Category Archives: Pandemic

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO SAVE THE ECONOMY.

12 Monday Oct 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., COVID-19, How to do it., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Purchasing Power., Reality., Stimulus package., Survival., Sustaniability, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Universal Basic Income ., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, World Economic Depression.

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(Three-minute read) 

The covid -19 pandemic is changing everything. Unfortunately, our politicians are not used to this kind of emergency.

But they may soon find that their preferred economic cure to the coronavirus will long outlive the enemy it was intended to fight.

After all, income taxes were first introduced as temporary measures intended to address a short-term crisis and are still with us today.

As western leaders learned in the Great Depression, and after the second world war, to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone.”

The only way to achieve the above in a world that is driven by greed is by implementing a universal basic income that is funded by greed. 

We all witnessed the Financial crises. How governments introduced Quantitive easing by issuing billions to banks. It did not stop it from spreading throughout a single economy, the economy of a region, or economies worldwide. Asset prices saw a steep decline in value, businesses, and consumers were unable to pay their debts, and financial institutions experience liquidity shortages.

If we learned anything it was that putting trillions into the mouths of the greedy did not help the poor.  As income inequality continues to grow and the disruptive impact of technology leads to less security and stability for a growing list of industries and careers, a  Universal basic income can protect people from slipping through the ever-expanding cracks in our social safety net.

THE PREPANDEMIC case for a universal basic income is both simple and seductive. 

It is the most efficient way to get money into the hands of individuals and prevent the economy from seizing up completely—and because it largely cuts government bureaucracy out of the equation.

Until this year, it was mostly an idea that lived on the margins of the political mainstream, debated and discussed in academic circles, and overlooked by almost everyone else. Then, as with so many other things, COVID-19 changed everything.


Helping us overcome that challenge isn’t the only thing a UBI could do.

Take, for example, its impact on homelessness, “a guaranteed annual income would also help to make it far less likely that job loss, divorce, family conflict, domestic violence, injury, or illness result in homelessness.

UBI “could be transformational.”

“Beyond defeating the disease, the great test all countries will soon face is whether current feelings of common purpose will shape society after the crisis.”

Humans need work more than work needs us. “Poverty and income insecurity translate into expensive health care needs .“Income is the leading determinant of health.”

But the most important contribution that a UBI could make to our lives is raising our expectations of what governments can—and should—do.

It holds up a guiding point by which to assess government initiatives to alleviate poverty, to reduce income inequality, and to address precarity in the labor market.

Just as we saw a major reassessment of the role that governments should play in the aftermath of the Second World War, we may well see a similar adjustment in the wake of COVID-19.

Dead people don’t pay taxes or contribute to the GDP. They remain in permanent lockdown. 

At least with UBI when a vaccine does arrive you might be able to afford to buy it and make better choices in saving yourself. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S IS ENGLAND ENTERING A GOLDEN ERA IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE?

17 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., 2020: The year we need to change., Brexit., COVID-19, Disconnection., Donald John Trump, Economic Depression., European Union., Heredity Monarchy., homelessness., Human values., Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Nigel Farage., Pandemic, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Post-Covid-19, President of the USA., Reality., Refugees., Robot citizenship., Sleeping Rough., Sovereign wealth fund, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The USA., Trade Agreements., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH

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    (Four-minute read) 

Here is a country that is losing its marbles.

In an interconnected world where there is no such thing as sovereignty because globalization means that nation-states submit themselves to international treaties and international agreements that are not always in their best interests.  

The recent economic crisis that started in 2007 and now the coming economic depression and the continuing pandemic will prove that sovereignty of nations being subsumed by international bodies cuts both ways as the global economy is tightly interconnected and hence, cannot be regulated by nations in isolation.

Here is a country that on 30 June 1997,  the final embers of its empire came to an end with the 99- years lease on Hong Kong’s New Territories.

Never before has a country passed a colony directly to a communist regime that does not even pretend to respect conventional democratic values.

However the British Empire – for all its messy crimes and misdemeanors – was equally praiseworthy.

The empire was and is not just a story of domination and subjection but something more complicated: the creation of novel or hybrid societies in which notions of governance, economic assumptions, religious values and morals, ideas about property, and conceptions of justice, conflicted and mingled, to be reinvented, refashioned, tried out or abandoned.

