Category Archives: Democracy

THE BEADY SAY’S: TO ANCHOR OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CORONA VIRUS THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS AND WILL BE VITAL.

27 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Communication., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Fake News., Freedom of the Press., Honesty., Human values., International solidarity., Life., Lock Down., Modern Day Communication., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, What Needs to change in the World, World Leaders, World Politics

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(Four-minute read) 


At the moment rightly so we are all preoccupied with the consequences of our own individual lives and all indicator point to world disaster on a scale not seen by most of us. 

However, if and when we return to a semblance of normal the freedom of the press will be in jeopardy when the blame game starts, which is inevitable. 

Why will it be?

Because the present pandemic marks the emergence of a new model of watchdog function, one that is neither purely networked nor purely traditional but is rather a mutualistic interaction between the two.

What globalization, technological integration and the general flattening of the world have done is to super empower individuals to such a degree that they can actually challenge any hierarchy—from a global bank to a nation-state—as individuals.

The fear that the decentralized network, with its capacity to empower individuals to challenge their governments or global banks, is not a democracy, but could lead to anarchy.

But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know.

There should be relentless exposure of politician or businessman, every evil practice, whether in politics, business, or social life if we are to change the world for a better future.

False news forces us to ask how comfortable we are with the actual shape of democratization created by the Internet. It circumvents the social and organizational
frameworks of traditional media, which played a large role in framing the
balance between freedom and responsibility of the press.

Many of the problems can be laid at the feet of the Internet—fragmentation of the audience and polarization of viewpoints.

We cannot afford as a polity to create classes of privileged speakers and
press agencies, and underclasses of networked information producers whose products we take into the public sphere when convenient, but whom we treat as susceptible to suppression when their publications become less palatable.

Doing so would severely undermine the quality of our public discourse.

The risk is that the government will support its preferred media models and that the
incumbent mass media players will, in turn, vilify and denigrate the newer
models in ways that make them more vulnerable to attack and shore up the
the privileged position of those incumbents in their role as a more reliable ally watchdog.

Clarifying that the freedom of the press extends to “every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion” and that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer and individual bloggers. 

Social distancing must not be allowed to turn into ruling distancing.

 Long live WikiLeaks. 

An uncomfortable fact is that a free press in a democracy can be messy at the best of times with governments around the world underestimated the coronavirus the political exploitation of the outbreak is now a reality. 

Capturing the treatment of television is less comprehensive as it is a visual medium.

 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOK’S AT POPULISM. WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Communication., Democracy, Digital age., Disconnection., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Technology, The common good., The far-right., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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(Eighteen-minute read)

The word came from the “prairie populists”, a 1890s movement of US farmers who supported more robust regulation of capitalism.

“But no one is clear what it is.”

We can’t really talk about populism without talking about our conflicting conceptions of democracy – and the question of what it truly means for citizens to be sovereign.

So is it an ideologically portable way of looking at politics as a forum for opposition between “people” and “elites”?

Or is it simply part of what it means to do politics?

Or is it a lens for looking at our politics?

Or a mode of talking about politics, rather than a set of beliefs?

Or is it an emerging political movement driven by technology, spread by social media, the smartphone and ruled by algorithms.

There is one thing for certain populism is inherent to democracy.

So it would be in the first place a massive mistake, considering the hollow, undemocratic mess we are in, with algorithms making decisions about our collective fate – outside the reach of politics, to ignore its power.

If one looks at the state of liberal democracy today it is becoming more and more a sham.  A nice-sounding set of universal principles that, in practice, end up functioning as smokescreens to normalise the exploitations and inequities of our capitalist system.

Nothing can stay depoliticised forever. The questions of populism would have little urgency were it not for the widespread agreement about the shortcomings of the political status quo: About the abyss between the shining ideals of equality and responsive government implied by our talk about democracy and the tarnished reality of life on the ground.

Populism is supposed to explain: Brexit, Trump, Viktor Orbán’s takeover of Hungary, the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, even Putin.

However, neither Trump nor Brexit should be regarded primarily as populist phenomena.

His election and Brexit shows that every status quo – however sturdy – is only temporary, and can always be challenged by a movement that seeks to replace it with something new.

Populists consider themselves as victims of economic exploitation, anti-austerity movements – such as Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and Occupy these movements are obviously animated by a sense of opposition.

From this perspective, populism is just another word for real politics.

On the other hand, what most people knew about these parties, at first, was that they were openly nativist and racist. They talked about “real” citizens of their countries, and fixated on the issue of national and ethnic “purity,” demonising immigrants and minorities.

But I say that there are no real populists in politics – just people, attitudes and movements that the political centre misunderstands and fears.

The question of populism, then, is always the question of what kind of democracy we want.

The only inherent connection between rightwing and leftwing populist movements is that both embrace the same fundamental truth about democracy: that it is an ever-shifting contest over how the default “we” of politics is defined and redefined, of which no one definition can be guaranteed to last.

When populism appears in the media, which it does more and more often now, it is typically presented without explanation, as if everyone can already define it.

It sounded less alarming than “extreme right” or “radical right”.

It will always live in the shadow of the muddled media and political discourse and there can no longer be any doubt that we are going through a populist moment, so which type of populist you want to be.

