Category Archives: Happiness.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT IS THE VALUE OF A HUMAN TO DAY ?

01 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2019., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Democracy, Education, Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., Happiness., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Trade Agreements., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven minuter read)

At the best of times, money is a touchy subject but when it comes to putting a value on a human there is a vast array of circumstances that all boil down to pain and pleasure.

Whatever rest assured with the Forth Industrial Revolution and Climate change we are going to learn the real value of human life. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "can we put a monetary value on ourselves" Should the value of life be variable depending on age?  UTILITARIANISM.

Have you been thinking about putting yourself up for sale lately?

Ever wonder how much money you could get on the open human market?

Money is merely an arbitrary store of value, wars and natural disasters bear witness to this fact.

In a system where capitalism is a prime determinant of value, how can we preserve what we truly value as humans, what matters to us beyond money?

No matter where we stand on the socioeconomic ladder, the future of the “normal life” doesn’t look good.

CAN WE DO ANYTHING?

Humanity is more important than money — it’s time for capitalism to get an

upgrade.

So how can we change capitalism so that it focuses on what humans really

want and need?

There have been many different forms of capitalist economies ever since money was invented around 5,000 years ago. The current form of institutional capitalism and corporatism is just the latest of many different versions with the current revolution in technology promoting another form of materialism, by and large, is a psychological trap.

Profit-seeking algorithms recognise that money is inherently neutral that it is merely a vessel for the exchange of experience between two people. Its value only becomes realized when it’s put into motion.

Technology will not be the key which frees us from this precipitous world.

Most people these days aren’t even conscious of what they’re using to determine their self-worth.

No matter how much you own, how much you buy, how much you earn, the disease of more never goes away- just look at the current state of the world.

Old-style protection of nature for its own sake has badly failed to stop the destruction of habitats and the dwindling of species. It has failed largely because philosophical and scientific arguments rarely trump profits and the promise of jobs.

In one of my recent post, I addressed the power of your back pocket – buying power as a means of effecting change. It needs to be supported by Social Credits. (See below)

Instead of having our humanity subverted to serve the marketplace, capitalism has to be made to serve human ends and goals.

Of course some time ago it dawned on someone that, by making it possible for people to buy and sell natures services, we could save the world and turn a profit at the same time. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. Nature by capital.

(Sorry, did I say nature? We don’t call it that any more. It is now called natural capital. Ecological processes are called ecosystem services because, of course, they exist only to serve us. Hills, forests, rivers: these are terribly out-dated terms. They are now called green infrastructure. Biodiversity and habitats? Not at all à la mode my dear. We now call them asset classes in an ecosystems market. I am not making any of this up. These are the names we now give to the natural world.)

WHAT IS NEEDED NOW IS FOR SOMEONE TO REALISE THAT:

1. Humanity is more important than money.
2. The unit of an economy is each person, not each dollar.
3. Markets exist to serve our common goals and values.

True wealth occurs when the way we spend our money is not simply compensating for how we earn it. The welfare of a nation or the world can… scarcely be inferred from a measurement of GDP.

The real value of money begins when we look beyond it and see ourselves as better, as more valuable, than it is.

Rarely will the money to be made by protecting nature match the money to be made by destroying it.

I’m talking about the development of what could be called the Natural Capital Agenda: the pricing, valuation, monetisation, financialisation of nature in the name of saving it by Social Credits.

They could put a stop to the risk of a progressive “privatisation” and “commodification” of nature.

We’re staring at trillion-dollar problems in the world with climate change, that is about to speed up and we need commensurate solutions.

One of the main problems is engaging the population of a country or countries to part take in the need to effect change.

We can harness the country’s ingenuity and energy to improve millions of lives if we could just create a way to monetize and measure goals by Social Credits.

People could buy them or win them.

For Example:

What if governments and world corporations were to introduced 100 million SCs to reduce obesity levels.

What if governments were to reward green energy projects with SCs.

What if governments were to use SCs to replace pensions/ treasury bonds.

What if countries used SCs to reflect fair trade.

What if education and reduction of inequality were promoted by SCs.

To protect the world from the despoilation and degradation which have done it so much harm. After all, it is not most environmentalists who have misunderstood the realities that come with ‘growth’ a finite Earth, but most economists.

Forget what society tells you about what it means to have succeeded, and endeavour to create your own definition of success based on those human qualities and virtues that you value most.

We are fundamentally empathetic creatures in an evolutionary process that started with blood ties, then tribes, religion, and currently nations but could extend to humans as one, then to creatures, plants and finally our planet.

The adage that money makes the world go round is the saddest reality of life.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Is the first generation of digital natives and sharing is their norm, could it be that collaborative consumption rather than consumer capitalism will be their norm?

If so, what will the next generation bring?