The question is are we now to witnessing the final act. 

The non-recognition of England is already being used by its national broadcasting company the BBC referring to England as the four nations.  

In fact, England is already fragmented.

English nationalists if such a thing exists appear to be blind to the breakup of England.

Today, a hundred years on, the world is witnessing remarkable self-destruction in England.

An uneasy transition has or is taking place, from a decaying colonial legacy to a country that sees life through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram lies, manipulation, in every area…..with a global crisis forming, which is not just a Pandemic but an Economic depression with mass unemployment.

The question now is whether British people can continue to play their part in the development of the modern world. 

It has to pump trillions of quantitative easing money into its banks at the cost of ten years of Austerity. Dumping the EU its largest market on the results of a non-legally- totally false informed non legally binding referendum while building two Aircraft carriers and replacing worthless nuclear submarines, while 8.4 million its people alone are living in sub-standard housing with 400,000 people are either homeless or at risk of being homeless relying on foodbanks. 

The people themselves – about half who no longer give a rat’s a— about England, who are now hellbent on their smartphones, Ipads, creating an unrealistic, relativistic, melting pot utopia.

These people will be living on the English purse for some time, not the stuff of which national pride is made. They have other priorities dedicated to its demise. 

One would have to wonder why migrants risking life and limb to get here. 

Perhaps it because all the servants are leaving. 

These are the strange things happening, that demonstrate quite clearly what is wrong with Britain – and, probably, the rest of the ‘developed’ world, both devotion to business and profit, not people. 

“We convinced many countries, many countries – and I did this myself for the most part – not to use Huawei because we think it’s an unsafe security risk,” the US president Donald Dump said.

(This is a man who seems to wake up every morning wondering what controversy he can provoke, what headlines he can create.

Diplomacy, or the lack of it, can be a complicated business. We’ve learned that from observing Donald Trump.

Both his campaign and presidency is marked by bursts of false and outrageous allegations, personal insults, xenophobic nationalism, unapologetic sexism and positions that shift according to his audience and his whims.

This is a man far more consumed with himself than with the nation’s well-being.

From that moment of combustion, it became clear that Mr. Trump’s views were matters of dangerous impulse and cynical pandering rather than thoughtful politics.)

With the UK now becoming the US junior partner, (one of the most unreliable partners for any country) who cares when a phenomenal’ trade deal beyond Nigel Farage is promised, providing it sends its new aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth to the South China Seas with American warplanes, and supplies the Arabs with bombs to finish off Yeham.   

It’s one thing to get rid of the Chinese firm Huawei and its 5G infrastructure and in return to sour the world’s second-largest economy behind the US, which has more money in the bank than any other country. 

Indeed three of the world’s 10 biggest sovereign wealth funds are Chinese, together holding more than $1.5tn (£988bn) in assets.

Not too long ago the UK was one of China’s favorite places to invest – not anymore. 

Beijing’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, warned: “China wants to be UK’s friend and partner. But if you treat China as a hostile country, you would have to bear the consequences.”

 China operates an Authoritarian form of capitalism against Anglo – American capitalism which is the root of the problem. Global supremacy.

China’s investments may well be subordinate to its National Development and reform commission, but the staggering truth of Huawei is that the US does not want China to be a superpower when it comes to technology.

With the pandemic being used to push the protection of businesses the world population will eventually be tracked.  

Both the US and England might well end up as viewed as failed states due to the handling of the COVID-19 with both countries ending up with up distant and withdrawn people far from enhanced by COVID-19.

Not too long ago, the UK did a 79 million deal to import pig semen from China for stemcell research.

Its not stemcell research it needs. It needs a lot of fixing but isn’t that what the next four years are going to be about?

What is needs is some Face Recognition and a written constitution.  All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE WILL NEVER HAVE A PERFECT WORLD, BUT WE DO STILL HAVE A WORLD OF INDESCRIBABLE BEAUTY.

21 Thursday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Disasters., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Evolution., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Aid., World Economic Depression.

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(Ten-minute read) 

There is no such thing as a perfect world here or anywhere else especially when it is inhabited by a species that thinks that it can survive at the cost of all that surrounds it.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

This is true if you can behold what you are looking at while accepting that it can’t be perfect in the true sense of the earthly word. 

