Services associated with comfort and impatience have flourished during the pandemic, boosted by an abundance of easy money and carried by an urban and affluent segment of the population. These are the components of the “lazy economy”, that of spoiled children, who no longer plan to go down to the grocery store or walk five minutes to get a bite to eat. They have also adopted the concept of micro-mobility, which allows them to avoid fifteen minutes of walking with a stroke of a scooter. They rave about being able to order a toothbrush, a box of paperclips or a burger by tracking it on their app.
They have invented a new sedentary lifestyle, supported by services to which the health crisis has given the illusion of sustainability. The only certainty is that they have contributed to the weight gain of Generation Z compared to the previous ones: around fifteen kilos added during the confinements, 14 to 23 kilos in the United States. This fat is far from having melted but the habit of services to laziness has persisted.
The invisible hand of the market responded frantically to this demand. Amazon has created new services, built warehouses even closer to the customer, imagined delivery systems to swallow up the expensive last mile even faster with fleets of electric vehicles, trucks, carts, all “painted green” for lack of to be truly ecological. Speedy delivery services have flourished, able to dispatch a meal or item in less time than it takes to watch an episode of Yellowstone. They call themselves Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Doordash, Gorillas, Grubhub and have raised the obscene sum of $100 billion. As for the micro-mobility sector, it has exploded, with self-service bicycles and scooters sliding on a mattress of fresh capital estimated at $60 billion.
In total, this sector, which the least we can say is that it is not of vital use for society or the future of the planet, has raised 160 billion dollars. In comparison, the ten biggest start-ups working on the future of nuclear energy – a far more important mission for the decarbonization of energy – have collectively raised a measly five billion dollars, thirty times less than the giants of the express delivery or scooter.
Since then, bad winds have risen.
The first is the revelation of an uncertain economic model. Surprise…most of these companies are massively losing money. The stock market and the private investment market have finally taken notice, reducing the value of the big players in home delivery by three quarters, while operators of self-service scooters and bicycles have seen their prices divided by five (Ezgo) or even by fifty (Bird). Even Amazon has shelved its drone delivery project and is closing fulfillment centers.
Add to this, for micro-mobility, an image associated with the worst urban incivility, and we arrive at the slow awakening of regulators, with more and more municipalities withdrawing their license from operators (Paris has not yet decided).
The second storm is social and environmental. Because the problem with the proletariat is that it tends to fight back. In Singapore, London or Paris, the stooges of the laziness economy have begun to demand some basic rights, such as social protection or employment contracts, further weakening the economic model. While public opinion is becoming aware of the environmental absurdity of transporting a toothbrush across Paris, or of the impact of shared vehicles whose lifespan is around 6 months or 2000 km traveled , before a final trip to the dumpster.
This element is undoubtedly the most important. Generations X and Z assumed the contradiction of buying eco-friendly second-hand clothes, while having them delivered by Deliveroo. But the balance is tilting. The children of Generation Z and the grandchildren of the “Xers” – those already called the Alpha generation – are likely to take a hard look at the carbon and social footprint of this mismanagement. Swarms of Greta Thunberg are still on the benches of the school or in the state of parental project, but their determination will undoubtedly be fierce.
