“You’re well within your right to know which vaccine you’re taking.
In this post, I am addressing the moral case for taking or not taking the Jab and I am no science or Medical guru.
Everyone has a choice.
When you get vaccinated, you should receive a card or printout telling you which COVID-19 vaccine you received, the date, and where you received it. You’ll also get a fact sheet listing the vaccine’s risks and benefits.
At the moment there are:
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine- USA.
Pfizer’s vaccine – USA
Novavax -USA
and AstraZeneca. – Uk
CanSino – China.
Others in trial. Valneva, GSK/Sanofi Pasteur, Janssen.
Vaccines and drugs often take years to go through trials and development before gaining approval and being used to treat patients. So with vaccines ready to be delivered within months of Covid-19’s emergence, it’s fair to ask how we can be sure they’re safe.
Could issues present themselves years down the line? No one knows. 100 percent safety can never be guaranteed.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses within 28 days. These vaccines don’t contain live viruses and will not give you COVID-19.
They are mRNA vaccines that use a strip of genetic material called mRNA. Once the mRNA enters a cell, it triggers the cell to build copies of the spike proteins. The immune system learns to recognize these spike proteins through the production of antibodies that block the virus from entering healthy cells. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work this way.
The Pfizer vaccine needs to be kept at super-cold temperatures of -70 degrees Celsius, while the Moderna vaccine must be stored at -2 degrees Celsius and must be used within 12 hours once it reaches room temperature.
The Pfizer vaccine is approved for individuals 16 and older.
The Moderna’s has been approved for patients 18 and older.
The AstraZenecaViral vector vaccines rely on another virus, called an adenovirus.
There is nothing in either vaccine that could affect anyone’s genetic makeup.“There is no evidence at all that they have any effect on fertility
For many diseases, immunity acquired naturally often lasts longer than immunity from a vaccine. But that means you have to suffer, and survive, the disease,” So what is called herd immunity might well be achievable but at the cost of millions more deaths and suffering.
To debunked myth that has with the help of social media morphed into a conspiracy theory after Bill Gates suggested creating a digital certificate of vaccine records.
There is no microchip and no tracking device of any kind in either vaccine.
It’s almost hard to deny this stuff because it’s so stupid or strange that even
to repeat it gives it credibility.
Unfortunately, it’s too early for anyone to knows whether any of the vaccines
will actually affect the virus spread with a new mutation or whether
symptomless vaccine takers could still infect others.
Everyone wants to see the back of Covid-19.
The truth at the moment is that there is a carnival of wild claims, distortions,
and flat-out lies about whichever jab you happen to get.
The pharmaceutical companies that developed these vaccines did so
against their own Data.
We don’t know how long vaccine-induced immunity is going to last.
Will we all have to carry either a digital health card or some other government Pass?
More than likely.
If we need a booster jab does it have to be the same vaccine or anyone of the others?
What would happen if you had one on each?
In the end, we have to hope that there are no unseen consequences from any of the available vaccines.
Should you take a jab?
The vaccines’ effectiveness isn’t dependent on the scientists alone. It’s also dependent on us. So, what should we do and why? Here’s why I am going to get vaccinated.
Vaccines are something we do for each other as much as ourselves.
It depends on a personal basis on what value you place on your life but with society-wide consequences.
As much as viruses are scourges and will always be here, vaccines are our friends. Before the measles vaccine, that disease killed millions of kids every year. About that gift horse, we should not be looking at.
It will show what we’re made of.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
(FUNDAMENTAL FIFTEEN MINUTE READ. TO CHANGING THE DIRECTION THE WORLD IS GOING IN)
This virus has no vaccine against it, it extracts data about our behaviors and using it to manipulate us. It flourishes on social media that preys on the most primal parts of your brain.
You sign up to it with the terms and conditions when you get online with Twitter or Facebook, Google, and more.
Companies like Facebook and Google have corporate goals and interests that are backing us into an untenable social framework, where these monopolies own and operate the Internet, outside societal influences, and democratic control, extracting data on a massive scale.
They own your content in precise ways, and they have precise aims for your content.
As well, and, most of the time, treating our private lives as raw material for their profit.
Their algorithms are engineered to amplify the most extreme, angry, toxic, content with the intent to maximize data extraction thereby creating a huge societal asymmetry of knowledge and power – a whole new dimension of inequality.
WE ARE LEARNING THE HARD ABOUT THEIR DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS – the election of Donald Trump, the Arab Spring, Promoting Popularism, false news on everything, from climate change to covid-19.
WITH THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IT IS INTOLERABLE TO ALLOW MISFORMATION TO BE SPREAD WILLY NILLY WITHOUT VERIFICATION OF THE TRUTH.