Time is the one resource all of us use to have, but it’s also painfully finite in nature. You can’t bank it — all you can do is invest it wisely.

Money is fluid.  Therefore, money is a reflection of the owner’s values and intentions.

We all have some sort of measuring stick that we use to determine our value as a human being.

Put another way, if we have access to all we need, would we need money?

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE STATE OF OUR WORLD.

24 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Environment, European Union., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Happiness., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Innovation., Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Refugees., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The Refugees, The world to day., World Organisations.

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(Fifteen minutes read.)

After decades of globalisation, our political systems are becoming obsolete.

Half a century has been spent building the global systems on which we all now depend.

The question is-  are they here to stay or do we need a new world system in order for it to serve the human community.

If so it must be subordinated to an equally spectacular political infrastructure, which we have not even begun to conceive.Image associée

Without political innovation, global capital and technology will rule us without any kind of democratic consultation, as naturally and indubitably as the rising oceans because any alternative to the nation-state system is a utopian impossibility.

This is the main reason we will not be able to tackle Climate change.

We have to move away from the Nation by Nation Paris Climate Promises Agreement with its new rules to a Collective World undertaking not a state by state input as there is no ecosystem immune to another.

When we discuss “politics”, we refer to what goes on inside sovereign states; everything else is “foreign affairs” or “international relations” – even in this era of global financial and technological integration we are unable to act like one.

Exhaustion, hopelessness, the dwindling effectiveness of old ways: these are the themes of politics all across the world.

In each country, the tendency is to blame “our” history, “our” populists, “our” media, “our” institutions, “our” lousy politicians.

This is understandable since the organs of modern political consciousness – public education and mass media – emerged in the 19th century from a globe-conquering ideology of unique national destinies.

However, it is becoming clearer every day – the real delusion is the belief that things can carry on as they are.

Distracted by wars, the magnification of presidential powers and the corresponding abandonment of civil rights and the rule of law.

We may all use Google and Facebook, but political life, curiously, is made of separate stuff and keeps the antique faith of borders.

All countries are today embedded in the same system, which subjects them all to the same pressures: and it is these that are squeezing and warping national political life everywhere.

The current appeal of machismo as political style, the wall-building and xenophobia, the mythology and race theory, the fantastical promises of national restoration – these are not cures, but symptoms of what is slowly revealing itself to all: Nation states everywhere are in an advanced state of political and moral decay from which they cannot individually extricate themselves.

National political authority is in decline, and, since we do not know any other sort, it feels like the end of the world.

Why is this happening?

In brief, 20th-century political structures are drowning in a 21st-century ocean of deregulated finance, autonomous technology, religious militancy and great-power rivalry.

Meanwhile, the suppressed consequences of 20th-century recklessness in the once-colonised world are erupting, cracking nations into fragments and forcing populations into post-national solidarities: roving tribal militias, ethnic and religious sub-states and super-states.

Finally, the old superpowers’ demolition of old ideas of international society – ideas of the “society of nations” that were essential to the way the new world order was envisioned after 1918 – has turned the nation-state system into a lawless gangland; and this is now producing a nihilistic backlash from the ones who have been most terrorised and despoiled.

The result?

For increasing numbers of people, our nations and the system of which they are a part now appear unable to offer a plausible, viable future. This is particularly the case as they watch financial elites – and their wealth – increasingly escaping national allegiances altogether.

Today’s failure of national political authority, after all, derives in large part from the loss of control over money flows. At the most obvious level, money is being transferred out of national space altogether, into a booming “offshore” zone. These fleeing trillions undermine national communities in real and symbolic ways. They are a cause of national decay, but they are also a result: for nation states have lost their moral aura, which is one of the reasons tax evasion has become an accepted fundament of 21st-century commerce.

The unwillingness even to acknowledge this crisis, meanwhile, is appropriately captured by the contempt for refugees that now drives so much of politics in the rich world.

In my view, it is unjust to preserve the freedom to move capital out of a place and simultaneously forbid people from following.

The ensuing vacuum can suck in firepower from all over the world, destroying conditions for life and spewing shell-shocked refugees in every direction. Nothing advertises the crisis of our nation-state system so well, in fact, as its 65 million refugees – a “new normal” far greater than the “old emergency” (in 1945) of 40 million.

After so many decades of globalisation, economics and information have successfully grown beyond the authority of national governments.

Today, the distribution of planetary wealth and resources is largely uncontested by any political mechanism – thanks to fourth Industrial technological revolution platforms with their algorithms, profit for profit sake is alive and growing while the inequality gap grows and grows.

Since 1989, barely 5% of the world’s wars have taken place between states:

National breakdown, not foreign invasion, has caused the vast majority of the 9 million war deaths in that time. Climate change will enhance those 9 million deaths and perversely might save the planet.

