The super-rich of the world are struggling with a shortage of butlers, and butler training schools can’t keep up with the demand.
Sound like trivia? It did to us too at first. In fact, it’s a bellwether, revealing something interesting about where the world’s heading. This was the opinion of futurist Dion Chang of Flux Trends at The Futurists annual gathering held last month in Sandton, Johannesburg, in partnership with the Heavy Chef community for entrepreneurs.
“People sometimes look at us strangely (for our analyses) … but this is one that tells a lot of stories,” Dion said.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world’s richest people started congregating in big cities like London, New York, and Shanghai, but many bought country estates for an escape, which contributed to the butler shortage.
Incidentally, head butlers can earn the equivalent of R2,4 million per year.
This story contrasts sharply with the plight of “parmesan bandits”, the term retailers are giving to middle-class people who can no longer afford luxuries and are slipping goods such as parmesan cheese and olive oil into their bags before striding boldly out of supermarkets. It’s a dangerous justification for shoplifting; a rage against inequality and large corporations who, the shoplifters believe, can afford the shrinkage.
But as one retailer succinctly observed: “Middle-class petty theft is death by a thousand cuts.”
Such trends expose “new undercurrents to growing global inequality”, Dion said, segueing into a related trend: the economic circumstances of Generation Z.
“Instead of saving money to buy a house, we’re buying a plane ticket to travel the world, buying things that look really cool but that we don’t need, and living our best lives until the wheels fall off.”
GenZ on the American Dream
Addressing GenZ (those born between 1997 and 2012) Dion said dryly, “Don’t think you are going to have butler problems.”
For this group, the traditional markers of adulthood, such as getting married and buying property, “are not happening.” Dion showed a video of a young American expressing what Flux Trends presented as the feelings of a generation: “There is no such thing as the American Dream anymore. Gone are the days when you could work hard, have a family, be financially stable, and retire with no worries. Instead of saving money to buy a house, we’re buying a plane ticket to travel the world, buying things that look really cool but that we don’t need, and living our best lives until the wheels fall off.”
In South Africa, just before elections last year, Flux Trends undertook research with Student Village into the lives of GenZ. It was “very enlightening,” said Dion. “Here in South Africa, people were saying that buying groceries is a luxury… they can’t work hard and achieve what their parents did.”
Even in China, this generation is observing that there is no point in climbing corporate ladders only to burn themselves out. “Very sobering.”
A telling story comes with 26-year-old Luigi Mangione’s alleged fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in the United States in December 2024. There followed an upswelling of support for and even glorification of Mangione, with “Wanted” pictures of other healthcare CEOs erected in public places in New York, accusing them of denying people healthcare to make higher profits, and implying that the business leaders should not feel safe.
Following this, the phrase “eat the rich” has resurfaced, Dion pointed out. It’s an expression attributed to French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the period before the French Revolution – not that cannibalism really became a trend then, but to express the depth of the underclass’s bitterness. Rousseau allegedly said, “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”
Such trends show up what some analysts have called “personality exhaustion”, in which ordinary people become tired of the rich and famous.
They also signal something of a social “slippery slope”, Dion said.
“Raise the drawbridge, the taxman comes”
As a small number of people become “super-rich”, international organisations are working to limit their tax havens. In a “doctors without borders” approach to global auditing, Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) – a joint initiative of the OECD and UNDP – is helping developing countries to strengthen their tax collection efforts.
Launched in 2015, TIWB has enabled African countries to collect an extra $1.82 billion in taxes, and 62 countries altogether to collect an extra $2.3 billion, the Dolphin Bay Brief’s own research shows.
The programme dovetails with a move for global “tax harmonising”: a call to adjust tax systems of different jurisdictions and create global compatibility of taxation.
Opportunities arise
The Dolphin Bay Brief observes that these trends may look rather dire, but the futurists gave good news, too, about the opportunities arising. Responding to a question, they observed that the digital era is more likely to provide a “bump-up” than a bottleneck to unemployed young South Africans, bringing them opportunities rather than excluding them.
Human innovation never ceases. In another growing international trend that Dion pointed out, households facing economic constraints are using their garages or even living rooms as “family warehouses” or factories to make ends meet.