This commercial surveillance has to stop because the boundaries between the virtual and the real world are melting.
We the people should have the right to decide what becomes of data and what remains private. What data is sharable and what purpose data should be used for.
WHY?
BECAUSE OUR PUBLIC DISCOURSE RULED BY SOCIAL MEDIA IS BEING RULED BY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR PROFIT.
If we don’t in the not so distant future you will see algorithms with self-awareness or worse still self-aware robots.
Instead of massive concentrations of data to manipulate our commercial and political behavior, data becomes a critical resource for people and society to ensure we remove inequalities in society.
There is no room tweaking any of this to get us where we need to go.
Let’s not delve into whether social media are a boon or bane for society. Instead, let’s appropriate social media and use it as an extension of ourselves to reach out to others, and not as a replacement for our physical offline relationships…
Unfortunately, our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens and it is too late to regulate or pass laws governing the use of Algorithms. Only the threat of the very large fines will get these platforms and the people behind to concentrate on this in an appropriate way.
Because the formulaic quality of social media is well suited to the banter it appears these days that you’re only as relevant as your last tweet.
WE NEED A FUNDAMENTAL WORLD RESET WITH AI TO TETHER INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY NOT INEQUALITY.
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Facebook is basically an advertising company; they exist to make money, like all companies.
Even though Facebook has joined WHO and UNIFC to supply accurate information about covid-19 vaccines misinformation still finds a way on to social media where it combined to make a whirlpool of misinformation.
For example. A post like this.
10 years from now you will hear commercials that say ” if you took the Covid-19 vaccine between 2020-2021 you may be entitled to compensation”
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The world is experiencing dramatic events that are leaving their mark not only on our society and our economy but on each and every one of us.
On the plus side of Ai technology, machine-learning algorithms are helping researchers understand the virus, identify the regions of the world with the highest contagion rates, and forecast the capacity needs of national health systems, with the aim—among others—of minimizing fatalities in the COVID-19 pandemic.
These algorithms can identify patterns of concentration, contagion rates, hidden similarities among cases, and, in general, allow for the aggregation of valuable knowledge that provides a more accurate global picture of the pandemic. More importantly, such algorithms can be used to protect communities that might be more vulnerable. For example, if an elder-care facility is located in an area with a high concentration of contagion, it should receive special attention to prevent unnecessary fatalities.
Prediction algorithms, together with fine-grained simulations can be used to forecast the evolution of the crisis.
For all these outcomes to be reliable, an important precondition is the trustworthiness of the data used with the algorithms.
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Social media is run by algorithms, programs that spit out the things you see online, working in the background to come up with the things you see.
The interest of the corporation is fueling the content that you’re seeing.
However, when we are talking about algorithms on the internet or social media, you’re talking about people’s data going into a system and reworked preferences that come from that data input coming out. So you’re seeing the same sorts of things again and again when you’re expressing your preferences online.
So clicking on Google, YouTube, Twitter, the Facebook which are reinforcement systems based on existing preferences is about giving anthropomorphic agency to something that really doesn’t make decisions in the same way that we do.
Are they giving us beneficial moments, or making actual choices for us?
The question is if algorithms just show us what we want, can they push us in different directions.
Think about it in terms of what the algorithm wants and how it’s treating us by personifying the algorithm.
To sum up.
They are inescapable and encrypted in individuals’ online lives constantly, ‘making autocratic decisions…to produce a single output and agonistic in influencing individuals becoming a key site of power in the contemporary mediascape with the ability to, ‘shape social and cultural formations.
To date, we as individuals have granted algorithms the, ‘almost unimaginable power to determine what we see, where we spend, how we perceive.
Their power seems to be located in the mechanics of the algorithm.
However, it is in the hands of the individual to modify their opinions and perspectives to what has been put in order for them.
Every algorithm falls under a certain class.
Basically, they are-
1) Brute force.
2) Divide and conquer.
3) Decrease and conquer.
4) Dynamic programming.
5) Greedy algorithm.
6) Transform and conquer.
7) Backtracking algorithm.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As you know the workings of the world of finance are screaming compilated.
All money is created as debt and destroyed when repaid.
Money originated as commodity money, but nearly all contemporary money systems are based on fiat money. ( Fiat money does not have intrinsic value and does not have use-value.)
It has value only because a government maintains its value, or because parties engaging in exchange agree on its value.
There are three major theories regarding the origin of money:-
1 Money was created for trading purposes;
2 Money was created for social purposes;
3 Money was created for religious purposes.
Money is an unconditional means of payment, a token for wealth, worthless of itself, but symbolizing wealth because it is enshrined in law. It is then administered by Governments as a public resource, for and on behalf of the People.