Even if we wanted to restore what we once had, that moment is gone.

We need to find new conceptions of citizenship. Citizenship is itself the primordial kind of injustice in the world.

It functions as an extreme form of inherited property and, like other systems in which inherited privilege is overwhelmingly determinant, it arouses little allegiance in those who inherit nothing.

97% of citizenship is inherited, which means that the essential horizons of life on this planet are already determined at birth.

National governments themselves need to be subjected to a superior tier of authority:  Oppressed national minorities must be given a legal mechanism to appeal over the heads of their own governments.

Nations must be nested in a stack of other stable, democratic structures – some smaller, some larger than they – so that turmoil at the national level does not lead to total breakdown.

The EU is the major experiment in this direction, and it is significant that the continent that invented the nation-state was also the first to move beyond it.

The EU has failed in many of its functions, principally because it has not established a truly democratic ethos. But the free movement has hugely democratised economic opportunity within the EU.

Finally.

If we as the custodians of the world are to address any of the major problems – Fresh Air, Freshwater, Clean Energy, Soil erosion, to name but a few and are unable to act as one we must put financial rewards in the path of those who do so.

Without this, our political infrastructure will continue to become more and more superfluous to actual material life.

In the process, we must also think more seriously about global redistribution: not aid, which is exceptional, but the systematic transfer of wealth from rich to poor for the improved security of all, as happens in national societies.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the state of the world"

We’re all responsible for the state of the world.

Creating this sense of ownership, connection, empathy and compassion should not be left to chance, but should be bred into all of us through the education system and how we raise our children.

In a landmark climate report last year, the United Nations last year called for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” It warned the world has only 12 years to avert a climate disaster.

“The enormity of the problem has only just dawned on quite a lot of people … Unless we sort ourselves out in the next decade or so we are dooming our children and our grandchildren to an appalling future.” David Attenborough.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT WILL BE THE POINT OF LIFE BE IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL AGE?

03 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Happiness., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Technology, The cloud.

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(Fifteen-minute read)

In this forthcoming age of technology, WE SHOULD NOW BE QUESTIONING what will be the point of life if we are not living it alone with free will.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of technology in the future"

Some like me are critical of technology, holding that it leads to alienation from nature, environmental destruction, the mechanization of human life, and the loss of human freedom.

Technology represents the knowledge of modern humanity, which seeks to control all of nature, including human nature.

As Martin Heidegger has forewarned, “The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control” it will become the master over and destructive of what is.

The ongoing convergence between science fiction and real-life technological advances makes it easy to imagine ‘the digital age’ as an era of conflict between human and bits of intelligence.

Machines are becoming stunningly adept at making decisions for us on the basis of vast amounts of data – and getting better at this at an equally stunning rate.

It’s precisely because our present machines can neither think nor feel that THE ABOVE QUESTION matters.

We call them “smart” and marvel at their powers; we paint pictures of a world in which they, not we, are determining what we do and how.

We can’t help ourselves: we see purpose, autonomy, and intent everywhere.

Machine efficiency is a very poor model indeed for understanding ourselves; and cutting people out of every possible loop – the better to assure speed, profit, protection or military success – is a poor model for a future in which humans and machines equally maximize their capabilities.

When I think about the future of human-machine interactions, and the ways in which our ideas and identities do not simply belong to us anymore the crowd in the cloud is becoming a stream of shared consciousness.

So digital technologies challenge us once again to ask what place we occupy in the universe: what it means to be creatures of language, self-awareness, and rationality. What will be the point of life?

Unfortunately, our conceptual lens is being warped by technology. Why? because death is always in the background. It makes a mockery of everything we do.

In asking what it means to be human, we are prone to think of ourselves as individual, rational minds, and to describe our relationships with and through technology on this basis: as isolated “users” whose agency and freedom are a matter of skills and reasoned options; as task-performers who are existentially threatened by any more efficient agent.

We have little in common with our creations – and a nasty habit of blaming them for things we are doing to ourselves.

Our machines may not yet be alive, nor yet conscious, but the evolutionary pressures surrounding them are every bit as intense as in nature and with few of its constraints.

Life is now, however, it is impossible to get to now never mind the future.

So what is now?  Is it just our conscious.

The future is just another thought arising now, and the past is just a memory.

Reality according to quantum physics only exists when it is observed by something that is conscious. But what is an observer? It is not necessarily a human.

Is reality just information?

Information is meaning in the form of symbolism or code, and code can represent itself.

However, information then needs meaning and meaning requires choice which is subjective to perception so something else which is conscious, which then needs time and time effects itself both in the past and the future to produce reality – life, so reality is its own creator with on alternative.

We have a very limited and confused view of what is going on.

How can we create lives that a truly worth living?

