To hear the Wall Street Journal tell it, you’d think that the stay at home economy is here to stay.

Frankly, we’re not convinced that the votes are all in yet.

While amusement parks, movie theatres, gyms and many restaurants, et al have closed or have been permanently shuttered, are those verticals truly gone forever? Movie theatre sales had been down for quite some time, thanks streaming services, what to speak of the fact that many A list actors found it incumbent upon themselves to take political stances and lost a good part of their fanbase prior to this flu. The common folk expressed their opinions in box office receipts.

According to the Journal, there is glut of cheap labor for the likes of Amazon, whose coffers continue to be enriched and who spent billions on infrastructure – as SMB grocers were shuttered. Peleton sales are up, but it’s unlikely that that $2000 machine is being purchased en masse by those low-wage Amazon workers. Their customers are more likely work-from-home employees who can accomplish much with zoom, dropbox, slack, et al, which is not most people. The article cites a 469% increase in the number who had used telemedicine – but fails to mention that doctors’ offices were shuttered and hospitals available only to flu patients.

In other words, reporters touting the new stay-at-home economy don’t seem to be addressing anyone beneath their pay grade or level of education, and we’re beginning to see a backlash from seemingly arbitrary dictates. Case in point: as Heavy reported, this video that quickly went viral of a Cali based barkeep whose business was shuttered – despite the fact that she had invested thousands to provide outdoor service/be in compliance – while a movie set was allowed to do the same not fifty feet away. No one considers this ‘normal’ and the real question is: where’s the science, when compliance means nothing? Nor is this story not an outlier. This California Sheriff Has Some Choice Words for Newsom Regarding the Latest Lockdowns, commenting on the governor’s “dictatorial attitude toward California residents while dining in luxury, traveling, keeping his business open, and sending his kids to in-person private schools is very telling about his attitude toward California residents, his feelings about the virus, and it is extremely hypocritical.”

New Normal: the revolution will not be televised, although it does seem to be making its way to the tweet and parler streams. Hard to sell the new normal when the old normal works just fine for the people enacting Draconian rules that apply only to other.

The trust is gone.

The New Normal is beginning to look more like unintended consequences, such as the rise in ‘Zoom Towns’ – latter day boom towns that are springing up all over the US. Even the  Founding Fathers of Silicon Valley Give Up on California, Move to Texas.  According to the article, “In the last decade, more than 13,000 companies have moved out of California. And the moves are understandable because California has utter “contempt for business,” according to Joseph Vranich, a corporate relocation expert.” With the state’s – and other former tech hubs’ – seeming contempt for its citizenry with their endless lockdowns, and with the culture and nightlife that has always lured people to those big cities gone, the exodus comes as no surprise.

“If things do go back to that “normal,” some companies now benefitting from the stay-at-home economy could be in jeopardy. DoorDash, which now claims half the food delivery market in the U.S., reported a surprise profit in the second quarter of 2020, but … also warned potential investors in its forthcoming IPO that it could continue to lose money—a safe bet if the end of the pandemic means an end to its growth or even a drop in revenue,” says the Journal piece.

Typical Silicon Valley/technology business model or lack of it. Nothing New Normal about that.

“Nevertheless, many industries now face similar questions: Are Americans now satisfied with home workouts going to brave traffic and locker rooms to hit the gym?…Will they drive to a big box store or supermarket if the selection isn’t as good as what’s found in an app? Are people going to tolerate any extraneous effort whatsoever when they know whatever they want can be delivered to their door tomorrow or even in as little as two hours?”

Short answer: Yes. People were not meant to live in isolation or have their freedom limited and behavior monitored. What’s not being considered in the Journal’s New Normal is the human factor: the serendipity that only happens at in-person events. The holiday Ugly Sweater Parties may have been sidelined for now in favor of the Ugly Mask Party, but note to self: U.S. Air Travelers Surge Over 1 Million in Holiday-Season Uptick, which in this case meant Thanksgiving, and the “increase (came) even as government warns people against travel.”

People are people or as Yeats put it, the centre cannot hold. You can change habits, but not basic human behavior.

From what we’re hearing from our readers, many of you are out visiting brick and mortars again: people enjoy being around other people, as well as the tactile experience and serendipity that online shopping for, say, groceries, doesn’t offer: a new item that has suddenly appeared on a store’s shelf that would never have come up in an Amazon search. Choosing one cut of meat over another – and having that ability to choose. Sitting in a restaurant with friends rather than have MREs delivered from ghost kitchens. Many of you have even relocated to less restrictive Zoom Towns.

Speaking of the Old Normal, in case you missed it, Amazon to roll out tools to monitor factory workers and machines (and plans to expand into other areas), while Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges. Again, the tech uberlords never shrink from attempting to cast an even larger footprint – especially now – into people’s lives, both personal and professional. Interesting that despite the huge shift in society over the last several months, they haven’t expanded beyond their overarching focus: surveillance. So where’s the innovation from the so-called best and the brightest, at a time ripe for innovation?  When was the last time you used Google Meet? Or Microsoft Teams? They’re simply Zoom revisited. So are they truly innovators, or is the mask at long last off? Heads up, founders: no one stays on top forever. More importantly, Google, Facebook, Amazon et al are all built on now-aging infrastructures and obsolete technology, as American Thinker notes (How Google Falls). Even Axios reported that Social media companies are all starting to look the same.

Which means opportunity. According to NPR, we’re witnessing an Unexpected Boom In Startups, with “Most of these new businesses seizing opportunities created by the weird coronavirus economy — an economy where people don’t really want to do stuff face-to-face anymore.” At least not for now. While holiday parties seem to be off the table this year, silver lining: investments in newcos have not slowed down, according to Ed Sim of Boldstart Ventures, who spoke at one of our recent online breakfast. Traditionally they tend to more or less come to a halt around now. And no matter the prevailing climate, entrepreneurs will always do what they normally do. Unlike what we seem to be witnessing now from the tech cartel, entrepreneurs seem never to shrink from moving onward and forward.