A liberal democracy populism that is forced by rightwing populism to make good on its promises of equality. That needs to reacquaint with the need to construct a democratic “we” – a people – around their demand to protect liberal institutions and procedures, in opposition to radical rightwing parties who are happy to see them discarded.

Liberal democracy, in this context, has almost nothing to do with contemporary distinctions between left and right. It refers, instead, to the idea that government should facilitate pluralistic coexistence by balancing the never fully attainable ideal of popular sovereignty with institutions that enshrine the rule of law and civil rights, which cannot easily be overturned by a political majority.

or

A populism that can never be disentangled from the concept’s pejorative baggage.  An ideology runs the risk of making effective and worthwhile political strategies seem irresponsible, even dangerously promoting nativisms and short term gains.

Obviously, there are leftwing and rightwing populisms both are motivated not by passion for populism’s core ideas, but by other ideological factors best described as a fuzzy blanket to camouflage nastier nativism.

We are now living through a time when familiar webs connecting citizens, ideologies and political parties are, if not falling apart, at least beginning to loosen and shift and old theories of populism that defined it specifically as rightwing, racist or anti-immigrant is insufficiently wide to describe these new developments in populist politics.

It seems to me that Populists deal in “simplicity,” in “glib, facile solutions” while liberal leaders have been “oblivious” to the sufferings of their people.

So why are the traditional parties of the left in the western world being defeated?

Because the other side doesn’t play fair any more with conflict an inescapable and defining feature of political life.

The juvenile incapacity of both to bring their preferences to the political arena and engage in the complex give-and-take of rational compromise is with Social Media now fraught with a political examination and association accusation and assassination.

With the impersonal forces, of “globalisation” and “technological change voters are deciding that mainstream political parties have done nothing for their static incomes or disappearing jobs or sense of national decline these past two decades.

The “many, not the few.”

Populism is a new, consensus-smashing thing that is now secondary to nativism. Ultimately, they are disputes about which types of politics make us suspicious, and why.

To conclude that the two camps are simply talking past each other would be to miss the extent to which they are in agreement –and what, taken together, they tell us about the current political moment.

We can never know exactly where democracy is going to take us – not this time, nor the next, nor the time after that, but political parties must come to terms that the elephant in the room is that we no longer vote once every five years we vote on Social media ever five minutes.

Unless politics is not achievable, or rewarding, it obviously is sowing the long-term seeds for discontent.

It’s great to see politicians with Twitter accounts but there’s only so much you can do with that. Online participation in local decision-making is possible.

Failing to practice what you preach has ethical and political costs. E-voting is the next step.

Here below is what they are voting on and its not Fifty Shades of Grey Popularism.

 

 

Capitalist greed has and is poisoning political life.

Unregulated Algorithms will ensure it continues to do so.  Combined with the new realities of the portability of populism’s ideological movements spread by social media it is no wonder that liberal democracy is crumbling around the world.

To keep up with algorithms and their lavishly detailed position papers, their leaders,  Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Mircosoft, and their inc have little personal sympathy any longer with the travails of working people.

We can only hope that the fear of populism on the left will enable the victory of populism of the right.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS IT TIME TO REGULATE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS WITH LAWS.

25 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Democracy, Digital Friendship., Elections/ Voting, Facebook., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Reality., Social Media, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, World Politics

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(Ten-minute read) 

The beady eye is far from the first voice to ask this question and it certainly will not be the last.

We might even come to “question whether we still have free will.

There is no doubting that the social web has created amazing opportunities to learn, discover, connect, but its downside as it penetrates our daily lives is becoming more and more prevalent in the creation of our future lives and the societies we live in.

If the public discussion is shifting increasingly to online fora, and those fora are having more and more influence over democracy it becomes increasingly important to apply principles to them. 

Honest political debate is essential for the health of a democracy.  

If discussions of import move into space where they can be readily censored, then we will simply no longer live in a society with a free exchange of ideas, because the playing field will always be tilted.

One only has to look at how social media platforms are amplifying what is wrong with the world.  

While we all reveal a huge amount of personal information online we are losing the ability to determine honest facts that democracy depends.

Basically, companies that run social media platforms are monopolies or near-monopolies in their areas of operation, and the only way we can achieve the desired outcomes is through clear, effective legal regulations. 

We can’t always control how others use their platforms but we can apply the same regulations that govern all other forms of Media.

The public cannot rely on these company’s self-regulation, because self-regulation raises more questions than it answers.

The fact is that the formation of a platform takes place in a vacuum, whereas the formation of any competitors do not, so they cannot be considered parallels in any way. 

If we take companies like Facebook and Google they both derive most of their revenue from advertising. They essentially constitute a duopoly because they have access to the best data about individuals. Every memory, picture, emoji, song, video, link, gripe, fear, hope, want, dream and bad political opinion posted is mined and monetized as data.

As a result of their algorithms, they are creating and reinforcing divided and insular online communities that do not interact with people or information with which they disagreed.

At the end of the day, how Facebook and Google conduct their businesses undermines privacy and raises questions about ethical behaviour in the uses of our information and their role in society.

The Internet is a “utility” like water or electricity. It is essential to modern life, not an optional subscription service.

Determining how to regulate Facebook or any other platform may first require some kind of definition of what it is.

Facebook brags about connecting us to our family and friends — but it also about directly influencing the outcomes of elections across the globe.

It sits on top of industries including journalism, where it, together with Google, essentially controls the distribution channels for online news and, in effect, the way people discover information about politics, government and society.