If we wish to build not only better machines, but better relationships with and through machines, we need to start talking far more richly about the qualities of these relationships; how precisely our thoughts and feelings and biases operate; and what it means to aim beyond efficiency at lives worth living.

What does a successful collaboration between humans mediated by technology look like? Our creations are certain to grow far beyond our current comprehension:

Indeed, the paradoxical and perhaps troubling state of being “recorded live”, might be one answer to the question of what it means to be human in the current digital world.

Are we all just 3d quasi-crystals or tetrahedra or pixelated reality called the E8 Lattice.

If wisdom is the art of living, of existing, participation in human life is fundamental (Spiegelberg, 1965, 426).

It might be that through our engagement with the actuality of human life, encountering and pursuing the art of living, we might circumvent the trappings that perceive, in modern science and technology, the soteriological temptation of overcoming contingency and infinitude by means of rational inquiry and technological powers.

By such an exercise, humanity might learn not simply to be the handmaid of modern scientific progress and technological promise. Rather, humanity might learn to work against such things. This work, however, ought not to be done in opposition, as a competing exercise of power; but for the redemption of a broken world, or a broken person, which has been encountered,

The redirection of technology will be no easy task.

Contemporary technology is so tightly tied to industry, government, and the structures of economic power that changes in direction will be difficult to achieve. As the critics of technology recognize, the person who tries to work for change within the existing order may be absorbed by the establishment.

But the welfare of humankind requires a creative technology that is economically productive, ecologically sound, socially just, and personally fulfilling.

Each generation lays the ground for the next, ours is ensuring that the voice of the coming generation will be lost in the algorithms of the future.
Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of robots birth"

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: THE WORLD OF WORK IS IN A STATE OF FLUX.

14 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in 2018: The Year of Disconnection., Capitalism, Democracy, Freedom, Happiness., Innovation., Life., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Politics., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Politics

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( A Sixteen minute read)

How much stuff do we really need to lead a normal life?

Not as much as you might think.

Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work.

You could say that: The world of work is in a state of flux.Humanoid robots work side by side with employees in the assembly line at a factory in Kazo, Japan.

There is growing polarization of labor-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, unemployment and underemployment especially among young people, stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality.

However the field of robotics promises to be the most profoundly disruptive technological shift since the industrial revolution.

The development of automation enabled by technologies including robotics and artificial intelligence brings the promise of higher productivity (and with productivity, economic growth), increased efficiencies, safety, and convenience. But these technologies also raise difficult questions about the broader impact of automation on jobs, skills, wages, and the nature of work itself.

Somehow, we believe our livelihoods will be safe. They’re not:

Every commercial sector will be affected by robotic automation in the next several years. We have yet to reach the full potential of digitization across the global economy.

More than half the world’s population is still offline.

Greater interaction will raise productivity but require different and often higher skills, new technology interfaces, different wage models in some cases, and different types of investments by businesses and workers to acquire skills.

In a recent report, the World Economic Forum predicted that robotic automation will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by 2020, a conservative estimate. 40–50% of all jobs will be taken by robots in the next twenty years.

By 2025, average salaries in the robotics sector will increase by at least 60% – yet more than one-third of the available jobs in robotics will remain vacant due to shortages of skilled workers.

Developments in motion control, sensor technologies, and artificial intelligence will inevitably give rise to an entirely new class of robots aimed primarily at consumer markets. For example  “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being.

The thing is: we’ve heard this all before. Time and time again, we underestimate capitalism’s extraordinary ability to come up with new meaningless jobs. (It’s 37% in the UK right now, but it could be 50%, 60% or even 100% in the future.)

Unless we update our ideas about what ‘work’ even is. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson’s Law, and much the same whether the volume of work, were to increase, diminish or even disappear.

Labor which was once the capital of working men will be longer true.

Again: it’s not about the technology, it’s about the choices we make as a society.

When it comes to universal basic income: we don’t have to wait for the robots. We are more than rich enough to do it right now – in fact, we should have done it forty years ago!

Technology is not destiny, education is.

Everything depends on the choices that we make as a society.

If history is any precedent, we already know the answer.

MOST OF US ARE NOW SURROUNDED WITH A PORTION- DISTORTED EMBARRASSMENT OF NOT JUST FOOD BUT GOVERNMENT SIZE.

Guest Blog: Downsizing for Public Health

It’s time for taxpayers to remind themselves just how much the cost of government to run us is..

Let’s take the cost of running the UK as an example.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of house of parliament in london"

The House of Commons with 650 Mbps at £76,000 pa costing the tax payer £156 million a year.

Add in the £6.4m pa given to opposition parties (Short Money), and support items like IT, and the overall total for each MP goes up to £242,000 pa.