We might be living in history’s most peaceful era, with violence of all kinds – from deaths in wars to mass shootings, streets stabbings, in a world as interconnected and algorithmically driven that it could simply spiral out of control with an invisible virus that could kill untold numbers worldwide. 

In some sense, unlike our precedents who had gods for everything, from Wars to Famines we live a great deal of our lives in a reality of only what is visible but there is more and more becoming invisible. 

If all this were really true, it would suggest that an overwhelming proportion of the energy we dedicate to debating the state of humanity – all the political outrage, the warnings of imminent disaster, the exasperated op-ed columns, all our anxiety and guilt about the misery afflicting people all over the world – is wasted.

This is not an irrational thought.

Perhaps we should have or will have enough good reason to assume things will continue to improve but when you live in a world where everything seems to be getting better, yet it could all collapse tomorrow, “it’s perfectly rational to be freaked out,” by COVID-19.

It wasn’t so long ago that dogs gnawed at the abandoned corpses of plague victims in the streets of European cities.

With countries now endeavoring to kick start their economies, lurking behind everything else is our collective inability to act as one, to appreciate or understand that we all live on the same planet with all of its invisibility.  

Rational optimism holds that the world will pull out of the current crisis, but what if it’s the very strength of democracy – and our complacency about its capacity to withstand almost anything – that augurs its eventual collapse. 

We have created – the very engine that is so complex, volatile, and unpredictable that catastrophe might befall us at any moment. If it happens no one will remember the internet.

The worlds we live in are now so self-centered that we see charities begging to save everything from donkeys to starving children, all saturated in a media-era, that is constantly misleading us, with an advertising industry promoting unsustainable consumption for profit.   

Digital technology has unquestionably helped fuel a worldwide surge in economic growth but it has turned us into digital slaves detached from a genuine knowledge of how our world works and concern for the future.  

In these hyper-connected times, our addiction to bad news just leads us to vacuum up depressing or enraging stories from across the globe, whether they threaten us or not, and therefore to conclude that things are much worse than they are.

We live now in the Age of the Take, in which a seemingly infinite supply of blog posts, opinion columns, books, and TV talking heads compete to tell us how to feel about the news. (Including this blog.)

While the usual intractable political disagreements about the state of the planet improvements in sanitation and life expectancy we can’t prevent rising sea levels from destroying your country.

This shouldn’t really come as a surprise:

The internet economy is fuelled by attention, and it’s far easier to seize someone’s attention with emotionally charged argument than mere information – plus you don’t have to pay for the expensive reporting required to ferret out the facts.

Or, worse, is the internet with its social media platforms now counterproductive, insofar as a belief that things are irredeemably awful seems like a bad way to motivate people to make things better, and thus in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The point is that if something does go seriously wrong in our societies, it’s really hard to see where it stops.

We are not merely ignorant of the facts; we are actively convinced of depressing “facts” that aren’t true.

You might argue that comparing the present with the past is stacking the deck.

Of course, things are better than they were. But they’re surely nowhere near as good as they ought to be.

Humanity indisputably has the capacity to eliminate extreme poverty, end famines, or radically reduce human damage to the climate. But we’ve done none of these, and the fact that things aren’t as terrible as they were in 1800 is arguably beside the point.

If you start from the fact that plague victims once languished in the streets of European cities, it’s natural to conclude that life these days is wonderful. But if you start from the position that we could have eliminated famines, or reversed global warming, the fact that such problems persist may provoke a different kind of judgment.

They’d say, the world’s getting better, but it doesn’t feel like that around here.

For people to feel deeply uneasy about the world we inhabit now, despite all most indicators pointing up, seems to be reasonable, given the relative instability of the evidence of this progress, and the [unpredictability] that overhangs it.

And I would say, ‘Yes, but this isn’t the whole world!

Should we be a  little bit cheered by the fact that really poor Africans are getting a bit less poor? There is a sense in which this is a fair point. But there’s another sense in which it’s a completely irrelevant one.

When we don’t see the progress we have made, we begin to search for scapegoats for the problems that remain.

Progress isn’t inevitable, progress is problem-solving but not problem solving that addresses the whole problem.  