They ( Google, Facebook, Twitter,etc) have figured out how to take advantage of this dynamic to distribute false information about political candidates and hot-button political issues in order to drive up traffic and advertising revenue.

Protecting our community is more important than maximizing their profits.

They are given protections that no one can sue them for any reason — that is Google and Facebook nither are responsible for the fake news that appears on their sites.

They are completely shielded from any responsibility for the content that appears on their service.

Changes to legal protection (which has been interpreted by judges to provide a safe harbour for online platforms even when they pay to distribute others’ content and decline the option to impose editorial oversight) would likely be devastating to online platforms like Google and Facebook and would transform the way people interact across the entire internet.

However, with legal protection, sites like these could be held responsible for libellous comments posted by readers, Google could lose lawsuits over potentially false or defamatory information surfacing in search results, and Facebook could be sued for any potentially libellous comment made by anyone on its platform against any other person.

The legal bills to defend against libel and defamation claims would be enormous.

We all need protection and the ability to request platforms to provide us with control over online information by making it accessible and removable at an individual’s request.

The government, on the other hand, has a regulatory intent to protect citizens from content that is obscene or violent.

Should Facebook and their like be regulated?

A question that is never going to end. 

However, until we recognize that there is no fool-proof safeguard to keep horrific content away from the eyes of children we rely on huge fines to the detriment of us all. 

Till then with all internet platforms deflecting criticism, social media will be more psychologically damaging than anyone expected. 

We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people.

It is beyond comprehension that we tolerate the present position.

Or is it? When you see the below.   

Would you ever be prepared to use a nuclear weapon?

This question is increasingly put to politicians as some kind of virility test.

The subtext is that to be a credible political leader, you must be willing to use an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction.

We should be baulking at the casual way in which political discourse on this topic has developed which is politically unacceptable and morally despicable. 

If a mainstream politician unblinkingly said that they would use chemical weapons against civilians there would be uproar. If a self-proclaimed candidate for prime minister boasted that they would commit war crimes, it would be a national scandal. Nuclear weapons should be seen no differently. 

It’s time that nuclear advocates spelt out the reality of what their position means.

The human race is so good at speaking, it’s lost the art of listening.

It might be easy to brush away the febrile atmosphere online as a nasty byproduct of free expression: I don’t want Facebook having everyone’s verified identities. I do want their platform and other platforms to be held responsible legally for content that is false, racest, hateful, rightwing fascist propaganda.  

I do know that if the big platforms, as they already do in part, forced some verifiable information to back up use, we could tame this wild west with legal requirements

I’ll give up on the consensus-building when I can open a platform knowing who to hold legally responsible.  


All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S; JUST WHAT IS A GENERAL ELECTION IN ENGLAND. THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE OR OTHERWISE.

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Democracy, ENGLAND'S SNAP ELECTION, England., English General Election., English parliamentary proceedings.

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(Three-minute read)

British elections are decided using what is known as the First Past the Post (abbreviated FPTP, 1stP, 1PTP or FPP) voting system.

Along with no written constitution, it is the primary cause of all Britain’s dysfunction. 

You would think that a General Election is how the British public decide who they want to represent them in Parliament and ultimately run the country.

Wrong.

First past the post is a voting system designed to keep the electorate/country under the control of a two-party dictatorship while giving the delusion of democracy.

The candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins and becomes the MP for that seat. All other votes are disregarded.

As there is only one candidate from each party, voters who support that party but don’t like their candidate have to either vote for a party they don’t support or a candidate they don’t like. This means the number of MPs a party has in parliament rarely matches their popularity with the public.

Westminster’s voting system creates two sorts of areas. ‘Safe seats’, with such a low chance of changing hands that there is no point in campaigning, and ‘swing seats’, that could change hands.

Parties design their manifestos to appeal to voters in swing seats, and spend the majority of their funds campaigning in them. But, policies designed to appeal to voters in these seats may not help voters in the rest of the country.

Voters who live in safe seats can feel ignored by politicians. The more candidates with a chance of getting elected the fewer votes the winner needs.

Under Westminster’s First Past the Post system it is common for constituencies to elect MPs that more than half the voters didn’t want.

As the number of MPs a party gets doesn’t match their level of support with the public, it can be hard for the public to hold the government to account.

To combat this, voters try to second-guess the results.

If a voter thinks their favourite candidate can’t win, they may vote for one with the best chance of stopping a candidate they dislike from winning.

Democracy is the political system where the government represents the will of the people. There never has been a perfect democracy, there are only degrees of approximation, and democracy goes far beyond discussion of the voting system. Nevertheless, the voting system is an important element in shaping a democracy, and First Past the Post (FPTP) is woefully inadequate in expressing the will of the people because the vote never gets beyond the constituency boundary.

Worse still, a Government can be elected on the basis of 33% of votes cast, but considering turnout, this falls to 22% of those entitled to vote.

22%! One in five!! Yet idiot conservatives of right and left still defend FPTP.

Words fail to describe such a form of democracy.

What’s immediately needed to resolve the impasse on Brexit is a second referendum, since Brexit is a single issue and referendums are a ballot on a single issue.

First past the post (FPTP) is the first step to full radical reform in the UK.

It is time to change the system.