Heavily influenced by the restrictions of the Covid-19 era, GenZ tends to turn in early and be in bed by 9pm, shunning alcohol rather than partying at night. As a result, about 34 pubs close every month in the UK, and traditional drinking holes in Japan are badly hit too. To fill this gap, day-time clubs and dry bars are opening up.
(Things may be slightly different in South Africa, where we still like to drink ourselves “into oblivion”, Dion said wryly).
In much of the world, economic constraints are leading the younger generation not to have children. The aging population is a huge economic burden, and some governments are trying to persuade their young populace to procreate by giving them a four-day week and saying, in effect, “Please date” and “We’ll give you money for kids,” as Dion put it.
By and large, this is not working. Instead, new variations of a nuclear family are mushrooming. Friends are marrying friends for tax benefits and home loans, while communal living is growing. As global birthrates decline (except on the African continent) the new nuclear family will inevitably include a pet, as the “pet parenting economy” booms.
Once you’ve identified the new signal, you need to decide whether it is an opportunity or a threat, “to predict what will happen if that grey rhino stampedes, the green swan flies into your garden, or the purple cow starts eating your neighbour’s lawn.”
Green swans and purple cows
How can we face uncertainty with confidence? This brought Flux Trends to its presentation of the F53 model, its name a spoof on South Africa’s K53 driving licence requirements.
The K53 method is built on the assumption that “here, unlike in other countries, other drivers will be breaking the rules of the road,” said Flux Trends’ Bronwyn Williams, to the audience’s amusement. “We realised this is the perfect model for approaching the future, because so much of the future is out of our control.”
The first step that F53 recommends is searching for signals of the future – things that either should or shouldn’t be there – and constantly checking your blind spots, like with the K53 method.
The unusual occurrences might be “grey rhinos” – something that is possible but that we ordinarily choose to ignore – or “green swans” which, similarly, are things we don’t want to exist but to which we should pay attention. The recent Los Angeles fires were a “green swan” event. Fires are not unknown in Los Angeles, yet some people continued to live there, uninsured, in wooden houses (Incidentally, Dolphin Bay has learnt that some Los Angeles residents were refused insurance and had to take “last resort” policies with limited cover.)
Once you’ve identified the signal of something new, you need to decide whether it is an opportunity or a threat, “to predict what will happen if that grey rhino stampedes, the green swan flies into your garden, or the purple cow starts eating your neighbour’s lawn…”
The best prospect is to spot that purple cow, “the new, new thing that no one else has done yet, that people might be ignoring… because it seems like too much hard work. It’s a pretty good place to be, for entrepreneurs,” said Bronwyn.
“No one can predict the future, but we can extrapolate, make assumptions. Problems are only one part of this future we’re talking about. There’s so much more space… We have to figure out whether something is possible, even if it’s improbable. And even if it’s only marginally possible, we should consider it.”
The recent Los Angeles fires were a “green swan” event: fires are not unknown in Los Angeles, yet some people continued to live there, in wooden houses and without insurance.
Water wars and conscription for techies
South Africans, and Capetonians particularly, understand the threat of water scarcity, Dion said, but globally, water shortages are creating cross-border tensions which brings the reality of “water wars” one step closer.
Nine international river basins on the planet where conflict has started, or the potential for armed conflict is high, have now been flagged as potential water war zones. Each of these flashpoints involves cojoined countries, many of which are already in volatile political situations.
Another of many developments in the natural world is that the Arctic permafrost, which previously helped to keep the planet cool, is now contributing to greenhouse gas concentrations as it thaws. Exposed organic matter is starting to decompose, releasing methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Entire villages who live in this region are having to relocate as “thaw slumps” literally cause the ground beneath their homes to fall away.
In our jittery world of politics, some countries are preparing for war: Scandinavian countries are issuing their citizens with information about how to survive for 48 hours and how to purify their own drinking water. Talk of conscription is spreading, but perhaps of a new kind: the Philippines, for instance, is conscripting young “techies” to fight cyberattacks. Technological warfare is the new battleground, given threats like crypto-funded terror, political deepfakes, and misinformation to sway elections.
“Calm and skilful diplomacy will be needed in 2025,” Dion observed.
To what extent will these trends shape our future? The pendulum always swings from a past reality towards a future extreme, before it settles in the middle.
“Only, the middle is not the same place as it was before,” Dion observed.
We can’t doubt the extent of the changes that each of our generations is experiencing, Bertus added.
Each one of us needs to decide what this means for them.
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