort people as they move around.
Everyone is tested twice a week.
For how long?
For the boxers it’s probably a relatively short amount of time.
A couple of weeks.
But for the productions crew it could be weeks or even months.
Not that they’re forced to be there!
So, Top Rank and the boxing association in Nevada are paying particular attention to the mental health needs of all concerned.
Because we’re in uncharted territory here. We don’t know what the long term effects of this kind of isolation and confinement are.
Or rather our models come from things like prisons where there are quite different expectations.
And then there are the matches themselves.
No spectators but pumped crowd noise from spectators watching on an app.
Separate platforms outside the ring for the host and the ring-card girls.
Pundits and commentators talking from their own studios and sound stages across the country.
How will that explain what happens with other sports?
When you look at a lot of league sports, the idea is that everyone plays everyone else.
Football, soccer, baseball, basketball. That’s a lot of teams per division and a lot of players and support personnel per team.
So your bubble has to be huge.
Which is where something like ESPN comes in - or rather its parent company - Disney.
Just for these boxing cards, they occupy a large chunk of real estate in a big casino.
So I’m thinking most extreme case scenario
That you isolate all the teams for an entire season?
Yes, that’s one possibility.
You create essentially a long term Olympic Village for the teams.
This is where Disney comes in - it having entire resorts to host and the sports facilities to host these tournaments in.
Wouldn’t you need multiple venues and locations?
Potentially. In that case you’d need your own fleet of planes or buses to whoosh the teams from one location to another.
Essentially from one quarantine green zone to another - without ever stepping foot into places that they could potentially be infected.
As these are contact sports, the testing and isolation regimes would have to be rigorous.
But they would probably have to extend far beyond normal crew requirements.
You would probably want everyone to live onsite for the duration.
Caterers. Cleaning staff.
An entire eco-system to care for the stars?
Yeah, so the penny may have dropped for listeners wondering why MSP would be interested in this as a model.
Because this isn’t just a model we may see for sports.
It could be repeated in many areas.
Making movies for example - maybe we see a return to the contract system where stars work exclusively for one studio and its pictures.
Many countries have seen their parliaments close down or go virtual. This is one model that would allow lawmakers to exist in a bubble that allows them to do their legislative work.
Companies could also adopt a similar model:
Isn’t that maybe taking it a step too far?
it’s not that outlandish, we’ve seen many care homes do something similar to protect residents.
What would be interesting - to me anyway - would be the extent to which it remapped our societies.
Imagine enclaves of the rich and famous. Living in hotel suites or bungalows while the people serving them crowd into dorms
A bit like that Snowpiercer movie / series.
It also sounds remarkably like the plot of the movie Land of the Dead...
One of my favorite zombie movies.
And yes, a pretty much pitch perfect analogue.
The zombies in this instance would be the coronavirus subjected hordes outside the gate.
While inside the elite live in luxurious splendor in a huge tower while the lucky few chosen to serve them eke out a life without any of the trappings of their bosses.
Pandemic or not, a bit different from being able to walk out into the real world versus being ripped apart by an undead horde?
Sure. But the movie is actually an economic allegory, it’s not about the zombies.
They’re just there to liven up the messaging.
You know how audiences are.
For every polemic filled monologue the actor deliver, the audience wants to see a zombie eating brains.
How do you think this show works?
I’m not even going to ask which one of us has his brain eaten...
With jobs scarce and rising unemployment levels, people may think they have no choice but to go and live inside this bubble.
Migrant workers are a feature of developing countries, but this pandemic could essentially bring that model back to developed countries too.
The idea of people forced - by quarantine restrictions - to live apart from their loved ones in order to work and earn money for them.
You can’t leave it there?
No. And to be honest - that is a worse case scenario.
But what we have seen is that the pandemic has deepened the disparities between the haves and the have nots in society.
From medical care through to access to food.
Life is much easier if you can afford to use food delivery apps for example, which are not in everyone’s price range.
Thankfully, in Malaysia the government has stepped in to control the prices of many essentials.
But that isn’t the case everywhere in the world.
So, do I see a pandemic ravaged future in the spirit of Land of the Dead?
No, I don’t.
But these systems we put in place to restart sports, industries, travel.
We have to make sure that they’re not just those gilded cages we talked about.
And that necessity forces us to walk towards a dystopia.