But that’s only part of the bill: we also need to add in the costs of running the Commons itself.  According to the HoC Administration Resource Accounts 2006-07, those costs total £210m, which is a further £325,000 per MP.

Oops I nearly forgot the gold-plated final salary pension guaranteed by taxpayers.

The official cost of MPs’ pensions is under 12 per cent of their salary, after 11 per cent contributions from MPs themselves. This adds up to total pay and pension for an MP of £85,000 (their £76,000 salary and £9,000 pension).

So with 650 MPs, that means each one costs us £85,000 pa in salary, pension contributions and employment taxes. Those troublesome “staffing allowances” cost us an additional £57.9m pa- £90,000 for each MP. Then there’s incidental expenses, additional cost allowances, and travel expenses, totaling a further £30.7m (£48,000 each).

Then you have 814 unelected Peers in the House of Lords at £83,000 pa. Costing the tax payer £67,932,000 a year plus £462,510 in tax-free expenses. Members can claim £300 or £150 for every day they attend the House and undertake parliamentary work. The dining rooms and bars are all subsidised by the taxpayer.

Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill, who has claimed £220,000 of expenses over her 27 year career on the red benches, has never spoken in a debate.

The total cost of members’ allowances and travel is around £20 million per annum.

So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.

Then you have the Civil Service 418,343, (316,792 full-time and 101,551 part-time.)  Gross annual earnings (excluding overtime or one-off bonuses) for Civil Service employees is around £25,350, pa.

You dont have to ask why people are lying on the floors of hospital corridors.

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‘What do you do when there is nothing left to do?’

What should a government faced with an unmanageable level of unemployment do when conventional policy has failed to resolve the issue?’

Perhaps then a seemingly radical solution, such as universal basic income (UBI), becomes plausible. Universal Basic Income (UBI), a form of social security paid to individuals, not households. It is paid to everyone.

It would give individuals the freedom to say ‘yes’ to jobs. Individuals will not have to do that which they do not wish to do. Fewer people will engage in menial and unsatisfying work. Employers may be forced to increase the wages for underpaid or unpaid jobs.

UBI creates a floor (minimum level) on the income distribution curve, alleviates poverty, and gives bargaining power to the ones who have it least.

Forgetting about work for a moment (if you can), think about what you should do when your physiological needs are no longer a concern. If you’ve had a passion at the back of your mind then you might finally pursue it. If, on the other hand, you’ve passed life going from one kind of busy to another, then you might have missed opportunities to reflect and figure out what you would like to be doing. The cost of failure may have been too high if it meant putting you or your family’s livelihood at risk.

Assuming UBI ensures a basic livelihood for everyone in a community, do these citizens have a duty to give back by working? Do individuals have a duty to accept paid, available employment?

I would say Yes: Individuals should have a duty to do something, providing it is socially beneficial. There was something about people helping each other for its own sake that makes for a good society. A society is not well-functioning if it’s members are not interested in actively improving each other’s well-being.

Caring for the those who cannot care for themselves (such as the elderly, children and disabled). One could volunteer for various causes they care about, whether they be social, environmental, tech-related or so on.

Your recognition that you have alleviated the suffering of others might make you feel like you have done something meaningful.

UBI provides the opportunity for you to try contributing to your community in different ways. This freedom lets you find a way to contribute that is most satisfying for yourself.

It would remove fear replacing it with dignity.

UBI would also reduce the cost of citizens relying on the state for assistance.

There are many pending environmental crises hanging over us, but human wastefulness can be avoided. Can you imagine a world of 7.6 billion people no longer struggling for food or shelter and now focused on bettering the world for their children? That’s universal basic income. That’s a legacy we can all leave.

So why is it not being done?

Because it would downsize our consumerism lifestyle and remove inequality.

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

I can hear you saying where will the money come from?

Vat, Negative Interest rates, Earnings from investments, Decreasing militry spending, Sovereign wealth funds, etc.

It would ensure that the distribution of the fruits of technology advancement are distributed fairly. 

As Jeremy Howard said: ” In a post-scarcity world , why hold back wealth from people just because they can’t provide labor inputs just to create wealth.”

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE NEED A NEW WAY OF MEASURING GROWTH.

30 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in 2018: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Capitalism, Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., Happiness., Humanity., Our Common Values., Poverty, Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The cloud., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Organisations.

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( A Four minute Happy New Year read)

As David Attenborough once said.

” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of GDP"

Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.

However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.

Our world is rapidly changing.  Markedly defined by the Internet.

We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.

With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.

We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.

Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.

These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.

Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.

A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.

Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.

All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.

With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.

There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.

However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.

It is what we are doing with it is the problem.

Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.

The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit. 

We need a new consciousness for a different world.

Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.

We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.

We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.

Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.

I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.

it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.

0.05%

On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.

This fund would be a perpetual source of money.

It could replace the begging Organisations.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of world aid funds"Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.