Everything really is pretty fragile and it is now beyond a doubt that the world is going into an economic depression. The pandemic has exposed our failings in many ways with the need to reverse that last four decades of the prevailing policies of growth at any cost.

Observations alone, however, will not bring transformation.

God forbid we should be naive to think that once ideas are discussed and made popular they will permeate policymaking and bring about change. In reality in a pandemic it is more than likely with a world economic depression the first thing that happens is not a radical reengineering of the economy. 

What happens is, what is dispensable, how many death can we afford before the economy suffers? Is the loss of life at a level acceptable to big business and the government?

So we will for the foreseeable future lurch forward with broken economies while millions are made scapegoats. Yes, your data will be centralized. The data doesn’t lie. Just look at the numbers, whatever happens, things could always, in principle, have been worse.

If we are not vigilant history shows, that whatever horrors the crises expose they will be covered up in the shattered aftermath.   

It took millions and millions of lives to win your freedom so why should we give it up to AI apps that are non-transparent, non-regulated, owned by you-know-who. 

To save lives Yes. To control lives NO.

We should look at things like climate change and nuclear war and pandemics as problems to be solved, not apocalypses in waiting. But they aren’t newsworthy. And you’ll rarely see a headline about a bad event that failed to occur.

Nature might be healing and the green deal looks like to way to go but a sustainable world requires that we address the world as a whole not just piecemeal solving one problem after another. 

There can be no sustainability with economies that don’t have their activities vetted against the knock-on effects they have on the whole ecosystem of our planet.    

Can this be achieved?

As I have said our problem is that we humans cannot act as one or see ourselves as a whole, inhabiting a planet that is interconnected to each and every one of us.

We will never be able to do so. 

How do we overcome this problem before the damage may not be repairable?

It has to achieve by invisibly means and on a sufficiently long timescale.

There is no reason with the computer power now at our disposal that we could not tap into the greed( profit for profit sake) by placing a world Aid commission of 0.005% on all activities that are not contributing to the health of our planet. ( See previous posts) 

Frankly, we have the knowledge so our prevailing mood of despair is irrational, and a bit self-indulgent.

Stay Alert. 

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

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: WE HAVE THE DREADED C – WORD AND SOON WE WILL HAVE THE DREADED R-WORD WHICH WILL TURN INTO THE DREADED D- WORD.

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., COVID-19, Economic Depression., How to do it., Modern day life., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Purchasing Power., Survival., The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Economic Depression.

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(Four-minute read)

Unless you already live in a cave or you are a complete and total mindless follower of the establishment media, you should be able to see very clearly that our society is more vulnerable now than it ever has been. Just as the course of the virus is uncertain, so too is its likely economic impact.

The reality is that very many people will be caught totally unaware and totally unprepared when the Economic Depression befall our generation…

Although we have all seen recessions most of us have little or no concept of an economic Depression.

A recession persists for 2 or more years.

Its starting gun is.

Two consecutive negative quarters of GDP over 6 months. A rise in unemployment of around 2%.Falls in GDP, Stock Markets, Real Estate prices, Exports/Imports, Real income, Savings rates, Industrial production, Corporate investment, Wholesale/retail sales, Interest rates falling. 

A Depression is altogether another kettle of fish.

Depression means the downturn has lasted a much longer time—usually years—with a much deeper impact.

I am not being alarmist but it’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: A Depression and it will drag on for many years.

True, that this one will not be a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort considering it lasted some 23 years.

Its starting gun is.

When GDP experiences a serious decline greater than 10%.

The Unemployment Rate spikes dramatically sometimes up to 25-40% in some sectors. Credit Liquidity dries up. Banking and Financial Crises rock the world.
Corporate and personal bankruptcies escalate. Corporate and personal bankruptcies escalate. Sovereign Debt Defaults and Bank closures cause a flight to cash, gold, or silver. International commerce and trade are curtailed as Trade Wars break out.
Desperate Currency Devaluations between nations result in a desperate “race to the bottom.” Entrenched Price Deflation replaces concerns over Inflation or Stagflation.
Civil strife sees law and order break down, crime and rioting escalate. Political tensions result in wars and a break down in societies.

Running the money printing presses day & night will not stop a Global Economic Depression. 

Unemployment in both the United States and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege. 