Most countries around the world use proportional voting systems – a party winning half the vote would win half the seats in parliament.

All comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WE ARE WELL ON THE WAY TO TOTALITARIANISM

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Enegery, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values.

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(Twenty-minute read.)

If we are not vigilant we might by accident and neglect combined with the erosion of civil liberties and with the increasing disenchantment of politicians easily sleepwalk into a form of a totalitarian society.

You could say at present that the world has more pressing problems but I consider this as a very dangerous trend and, sadly, unlike climate change perhaps unstoppable.

Why?

Because corporations belong to no land, no country, no people and have no loyalty to anything apart from profit – their profits and the profits today are on an unimaginable scale. 

Because individual liberty which our ancestors fought for generations to establish are now been blowing away in the wind with Artifical Intelligence turning our politics into a form of Digital Dictatorship.

Control of society above personality.

The modern sense of entertainment, for example, has led to the shallowness

of life that permeates all aspects of life, separates us from the seriousness of

existence, and fills this existence with false content.

What we are seeing is a widening of inequality, a rise in racism and ant semitic traits all of which are essential to a totalitarian society. Individualism itself is diminishing and in the end, people will embrace the totalitarian state’s ideology.

This fourth industrial revolution as it is called is presently without any AI laws other than the EU guidelines on the trustworthiness of AI – what data to use or not use to train other Algorithms.

The last industrial revolution taught us a lot about basic human rights and social values to wake us up, to help us prepare for the future however what we are seeing with smartphones is a form of doublethinking that leads to banality or to implicit acceptance of the standard of psychological normality, the lost of limits.

You are going to work with a digital colleague that has no set rules, no personal judgment. 

The threat of climate change with the rise of stateless refugees is forcing millions around the world to realistically confront a future in which their lives, at a minimum, look radically worse than they are today.

At the same time, emerging algorithms are giving a small technocratic elite the power to radically alter our species to a point when it will no longer resemble itself.

They both will call into question the basic ideas of who are and how we think about ourselves.

There are technologies now already emerging that are asking this question with the very fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human.

Why is this?

Because by limiting the choices and activities that have given us our basic sense of identity we can’t express our own opinions because they fear individual power.

There is nothing we can really do to change the course of our civilization except to patiently and persistently saying the truth about false worldviews, both on climate change and materialistic algorithms for profit both of which are and will have dramatic consequences. 

Take Climate change and  Fossil fuel:

It seems that fossil fuel owners and technology only goals are to protect their business models at all cost.

Climate change will shrink the size of the world that is livable on. while allowing unregulated technologies to rule it.

Algorithms Data Apps are tools by means of which, once installed, they start making decisions on your behalf. They will enable governments to assert their ideological and intellectual authority over party members and employees of party-run institutions, including schools and media.

Their messages becoming inescapable.

The beauty of digital media technology — disquieting for those who care about privacy and freedom from intrusion — is that our smart apps know a great deal about our actual behaviour.

Technology now interacts with you and takes the measure of you. It can determine just how “smart” you are when it comes to your devotion and your grasp of the ideological essentials.

This is where we seem to be headed for compelling materialist reasons, not ethical reasons. 

Habitual smartphone user was spending a great deal of time glued to the screen, as a result, the potential of the smartphone to be used as a tool through which authoritarian regimes can shape and reinforce dominance over the population is no longer a fantasy – China.  

It is reinventing the process of ideological dominance for the digital era.

In China, censorship, is now largely automated, reaching “unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition.  It has an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020.

China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, “social credit” will bring privileges — for others, punishment.

If successful, it will be the world’s first digital dictatorship.

The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state. who has done what (and for how long)

They can leverage digital media products to reshape the whole process of ideological control in ways that are far more personal, and far more effective, than anything we have witnessed in the reform era.

We, on the other hand, need to find out once again how to make decisions not just as individuals but as a society.  We need new economics theories of not top-down but bottom-up. Its isn’t capital that creates economic growth its people. It isn’t competition that creates prosperity its cooperation. The economics that is not inclusive will not allow modern society to thrive. 

Its painfully obvious that the fundamental assumptions of neoliberal economics are wrong.

The market now with profit-seeking algorithms can never distribute wealth because there is no equilibrium.

So is there any way of combating the technological growing algorithm market.

Inclusion will be the only brake.

We must allow people to get involved while improving all stakeholders in the market. The laws of economics are a choice.

So give people the choice to invest in the future by the creation of Nation backed non-trading Green deal bonds. ( See previous posts) This is about creating a platform for real and measurable engagement.

Algorithms all ready control 99.9% of stock exchanges. 

Taking self-responsibility and living life the fullest will not only enrich our own lives but as well the lives of others.    

Then the question arises:

No government in what used to be called “the free world” seems prepared to take the steps that can stop this inexorable decline.

Totalitarianism is a political concept of a mode of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.

Big data:  The length of time that it took them to use unfettered free speech to subvert and undermine all of our core institutions. Thus we arrive at the present situation where the brief a historical version of freedom of speech has reverted back towards what the state deems controversial today might be very different to what it deems controversial tomorrow.

Take Brexit for example. Nostalgia is that it’s become a political weapon. Politicians are creating nostalgia for an England that never existed and selling it, really, as something we could return to.

Do we want to be told what to think and do? Or are we ready to come up with our own solutions for the consequences we’ve caused?