It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.

Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.

It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of world aid funds "

Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.

Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start. 

All suggestions appreciated.

All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE TYRANNY OF GROWTH.

02 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Algorithms., G7., GDP., Happiness., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The cloud., The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations.

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( A Twenty minute read)

They say we have free will, but there are many types of tyrannies in our world.

You could describe our hand-held devices which are keeping us connected to anything, anytime, anywhere as one. 

We now use our hand-held devices for almost everything. More importantly, they use us for everything.

The extreme availability of information has not led to a more enlightened population, but to more confusion.

Connectivity is both a blessing and a curse.

It has become the pathway for almost all we do as we have become helpless without technology and the need for immediate data at our fingertips. But this is taking its toll.

The number of times we look at our phones daily would shock you: some studies say 50 times, others as many as 75 to 150 times. Most of our e mails are reactionary.Tyranny of the Should

Information technology is all-pervasive in production and consumption.

Each time we look at the phone, we look away from what we should be or were focused on. Our collective ability to stay focused on anything is destroyed.

How does this connect to Growth.

It is too simplistic to attribute all of our economic problems to government: indeed, that sort of reasoning is counterproductive: it absolves everyone else responsibility.

Although part of the responsibility lies with forces that are outside a government, a significant share rests with the attitudes, preoccupations, we have to Artificial Intelligence that is now analyzing our every movement to the extent that advertising is becoming personalized.

I’m not saying that growth is bad but growth that destroys value just for profit is cancer that is driving inequality with a tendency to cluster around the short-term, issues while ignoring reality is going to bite us all.

I want to begin by touching on a crucial economy-wide factor
in the erosion of our economic strength which fosters short-term
thinking.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of social media advertising"

Advertising:

 It is a major driver of unnecessary consumption.

This hasn’t always been the problem. Advertising use to inform you of the useful qualities of an object. Now it manipulates your emotions like anxiety and promises to improve social acceptance or class distinction.

It is now with a frenzy of social media advertising attaching its self to saving the world  that is driving consumption to new dizzying heights.

Growth for growth’s sake, is an ugly word with even uglier connotations when it is using social media in the form of algorithms FOR PROFIT, regardless of the cost.

So what is driving it:

In the information age, time is compressed and events are squeezed into ever-decreasing periods.

We have governments encouraging a restless, fleeting mode of being, and a superficial, hurried culture, which is inimical to fundamental values.

They encourage growth programs, the benefits of which are available   immediately, but the costs of which appear only at a later stage. They are less interested in public investments that have to be financed now but do not payoff adequately before the next election.

It’s as if human progress depends on economic progress.

At minimum, the kind of short-term oriented cycle in which we find ourselves behaves as though tomorrow is forever. And, in fact, a series of tomorrows will create a forever — a very predictable one — and not a very desirable or promising one.

Rewards which are heavily focused on short-term results, even if they make some financial sense, often do not deliver the economic promise or the synergy which is anticipated.

Perhaps it is true that the landmarks in human progress — in the arts, science, government, or elsewhere — have rarely been reached in societies in which the economy was unable to free most of its members from a daily obsession with subsistence needs.

On the contrary, wherever the economy is feeble or stagnant for
a prolonged period, where most people see their basic material
needs as unfulfilled and the prospects for improvement as
unlikely, the result is almost invariably either a dull fatalism
or political upheaval, neither of which is likely to be favorable
to liberty and freedom.

However we are now looking at a unremitting focus on economic growth. The drive to achieve growth at practically any cost and to the exclusion of all other measures of prosperity.

This focus on GDP growth as the prime measure of economic success is out of date. It’s not how big it is that counts, it’s what you do with it.

The distance to the future – is no longer the next election, it will be how much you are willing to pay the Cloud for information. The cumulative effects of almost five decades of constantly accelerating reliance on government regulation to address social inequities and problems is coming to an end.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of social media advertising"

The linkage between ownership and participation is changing.

Social Media is not just eroding the meaning of democracy but effecting our critical thinking skills. Polluted with consumption advertising it is adding to global inequality.

While there are hundreds of different marketing strategies, only one can bring in consistent sales from day one. Social media advertising. This is why global social ad spending doubled from $16 billion in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016 and is projected to increase another 26% in 2017.

One of the fascinating things about social advertising is that there is virtually no limit to your ability to scale.You don’t have to wait for someone to search for your targeted keywords. You don’t have to wait for someone to run your promotion or read your blog.