Money today has no connection with earthly resources, and actually many earthly resources are diminishing while money (or at least the number on the pieces of paper) gets bigger and bigger.
I think we’d soon find out how money has stopped us from appreciating the true value of the earth we live on.
In the coming years, we need to get this reality of money out to everyone.
I imagine the scenario whereby ‘money’ in its present form disappeared in a flash, there would be no physical change in anything, just a lot of renegotiation.
With Facebook’s Libra looming on the horizon and the Covid-19 pandemic further depressing the use of physical cash perhaps it’s time for Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) to be introduced.
To give policymakers more effective tools to support the economy, particularly during times of crisis, while maintaining financial stability. Allowing central banks to distribute newly created public money directly to citizens rather than going through financial markets.
What happens if the world does not return to normalcy within, say, a few years?
If so, governments will find themselves writing enormous cheques every month to sustain comatose economies. If that happens, all bets are off.
The bottom line is, we are not at the mercy of just a virus but a world economic depression with governments issuing epic amounts of debt. For now, confronted by an overwhelming emergency, governments have little choice but to engage in deficit spending on a giant scale, embarking on one of the greatest peacetime borrowing binges in history.
This is and should be raising many questions when it comes to borrowing, severely tests the question of how much the governments can borrow.
Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, the economic uncertainty will likely cost the global economy trillions.
In fact, the urgent question isn’t whether countries can afford to take on more debt. It’s whether they’re taking on enough debt to fund the stimulus programs necessary to avert an even deeper downturn.
There’s a degree of anxiety now that’s well beyond the health scares which are very serious and concerning. No matter how expensive an outpouring of government aid may seem right now, it is cheaper than dealing with a depression down the road.
After all, it consists of one arm of government creating money in order to buy debt issued by another arm of government, which looks perilously close to a shell game in which central banks monetize government debt and distort markets.
The amount a government can borrow depends on many factors, such as
Does it print its own currency?
Do markets trust the government to maintain low inflation and not default?
What is the interest rate on government bonds?
What is the state of the economy?
What is the purpose of government borrowing?
To what extent is the government borrowing from domestic or foreign investors?
Should we worry about the long-term effects of this new borrowing?
Without question, the new debt will leave taxpayers with a significantly larger burden to carry in years to come.
Some commentators believe debt-challenged governments may eventually be forced to go even further and turn to “helicopter money,” a maneuver in which central banks would simply create money, without issuing any corresponding debt, and the government would funnel the new cash to people and businesses.
The lender of last resort.
If there is no lender of last resort.
The nightmare scenario where the virus continues to suffocate the global economy for a year or more would lead to the unpardonable sin of blurring the distinction between fiscal and monetary policy.
Disaster Capitalism.
But until we win the battle against COVID-19, and revive our battered economies, we are in uncharted territory. Best to not rule anything out.
The economic impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus will be different than anything we have seen before.
This is the calm before the storm.
How far can a currency fall before the government has to protect its citizens from the effects of a worthless currency?
STIMULUS DOES NOT NECESSITATE EXTRA DEBT.
Money should become Man’s servant rather than his master.
In fact, central banks act as a broker between the governments and private bankers who lend the nation its own national currency at interest.
It does this by issuing gilt-edged bonds.
Markets are allowing all the major countries to borrow plenty at ultra-low rates of interest, underpinned by Central Banks buying up a lot of the debt.
This only has to change where inflation picks up, which so far it has not.
Inflation reduces the real value of the government debt, but, that means people will be less willing to hold government bonds.
Inflation will require higher interest rates to attract people to keep bonds. In theory, the government can print money to reduce the real value of debt; but existing savers will lose out.
If the government creates inflation, it will be more difficult to attract savings in the future.
But in an economic depression, inflationary pressures vanish so it is much easier to finance a deficit by borrowing.
So do government debt and deficits don’t matter.
2021 will be the first year where the three main economies or trading blocs of the world – the US, the European Union (EU), and China – will refocus their efforts on fighting climate change.
Can the world afford this avalanche of new borrowing?
With the coming economic depression and the need to redefine our association with nature, while addressing climate change, and getting control of the pandemics there is no choice.
It sticks out like a sore thumb if we are to win the war against this virus inequality has to be addressed by paying for the protection of our ecosystems.
In other words, to make it less profitable to destroy rather than to create.
This can be achieved without the need to borrow with the technology we have at our disposal by placing a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all activities that generate profit for profit’s sake. ( See previous posts)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.)
Once society gains control of the issue of money, it cannot let the bankers issue money ever again.
providing a safe public form of money and breaking the oligopoly that banks currently have on the digital money and payments system.
It does need standards and global agreements but the potential advantages clearly outwiegh the disadvantages.
endorsed digital currency is the way forward> this potentially is a great (and cheaper) way to distribute money to where its needed and this is more importnat than ever right know for obvious reasons.
