With the current frangible condition of the world the question is, should we be focussing more on local and community resilience rather than trying to address climate change on a world scale.
Of course it is only natural that all of us look to ourselves but “The economy comes first,” seems to make less and less sense.
This time is undoubtedly critical, to decide on our definitions of economy or wealth?
What, indeed, is most precious to us?
Covid, of course, may have shifted the landscape, not necessarily of our wants, but of the possibilities available to us, and how we order our list of priorities.
Taking account of the increased threats to global stability posed by “a nuclear blunder”, aggravated by the gradient of climate change and combine this with technologies that are wreaking the cultural web of civilization, as the loss of biodiversity begins to fracture the web of the biosphere, with consequences that are both wholesale and probably irredeemable. The question must be broader than our “wants” at the personal, or even national level, but must consider “the world” in its full dimension.
Hence, our choices made on the local scale must further consider their impacts more globally not only in a geographical sense, but across the swathe of beliefs and views that different cultures hold as their framework to make sense of existence, to give value and meaning to life, and to decide upon which goals count as being worthy of achieving.
The intermeshing quality of the world’s many woes has been conveyed by the term “changing climate” (i.e. climate change per se being just one item on the list), and amid a morass of such magnitude, positives are apt to remain obscured and muffled.
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In the industrialised West, we have become increasingly focussed on money as a goal and the accumulation of personal wealth, and it’s trappings, as our measure of success.
In short, the time is now or never, yet as set against a backdrop of “business as usual”, beyond the confines of human cultures, and considers more broadly our place on this planet, within the context of all life.
Opportunities to address climate change are not merely slipping through our fingers, but wilfully being cast aside.
Thus, the message is not just one of yet another traditional way of life being driven to extinction by climate change, but that because the Earth system is an interconnected and “living” organism, impacts on any component of it will be felt throughout, causing the body to sicken and die.
Change is frightening, and uncertainty even more so; thus we tend to cling to a familiar craft, even as it sinks.
But, if we want a world that is both habitable and agreeable into the future, for all Earthlings, our choices are limited to those which also reduce the conjoined burdens of our rapidly consuming finite resources and the carbon emissions and other pollution that are discharged in the process.
However, due to the tardiness of our efforts, the scale and rate of the changes now required are staggering, amounting to an 8-10% reduction in carbon emissions per year in the wealthiest nations of the world, which presents as a practically insurmountable challenge.
If Capitalism in all its forms usher in a definite of sustained mitigation of carbon emissions, it is highly unlikely that climate targets will be met.
Full collapse is not yet inevitable, or already crumbling out of our hands change might yet be managed.
Albert Einstein is quoted, perhaps apocryphally, as saying (something like):
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking. If we want to change the world we have to change our thinking…no problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew.”
Is this the world you want.
The perils of treating natural capital as income, are evident to all.
We do not have enough fresh water for the people.. Billions of people are subject to hunger today. So the new model must consider all these needs. This model must be more human and more nature oriented… We are all interconnected but we keep acting as though we are completely autonomous.”
Change requires all of us developed a deeper recognition of our common humanity.
Instead of merely documenting loss of habit, bio-diversity, air and water quality, and more, we have to work with the larger society to do a better job of maintaining invaluable and irreplaceable ecosystem services.
This can only be achieved by education. Education that balances the sciences with the humanities.
Education that prepares children to live in a changing world by emphasizing critical thinking and learning-to-learn as much more than rote memorization.
(The below video ALUNA should be shown in all schools.)
Such a world won’t be achieved overnight.
BECAUSE THE CAPITALIST WORLD IS NOW WITH THE HELP OF ALGORITHIMS GOING UNDERGROUND.
If there is to be any movement in the right direction we can only make the Capitalists world change its short term model of profit for profit sake with our buying power. By boycotting any corporations/ companies/ organisations/ etc that dont have sustainability at their core of their business models.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
“What makes a life worth living?” “What is a life worth? ” are both questions that nobody can answer and should perhaps remain unanswered.
These questions once came pre-answered—by culture, by religion, by tradition—but these days, because of capitalism we each have to ask and answer for ourselves, with an answer not in poetic words or any words but an answer in pounds and pence or dollars and cents.
The “real question today is not when human life begins, but, what is the value of human life?”
The task of valuing life has many competing truths with no simple answer.
“Price tags are being continuously placed on our lives. If we care about equity, we need to ensure that the science behind these estimates is not oversold and that fairness is always a consideration when cost-benefit analysis is performed.”
Howard Steven Friedman
Valuing some lives more than others seems logical and natural to many of us.
We value human life in a way that assumes we possess a sacred something.
Aristotle concluded that we should value human life, due to our inherent capacity for reason.
So what reasons can we give for calling human life valuable?
The question’s complexity resides in the fact that how we arrive at a price tag on human life says a great deal about our priorities. A lot of the value we attribute to human life comes from religion. However, when you remove religion, what philosophical arguments are left?
This is were it gets tricky.
The philosopher’s job is not to accept the assumed inheritance of our forebears.
Do we determine the value of a human life based on the value we place on our lives in private decisions, and do we accept policy choices that puts future generations at risk.
Do we continue to value human life, especially above and beyond animals? If you value rationality, why is that? And does rationality, alone, bestow value on a human life?