The idea of the totalitarian state can never be a true and effective form of government rule. Increasing state interference, a crumbing electoral system, the loss of a free press and loss of freedom of speech are grave threats to our democratic system. 

The potential consequences that come from using AI, such as giving up privacy are only the ice cubes in the bucket. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S; IS THE NEW GREEN DEAL PRIMARILY A PETTY-BOURGEOIS ATTEMPT TO RESCUE CAPITALISM BY THE METHODS OF SOCIAL REFORMISTS UNDER THE CLOAK OF CLIMATE CHANGE?

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Climate Change., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Environment, European Union., Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Inequality, Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Purchasing Power., Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The Obvious., The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., World Politics

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(Twenty-minute read) 

In politics, nothing happens by accident.

These days in the higher ethylene of the political world it seems you must be an accomplished liar and not a far-seeing planner to be successful.

With the advent of social media people’s day-to-day exposure to political discussion and disagreement has increased dramatically.

However what is worrying is that technology in the form of social media, the smartphone is continuing to create a contemporary problem that large sections of the public want ‘democracy’ but without the ‘politics.

As a result, were are seeing fake news driving populist politics that has no longterm objectives. 

There is nothing new about fake news it has been prevalent down the ages but the days when a lot of us believe that many of the major world events that are shaping our destinies occur because somebody or somebodies have planned them that way are all but disappeared.

However, with the media making very little effort to explain political decisions, rather than just jumping on any perceived gaffe or conflict ‘democracy’ remains an incredibly positive notion. 

With the public no longer thinking about the world within the silos of government departments governments need to engage people in solutions rather than top-down ‘vote for us and we’ll provide the answers.

Younger people don’t just copy their parents’ tribal loyalties. Voting is more like shopping, with preferences changing on a quim of twitter on social media.  

Unfortunately, our present-day political system has not yet caught up, it offers limited choice. What happens in between elections is for all attentive purposes driven by the smartphone that are monitored by unregulated algorithms owned by you know who.

What is been ignored is that this digital space in all its diversity represents a huge opportunity with the power to engage people in new ways. Online participation in local decision-making is one possibility. This would involve citizens outside election time-.

So we need to understand all the ways people behave and respond in the digital space and set clear and realistic goals for what they hope to accomplish.

However, people are now becoming slow and slower to engage with the internet due to the lack of security/ privacy/and a source of truth.

Why?

Because Capitalism is spending billion on digital marketing each year, and for good reason. Digital media has enormous power to reach and influence people. Over 2 billion people—about one-third of the global population—now access the Internet.

We all know if we are to avoid extinction due to climate change which poses real risks to our collective future we need a green energy transformation.

The problem is that behind a veneer of objectivity, Capitalism as always sees an opportunity to make a profit – Carbon Credits for instance, with more and more consumerism products being promoted as good for the environment 

With all the political goodwill the transfer to low carbon emission can only be achieved by offering citizens a means to get involved other than protesting.

How can this be done?

We must allow people to exercise democratic control over their money, finance, working conditions and environment ie De-politicising decision-making by limiting capitalism’s worst failing- profit for profit sake.

To have authentic democracy!

Citizens must be afforded the opportunity to get involved not just politically, but financially by creating Green Energy European Bonds that cannot be traded.  

These bonds will allow citizens to regain control over unaccountable ‘technocrats’, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions.

They can be sold like lotto tickets. Forging a common agenda.

Emancipating citizens from all levels of government from bureaucratic and corporate power. Allowing direct investment into shared, green prosperity.

Politics has never been popular and never will be:

The more disengaged, the less likely that political parties will deliver. 

We’re able to measure things in a way that we’ve never been able to measure them before. So why not measure the wealth of a nation by the financial investment support it gets from its citizen’s. Rather than encompassing every possible thing that can go under the rubric of “green.

I suppose my goal here is to propose something vague enough that no one will object to it.

Have you wondered how you got to where you are today?

Greed.

Is technology taking control of our lives or our destiny?

Yes.  We’ve ditched reality.

The very data on which we measure the economy is disconnected from

the reality, with political leaders using high soaring” words “which often

imbibe emptiness.

Communication and leadership are key elements in elections these days

but you can’t sell a bad product, can you? 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. WE MUST REIN IN THE TECH GIANTS BEFORE ITS TOO LATE.

20 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Capitalism, Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Purchasing Power., Reality., Social Media., Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Fifteen-minute read) 

WHY?

These days we are allowing Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook do whatever the hell they want. The US sees them as winner-takes-all markets as the law of the capitalist jungle; the EU sees them as an intrinsic threat to consumers.

Because four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. They have aggregated more economic value and influence than nearly any other commercial entity in history.

Because the concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power. Their massive size and unchecked power have and are throttling competitive markets and are keeping the economy from doing its job—namely, to promote a vibrant democracy.

Because all of them have managed to preserve their monopoly-like powers without heavy regulation. 

Because they have effectively ripped the heart out of the journalism, publishing, music, and entertainment industries but, even worse, they are demolishing the ranks of both corporate middle-management and entry-level service jobs and crushed commercial real estate and retail shopping malls, all for the enrichment of a very few.

Because they’re tracking your movements — or, even better, getting you to track yourselves for them, whether it’s “checking in” on Facebook or leaving your cell phone switched on while you travel (and who doesn’t?).

