Sure Things II: Engines of Affluence
Not much needs to be said about the law. Lawyers can protect wealth only in societies that style themselves as democracies, and democracy is a frontier ideal.
Local electric power generation will become an engine of affluence. As the cost of supporting an electrical power infrastructure escalates beyond the ability of most people to pay, making power at home will become an issue for the wealthy. Solar power and wind power are current options. However, the hardware is conspicuous and vulnerable to storms and vandals. Further, there is no good way to store power generated when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Fuel cells with multi-fuel capability appear to offer a good solution for secure power in the homes and businesses of the wealthy.
The manufacture of high-end consumer products will become an engine of affluence. If you buy houses or cars or gasoline or tires or light bulbs or candy bars, or just about anything else, you will encounter "value engineering", which is the art of discovering the value in a product and getting rid of it. In an effort to keep prices within the reach of consumers, manufacturers already combine parts, make them thinner "but just as strong", replace expensive materials with cheaper ones, reduce test time, eliminate some kinds of tests and lose components that only might contribute to safety. You could think of it as a hidden form of inflation. In order to obtain a useful and safe product, consumers will have to move up the scale, and the cheaper products will drop out of sight as people make do without them or focus on maintenance instead of buying new. Ultimately, the only market for most new consumer products will be rich people, and only manufacturers positioned to take advantage of that will survive.
Maintenance will become an engine of affluence. Outside the circles of the incredibly wealthy, the global standard of living will be a Third World standard. Today in Cairo, anyone who can fix an obsolete toilet without spare parts is in demand. Hire a small army of such resourceful technicians and you have an engine of affluence. Under our assumptions, frontier theory predicts that this opportunity will become more widespread.
Security services will become engines of affluence. Body guards, guard dogs, concertina wire, alarms, weapons - those are the most obvious elements of an emerging market for protective services for the very rich. Fear on the
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