It’s no wonder that working-class person is scared to death they’re going to lose their house, and scared to death they’re going to lose their job and it may prove almost impossible to find another quickly.

So here are a few beady eye possible suggestions:

The sad truth is that the vast majority of people would last little more than a month on what they have stored up in their homes. 

Falling asset values and falling wages or income are a killer if you’re lumbered with high debt and interest repayments. Cash Is King in a Deflationary Environment.

Now is the time for preparation to form buying Co-ops/ Neighborhood Aid associations, Growing clubs. 

The greatest responsibility for healthcare will have to be taken on by community-based organizations and family networks, which would provide services more efficiently than the formal health system. 

Everything comes to an end, including Depressions

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

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: AT THE MOMENT THERE IS A LOT OF HYPE THAT AFTER THE CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC IS OVER THE WORLD WILL HAVE CHANGED.

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Emergency powers., Fourth Industrial Revolution., GPS-Tracking., Human values., Inequality., Lock Down., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Pandemic, Post - truth politics., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Politics

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

Obviously, where will we be in six months, a year, 10 years from now is unknown but what Covid-19 is throwing into sharp relief is just how false our beliefs about markets are. 

We all know what is needed and one could compose a list as long as your arm but all are connected to where and what we live on the Earth.

In the face of Covid-19, this has never been more obvious.

“We’re all in this together and nobody has a clear answer to a way out.”

However, when all of this is over together in lockdown will become more than an appropriate word in more ways than we might like.  

As with sheep, it is easier to control a flock when they are enclosed. 

There is a chance that the herd scenario will be the most dangerous scenario, with profound implications for all. 

Big untransparent data is a minefield to the civil liberties we enjoy at the moment.

We won’t be clapping when the freedom of choice disappears. 

So as responses to the virus evolve, how might our economic futures develop?

The main fact exposed in our societies by COVID-19 is that so many people work pointless jobs because, they make lots of money we have lots of consultants, huge advertising industry and a massive financial sector. Meanwhile, we have a crisis in health and social care, where people are often forced out of useful jobs they enjoy because these jobs don’t pay them enough to live.

In a society where exchange value is the guiding principle of the economy, the basic goods of life are mainly available through markets. This means you have to buy them, and to buy them you need an income, which comes from a job.

In other words, people are compelled to work in pointless jobs.

This is partly why so many countries were so ill-prepared to respond to Covid-19.

There are a number of possible futures, all dependent on how governments and society respond to coronavirus and its economic aftermath.

So, will, we take the opportunity of prioritization of one type of value over others.

(This dynamic has played a large part in driving global responses to Covid-19.)

First, it is quite hard to make money from many of the most essential societal services.

The best-paid jobs only exist to facilitate exchanges: to make money. They serve a no wider purpose to society.

We need a very different kind of economics if we are to build socially just and ecologically sound futures.Civil liberties under attack during COVID-19

From an economic perspective, there are four possible futures:

Descent into barbarism, robust state capitalism, radical state socialism, or a transformation into a big society built on mutual aid run by unregulated AI. 

If we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood or our civil liberties. 

From the economic point of view, this has to be is a Green sustainable Economy because the challenge of producing less is also central to tackling climate change.

(Coronavirus, like climate change, is partly a problem of our economic structure. Although both appear to be “environmental” or “natural” problems, they are socially driven.)

From an individual point of view, the solutions are not so clear.

Should we give up our liberties for the common good?

When faced with a complete lack of evidence about a tracking policy’s long term effects crisis situations afford the state the opportunity to stretch its power into areas of life that were before beyond its reach.

Politics is plagued by a do-something bias and this question is unanswerable because we cannot know how much the forcible suppression of civil society will cost and we won’t know the benefits.

The actions of governments if not reversed when the pandemic is over or under control to date if not reversed are of magnitude more dangerous than this virus.

Thinking critically we are now confronted nonetheless with the question of who gets to make such a decision on tracking, the government on a compulsory law backed bases or the individual on a voluntary base.  

It’s a social theory question, not a medical one: how does a comparatively tiny group of people at the top of government acquire the right to make this call for all other people. How could anyone or any group attain to such a power?

This leads us to some troubling questions.