Created money is already inflationary,
BORROWING COMES IN FORTY SHADES OF GRAY
a surge in misleading and unsubstantiated medical advice since the Covid-19 outbreak.
The first is that borrowing has been historically high in recent years following the financial crisis in the late noughties,
the deficit
GDP reflecting the need to spend and borrow to win the war.
Bank of England is buying in substantial quantities of the debt.
There is no need to count the interest paid on the debt owned by the Bank of England, as taxpayers and government get that receipt.
The debt taken on by the UK now has to be serviced by the following generations. And what are they getting in return for that debt? Just about nothing.
Quantative easing, which is bond buying by central banks
as it’s known in the jargon –
Covid is going to be around in the world for decadesa
possible total deficit of £7 trn by 2050.
By hoovering up domestic bonds, these central banks are creating artificial demand for bonds and thereby driving down interest rates (which move in the opposite direction to bond prices).
Central banks’ balance sheets are expanding furiously as they gobble up government bonds and other forms of debt.
Since the internet was in its infancy, the rights of users to use it to express their opinions were sacrosanct.
However, there is a price for “free” internet, and that we’ve given up more of ourselves than we ever intended to.
Concern already exists that Facebook and similar social media platforms act as echo chambers that validate opinions we already hold – fuelling precisely the type of extreme views that Facebook says it has a right to edit.
Might this new position simply result in more fake news?
The Internet has and is empowering masses of people by access to world-wide information sources, education, and communication but what is now considered permissible and acceptable online is shifting.
The question is with this newfound freedom, that is influencing every aspect of our lives for good or bad, should we be requiring people to register their identity when using the internet.?
If so how.
It would be true to say as we have become constantly connected, none of us are as anonymous as we think.
George Orwell presciently realized that if citizens don’t know what is true and what is false, they can’t make a judgment about what to object to in their lives.
Is it time to introduce an online digital passport to eradicate individual desires, such as credulity, abuse, gender-swapping, exploration, radicalizing, hacking, trolling, spreading false news, promoting popularism groups, bullying, racism, the list is endless?
( Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”
The GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give internet users the right to privacy and the right to withhold their personal details.
The Malicious Communication Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003 make it possible to prosecute “trolling” – and many other forms of online harassment are also now covered by the legislation. )
Platforms on the internet avoided liability by claiming they were “mere conduits” of these views and not “publishers” of them. The argument goes that this includes protection for freedom of expression by the right to remain anonymous online.
So which should remain enshrined: freedom of speech or freedom from abuse?
The world feels smaller and we’ve celebrated this but in any human population, there will be people with irreconcilably different understandings of the truth.
Repressing speech has costs, but so does allowing it.
The world, however, has changed, and many of us may be in the time warp of old values. Human beings are poor witnesses, easily misled by a personal bias, profoundly influenced by their social environment.
As products of their society, social media and journalists are no exceptions.
The world is now a much more dangerous place, not because of Covid -19 which is plunging it into a Depression with social media exposing a system of governance corseted by greed – profit before the people. Then, on the other hand, social media is like cancer at the heart of societies spreading the news, not what the facts are, but what men wish to see.
The press once seemed to have a conscience, thanks to history’s painful social conflicts and questions of war and peace.
Social media is not concerned with any historical lessons it being a wildfire of the short-term reactions of unfounded populism without any in-depth investigative journalism.
It is becoming impossible to distinguish between paid news and actual, unbiased news.
You could say that the world has more pressing problems.
However, our current and future problems, like the internet, are all interconnected.
Shifting trends and the advancement in communication technology require a re-examination of the underlying principle and its application in new contexts.
There are attempts to get some control.
Free-speech advocates typically claim that the value of unfettered expression outweighs any harm it might cause, offering assurances that any such harm will be minimal.
Because like several other precious freedoms, free speech must be placed outside the reach of political exigency.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, it is impossible to pass binding regulations or laws that don’t restrict the sanctity of free speech.
Free speech or the freedom of expression is the modern civilization’s most precious gift to human society but it can’t be reaffirmed by drowning out its opponents.
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The issuing of Digital Passports could not be left to the whim of Facebook or any other internet providers.
Also “Digital identity solutions leave us open to data exploitation with the valuable data from these solutions (being) used for other purposes, so governments could not be involved in their issuing other than making supporting laws with large fines.
The most obvious hitch in this plan is that not everyone has a smartphone,
With the current Pandemic and vacations, there will be an attempt to introduce Covid-19 free digital health certification (Of course, this would only be applicable to people with smartphones.) and they could become a prerequisite for some activities.