Because as we have seen the harvesting of the personal data use for political purposes.

Because the amount of money they generate, and the volume of content they accumulate, most of it provided voluntarily by you, for free, is stupefying.

Because with the coming of 5G technology they will have  too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy.

Because using black-box algorithms to surface content to users they will have control over the way we use the Internet.

Because they are exploiting their monopoly power to stifle competition; they are spreading fake news; their fantastically rich owners portray themselves as right-on yet go to a great deal of trouble to minimise their corporate tax bills; they are ripping the heart out of communities through the closure of brick-and-mortar retailers.

Because social media is an increasingly key part of how we communicate. Yet legally, nothing stops Facebook from simply banning users from its platform, for any reason it wishes.

Because we’re heading for an Orwellian nightmare the shape of which is just now becoming apparent with climate change is being turned into a product. 

Because this isn’t just abstract concern about what could possibly happen in the future – market power of this magnitude isn’t unprecedented.

Because with a sprawling array of loosely related businesses under one roof they are becoming worldwide conglomerates.

Because no one or any company is now going to penetrate online shopping or the search market.

Google, Amazon, and Facebook are colossal companies. Together they make up almost 10% of the S&P 500. Together, they have a market capitalization of the GDP of France.

These are the 3rd-, 4th-, and 6th-largest companies on earth. Combined, they are worth over $2 trillion. And they’ve grown 470%, 175%, and 95% over the past five years.

Because they will take our choices away.

Because they’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else.

Because country and companies that dominate technology will gain more power with time and 5G technology, gene editing, nanotechnology, creating what only can be called a profitable circle of global oligopolies.

Because they will soon be introducing their own cyber currencies.

Because our existing computers can’t even scratch the surface of what quantum computers will be able to do via the cloud quantum computers will. Those who own this technology will make supremacy an arbitrary goal.

Such computing power will change the way we do business and the security we have in place to safeguard data, how we fight disease and invent new materials, and solve health and climate problems.

Just like humans, artificial intelligence machines powered by the insights from quantum commercialising technology computers that will learn from experience and self-correct.

They’ll be able to use quantum simulations to design entirely new molecules for use in medicine making it possible for chemists to determine viable drug options quicker. Instead of troubleshooting issues bit by bit as we do now with classical computers, they will allow for a person’s genes to be sequenced and analyzed much more rapidly tackling the entire problem at once.

How do they do it?

By creating what we now perceive to be free platforms run by algorithms.  

( To Big Tech, you’re not the customer, you’re the product they’re selling to others:)

Google offers a vast bounty of free services in order to maximize its data collection and optimize its advertising capabilities. Similarly, Amazon is credibly accused of hurting suppliers, hurting competitors, and even hurting its own employees — but nobody can deny that it’s a cheap and convenient way to shop for a staggering array of things.

Amazon is keeping tabs on you, monitoring your purchases, pushing other products on you and, in the form of the hideous Alexa, listening in on you while you sleep. Throw in the electronic snooping of Facebook, Google and your iPhone.

We know the problems; they’re easy to diagnose, however shaping the solutions is going to be more difficult.

So what if anything can be achieved to restrain their coming power?

The difficulty lies in defining what the real harmful effect is of these companies and establishing a causal link between their creation, their products, behaviour, and trends such as populism, depression, and manipulation. The contribution to society of these companies’ products is not as black and white as some would like them to be. 

We’re heading down an entirely new field of physics, and by its very nature, there will be discoveries, innovations and solutions we have never dreamed of yet.

However we’re living in a capitalists world we should be empowering people to choose where to sell their information, personal data so it would no longer be monopolised by the tech giants.

Competition authorities need to move beyond a reliance on prices towards an analysis of the impact of takeovers and mergers on societal welfare.

As we grapple with how best to protect ourselves against the risks of new, disruptive technologies, policymakers need to understand the roles that ethics and law can and should play. 

If human rights are at risk, and existing law is found wanting, we may need new, legally enforceable rights and mechanisms to grapple with emerging technologies. Citizens should not need to rely on the “ethical conscience” of tech companies to know their fundamental rights are protected. Ethics are laudable—but sometimes they are not enough.

At their core, Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and while Facebook’s goal was to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” are both truly admirable and few people would disagree with them but ethical promises made by tech companies are not good enough.

Instead of adding value to our societies, Facebook,  Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple have sucked the data out of us.

They or at least their free platforms which have become essential to daily life should be regulated as public utilities.

Failing to do so risks a backlash which will be bad for everyone.

Why? 

Because there is one indisputable fact.

In front of every great fortune lies a great crime, Immense wealth translates automatically into environmental impacts regardless of the intentions of those who possess it. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google does the same by using algorithms to decide what comes up on an internet search. They hardly pay any taxes and their business practices and technology will help crush industries and companies left and right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 “platform utility.” A platform utility would be barred from owning any of the participants on the platform.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. HUMANITY MUST NOW COME FIRST.

16 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Dehumanization., Democracy, Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The state of the World., The world to day., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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( Seventeen-minute read)

The world has been so depleted and is being so depleted even at this moment, that the future sustenance and stability for humanity is now imperilled.

Your future and your destiny will not be determined within the next decades. It will be determined now.

It will be determined by humanity’s wisdom or by its ignorance.

The future and fate of humanity will be decided in the years to come, and it will be determined by how humanity responds to the great change that is coming over the horizon in the form of climate change to the world.