For example, What kinds of communicable diseases function to void one’s right to free movement? How deadly does the disease have to be? How contagious? 

It is not worth giving up for a problem that has existed even before our time.

After giving up this right, what other rights will follow?

Where will be the balance? Do we become mindless government slaves?

Where is the line between where our right to choose is more important than the government’s right to impose their standards on us? Even if it’s for our own good?

Governments don’t give us our rights. Our rights are ours.

If we let freedom and liberty slip away a little at a time, then we are a people who don’t deserve to be free.

Just as the government has a duty to serve us, we as a people have a duty to defend our freedom and to understand and appreciate the rewards of being a free and open society. If we as a people fail in our duty to protect our freedom, then we no longer deserve to be a free people.

Once you give up even just a little, it is unlikely you will ever get them back. The individual is all that matters when it is you.

Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, “Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear.”

These times of crisis are when we must be vigilant, guarding our rights and liberties, watchful of overreach, as transparency of who, what, and how we are governed will disappear into big data run by algorithms that learn from each other owned by god only knows.   

Will the world change as we are told?  Will the draconian laws revert?  

Will this happen?

More than likely not to all three.  

Why?

Because we are in a capitalist system that cannot or is unable to manage greed, inequality, and profit for profit sake.

Because businesses, of course, want to be able to meet demand when the economy picks back up again. But, if things start to look really bad, then they won’t. So, more people lose their jobs or fear to lose their jobs. So they buy less. And the whole cycle starts again, and we spiral into an economic depression.

Because we are now facing a serious recession if not a global depression.

Our modern generations have lost so much of the sensibility, practicality, frugality, and “know-how.”  Very few of us alive today have experienced an economic depression.

The fan is spinning and something very brown is beginning to hit the economies of the world at some point they will be unable to sustain themself.…so be preemptive.

Preparing for that eventuality now is really the only way to be ready when we will actually need to be much more self-reliant for our food.

A full-on economic collapse isn’t simply a disaster threat we should look out for, if you can’t appreciate what you have, you’ll never be content even if you exceed every goal you set for yourself.

Initially, chaos will reign but people will start banding together and not spending money. Debt will become a dirty word. You can’t eat money or your smartphone so start digging your garden. Get your village to open communal gardens.

Before you throw something away as it could be re-purposed.

The prescription for solving this is simple – the government spends, and it spends until people start consuming and working again. 

However, it is my belief that this type of intervention won’t work here because we don’t want the economy to recover (at least, not immediately). 

Businesses exist to make a profit. If they can’t produce, they can’t sell things. This means they won’t make profits, which means they are less able to employ you. 

What is needed is an “anti-wartime” economy and a massive scaling back of production.

A key task for us all is demanding that emerging social forms come from an ethic that values care, life, and democracy. The central political task in this time of crisis is living and (virtually) organizing around those values.

Yes, climate change is caused by certain gases absorbing heat. But that’s a very shallow explanation. To really understand climate change, we need to understand the social reasons that keep us emitting greenhouse gases.

The dominant idea of the current system we live in is that “exchange value” is the same thing as “use value” and currently, the primary aim of the global economy is to facilitate exchanges of money. 

However, Governments are now providing people with an income in order to stop them from going to work reducing people’s dependence on a wage to be able to live.

This is viewed both by the market and governments as a temporary necessity to keep their economic where-with-all to deliver a good quality of life, so it must be protected. 

The market will always return to normal after short periods of crisis.

We do not have the right “mindset” in order to adopt the protection of life as the guiding principle of our economy. The use of profits as the primary way of organizing an economy can only continue if it is used to remove inequality on all fronts.

If it delivers a good quality of life, for all so it must be protected.

Barbarism is the future if we continue to rely on exchange value as our guiding principle and yet refuse to extend support to those who get locked out of markets by illness or unemployment.

It describes a situation that we have not yet seen.

Citizens no longer rely on employers as intermediaries between them and the basic materials of life.

We must be careful to avoid authoritarianism and massive austerity after the pandemic has peaked that will only consolidate wealth into tracking apps.

We can expect the lure of tracking citizens to infect politicians. The ideals of democracy will be surrendered to the relative security of authoritarianism. 

Likewise with Covid-19. Yes, the direct cause is the virus. But managing its effects requires us to understand human behavior and its wider economic context.