But for now, we’re many steps removed from that kind of streamlined process even becoming possible. Widespread adoption of so-called immunity passports would require a level of coordination and organization uncharacteristic of any country’s response to COVID-19 so far.
So here is the challenge.
Is it possible to create a Digital Passport that is unhackable, that can be applied for online, that would combine your present Passport information, that you could use to vote, to register an internet identity, and carry your medical history.
People would only accept such a thing if it commands public trust.
As evidence with the recent election in the USA entrusting your democracy to a black-box proprietary system that is subject to hacking, glitches, and errors, but NOT subject to scrutiny, analysis, or independent verification, is the surest and quickest way to lose your democracy.
However, creating an internet user register could be possible not only authenticating the user but making it more transparent and ensure that users have the right to remedy when wrong decisions are made.
As for platforms, they know what they need to do because civil society has told them for years.
Just in case they have not got the message they should ensure that the decisions they make about speech are in line with global human rights standards, rather than making the rules up as they go.
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.
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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.
Yes, as humans we face natural disasters and pandemics but neither can hold a candle to the carnage that humans inflict on each other. 81.5 billion people died because of war, 800,000 because of disaster, less than 5 billion from all diseases including cancer.
You could say that religion is the biggest killer of all but would be wrong, even ignoring the big epidemics, the death toll through the years from things like Cholera, Malaria, and yearly flu outbreaks, Smallpox, The Black Death, The Plague of Justinian, HIV, 1918 Influenza, TB, Polio have no connection to religious belief.
Almost three-quarters of deaths are from non-communicable diseases, with obesity and diet amongst the most significant contributors. Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of early deaths across the globe.
You could also say that the world’s health lies outside of the control of the individual; war, conflict, or environmental factors, which is also untrue.
What is true is that Climate Change will be the all-encompassing killer.
Death by many cuts.
The world population has increased from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.7 billion today.
Global deaths from COVID-19 passed 776,000 in mid-August 2021 with 7.7 billion of us it has the potential to get rid of a lot of us.
The annual mortality rate for the seasonal flu is about 0.01% or 12,000-61,000 deaths per year.
To get some perspective and context here are some of the main killers the world has seen.
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide—about one-third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50… 5.26% of an estimated global population of 950 million, died. The pandemic lasted for two years.
The Irish Famine.
Around a million.
Genghis Khan
40 million deaths.
Genocide.
The Armenian Genocide (800,000 to 1,500,000), The Assyrian Genocide (150,000 to 300,000), and the Greek Genocide (289,000 to 750,000) combined with the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon (200,000).
The Cambodian Civil War.
Pol Pot, Around 2 million people.
Ranavalona I of Madagascar
Around 5 million to 2.5 million
The Congo
10 million deaths
Japan.
Millions.
Hitler Germany The Nazi Holocaust.
17 million.
China.
The Nationalist government of China is responsible for between 6 and 18.5 million deaths. Mao Zedong Chairman Mao Catastrophes alone 15 million.
Stalin.
From 4 to 10 million. Stalinism killed more soviets than Nazism: a total of 12 million death of soviets were attributed to the Nazis, while up to 25 million deaths in total were by Stalin’s orders.
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people.
The British Empire killed with famine, sword, and fire more people than
Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Hitler or Stalin.
It must be said that many empires behaved this way, and the British are not an exception. Most large empires will have blood on their hands to varying degrees, whether it is through conquest, colonization, the implementation of the rule, control of the colony, or suppression of the people and opposition.
Inevitably, given that the British Empire was the largest in history and that it existed from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century, the activities and policies of the Empire would have resulted in the deaths of many people – or perhaps it saved more people than it extinguished.
I doubt you could put an exact figure on it because there’s no systematic way of knowing the real number in our modern days – either way, it has a gritty past.
9/11, Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Isis, and recent conflicts, such as those in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, and Libya, yet to be counted.
Road traffic. According to the World Health Organization, caused an estimated 1.35 million deaths worldwide in 2016. That is, one person is killed every 25 seconds.
Illicit drugs are drugs.
Who knows how many. Directly and indirectly – it is over 750,000 per year.
Murder.
The murder rate is 7.6 for every 100000 people globally. Think this works out to be around 6 million homicides per year globally.
Poverty.
Around 18 million die from poverty.
The ice age.
It killed an estimated 75 million people, including 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population.
If you are reading this consider yourself lucky.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We, humans, live on an ecologically fragile planet with limited resources that must be sustained for future generations we must move humanity to an alternative world system — one committed to social justice, deep democracy, environmental sustainability, a safe climate, and planetary health.
The COVID-19 pandemic contains the fuel for social change – verbal with little imagination as to what to change.
History tells us that social changes can occur quickly once economic, political, social structural, and environmental conditions have reached a tipping point.