How should we proceed?
We teach each generation that human life is valuable beyond all else.
.Is this good enough today?
Government officials are supposed to put numbers on the pros and cons of these questions but how to assess the value of a human life in financial terms is riddled with conundrum based on our behaviour which has no common denominators to adjust our assessment of a life’s value based on its quality or the probability of death?
How much should we pay today to prevent an event that would result in the loss of ten billion human lives in 50 years? Climate Change.
So, how much is a life worth?
It seems so inhumane to put a monetary value our modern sentiments tell us that costs should not dictate life-and-death decisions. But those modern sentiments do not fit our modern experience.
We know that not all lives are valued by society equally.
Over the past four centuries, generations of black people have asked the question: What is a black life worth?
The summation of historical facts and statistical data clearly shows that the prices of black bodies in America are worth more imprisoned, enslaved, and dead than educated.
Here in Europe depending on all sorts of assumptions arisen by the Covid pandemic and now the war in the Ukraine there are a lots of conversations (right now) that seem to pit economics against life and health.
The result is the cost of living is mounting day on day while its value is descending but don’t worry your value is being look after by the invisible hand of the market run algorithms is giving your value the finger.
Unfortunately GDP distribution issue are now surfacing, like where is the GDP growth actually coming from? Who’s losing income? Does it increase equity in society?
How much a person is willing to accept to risk their own life – Climate change.
In the end the answer is my life is worth everything to me.
How much money do you get for losing a limb? It depends on where you live.
Foot note . What’s wrong with killing people?
Abortion kills babies, and its advocates are loudly telling us the value they place on human life.
The idea is that we can best understand what life is worth by first understanding what death means.
All human comments appreciate. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.
THIS POST IS FOR ALL THOSE CHINLESS WONDERS WHO BELIEVE IN PROFIT FOR THEMSELVES.
It’s no longer good enough to measure the overall wealth of a nation whilst glossing over inequality or consequential environmental degradation.
Why?
Because it is quite apparent that capitalism is stuck while the longer-term future has been transformed by the pandemic and climate change.
It has no answers to a host of problems, including disease, inequality, the digital divide, and, perhaps most blatantly, the environmental crisis the biggest problems of our time.
Rethinking the role of government nationally and in the international economy is now reaching critical a point – to put public purpose first and solve the problems that matter to people – are now the central questions for humanity.
It is imperative that responding to the climate and nature emergency is integrated across all economic activity, with an explicit commitment to moving to a more circular and resource-efficient economy.
The capacities and role of government within the economy and society, above all need to recover a sense of public purpose in order to reshape the economic development to invests in people and businesses drive prosperity, and reduce inequality.
Our economic well-being is without any doubt tied to our environmental, cultural, and social well-being.
One can say this till we are blue in the face but the Covid crisis has removed any doubt about the fundamental role of the foundational economy in the well-being of a nation. (This is the part of the economy which could not be shut down as it provides the infrastructure of everyday life)
So investing in social care, childcare, housing, energy, low carbon, and digital connectivity not only addresses the foundational needs of civilized life but can offer meaningful and rewarding careers and be harnessed for economic development.
A holistic approach to the economy, recognizing its potential for harm as well as good, demands a holistic way to measure progress.
None of the above is possible unless we find a way of committing to long-term projects that are both politically and financially sound.
Our problem is that governments are subjected to short electrical terms in office so long-term objectives are not a priority. While the electoral population pays ever-increasing taxes either to fund a project or rectify a mistake, (without any real commitment to the project in the first place) other than a general election and a new manifesto of verbal diarrhea can deserving projects be fulfilled to completion?
What if we were to introduce legal mission statements that could not be changed till achieved, ‘magnet projects’ funded not by taxation but by voluntary participation in the form of willing support in allowing citizens to support projects by buying sustainable green bonds with guaranteed returns and Loto style financial monthly prizes.
If we are to genuinely tackle the problems that we have created lets us genuinely participate by putting our money where our mouths are.
Too often overlooked in economic development.
You also might be led to believe that monetary activism is financial triage against world economic collapse but ask yourself what kind of political creatures are money printing spawning.
What we are seeing is the economy going online with businesses and organizations in receipt of public funding far from being totally transparent with online profit-seeking algorithms that are now driving a hidden non-paying tax economy.
The pandemic points forward to realizing that our economic models are not dealing with the growth of inequalities.
Money must be made to serve the people not the other way around social value
Imagine a society where everyone can have an equal say in the issues that concern them. Above all, a world, in which all the people own and share the wealth that we need in order to live. These would be enormously exciting times because, at long last, human society will have evolved to the position of being able to tackle effectively the challenges facing the modern world.
So here is your chance to contribute by suggesting your solutions or improving on the above suggestion of Mission Economics.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS THE ENVIORMENT MORE IMPORTAIN THAN THE ECONOMY?
(Five-minute read)
With the continuation of the covid pandemic, this is going to become the big question because the two are intertwined.
If this pandemic drags on, which appears it will do with new variants, the degree of economic harm will become extreme, resulting in a different kind of “ailment” worse than the one we’re supposedly trying to “cure.”
Either way, the current shackling of the economy cannot be allowed to drag on much longer, or we will find ourselves in a full-blown global depression — and then more people will die.
However, if you combine the pandemic with the other major crises Climate Change the Environment wins hands down.
Why?
Because in the long run if the environment is not protected it will inevitably lead to the depletion of economic resources and the destruction of the earth and human life.
In this world, humans are not here for only survival there are many other aspects that are necessary for the lives of humans. The economy is not, and never was intended as, “an end in itself”.
Everything that belonged to humans came from the environment but we can live without an economy, but not without our environment!
We’re all in this together.
There’s just enough truth to that to convince the average citizen — but the more insidious (and, I believe, likely intended) effect is to promote public docility;
To persuade us to go along with any and all directives issued by the authorities.
An economy is good only insofar as it satisfies our needs for freedom to enjoy the actuality of living, not valuing profit over life itself. On the physical level, human lives literally depend on the economy; not only for paying the bills and preparing for retirement but for healthcare itself.
With no economy, there is no point in having a good environment. everything in the history of the world created by humans came from the environment.
A “healthy” economy is an indicator of a “healthy” society. They live side by side.
If the goal of government policy is only “to slow the spread of infections”“
If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.” — Guy McPherson.
The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease. Government handling of any public emergency — if those in power are rational and just — will be balanced with their handling of the economy.
Pope Francis said on Sunday that people are more important than the economy, as countries decide how quickly to reopen their countries from coronavirus lockdowns.
What do you think the economy is?
It is people but unfortunately, with our present system of capitalist economies, people do not benefit equally from its growth. Essential workers versus the unemployed, shareholders versus self-employed, foodbanks versus dialing a meal, the list is endless however without humans, how can we hope to repair anything?
To remove these inequalities is impossible but an economy based on universal basic income for all would allow people to look after themselves rather than state handouts.
Providing inflation was controlled it would go a long way to leveling up.
Instead, the possibility of dictatorial governments using technology data is now on the cards. This fear is exacerbated by the average person’s lack of reflection on just what “the economy” is, and what it means to both individual freedom and the public good.
History has shown us we shouldn’t underestimate the threat to our liberty arising from the government’s response to Covid. There’s no reason to assume that after the pandemic — if there is an “after” — all democratic governments will voluntarily relinquish their newly acquired power.
Sure the government’s first obligation is to ensure people can survive both Climate change and the virus but without the means to change the way we live our lives it will be meanless.
So it’s time for the media to make the cost of human life better understood.
It’s time for the advertising industry to stop promoting consumption for profit.
It’s time to regulate Profit for-profit technology such as non-transparent Algorithms.
Either we are really all in this together or we are not.
Of course, together will remain only words till we address the weakness which is at the heart of any nation-state project ( Like the current Vaccination program)
The vast majority are unable to participate because of a lack of compensation, by the capacity ( notably economic) of the capitalist system to ensure that everybody enjoys certain equality of access to material well-being. A Basis Universal income would rectify that.
Modern societies can easily get by without cultural integration, tolerating a situation of competitive pluralism of values without automatically sinking into anarchy feared by the sociological tradition of inequality, if given the means to do so.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse are chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAYS. ITS IS NOT CLIMATE CHANGE OR COVID THAT IS THE PROBLEM. IT IS AS SHOWN BY COP26/G20 THE UNFFETTED PERSUIT OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROFIT .
COP26/G20 ARE NOW BOTH PERFECT MODELS OF OUR COLLECTIVE FAILURE TO BUILD INSTITUTIONS CAPABLE OF COPING WITH, DEEP LONG-TERM. EXISTENTIAL PROBLEMS CAN NOT BE SOLVED BY EITHER GOING TO WAR OR RELYING ON FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES.
Now we find that the entire globe is trapped in the gruesome logic of Capitalism.
It’s perfectly OK for rich countries to continue doing something that is destroying the planet as long as the profit reaped will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.
We, that is all of us homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have managed to get ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all of the wildfires, floods, droughts, and disasters is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it.
Of course, we need a price on carbon. Of course, we need extremely strict emissions regulations, massive green energy investments, and a maniacal focus on sustainability fierce enough to radically change a society that is built to promote unlimited consumption.
Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left.
We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
With or without technology there will always be inequalities in the world.
So why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology?
Because this way of thinking is so ingrained that is adopted by organizations that fight poverty—which often refashion themselves to resemble technology startups.
Inequality has been growing so much that all governments and civil society speak about it with increasing worry, trying to understand its causes, but unable to find solutions, because of greed.
It is our policy on technology that drives inequality.
There is no better example of this than in the way the world is handling the current Covid pandemic unable to share the know-how to make the vaccinations.
Patents and copyrights are not guaranteed as individual rights, like the right to free speech or religion.
After all, why would a drug company pay large amounts of money to people to develop new drugs if the drugs can be copied and sold by competitors from the day they enter the market?
If it is not already obvious, patent and copyright monopolies are instruments of public policy, not acts of God.
This is why there is still not enough coronavirus vaccine to meet worldwide demand.
A year ago there was no commercial market for mRNA products.
Vaccine manufacturers long ago should have been sharing technology and expertise to boost production in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in developing countries.
The same would be true of software developers, makers of medical equipment, computer manufacturers, smartphone companies, and any other product where the cost of research and development was a substantial portion of the price of the product.
The complete elimination of patents and copyrights is of course an extreme scenario, but it is a possible policy option.
If we did choose this policy option, we would have a much more equal distribution of income, in spite of having the same technology.
In short, the fact that there was a huge increase in inequality associated with the development of technology over the last four decades was the result of policy choices, not technology.
There should be serious public debate about both how strong we want to patent and copyright protection to be and also whether they are always the best way to promote innovation and creative work, as opposed to alternatives like direct public funding.
If we acknowledge the extreme case, where we literally have no patent or copyright protection, then we have to recognize that there is nothing inherent in our technology that would cause inequality.
Few things, in principle, can’t be delivered through technology.
It is entirely our rules on technology that can cause inequality to increase.
So on one hand, technology can eradicate poverty — not by making poor people less poor, but by making it less valuable to be rich.
On the other as technology spreads, making its creators rich, but treating its users the same, we should expect more monopolies and more financial inequality.
Although it is your data you can’t pay for a better Facebook experience.
Companies are incentivized to offer a product if it makes more than it costs. And technology ends up not costing much once you’ve built it.
So, in the end, you charge people whatever they can pay and in poorer countries, people just pay and get paid less.
Times are changing from the days that growth in inequality was largely an organic process independent of government policy.
“Owning” the robot/algorithm is not a technical relationship, it is a legal one, and therefore one that depends on our laws.
The reason some people might get very rich from owning robots or algorithms is that they own patents and copyrights that are needed for the making of the robots/ algorithms.
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In the past, technological improvements would be beneficial to all:
Extreme economic inequality is corrosive to our societies.
Around 8% of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty — but do you know why?
Gender inequality, caste systems, marginalization based on race or tribal affiliations are all economic and social inequalities that mean the same thing:
You might think that poverty causes hunger (and you would be right!), but hunger is also a cause — and maintainer — of poverty. This is why now with climate change, negotiating international trade agreements behind closed doors with only bureaucrats and corporate lobbyists present has to end.
Economics should take into account ethics and the environment, and treat its claims less like invariable truths.
It goes without saying that any actions coming out of Cop 26 climate change conferences to reduce temperatures will be derailed by not just income inequality, (only the higher income household will be able to afford green energy technologies. Solar panels, electric cars, heating pumps, etc.) but by the total lack of shared responsibility to do anything about it.
Of course, there are hundreds of other elements that contribute to the problems our world is now facing.
World poverty isn’t a problem of limited resources, it is a problem of inequality and this inequality is upheld by the idea that aid creates dependence.
Climate change will drive up to 132 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030.
The pricing carbon emissions on average is at a mere $3 a tonne.
The price of inequality in all its forms is greed. There are vast fortunes to be made with Technology/ Algorithms for profit and nothing blurs ethical lines faster than greed.
So far, any decoupling has either been largely relative – in the sense of merely achieving higher rates of economic growth than gains in emissions – or achieved by shifting dirty production from one national territory to another.
And that is why, for now, global emissions are still rising.
The idea of “Just Transition” without financing is pie in the sky.
Take the aftermath of the Afghan 20-year war.
The country is now facing starvation. Why not bomb it with food.
By coming together to tackle the plague of destitution around the world, we have the opportunity to advance the human condition and eliminate global poverty in a way no one has done before.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats.
All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.
In the next few months, we will once again witness a gathering of verbal diarrhea in Scotland all promising to go green.
There is no doubting in the last few decades that we humans have achieved advances away beyond what our ancestors would have believed possible. The irony is that to survive we have to become something very different from what we are.
Many optimists believe that technology can transform society and solve climate change.
To a great extent, this is probably true no more so than in the field of medician.
Take the discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 of Penicillin.
Before its discovery, we were dying thirty years early than we do today.
His discovery was down to an accidental piece of bacteria landing on one of his Petri dishes which took another ten years to develop into a drug to save lives.
Today with human intelligence and machine learning we can produce drugs in a matter of months.
The way forward to reducing CO2 emissions is not a by-pass lane it is by using the technologies that already exist.
It’s time to cut out the verbal and bull shit and make these technologies affordable to all.
Yes, the world today is in a dire state and a new kind of social and ecological environment needs to be created with green energy the price of which is toppling daily.
Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls, but every problem is solvable if we devote resources to building a just world and not guns.
THE WORLD RUNS ON ELECTRICITY.
SO IF WE WANT A GREEN FUTURE NON-REPAYABLE GRANTS TO CONVERT FROM FOSSIL FUELS GENERATED ELECTRIC TO ENERGY BY NON-POLLUTING RENEWABLE MATERIALS – WIND – SUN- WATER- GEOTHERMAL – HYDROGEN.
SUCH A MOVE WOULD CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS AND COULD BE FUNDED BY PLACING A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT HAVE PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE AT THEIR HEART. ( See previous posts)
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We are now presented with two very different futures.
The last generation that can stop devastating climate change. We have the knowledge and the tools – we just need politicians to lead the way.
or
We fail to meet climate mitigation goals.
For certain, either outcome will not be easy or cheap and it is happing faster than we wish to acknowledge.
The problem is the two outcomes are profoundly interlocked with lots of uncertainty.
HOWEVER, UNLIKE THE CURRENT PANDEMIC CLIMATE CHANGE WON’T JUST DISAPPEAR IT WILL REQUIRE A NEW MEANING OF LIFE.
To recognize that we are entering a new world with opportunities and perspectives is an enormous challenge not because of climate change but because of the current inequalities existing on the Planet.
The choice we are now confronted with is one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.
The question is who is going to pay for the transition.
New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.
THERE IS LITTLE POINT IN REDUCING GLOBAL TEMPERATURES IF BY THE TIME IT HAS STABILIZED HALF OF THE WORLDS POPULATION HAS BEEN DESTABILIZED OR DISPLACED.
A lack of global emphasis on foreign aid, conflict, and political factors have kept poverty as a driving factor of Inequality.
To adjust to the coming new kind of social and ecological environment, how do we frame either of the above outcomes constructively.
We will have to relearn the world to do so.
We have to become more aware of the future of our planet and our future and the legacy of the human species to start a serious battle to make up for the damages.
At the moment it is difficult to know the changes in the ecosystems that surround us not to mention the social uncertainty to come.
The fundamental economic problem is related to the issue of scarcity.
Society is mostly dominated by people wishing to consume more goods and services that are available.
One in nine people in the world go hungry each day and suffer from nutritional deficiencies as a result.
Currently, 1 in 9 people lack access to clean water across the world.
The problem is not that we aren’t producing enough food, but rather that people lack access to food. Many people do not have enough money to purchase food and cannot grow their own.
To try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them is impossible unless we address the fundamental problem.
To recognize that scarcity will drive almost everything.
To recognize a sense of shared humanity.
To recognize that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.
To recognize that is not just climate change that treating the world but artificial intelligence and the way we are using it.
Using only the interaction of its embedded sensors, computer programming, and algorithms in the human environment and ecosystem — is becoming a reality that cannot be ignored anymore.
Because building autonomous weapons systems are one thing but using them in algorithmic warfare with other nations and against other humans is another.
They will in no uncertain terms alter the very fundamentals of security and the future of humanity and peace.
As global temperatures continue to rise, technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale with the weaponizing of artificial intelligence both military-wise and as a social tool.
The Weaponization Of Artificial Intelligence
The development of autonomous weapons system (AWS) is progressing rapidly, and this increase in the weaponization of artificial intelligence seems to have become a highly destabilizing development. It brings complex security challenges for not only each nation’s decision-makers but also for the future of humanity.
There are always unforeseen consequences when new technology is introduced. Those unintended outcomes of artificial intelligence will likely challenge us all.
AI algorithms must be built to align with the overarching goals of humans.
As more and more data is collected about every single minute of every person’s day, our privacy gets compromised.
Look at what is happing in China with its social credit system, it could devolve into social oppression.
Unless you choose to live remotely and never plan to interact with the modern world, your life will be significantly impacted by artificial intelligence.
The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on our society will have far-reaching economic, legal, political, and regulatory implications that we need to be discussing and preparing for.
Sure, it can transform our lives for the better.
In fact, people have gotten used to depending on AI for almost everything and can’t imagine not having these technological advancements as part of their life. Because many processes and applications are getting automated, people are getting addicted to these kinds of inventions which can be an issue for future generations to come.
Societies will face further challenges in directing and investing in technologies that benefit humanity instead of destroying it or intruding on basic human rights of privacy and freedom of access to information.
In the future, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence will play an even more fundamental role in content creation that will affect our wallets, health, safety, and lives.
The mistake we are making is to think that this situation is the only future.
That it is impossible to regulate AI because of the rate of AI change entails.
This is not true as it is possible to Audit all AI technology and algorithms to ensure that comply with human values and to make their programs totally transparent.
Why is the above urgent?
Because combined with climate change we are faced with and a transactional wealth of a new currency of unknowable value called personal data inequality will ravage the planet we all live in and on.
These are not some science fiction movie scenarios the current Pandemic is revealing a much more tragic and fragile world that requires more than trust.
The United Nations (UN) currently lists 22 “Global Issues”.
These correspond with the most important issues of our time and are known as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).
Here is a few of them.
FOOD SECURITY.
HEALTH ISSUES.
EDUCATION.
GENDER EQUALITY.
AFRICA.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES/ POLLUTION.
OCEAN CONSERVATION.
WATER SCARCITY.
GLOBAL ISSUES THAT REQUIRE POLICY SOLUTIONS.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it serves as an overview of some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of.
Artificial intelligence is not on the list.
Because the biggest challenge facing the planet needs every solution possible including technology like artificial intelligence (AI).
But AI is not a silver bullet it can only unlock new insights, pinpointing those responsible for it.
The current environmental issues pose so many problems to industry and society that not enough action has been taken to stop turning Climate change into a product.
My goal in this blog is not to convince people climate change is real, or that AI is destroying society it’s to get people who do believe that climate change is real and that Algorithms for profit’s sake are plundering the world to do more to affect change.
What can be done by any of us against the might of Capitalism that will have any effect?
There is only one weapon available to us all and that is our buying power.
If we use our collective buying power you will then see not just governments but global corporations change their tune from profit to sustainability.
We decide whether we want to look at the world in one way or another, always making tradeoffs.
As Harvey Sacks observed.
” If only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed”
” But the best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a world that has whatever organization it already has”
All are under threat because all are happening at what scientists estimate to be about 1,000 times the normal pace and are yet to be quantified.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic, it’s impossible to measure the price of A GLOBAL DEPRESSION OR THE COMING CLIMATE CHANGE, NOT TO MENTION THE SURGING INEQUALITY DRIVEN BY AI.
But rest assured that it will be the young generation that will be saddled with the bill and the consequences and few countries are likely to be left unscathed by the covid -19 outbreak’s financial ramifications.
We have conveniently forgotten if you remember before the pandemic we had a financial meltdown in 2008.
Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, economies were all operating on borrowed money with all of them amassing debts away beyond their annual tax revenues to the point that their budgets were consumed entirely by interest payments.
Greece was on the verge of causing the Euro to collapse while England was in the grips of an austerity program that resulted in Brexit the cost of which has no definitive figure.
90% of this was big banks creating debts world-wise in the knowledge that they would have to be bailed out by the taxpayers. (Too big to fail is a phrase used to describe a company that’s so entwined in the global economy that its failure would be catastrophic.)
While Wall Street hedge funds, with credit default swaps and sovereignty wealth funds, we’re making hay while the sun-shined, world debts were doubling.
Take Iceland for example. German banks pumped $21 into its banks, Sweden $400 million, England around $30billion, the Netherlands $300 million, Oxford University a mere $50 million. Iceland’s banks went bankrupt. The government couldn’t bail them out because it didn’t have the money. Instead of being too big to fail, they were too big to save. Iceland never resorted to austere budget cuts that are so prevalent in Europe.
They imposed capital controls. They let the banks fail.
Iceland’s economy successfully survived a sovereign bankruptcy and government collapse.
However, Iceland’s government today is spending a back-breaking 17.3% of its tax revenue just to pay interest on the debt.
Without a doubt, Iceland was and is the canary in the coalmine for the sovereign debt crisis that is now unfolding across the world right now.
With investors around the world suddenly wake up to a sobering reality of a major default… bigger than Iceland in 2008. It won’t be long before we see countries defaulting because of the amount of government borrowing to fight Covid-19
So what happens when governments themselves ceased to be credible?
This might be something that had been considered preposterous only months ago but when one looks at what is only the start of a global depression it is now very much on the cards.
It’s important to remember that throughout history humanity has experienced no shortage of pandemics and deadly viruses but despite the similarities, of these pandemics some of the differences are now even more striking.
The economic fallout from these pandemics was barely noticeable. (The same can be said of the Spanish Flu of 1918.)
What is making the COVID-19 pandemic so unique is not the virus itself, but our collective responseto it. Governments in their zeal to control society, have destroyed the global economy on a scale the modern world has never seen. These losses are unprecedented in modern history. The loss of human life that can never be recovered is regrettable but there’s a degree of anxiety now that’s well beyond the health scares which are still very serious and concerning.
If we take a look for example at the USA.
Its economic loss is more than twice the total monetary outlay for all the wars the US has fought since September 11, 2001, including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
Closer to home.
Millions out of work, industries losing billions, and that’s just the beginning. Transportation companies losing billions in market value with tourism the restaurant and foodservice industry decimated with real estate defaults looming.
Further afield the so-called least Developed Countries, whose economies are driven by the sale of raw materials, will not be spared either. Latin American region as similarly vulnerable.
In addition to global poverty, the pandemic has adversely affected vaccination rates, HIV transmission, gender equality, education, and more. Unfortunately, these problems won’t be reversed overnight—or anytime soon.
When will things go back to normal?
Never.
Our society is fundamentally flawed, with a devastating financial storm more than likely on its way we cannot simply hit the reset button and go back to normal.
As we go about rebuilding our society for a new day, it is absolutely critical that we focus our efforts on healing the wounds of the people who suffered most.
We all know that the distribution of wealth is key to any recovery and we are going to witness in this pandemic and subsequent economic depression how inequality is the main cause s of why our world is in such a mess.
So if we want a world worth living in we must address the distribution of wealth along with education.
( The Solution.
Embedding equity and empathy into our cultures by reimagining schools and the introduction of a Universal Basis Living Wage.
Rather than preparation education (to enter a world of I am all right Jack ) we should be promoting core values education.
This education should be free to all paid for by the state. Not designed by wealthy white men paying the minimum wage, awarding themselves dividends, launching profit-seeking algorithms, running plundering sovereignty wealth funds, leaving the young generation with massive debt.
After two decades of progress around the world, nearly 37 million people have lost significant amounts of income and are now living on less than $1.90 per day.
There is little point in governments spending billions on projects that enrich the few while their citizens have to resort to food banks, social welfare, etc.
While Countries’ debts are ballooning exponentially, due in part to combating Covid-19, the fourth industrial revolution in the form of Technology is eroding the opportunities of earning a living or sharing in the profits of automation, machine learning, etc.
It is not possible to stop the erosion but it is possible to share the wealth in a fair and meaningful way with a guaranteed income that would cut government costs while stimulating economic recovery.
By scrapping the concept of the welfare state a form of structural inequality and replace it with a government-guaranteed payment to provide financial security
Cash is the best thing you can do to improve health outcomes, education outcomes and lift people out of poverty.
It would stop people from emigrating not just to other countries but to cities.
The social welfare state is what prevents the poor from building their wealth to better their lives.
How could it be financed?
Place a 0.05% aid commission on revenue made by profit-seeking algorithms and tax the top 1% and allocate 10 to 12% of GDP directly to the universal income payments.
The benefit would automatically rise with national prosperity and inflation.
The simplicity of the program means it would also cost governments less.
It is inevitable. If we don’t we will rebuild an exclusionary society.)
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Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. are all in the top 10 spenders, all conjure money out of thin air and funnels it to the government.
There will be inquiries. How long of a sentence does someone get for railroading his nation’s economy? Life? 30-years? 10-years?
Where should we begin to rebuild our lives?
There are a number of possible futures however if we don’t take this opportunity to build a future that is more humane we will slide into something far worse.
The responses so far to the pandemic are simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises.
The overriding priority remains to save lives.
However, understanding human behavior in its wider economic context is necessary if we are to solve climate change or if we are to tackle future pandemics problems all created by our economic structure.
Both are socially driven.
With every week that passes, we learn more about the virus and understand more about how to defeat it. But the more we learn, the more we realize how little the world yet understands about the true nature of the threat – except that it is a shared one that we must all work together to defeat.
Now is the time to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization…
The world is “not at the mercy of the virus called covid, but the fuse is burning on the bomb – Climate Change.
It is at the mercy of Profit for profit’s sake that must be harnessed to affect change.
(See previous posts)
At the end of the day, the Icelandic people are responsible back in 2008 for their collapse. They were never bailed out. They were stuck with the bill.
It does not take a genius to describe the changes that are needed.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As we floundering around in the midst of COMPOUNDING PANDEMICS that are far from over, the future is not here yet.
With our planet is crying out, our political leaders are like fish out of water, apart from the obvious, it seems that we have lost the plot. Compounded by ignorance, short term self-interest, the pursuit of wealth, and political interests, any actions that are vital for survival are stymieing by the lack of conciliation.
Climate Change, Biodiversity, Artificial Intelligence, Poverty and Inequality, Population all on the top of the list. All of them are presenting overwhelming challenges ahead.
There is no way of sugar-coating any of these threats, they have no borders.
We are brought up with other people’s perceptions of life.
Not until we develop enough, intellectually, can we change those perceptions, and even then it can be difficult to change our perceptions about the world until we start to really question it.
Anything else is a blatant lie.
With millions of dead and millions more death to come, we can only prevent any one of them from coming to fruition if we take all of them especially the environmental threat seriously.
With large swaths of people still dealing with entrenched inequalities, it is no wonder we are unable to see the above threats as reality.
If there was ever a time to join together it is now.
We all have an identity and cultural distinctiveness, but if we bound together in a common cause, we could accomplish spectacular things.
To do this we must first start to see ourselves as HUMAN BEINGS, and the planet earth as HOME, not our individual countries.
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I am sure you will agree that the world order is destined to change and it’s urgent that humanity gets a way to preserve what’s left on Earth.
In this regard, technology is not a destiny jobs will be for robots and life for people.
The problem is who is the owner of the robots and how do we ensure that we all benefit.
At the moment there are millions wasting their time in useless jobs to scratch a living. Rest assured that capitalism will come up with millions of more useless jobs.
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Unfortunately, we are not able to act as one, and even if we could there would be no point in becoming mindless drones with no culture.
There would be no point in living because it’ would be all just be one culture with no distinct forms.
The raw reality exposed by the current pandemic is that everyone is only just a human unable to act as one due to greed-driven by unregulated social media and profit-seeking algorithms.
———–
The big question is what can be done?
SOLUTIONS WITHOUT FUNDING, ABOUND ON TED TALKS.
We know that poverty is one of the main driving forces when it comes to any long term perspective to protecting the earth.
Poverty is not due to a lack of knowledge. POVERTY IS CREATED BY SCARCITY, not a personality defect as Maggie Thatcher once said.
As George Orwell said “Poverty annihilates the Future “
You would think by now we would have figured out the reasons for its existence.
ALMOST EVERYTHING NEEDED FOR LIFE IS MADE SCARCE BY APPLYING CAPITALIST PROFIT, TURNING ALMOST EVERYTHING INTO A PRODUCT TO BE TRADED.
SO WHEN ONE IS UNABLE TO ACQUIRE WHAT IS NEEDED DUE TO THE LACK OF CASH YOU HAVE POVERTY. If we genuinely ask why do the poor make so many bad decisions THIS IS THE MAIN REASON.
Till now we have ignored the symptoms of poverty to our cost, and now to the chilling silence of Earth protests, we find ourselves unable to enjoy the Earth we live on.
To date, we have created World organizations without the power of funding that vents verbal warnings, that no one takes heed of unless it is in their own interest to do so
Take Co2 admissions. We continue to pump Co2 into our shared atmosphere. (Earth isn’t the only planet in our solar system with an atmosphere, it is the only one in which we humans can survive.)
It is blatantly obvious that we are not able through our global conversation whether they are online or not due to profit-taking we are not able to establish any solidarity.
A lot of religious people mentioned that there is a leader who is going to save this world and stands for oppressed, poor, and homeless people.
While we are waiting we need to be more creative in our imagination if we want to match the relentless progression of biodiversity loss, climate change, and the other problems facing us all that are going to drive the Scarcity market.
A basic income is an idea that has and is being kicked from pillar to post for years.
Free money for everybody.
Not the welfare state but AN INCOME FOR ALL – UNCONDITIONAL YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH IT.
Where will the cash come from?
( See previous posts. A World Commission of 0.05%)
Of course, no one or anybody is going to take on or take down the holy grail of profit for profit’s sake.
After all, we live in societies that have allowed themselves to be subsumed by greed with ethics still being sacrificed on the altar of turnover and growth at all costs- GDP.
What is truly galling though is how the rot persists, where people cannot see the direct causal link, to overconsumption prompted by the advertising industries.
Profit is not intrinsically bad, but profit for profit’s sake alone is not just bad it’s unimaginably damaging.
Profit has to be extracted in such a way that every partner in the supply chain profits; from the workers to the shareholders, from the local community through to the nation itself.
That means creating a system where people are empowered to speak, where processes are so transparent that nothing can be hidden and where part of those profits is reinvested into those communities to sustain growth and development for generations to come.
So before we find ourselves teetering over the edge of the precipice. We need to speak truth to power when we start to feel discomfited, not when we have already entered the realm of cognitive dissonance or, worse, open and cynical collusion in the Bell Pottinger mode.
We have been gifted by the current pandemic which is yet to reach its apogee. It is daring us not to be paralyzed by our past.
It is offering a chance to find and resolve, to do things differently.
To call out the emperors of technology, when they stride about us in their unabashed nudity to put sustainability at the core of their online and off-line operations.
They are now the praetorian guard of citizen and corporate activists and it is essential in this post-covid-19 economic depression that society should be saved from exploitation.
Unfortunately, they are unable to regulate themselves. This can be done only when the state interferes with total transparency.
Is it not time that all non-essential products are labeled with their carbon footprint.
What is Cash but transparency, in its naked form, creating fair competitions.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
BECAUSE The world we now have is a tragic begging world.
WE MUST BECOME PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVITY.
Because humanity is entering a new age, where we are faced with not only existential risks from our natural environment but by those of our own creation.
Two hundred years ago we didn’t understand the basic causes of a Pandemic.
Because the world is now so interconnected (with a vastly increased population than any time in our history) pandemics have more opportunities not only to spread new diseases but to originate new sources.
Because we are reaching “The Precipice” a time where we’ve reached the ability to pose an existential risk to ourselves, which is substantially bigger than the natural risks, the background that we were facing before.
Because we need to understand our vulnerability and determine what steps must be taken to end this pandemic.
Because just a few years ago more than one bomb was created.
One in the hands of a few decision-makers that could destroy civilization the other the Internet, not in the hands
The current bombs are created by our continuing abuse of the planet we live on. They are not in the hands of deranged dictators or impeached presidents but in the hands of a system of exploitation called capitalism now becoming more and more driven by profit-seeking algorithms.
Because we think everyone’s interests matter equally, approaches to improving the world should be evaluated mainly in terms of their potential for long-term impact.
Because there are vast differences between the effectiveness of working on different global problems we need better global prioritization.
Because as technology improves and the world economy grows or shrinks, it is getting easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale.
(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.)
Because Covid-19 is showing us that there are many available avenues for improving the world, in terms of social value.
Because now there is much uncertainty around the value of specific options.
Because not enough cause prioritization is done, from the perspective of total social welfare.
The reasons are endless.
However to build the new field of ‘global priorities’ and to try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them we need to start understanding that just as the fate of gorillas currently depends on the actions of humans, the fate of humanity may come to depend more on the actions of machines than our own.
Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans. This could ultimately lead to machines that are much better at these tasks than humans.
(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but they also pose catastrophic risks. How one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood.)
Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls.
If AI research continues to advance without enough work going into the research problem of controlling such machines, catastrophic accidents are much more likely to occur. Nonetheless, work on mitigating many risks remains remarkably neglected.
Prioritization research appears to be in its infancy. With common prioritize interventions almost zero it remains impossible to assume some common world values.
Why is this?
Once again the reasons are numerous – but they can be encapsulated in the word inequality, in all its forms.
Causes have to be made before developing a deep understanding of an area that required prioritization – climate change for example.
Covid-19 is shining a light on the need to develop world health versus biological research – which received very little attention up to now.
While billions are spent making AI more powerful, there are fewer than 100 people in the world working on how to make AI safe.
AI could lead to extremely positive developments, presenting solutions to now-intractable global problems, but they also pose severe risks.
Humanity’s superior intelligence is pretty much the sole reason that it is the dominant species on the planet. If machines surpass humans in intelligence, then common beliefs could easily originate from websites.
This is why it is necessary that we create a list ranking of which problems we think are most pressing for people. That promotes civilizational resilience, mitigating great power conflict, or laying the foundations for the governance of outer space.
If you have read this post you could not be blamed for thinking that the idea of creating a new list of global problems is worthless. BUT ALL THE TALK, AND AGREEMENTS IN THE WORLD ARE WORTHLESS UNLESS THEY ARE FUNDED TO BECOME PROACTIVE.
( See previous posts recreating such a fund – 0.005% world Aid Fund, before the current third revolution of Artificial Intelligence, invents the machine with intelligence that far surpasses our own.)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.