It is hard to believe but there was a time when computers didn’t control every aspect of the world, just like it is hard to believe that the world survived before electricity.

Nowadays it is hard for most to believe that people lived without cellphones.

I believe that sooner or later we will be facing a Greater Depression. While I certainly ‘hope’ not, logic is telling me that it is inevitable.

I do believe when things change, people will change also because it will become necessary. 

Which of the overwhelming number of urgent global issues should I focus my attention on first? 

Maybe you can’t save the world, but you can save your backyard.

Imagine what would happen if we all did the same?

Rather than waiting for the elected leaders to listen to your concerns, the quickest and most effective way of making a difference is to do it yourself.

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


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. ARE WE LOOSING OUR WORKING MEMORY OR IS GOOGLE DESTROYING THEM.

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disasters., Disconnection., Environment, Google, Google it., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., International solidarity., Life., Lock Down., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, Post-Covid-19, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

Post COVID-19 this will become a question that we will all have to ask yourselves. 

Coronavirus came after a series of wake-up calls.

Perhaps the COVID-19 outbreak is the wake-up call the world needs to get people accustomed to the fact that because of climate change, we all now need to change our lifestyles to protect our lives. 

The COVID-19 outbreak should be a wake-up call that the economic and social costs of climate change will likely be so catastrophic – potentially many times worse than what we’re currently witnessing – that as a nation and the community of nations, we can’t afford not to take massive measures to combat and mitigate the dangers.

Confronting climate change will take a global effort far beyond any that’s been on the table so far, and far beyond the voluntary commitments in the Paris Climate accord.

We don’t yet know how long the COVID-19 outbreak will last, how many people will get sick or die, or the ultimate cost to global wealth and to people’s jobs and homes.

However, it seems obvious to say that, if we can transform the economy for a virus, we can also do so to prevent climate change.

Acres of column inches have already been written about how the Coronavirus is going to change our economies, politics, and societies forever. 

We can choose to prioritize something – in this case, human life – above the maximization of profit and even our individual freedom.

Unchecked, climate change will wreak far greater damage on our ability to live safe, profitable, happy, and free lives than COVID-19.

Despite the brief dip in emissions due to COVID-19, there is a risk that the pandemic – which is likely to dominate politics for months or even years to come – will overshadow environmental concerns. 

Mortimer Adler Said ” To regard anyone except yourself as responsible for your judgment is to be a slave, not a free man. It is this fact that the liberal arts acquire their name.”

For most of human history, the only other reliable sources of information were other people.

We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found. If we know that a fact is only a Google away, then we’re not going to waste precious synaptic space on it. Better to let a server remember.

Or is it?

Feel like you’re losing grip of your memory. Google it.

Every time we recall a memory we also remake it, subtly tweaking the neuronal details. (This is why the more we remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes.) Although we like to think of our memories as being immutable impressions, somehow separate from the act of remembering them, they aren’t.

A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it.

The brain has no interest immaculate recall – it’s only interested in the past to the extent it helps us make sense of the future.

By having memories that constantly change, we ensure that the memories stored inside our mental file cabinets are most relevant.

Although our memories always feel true – as a literal recording of the past – they’re mostly not, since they’re always being edited and bent by what we think now. And now. And now. 

And this is where the internet comes in. One of the virtues of transactive memory is that it acts like a fact-check, helping ensure we don’t all descend into selfish solipsism. ( Solipsism: The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified)

By sharing and comparing our memories, we can ensure that we still have some facts in common, that we all haven’t disappeared down the private rabbit hole of our own reconsolidations.

I don’t think it’s a sign that technology is rotting our cortex – I think it shows that we’re wise enough to outsource a skill we’re not very good at.

Because while the web enables all sorts of other biases – it lets us filter news, for instance, to confirm what we already believe – the use of the web as a vessel of transactive memory is mostly virtuous. We save hard drive space for what matters, while at the same time improving the accuracy of recall.

But if a fact stored externally were the same as a memory of that fact stored in our mind, then the loss of internal memory wouldn’t much matter.

External storage and biological memory are not the same things.

When we form, or “consolidate,” a personal memory, we also form associations between that memory and other memories that are unique to ourselves and also indispensable to the development of deep, conceptual knowledge.