Humanity is now obviously at a crossroads or perhaps several crossroads: one is business-as-usual which is sure to result in dystopia; another is a shift to some variant of green capitalism, which is gaining considerable support; and finally an eco-socialist vision that, while muted at this time, will hopefully become stronger as the need for it becomes more apparent to the mass of humanity.
Thanks to Covid -19 the world is off-balance – and it will remain so for years to come.
Far from settling into a ‘new normal’, we should expect a COVID-19 domino effect, triggering further disruptions – positive as well as negative – over the decade ahead.
It has underscored the interconnectedness of our natural, social and economic systems, and provided a stark reminder of the scale of systemic risks that can build up when we allow weaknesses and negative impacts to accumulate over time.
Continuation on the current pathway will, over time, only lead to deeper and deeper crises, including an ever-escalating climate change crisis, the result of growing greenhouse emissions spewed by the capitalist treadmill of production and consumption.
Combating both climate change and global capitalism go hand-in-hand however the raw truth is that Capitalism will certainly not consciously permit the eventual demise of global capitalism and the emergence of an ecosocialist world system promoted by many.
In previous posts, I have advocated that without funding all alternatives will fail whether they are green capitalism and existing climate regimes, including the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, which is not sufficient to mitigate climate change in any serious way.
How can we expect the system that created the problem to solve the problem?
Despite the daunting difficulties that much of humanity currently faces, and will continue to face over the course of this century capitalism today continues unabated to pump Co2 into the atmosphere and will continue to do so after the Climate Summit this year in Scotland. (By the deadline of December 31, 2020, only 70 out of 192 countries had presented their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs): the individual commitments made to fight against climate change.)
One doesn’t have to have to be a delegate to this summit to know that if we manage to get on top of the current Pandemic which is bleeding the coffers of countries endeavoring to save their economies the emissions will triple on returning to anything that looks like normal.
Of course, we will be told that we have learned the lesson that Green is the way forward. It is true to say that the construction of ecosocialism needs to be based upon a commitment to a long-term sustainable balance between sociocultural systems and the natural environment but it is also true to say that the capitalist world system continues to self-destruct due to its exploitative, oppressive, socially unjust, and environmentally unsustainable practices – this will continue with artificial intelligence to plunder the earth for a profit with machining mining called data, fed to machine unregulated algorithm, making us all but powerless.
Ecosocialism constitutes a vision against the mal-distribution of resources on a global scale that capitalism produces is bound to keep alive, notions of social justice and equality, deep democracy, and socialism in oppressed classes.
It is only by spreading the cost of change fairly that we can reinvent capitalism.
We could adopt a universal wage and let people fend for themselves but this won’t change our habits.
It is time to envision future scenarios and strategies for achieving an alternative world system.
Once again here’s how.
Because we live in different cultures, transparency is vital to address the main problem – Inequality in all its forms.
To do this the cost of change has to be spread fairly.
This can only be achieved by making a profit for profit sake contribute.
Not by taxation, IMF loans, foreign aid, or begging charity aid programs.
The UN is now relied upon by the international community to coordinate humanitarian relief operations due to natural and man-made disasters in areas beyond the relief capacity of national authorities alone.
We currently have the technology that maximizes profit and future profit, like high-frequency trading that runs 90% of world stock exchanges.
THERE IS NO REASON NOT TO PLACE A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE TO CREATE A PERPETUAL FUND TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER PRESSING WORLD PROBLEMS.
ALL OF ITS AID WOULD BE GRANTED NON-REPAYABLE.
THIS FUND COULD BE ADMINISTERED BY ELECTED MEMBERS.
ALL PROJECTS OTHER THAN DISASTER RELIEF WOULD BE SUBJECT TO APPROVAL AGAINST A WRITTEN EARTH CONSTITUTION THAT TRULY ALIGNS MARKETS WITH THE NATURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS ON WHICH WE ALL DEPEND.
It is about building real resilience, driving equitable and sustainable growth, and reinventing capitalism itself.
PROJECTS THAT MEET THE REQUIRED PERMATERS WOULD THEN BE ELIGIBLE FOR FUNDING.
TO AVOID CORRUPTION AND LOBBYING ALL APPROVED PROJECTS ARE PLACED IN A TELEVISED YEARY DRAW.
50,000 – 100,000
100,000 – 250,000
250,000 – 500,000
500,000 – 1 MILLION
1 MILLION AND GREATER.
Here is a suggestion that could be funded.
Products Labeling.
Marketers use labeling for their products to bring identification to impart information to the consumer about the product. They allow customers to know about the item and give necessary messages including ingredients, instructions, and uses.
Why not their carbon footprint with a symbol showing their contribution to Carbon emissions.
Human and nonhuman, have a natural right to sustenance.