No religion nor religious institution as it stands today can prepare humanity for the complexities of life in the universe or what humanity must know to preserve human freedom and sovereignty within this world.

It is what humanity must do to prepare both collectively and individually for climate change and our collective inability to regulate AI.

But because humanity as a whole is dull and ignorant, self-absorbed and unresponsive to a changing world we are still writing ourselves out of the script.

Our universities for years have taught classical/neoclassic/neoliberal economics; like these theories are unmovable divine pillars of reality.

Therefore, while most people see we need a more reasonable and democratic version of our current extreme capitalism, the dominant discourse insists the story not be changed at all. The dominant political narrative of our times is that we must live as individuals crushed between market and state. The relationship between the individual and the state boils down to a zero-sum game where everyone one eventually looses. The state is a pure and simple force.

With the effects of climate change (to come) people are waking up to the deception, let’s hope we can do right, because on all fronts of civilization as we know it time is running out.

We have political failure everywhere leading to the malfunctioning of our altruistic nature.

There is a disconnect between mass (commercial) media, even political science and common sense or popular wisdom.

Sounds to cynical?

Let me oil up my bow.

Present-day political failures are at heart of our problems.

Why?

Because there is a failure of imagination when it comes to the societal structure we evolved to live in and that our brains are still programmed for.

Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc.

These new organizations are actually not creating a dream environment of maximum social cooperation.

They are instead removing people’s needs to fulfilling each other’s needs!

Gnawing away our collective and individual identity our senses of belonging to a community for the sake of profit.

We need politics of belonging, but the trouble is, it requires a moral, ethical and educated populations which we don’t have and are now with AI are more than likely than ever never going to have.

As we rely on more and more Algorithms to make decisions without a discussion of facts and morals, against a background of pure data narrative can lead society to dark places.

We are unaware of what I call honest pricing that shows the cost of profit for profit sake to the environment.

If we were to charge fees proportional to harmful impacts on the environment, we would create a monetary representation of the value of natural resources.A Brazilian protester stands before gunfire during protests against corruption and police brutality.

So overcoming the material world would be the first step to a sustainable world-shifting us into a new reality.

We are left with the ever-present questions.

Do we give a toss and if so what can be done about it?

What roles do religion and our deepest beliefs play in contemporary life?

What lifestyles are we adopting in an increasingly technological world?

What is the balance of power–and the balance of trade?

What is the pattern of war and peace?

What are the issues facing local and regional communities, and what issues must we confront on a global scale?

What do we remember about our collective past, and how do we see the future?

Have the great issues that preoccupied people since the beginning of time taken new, distinctive forms after more than a hundred years of the fastest technological and cultural change in the history of the planet?

What challenges remain intractable?

What emerging solutions seem to offer the greatest promise?

Social media is full of video on the state of the world.

The need for clear-headed prioritisation of resources to tackle real, not imagined problems.

Despite that long record of success, agricultural production is stressed by floods, deforestation, drought, urbanization (land-devouring cities), and a growing appetite for resource-intensive meat.

More than 150 million people worldwide are at risk from rising sea levels and extreme storms that cause coastal flooding.

In the past 50 years, thanks to education and technology, more than 2 billion people joined the middle class, swelling the human footprint of nearly 50 per cent. At the same time, millions of acres of cropland have been devoured by population growth.

Today more than 6 billion people live in cities—about 70 per cent of the world’s population, roughly double the proportion of a half-century ago.

The Arctic may hold 22 per cent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas resources. Melting ice is liberating immense oil and natural gas reserves.

Although mounting worldwide energy demand continues to stress the environment, it has powered large-scale development of renewable energy.

Artificial intelligence will soon dominate the Earth—it could take decades, it could take millennia. At that point, AI will also take control of the Earths process. Refashioning the planet in ways that are optimal for synthetic life but quite possibly deadly for us.

You can’t help but wonder where it will lead. It’s a very dodgy future.

It may be true that the cosmos started with the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago, but it took an awfully long time for the consequences of the Big Bang to settle down.

To have an optimistic view is the only one worth having.Our world relies on vast global networks.

So may you recognize that you as an individual must make these decisions and not simply rely upon others to make them for you.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: SHOULD THE MONARCHY BE DISMANTLED IN LIGHT OF BREXIT.

13 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Brexit., Democracy

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(Ten-minute read)

 

The monarchy has been part of the British constitution for centuries and it symbolises the unity and traditional standards of the nation.An official photograph, released by Buckingham Palace to mark her 90th birthday, shows Queen Elizabeth II with her five great-grandchildren and her two youngest grandchildren at Windsor Castle

However, no matter how it is dressed up in order to marry into modern times it represents a feudal society of medieval England in a modern democratic state that has no written constitution.

This feudal system is now outdated and Britain needs a change in order to revolutionalise the country and live in a more modern and democratic society.

The monarchy’s existence is undemocratic it is unaccountable even if serves no political purpose other than just a figurehead for the country.

Living in modern democratic society and having a constitutional monarchy underlines a string of values which hinder the modernisation of the country.

Having a monarch creates social and class divisions.

The hereditary privilege which the royals are ultimately born in to is no guarantee that the person in the office is fit by birth to be head of state.