( For Instance:

With more than 2 billion monthly users, Facebook hosts over a quarter of the world’s population, providing advertisers with an unparalleled opportunity to reach virtually anyone and everyone. It provides free lead magnet like:

  • Whitepapers
  • Ebooks
  • Product coupons
  • Sitewide discounts
  • Limited-time offers
  • Giveaways
  • Free shipping

These leads can then be nurtured with a targeted autoresponder. Offering free products, download-ables and predictable discounts and coupons for her audience. Doing so has earned Facebook more than $1,000,000 in annual sales in just 2 years. Facebook allows more advanced targeting than any other advertising platform on earth. Advertisers can target by location (within a 5-mile radius), job description, interests, past activity, and many other incredibly valuable criteria.

Instagram now boasts more than 500 million monthly active users and commands one of the highest audience engagement rates in social media, 58% higher than Facebook and 2000% higher than Twitter.

Twitter with 328 million monthly active users, it remains one of the most popular social media platforms. Brands don’t need to pay in order to reach their followers, which enhances the platform’s value even when running paid ads.

Pinterest: With 175 million monthly users is highly targeted toward women with an 81% female user base.

LinkedIn : Where you tend to find the highest average disposable income, has an estimated 227 million monthly active users.

Snapchat Advertising:    310 million users.   

All Social advertising is incredibly measurable.)

(You can, in fact, control when you choose to look at your hand-held device.)

In light of this one easy solution to over-consumption would be to ban advertising- at least in pubic places and on Social Media where Profit seeking Algorithms are used.

Much of’ the crippling of our economic systems can find its roots in Algorithms for profit. (see previous posts)

The consequences of elected government’s short-range perspective are not difficult to understand. They are seen as having succeeded in undermining the economy through overbearing regulation, tolerance of inflation, indifference to the cost of environmental and social programs, and a pervasive anti-business attitude.

Government thus diminishes the private sector’s sense of responsibility —
both in economic and ethical terms — for its own conduct and for its own performance.

While I appreciate that degrowth will not happen as quickly as we need it to do and it will take generations to move our collective consciousness on most issue, we don’t have that kind of time any longer.

Technology that ostensibly should help people save time, has instead led to a situation where time is scarcer than ever.

When an exponential growth curve becomes vertical, time has ceased to exist as duration.”life stands still at a tremendous speed”, with serious consequences for culture, intellectual life and the very fabric of society.

What we do not know today is what it will take to send us to
the pumps.

The struggle now concerns the right to be unavailable, the right to live and think more slowly.

Choosing to live according to one’s own self-made conception of reality, human nature, and happiness is a recipe for tyranny.

It is about time that we ask what wireless communications and the Internet are preconditions for. They are problems need to be understood well, in order to be dealt with the political upheaval that is around the corner.

Relying on averages generate by computers is worsening inequality

within countries, and the world as a whole.

So is there anything that can be done legitimately that will have a positive effect.

Becoming more grounded in ones own true feelings and perceptions is a primary indication that one has begun to free himself from the “tyranny of the should.”

Assuring that investment in future profitability is not sacrificed on
the altar of quarterly earnings growth. Refocusing our approach to economic decision-making, to benefit all not the few.

Willingness to pay the price today for the health and vitality of the country tomorrow is the ultimate test of stewardship. To live with a view to the regime should not be supposed to be slavery, but preservation.

Finally, it is as we all know easy to point the finger, however we are the will in any form or symbol and we are identifiable as water.  

However if we are to address any of our world problems and stop the self-perpetuating downward cycle, with all the suction of a whirlpool, from which there will be no escape we cannot and should not rely on technology to bail us out.

There is only one solution. Make Greed pay a World Aid commission of 0.05% ( See previous post)

Technology, if it has not yet become the de fac~o

decision- — . . . maker in the production process, has

certainly become a participant who cannot be

ignored.

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

 https://youtu.be/cV_D2hC50Kk

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT IS HAPPINESS.

31 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Emotions., Energy, Google it., Happiness., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Technology, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions.

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( A follow on read: Twelve minutes from the post – WHAT IS THE CONCEPT OF NOW.)

While writing:( what is the concept of now) my daughter suggested I write a happy post. This post is therefore dedicated to her continuing search for happiness.

What is happiness?  How do we find the key to happiness?

Is happiness the sole purpose of life or is it just good health with a bad memory.

To day this is the default view. Skepticism about the afterlife drives humankind to seek not only immortality but also earthly happiness.

Who would like to live for ever in eternal misery?

What stands between us and an answer to this deceptively complex questions is the problem of subjectivity –happiness means different things to different people.

To behaviorist, happiness is a cocktail of emotions we experience when we do something good or positive. To neurologists, happiness is the experience of a flood of hormones released in the brain as a reward for behavior that prolongs survival. According to the tenets of several major religions, happiness indicates the presence of God.

This question has no straightforward answer, because the meaning of the question itself is unclear. What exactly is being asked? Perhaps you want to know what the word ‘happiness’ means. In that case your inquiry is linguistic.