( See the previous posts on a world aid commission.)
All human comments and imagination appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
IF THERE IS ANYTHING TO LEARN FROM COVID IT IS THAT WE HUMANS MUST CHANGE THE WAY WE LIVE COLLECTIVELY AND INDIVIDUALLY ON THIS PLANET.
CURRENTLY, WE ALL LIVE WITHIN IDEOLOGIES THAT ARE BROKEN.
SOME VISIBLE SOME NOT.
(An ideology (/ˌʌɪdɪˈɒlədʒi/) is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially as held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which “practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones.” Wikipedia.
There are many different kinds of ideologies, including political, social, epistemological, and ethical.
“We do not need…to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities. The need for a sense of universal responsibility affects every aspect of modern life.” — Dalai Lama.
“The function of ideology is to stabilize and perpetuate dominance through masking or illusion.” — Sally Haslanger
“[A]n ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history or the solution for all the ‘riddles of the universe,’ or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws, which are supposed to rule nature and man.” — Hannah Arendt)
At the root of all these ideologies is the value of money.
HOW IT IS ACQUIRED AND DISTRIBUTED IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED.
A religion may present a vision of a just society, but it cannot easily have a practical political program with or without money.
All idea systems have a class basis. This class bias is defined by the acquisition of wealth in one form or another – assets, power, etc. Nither however can any longer dominate the state through an appeal to the populace, and then use the powers of the state to control both the economy and the private lives of the citizen’s work.
No longer can politics itself, acquire certain ideological characteristics whose true nature is concealed.
All forms of isms that belong to the 19th or 20th century may suggest that ideologies are no older than the word itself—that they belong essentially to a period in which secular belief increasingly replaced traditional religious faith.
So let’s ask the question.
Where are we?
In terms of truth we now in a world both connected and disconnected in the extreme sense of the word connected.
IT IS CLEAR THAT THE WORLD NEEDS TO MOVE BEYOND SLOGANS.
A system that rewards those with capita while taxpayer’s money is used to support food banks for those out of work is not sustainable.
The economic injustices are plain to see with historic debt the inheritance of the young along with irreversible climate change and biodiversity collapse.
We now need an ism that shifts human values to a different set of values by placing the earth’s healthy existence at the forefront of all our values.
WE MUST NOT ONLY CONFRONT OUR MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF THE NATURAL WORLD WE MUST USE KNOWLEDGE NOT AS A MEANS TO CREATE WEALTH BUT AS A GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING WHERE WE ARE AT.
WE CAN NO LONGER STAND BYE AND WATCH BIG TECH MONOPOLIES COMPANIES SWALLOW WHAT IS LEFT OF COMPETITION.
WE CAN NO LONGER STAND BYE AND WATCH A MARKET PLACE THAT CREATES WINNERS AND LOSERS ON THE BASES OF WEALTH.
WE CAN NO LONGER WATCH WORLD ORGANISATIONS GOVERNED BY VETOES.
WE ALL DEPENDENT ON EACH OTHER AND OTHERS AND MUST COLLABORATE WITH ALL THAT SURROUNDS US.
No longer is it possible for any system whether it’s socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism, nationalism, liberalism, and conservatism to be FREE OF INTERFERENCE FROM ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MACHINE LEARNING, AND UNCONTROLLED ALGORITHMS.
THESE TECHNOLOGIES IN THEIR PRESENT STATE ARE SIGNALING THAT INTERPRETATIONS OF IDEOLOGIES ARE OUT OF DATE.
You only have to look at the world to see the inequalities created by the pursuit of growth at any cost. This pursuit has turned all of earth’s resources into products to produce more products sold in a marketplace governed by short term profit.
No longer is it possible to take fresh air, fresh water for granted.
If we don’t want a world where from birth to death is viewed as an opportunity to exploit our weaknesses and essential needs to live out our lives in the first place, we need AN NEW IDOLOGIE CALLED REALISM, NOT ESCAPISM, NOT APATHY, OR ANY MONOTHEISM, OR NEOREALISTS
“ Rather a collective meanings that constitute the structures which organize our actions.”
There is only one solution.
That is as advocated by this blog in several posts to Harness PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE.
High-frequency trading with algorithms, sovereign wealth funds buying earth resources – land, water, energy, futures/ hedge funds – betting on demand, currency exchanges manipulating value, trade deals excluding fair trade, the list is endless.
ALL ACTIONS THAT ARE NOW REQUIRED TO CHANGE COURSE REQUIRE FUNDING.
A 0.05% WORLD AID COMMISSION ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE WILL CREATE A PERTUTIAL FUND OF TRILLIONS TO CREATE A WORLD THAT’S WORTH LIVING ON.
There is one thing for certain change is happing but the window for change is closing.
Climate change is not something that might happen in the future.
We need a new relationship, to a more sustainable relationship with the natural world.
Creative imagination is what’s required so if you read this post let’s hear your comments.
There is a radical difference between conventional threats and emerging threats which are posing a strategic challenge that must be met with a strategic response.
On one hand, it would be fair to say that Human advances have got us into the mess, but the question is the technology capable of getting us out of the mess.
Globalization, complexity, our relatively unsophisticated mechanisms for sharing information and making sense out of changes that we barely perceive, much less understand, all assure that any major threat — and especially non-state threats such as infectious disease – covid -19.
So let’s look at a few things that stick out like sore thumbs when it comes to technology.
The fear that technology could cause humanity’s downfall as such offers some terrifying scenarios that could befall our species.
The risk of the creation of some new super virus or bug in a lab that we are unable to control if it were to escape into the wild isn’t any longer beyond the realms of impossibility.
It means we must apply technology in ways responsive to our most immediate and frequent threats and must balance our use of technology with the intelligence cycle:
If we do not harness the fourth industrial revolution to the benefit of all we will turn the planet once more back into a snowball Earth.
We must develop reliable capabilities for developing technology advancement.
No government, no international organization, and certainly no corporation, can be relied upon to seek out and act on the truth, or even to act in the public interest.
So in my view, the greatest threat we face is unregulated software that is driving our lives. It is one of the greatest problems afflicting modern society, not because of human intelligence, but because we are allowing profit-seeking algorithms to dominate consumption.
Current economic policy is short-term creating a non-saving society for the rainy day.
One only has to look at the effects of the covid pandemic to see that a redistribution of wealth is required urgently if we are to have any chance of a caring society.
The current threats.
Take for example.
Cyber malware.
What is malware? How dangerous is it?
It is a contraction of malicious software that exploits your digital life, by mining your personal data either to profit directly or sell on the information. It comes in the form of a virus embedded in a piece of software and can spread from one file to another or computer.
There are several types of malware.
A worm. Does not need to be triggered. It automatically propagates itself.
A Trojan. Can be a good-looking App that will wreak havoc.
A Ransom. Pay up before everything is deleted.
They can be weaponized to have real-world consequences. Over fifteen Iranian facilities were attacked and infiltrated by the Stuxnet worm.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) disclosed on Wednesday that it has suffered a cyber-attack, leading to unauthorized access to documents relating to a Covid-19 vaccine.
Now imagine the threat to the stability of critical infrastructures around water, electricity, and gas that are vital to the running of nations.
The next has to be Climate change.
The main problem here is that no one whats to foot the bill. ( See previous posts)
To achieve long-term and profound progress in environmental governance, policy focus needs to be complemented by intensified efforts to strengthen the rule of environmental law not just shallow promises coming out of Climate Conferences.
To do so, the capacity of international courts to pronounce judgments on environmental matters, the clarity, and scope of environmental legal principles, and compliance with and implementation of judgments must be further strengthened with a constitution for the whole of the Earth.
What’s at stake here are basic rights to life and health so the pursuing of climate policies that violate the right to life must have genuine consequences if we are to keep global warming to 2°C.
Climate change crossing borders with impunity.
Next: Poverty.
The gap between rich and poor is now a pandemic.
No single factor can account for the large disparities in economic development among the countries of the world. Nor is the relative influence of any particular factor likely to remain the same over time.
While such things as technology and natural resources are obvious factors in economic development, they are plundered for profit’s sake by high-frequency trading run by unregulated data mining algorithms.
However, there is no denying the fact that the rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer.
This is happing not because of human intelligence but can be attributed to numerous factors such as social immobility, globalization, more advanced technology, and taxation.
Current economic policy is dominated by short-term thinking so there is a serious lack of savings for the rainy day.
The COVID-19 pandemic will and is widening the gap between the rich and the poor, especially in the emerging online markets and developing economies.
Next.
Nuclear Armageddon.
The threat of nuclear Armageddon has receded these days replaced by Climate Change.
Still, it’s a worrying thought alongside artificial intelligence, biotechnology warfare it is and remains inconceivable to our comprehension other than an instant self ext to our existence.
Next
Enslavement by self-replicate robotic robots created by nano-sized technology.
It may well be a piece of code – not a nuclear weapon or infectious disease or indeed climate change – that brings about humanity’s downfall.
As our culture advanced and our species invented many things that will make our lives easier, our demand for raw materials increased by leaps and bounds. We get these resources from the other. The problem is, we’re using too much and without care. Our planet just can’t keep up with our ever-increasing demands.
Finally: With quality education becoming more and more expensive only an investment in people and not profit has any hope.
Our demand for knowledge shows no sign of abating.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.