As we are witnessing with the ongoing chariot of Brexit the crown prerogative is exploited by ministers, and parliament cannot do anything to take away or reduce these powers as they have been derived from the royal prerogative.

It is said that the queen is powerless and pointless and all her powers are invested in the prime minister. However, officials hide the real nature of this truth by saying the queen “acts on the advice of the prime minister”, meaning she does what she is told.the

“Royal Prerogative” can be described more accurately as “prime ministerial powers” due to the huge amount of power the government exercises.

There are some powers which she can and has used, on occasions when there is a hung parliament. In an event of a hung parliament, the queen will have to choose who to appoint if the incumbent prime minister resigns straight away or is defeated in the commons.

In her position as head of the Church of England, she is in a direct conflict of interest with her role as head of the armed forces and the government. As head of the Armed forces, everyone swears allegiance to her, not the Government. 

At this point the question arises, should the queen consider dissolving parliament again?

It is for this reason some have called for a reform of the sovereign’s personal prerogative.

The call for this reform is one of the arguments for getting rid of the monarchy as many people do not agree with why an unelected and unaccountable monarch should have the right to play any part in the political process.

This brings us again to why the monarchy should be eradicated; she plays no political role for the UK and she gives the government enormous amount of political power which the government take full advantage of because they are not accountable to parliament. She is immune from prosecution?

The monarchy is actually paid for by the taxpayer’s money.

While the official figure is that the Royal family costs only about £40m per annum, this doesn’t take into account security costs, royal visits and others of less significance. The actual figure is estimated by some to be about £200m every year.

Other countries maintain their monarchies at a fraction of the cost of the British monarchy.

In fact, to take the monarchy out of the British constitution you would actually need a written constitution to do this, which currently does not exist. The royal family contributes a lot to the economy through tourism, but it is not sufficient reason to give the government powers.queen elizabeth ii birthday trooping the colour

She is still consulted weekly on government business by the prime minister in person.

Yes, the historic “prerogative powers” of the Sovereign have been devolved largely to government ministers. But this still means that when the British government declares war, or regulates the civil service, or signs a treaty, it is doing so only on her authority.

The Queen’s consent is necessary to turn any bill into actual law.

However, Royal Assent is different than “Queen’s consent.”

Queen’s consent is exercised only on the advice of ministers, but its existence provides the government with a tool for blocking debate on certain subjects if bills are tabled by backbench rebels or the opposition.

There is one exception that allows her to wield power herself. Only “in a grave constitutional crisis,” the Sovereign can “act contrary to or without Ministerial advice.”

With no precedent in modern times, it’s not clear what would actually constitute this, but the possibility remains.

However, due to the Fixed Term Parliament Act, she can not dissolve Parliament, two-thirds vote in the commons is required. But she does play a part after an election when she calls on the MP able to form a government to do so.

All prosecutions are carried out in the name of the Sovereign, and she is both immune from prosecution and cannot be compelled to give evidence in court. But no immunity attaches to the name Elizabeth WINDSOR, which is her legal name as an individual.

God help the idiots that try.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT MODERN DAY POLITICS.

02 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Dehumanization., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Elections/ Voting, England., English parliamentary proceedings., European Elections., European Union., First past the post., Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Political voting systems., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Social Media, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Five-minute read) 

My vote makes no difference is plausibly a part of the modern-day phenomenon of algorithm analyse voting that has lead to both the election of Donal Trump and Boris Jonhson.

It is resulting in the loss or deliberate yielding up of decision-making power by national governments to other organisations with Social media platforms both domestic and international— Like Facebook, Twitter,  etc. 

Combine this with Ngo’s, quangos, the law courts, business corporations, central banks, the E.U., the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and its no wonder that many are no longer content as voters to be the foot soldiers of a social or religious bloc.

They want to make a difference individually and although in a mass democracy this may lead to inevitable frustration, few would want to return to a time of extreme political polarisation or digital dictatorship. 

The symptoms of short term popularism driven by social media platforms and the smartphone are leading to a no-deal Brexit are the same worldwide. 

Denunciations of the system, citizen disengagement from mainstream parties, electoral volatility and/or apathy, the rise of dissenting movements that appeal to large numbers who are, or feel themselves to be, disfranchised or ignored by an establishment dominated by uncontrollable and often faceless forces are replacing old political systems. 

Hence the perception that parties and politicians are no longer willing or able to represent their voters, that they are “all the same” and that politics has become an irrelevant smokescreen for the machinations of special interests and lobby groups.

When relatively few people are losing out—these changes may not seem to matter much. They may even seem desirable: “pooling of sovereignty,” removal of political interference from civil society, increasing checks on the executive by domestic and international courts, subsidiarity in decision-making, encouragement of inward investment, and so on.

This creates a political and administrative burden that can neither manage nor surrender—a great cause of popular discontent.

Not so, of course, when things suddenly go wrong.

One has only to look at England:

A combination of capitalism and socialism in a highly centralized system without a nationally elected government makes England today a very unusual place.

This oddity has opened up a constitutional free-for-all.

However, national identity, not administrative or economic efficiency, is the core of both devolution and independence— and the rest is window-dressing with the past affecting us all in more complex and deep-seated ways than in countries that have experienced violent historic ruptures.

Community loyalties, however deep-rooted, are not permanent.

Whatever happens in England, there will remain the question of how to govern a big, growing, diverse, crowded, and increasingly self-conscious England.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.