The associations, moreover, continue to change with time, as we learn more and experience more.

The essence of personal memory is not the discrete facts or experiences we store in our mind but “the cohesion” which ties all those facts and experiences together.

What is the self but the unique pattern of that cohesion?

Our over-reliance on google and the smartphone search engines is destroying our memories – ‘digital amnesia’. 

Google in its very nature is making us stupid, making us more likely to recall where the facts are rather than the facts themselves.

We hold the answers to just about all of life’s questions in our palms today. But that means our brains are feeling free to take some R & R.

If you have no working memory, you can have no longterm memory and you understand very little.

The growing reliance on the world wide web for fact-checking is rotting our memories.

We off-load memories to the cloud just as readily as we would to a family member, friend, or lover.

Almost all information today is readily available through a quick internet search. It may be that the internet is taking the place not just of other people as external sources of memory but also of our own cognitive faculties becoming an extension of our own intelligence, rather than a separate tool.

At this point, you might be asking why is any of this important.

Indeed, As the specter of creeping authoritarianism – as emergency disaster measures become normalized, or even permanent – it should be at the forefront of our minds. 

Because the consequences of COVID-19 will reorder society in a dramatic way, and this combined with climate change we are witnessing a tipping point as to how the world is going to work.

Unfortunately, we constructed a world that could not be more suited to a Pandemic – density everywhere- inward rural migration and now Data harvesting.

We can expect greater efforts to digitally capture and record our behavior in urban areas – and fiercer debates over the power such surveillance hands to corporations and states.

One consequence of coronavirus could be an entrenchment of exclusionary political narratives, calling for new borders to be placed around urban communities – overseen by leaders who have the legal and technological capacity, and the political will, to build them.

In other words an intensification of digital infrastructure in our cities to track the spread of COVID-19 using “big data” analysis to anticipate where transmission clusters will emerge next.

A police security robot drives on the high-speed railway station platform in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The device, which patrols public places, warns people when they are not wearing masks, checks their body temperature and identity.

This much is certain:

Just as this disease has shattered lives, disrupted markets and exposed the competence (or lack thereof) of governments, it will lead to permanent shifts in political and economic power in ways that will become apparent only later.

It will be a time of contradictions.

Internationally, many issues that appeared pressing prior to the pandemic will likely recede in prominence once the world begins its recovery. All non-coronavirus issues will be pushed aside.

Not only because of a shared experience but also because of the mutual assistance that will be required at the same time, democracies must prevent the emergence of a big brother-style intrusion into the personal sphere by the security apparatus.

Such a thing can only occur in the absence of massive civilian oversight.

Many countries will set up committees of inquiry to find out why they and their healthcare systems were caught unprepared, humanity is destined to return to its old self after the adjustment period ends. And that, on balance, is a good thing.

Coronavirus will not end globalization, but it will change it by disrupting our lives and causing painful tragedy —it may introduce a new acceptance of unpredictability into our thinking.

This is certainly not the last time that we’re going to have these kinds of disease eruptions if we deny, delude, and delay on climate change.

We know what to do to halt climate change, we just have to do it.

Our current sense of risk — such as when it is safe to cross a road — is insufficient to deal with threats that are so dire they must be minimized; we need a complete rethink.

If we don’t we will have unregulated algorithms run the world.

How much of life can now be conducted digitally?

If we can accept canceled flights, closed schools, postponed sporting fixtures now, perhaps we can accept restraints in the future.

If we can rely on international co-operation now, perhaps we can summon the same spirit again.

At some point, a nudge will be required. If the shock of coronavirus disruption isn’t enough for us to recalibrate, what will be? 

Our Memories!

We have to recognize there will be other pandemics and be better prepared. We must also recognize that climate change is a deeper and bigger threat that doesn’t go away, and is just as urgent.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

get inscribed into our biological memory banks. 

 

Gallery

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WILL THE WORLD BE EVER A SAFE PLACE.

05 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Biotechnology., Capitalism, CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy, Digital age., Disasters., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality., International solidarity., Life., Lock Down., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Nanotechnology, Pandemic, Political Trust, Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Survival., Sustaniability, Technologically Enabled Genetics., Technology v Humanity, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Economy., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics, World Trade Organisation

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