Chances are you had something more interesting in mind: perhaps you want to know about the thing, happiness, itself. Is it pleasure, a life of prosperity, something else? Yet we can’t answer that question until we have some notion of what we mean by the word.Image associée

Is there anything more to being happy than just thinking you’re happy?

Do we have the power to choose to be happy or unhappy?

Are all kinds of happiness created equal?

Happiness is not a single all-encompassing concept it is a complex the notion.

A state of mind. What is this state of mind we call happiness? Typical answers to this question include life satisfaction, pleasure, or a positive emotional condition.

A life that goes well for the person leading it. Perhaps you are a high-achieving intellectual who thinks that only ignoramuses can be happy. On this sort of view, happy people are to be pitied, not envied.

We are inclined to think that pleasure is the key to happiness.

Is it purpose, or goal?

Has a goal that is an end-in-itself, nothing that he does is actually worth doing.

For most people, happiness is a central aspect of well-being, since most people very much desire to be happy. Even a slave might come to internalize the values of his oppressors and be happy, and this strikes most as an unenviable life indeed.

Is happiness overrated?

How if at all should one pursue happiness as part of a good life?

Is it possible to objectify and even quantify so subjective and elusive a quality as happiness?  The individual pursuit of happiness may be subject to non-moral norms as well, prudence being the most obvious among them.

The pursuit of happiness is self-defeating especially when it is associated with pleasure. The virtue of compassion or kindness, giving not receiving, produce happiness.    

Philosophical “theories of happiness” can be about either of at least two different things: well-being, or a state of mind. To be happy, it seems, is just to be in a certain sort of psychological state or condition.

Is it a psychological state (for example, feeling overall more pleasure than pain) and happiness as a positive evaluation of your life, even if it has involved more pain than pleasure.

Above all, there is the fundamental question: In which sense, if any, is happiness a proper goal of a human life?

Wealth, beauty, and pleasure, for example, have little effect on happiness.

What is needed to achieve genuine happiness?

Answer me this:  Would you choose to attach ourselves to a device that would produce a constant state of intense pleasure, even if we never achieved anything in our lives other than experiencing this pleasure. We all need to answer this question for ourselves.

Morality itself is a worthy goal of human existence. Our good or bad fortune can play a part in determining our happiness; for example, happiness can be affected by factors as our material circumstances, our place in society, and even our looks, whether we are married or not. In the long run marriage is not a major source of either happiness or unhappiness.

When asked Aristotle said” that the supreme good is happiness.”

And of this nature happiness is mostly thought to be, for this we choose always for its own sake, and never with a view to anything further: whereas honour, pleasure, intellect, in fact every excellence we choose for their own sakes, it is true, but we choose them also with a view to happiness, conceiving that through their instrumentality we shall be happy: but no man chooses happiness with a view to them, nor in fact with a view to any other thing whatsoever.

But what is happiness?

For Aristotle, it is by understanding the distinctive function of a thing that one can understand its essence.

Whereas human beings need nourishment like plants and have sentience like animals, their distinctive function, says Aristotle, is their unique capacity to reason. Thus, our supreme good, or happiness, is to lead a life that enables us to use and develop our reason, and that is in accordance with reason. Unlike amusement or pleasure, which can also be enjoyed by animals, happiness is not a state but an activity. And like virtue or goodness, it is profound and enduring.

By living our life to the full according to our essential nature as rational beings, we are bound to become happy regardless.

For this reason, happiness is more a question of behavior and of habit—of virtue—than of luck; a person who cultivates such behaviors and habits is able to bear his misfortunes with balance and perspective, and thus can never be said to be truly unhappy.

Some goals are subordinate to other goals, which are themselves subordinate to yet other goals, but happiness needs sadness. Without sadness there can be no happy moments unlike pleasure which can be manufactured by algorithms.

Being happy doesn’t come easy with the stress of modern life.  Take for instance the average American who uses sixty times more energy than the average stone age hunter-gatherer. Is he sixty times happier?

It took just a piece of bread to make a starving medieval peasant joyful.

It appears that even with all our unprecedented accomplishments even if we provided free food, ensured world peace, provided free medical care, gave everyone a thousand bitcoins the Capitalism system ensures that the ceiling of happiness remains out of reach.

Our exceptions are driven by our biochemistry level rather than our economic, social or political situation. Pleasure v pain. Unpleasant bodily sensations.

PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS DISAPPOINT TO REMAIN HAPPY YOU MUST LEARN HOW TO FORGIVE, FORGET, “ Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Self-actualization is Happiness. Joy goes in and out of vogue. We can deceive ourselves into thinking we’re happy when we’re not and we can be happy without realizing it.

Happy.

It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of a pig in shit"

I would be as happy as a pig in shit if I could live in THE CONCEPT OF NOW.

All comments happily appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin.