The UK was recently given the title of the most crowded country in Europe with a population of nearly 65,000,000 it is the 10th largest source of migrants to the rest of the world.
This is a country that made its wealth on the back of slavery and is now intending to provide those deemed to have arrived unlawfully with a one-way ticket to Rwanda.
SHAME ON YOU Britain.
In an effort to curtail human trafficking it is resorting to the same despicable trade of human trafficking it wants to stop.
Priti Patel the daughter of a Ugandan-Indian family should know that refugees are among the most vulnerable people in the world.
Your indifference is the engine of entropy that is shining a light on Britain’s apathy to the plight of refugees.
Anti-immigration sentiment existed in Britain long before the referendum.
On June 23, 2016, Britain held a referendum to determine the future of its relationship with the European Union. “Immigration” was the single strongest issue driving Brits to vote for Leave and fundamentally reshaping the language of “immigration.”
In reality, the UK’s membership in the EU would have very little effect on the country’s responsibilities concerning the refugee crisis, as the UK had already opted out of common EU asylum policies and instead was bound only by a distinct set of international conventions.
The relentless (negative) coverage of the refugee crisis in the media brought the topic of immigration to unprecedented national salience for the British public.
By blurring the boundaries between EU and non-EU, economic and humanitarian, and legal and illegal migration it has not isolated itself from the Leave campaign. It not only stripped humanity from the crisis but also misled voters by implying that the forces guiding and controlling both the refugee crisis and internal EU migration were the same and could both be solved by leaving the EU.
Without using the terminology of “refugee,” the umbrella term “migrant” instead of “refugee” to refer to people fleeing war zones, has resulted in sending a strong message that Britain is not a country to migrate to.
The UK’s referendum to leave the EU was an unequivocal demonstration of the anti-establishment sentiments, xenophobia, populism, and Euroscepticism.
( There has always been an intersection between populist politics and media discourse, and there is strong evidence that fear-based messages appear during important political and electoral markers, like elections.)
We must hope that the Priti Patel deal with Rwanda falls on the sword of justice and that decency people in the UK make their voices heard.
Now more than ever UNHCR’s role in Britain must come to the fore. Promoting accession to, and implementation of, refugee conventions and laws.
Ensuring that refugees are treated in accordance with internationally recognized legal standards;
Ensuring that refugees are granted asylum and are not forcibly returned to the countries from which they have fled;
Promoting appropriate procedures to determine whether or not a person is a refugee according to the 1951 Convention definition and/or to other definitions found in regional conventions;
Seeking durable solutions for refugees.
The definition of a refugee is someone who:
“Owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”
It cost Australia more than £5 billion since 2013 to send 3,127 people to Papua New Guinea and Nauru as part of a similar policy.
The realities of conflict, violence, and persecution continue to cause displacement.
THERE GO I BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
THIS POST IS FOR ALL THOSE CHINLESS WONDERS WHO BELIEVE IN PROFIT FOR THEMSELVES.
It’s no longer good enough to measure the overall wealth of a nation whilst glossing over inequality or consequential environmental degradation.
Why?
Because it is quite apparent that capitalism is stuck while the longer-term future has been transformed by the pandemic and climate change.
It has no answers to a host of problems, including disease, inequality, the digital divide, and, perhaps most blatantly, the environmental crisis the biggest problems of our time.
Rethinking the role of government nationally and in the international economy is now reaching critical a point – to put public purpose first and solve the problems that matter to people – are now the central questions for humanity.
It is imperative that responding to the climate and nature emergency is integrated across all economic activity, with an explicit commitment to moving to a more circular and resource-efficient economy.
The capacities and role of government within the economy and society, above all need to recover a sense of public purpose in order to reshape the economic development to invests in people and businesses drive prosperity, and reduce inequality.
Our economic well-being is without any doubt tied to our environmental, cultural, and social well-being.
One can say this till we are blue in the face but the Covid crisis has removed any doubt about the fundamental role of the foundational economy in the well-being of a nation. (This is the part of the economy which could not be shut down as it provides the infrastructure of everyday life)
So investing in social care, childcare, housing, energy, low carbon, and digital connectivity not only addresses the foundational needs of civilized life but can offer meaningful and rewarding careers and be harnessed for economic development.
A holistic approach to the economy, recognizing its potential for harm as well as good, demands a holistic way to measure progress.
None of the above is possible unless we find a way of committing to long-term projects that are both politically and financially sound.
Our problem is that governments are subjected to short electrical terms in office so long-term objectives are not a priority. While the electoral population pays ever-increasing taxes either to fund a project or rectify a mistake, (without any real commitment to the project in the first place) other than a general election and a new manifesto of verbal diarrhea can deserving projects be fulfilled to completion?
What if we were to introduce legal mission statements that could not be changed till achieved, ‘magnet projects’ funded not by taxation but by voluntary participation in the form of willing support in allowing citizens to support projects by buying sustainable green bonds with guaranteed returns and Loto style financial monthly prizes.
If we are to genuinely tackle the problems that we have created lets us genuinely participate by putting our money where our mouths are.
Too often overlooked in economic development.
You also might be led to believe that monetary activism is financial triage against world economic collapse but ask yourself what kind of political creatures are money printing spawning.
What we are seeing is the economy going online with businesses and organizations in receipt of public funding far from being totally transparent with online profit-seeking algorithms that are now driving a hidden non-paying tax economy.
The pandemic points forward to realizing that our economic models are not dealing with the growth of inequalities.
Money must be made to serve the people not the other way around social value
Imagine a society where everyone can have an equal say in the issues that concern them. Above all, a world, in which all the people own and share the wealth that we need in order to live. These would be enormously exciting times because, at long last, human society will have evolved to the position of being able to tackle effectively the challenges facing the modern world.
So here is your chance to contribute by suggesting your solutions or improving on the above suggestion of Mission Economics.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
With the continuation of the covid pandemic, this is going to become the big question because the two are intertwined.
If this pandemic drags on, which appears it will do with new variants, the degree of economic harm will become extreme, resulting in a different kind of “ailment” worse than the one we’re supposedly trying to “cure.”
Either way, the current shackling of the economy cannot be allowed to drag on much longer, or we will find ourselves in a full-blown global depression — and then more people will die.
However, if you combine the pandemic with the other major crises Climate Change the Environment wins hands down.
Why?
Because in the long run if the environment is not protected it will inevitably lead to the depletion of economic resources and the destruction of the earth and human life.
In this world, humans are not here for only survival there are many other aspects that are necessary for the lives of humans. The economy is not, and never was intended as, “an end in itself”.
Everything that belonged to humans came from the environment but we can live without an economy, but not without our environment!
We’re all in this together.
There’s just enough truth to that to convince the average citizen — but the more insidious (and, I believe, likely intended) effect is to promote public docility;
To persuade us to go along with any and all directives issued by the authorities.
An economy is good only insofar as it satisfies our needs for freedom to enjoy the actuality of living, not valuing profit over life itself. On the physical level, human lives literally depend on the economy; not only for paying the bills and preparing for retirement but for healthcare itself.
With no economy, there is no point in having a good environment. everything in the history of the world created by humans came from the environment.
A “healthy” economy is an indicator of a “healthy” society. They live side by side.
If the goal of government policy is only “to slow the spread of infections”“
If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.” — Guy McPherson.
The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease. Government handling of any public emergency — if those in power are rational and just — will be balanced with their handling of the economy.
Pope Francis said on Sunday that people are more important than the economy, as countries decide how quickly to reopen their countries from coronavirus lockdowns.
What do you think the economy is?
It is people but unfortunately, with our present system of capitalist economies, people do not benefit equally from its growth. Essential workers versus the unemployed, shareholders versus self-employed, foodbanks versus dialing a meal, the list is endless however without humans, how can we hope to repair anything?
To remove these inequalities is impossible but an economy based on universal basic income for all would allow people to look after themselves rather than state handouts.
Providing inflation was controlled it would go a long way to leveling up.
Instead, the possibility of dictatorial governments using technology data is now on the cards. This fear is exacerbated by the average person’s lack of reflection on just what “the economy” is, and what it means to both individual freedom and the public good.
History has shown us we shouldn’t underestimate the threat to our liberty arising from the government’s response to Covid. There’s no reason to assume that after the pandemic — if there is an “after” — all democratic governments will voluntarily relinquish their newly acquired power.
Sure the government’s first obligation is to ensure people can survive both Climate change and the virus but without the means to change the way we live our lives it will be meanless.
So it’s time for the media to make the cost of human life better understood.
It’s time for the advertising industry to stop promoting consumption for profit.
It’s time to regulate Profit for-profit technology such as non-transparent Algorithms.
Either we are really all in this together or we are not.
Of course, together will remain only words till we address the weakness which is at the heart of any nation-state project ( Like the current Vaccination program)
The vast majority are unable to participate because of a lack of compensation, by the capacity ( notably economic) of the capitalist system to ensure that everybody enjoys certain equality of access to material well-being. A Basis Universal income would rectify that.
Modern societies can easily get by without cultural integration, tolerating a situation of competitive pluralism of values without automatically sinking into anarchy feared by the sociological tradition of inequality, if given the means to do so.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse are chucked in the bin.
First, money is a medium of exchange that lets us earn, buy, and sell completely different things in the same units.
On top of this, money is also a unit of account—i.e. it lets us put the prices of very different things in the same terms.
This is why private wealth impacts public life, with the world of politics full of lobbyists.
Money has always shaped the process of political competition and influences policymaking but most of us are unaware of how money works, behind the scenes in the political theater, it is a year-round issue that dictates the daily life of the nation.
Money finds its way into politics in myriad ways —
Any political campaign lives or dies by its funding and for a long time, there has been a popular myth about how everyday voters who outnumber the wealthy will collectively donate more money than the few donations of the wealthy.
The influence of cash within politics could be called dark money.
It turns politicians’ existence into serving their donors instead of their voters, which affects the policies they support, how they allocate government spending, and their expressed values.
Regardless of our personal feelings, money makes the world (and democracy) go round.
It seems unfathomable that these external entities have such leverage in our election process.
Whether elected officeholders betray their voters, prioritizing interest groups or single campaign donors, remains a question to be answered in the public sphere.
The super-wealthy class is almost single-handedly funding elections, which impacts our government’s overall functionality and integrity, meaning the power lies in the hands of few.
Cash has become a determining factor for who wins the most crucial elections like the president of the USA.
Since 1980 if you add it all up it comes to $ 105 billion 349 million.
There’s way way way too much money in politics and most of it is having a corrupting, undue influence and locking out the voices that count.
For too long, money has been the one thing that has reigned supreme in a democracy.
The influx of cash from corporations and interest groups sways the ways our political leaders pass legislation that supports these entities, regardless of the public’s best interest.
It allows corporations to buy leverage that alters the fabric of our economy.
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Fighting undue influence and corruption from political financing requires a clear understanding of the difference between unlawful influence on public administration and behavior and breach of trust of voters.
The former requires precise regulation of those sectors of administration that usually lend themselves to compensate campaign donors.
The potential entry point in the public sector can vary along with several channels of influence.
Beyond political advertising and election contributions, cash is influential in the lobbying industry.
A ridiculous game in which corporations are people and money is magically empowered to speak. Allowing people and corporate interest groups and others to spend an unlimited amount of unidentified money has enabled certain individuals to swing any and all elections. Donal Trump and referendums like Brexit.
While banning all campaign donations is an option, a comprehensive approach will take into account private agents who can resort to lobbying, personal networks, or corruption.
The truth requires that we call the corrosion of money in politics what it is – it is a form of corruption and it muzzles more of us than it empowers, and it is an imbalance that the world has taught us can only sow the seeds of unrest.
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Money cannot always buy the best election results – Trump – Robert Mugabe – Crown Prince Abdullah – Kim Jong-un – Bashar al-Assad –Saparmurat Niyazov – Putin – Idi Amin Saddam Hussein – Mengistu Haile Mariam – Augusto Pinochet – Pol Pot – Charles Taylor – Suharto – Mobutu Seko to name just a few dead and alive.
As of today, there are 50 dictatorships in the world.
But the millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the political process, and they own the politicians that go to them for money.
It’s time to get big money out of politics., and have a system of scrutiny to ensure that no special access or call time with rich donors or big-dollar fundraisers to permanently eliminate big money from our politics and return it to the people.
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Our democracy shouldn’t be bought and paid for by the wealthy and powerful.
It belongs to all of us or does it with the arrival of Big data the next currency of politics now being used to directly influence our decisions.
Data brings change to much more than just the commercial side of our lives.
We have to acknowledge that our data has much more than just a “one-shot” value.
The fact that Facebook and other social networks collect data on us is presented as something outrageous but not in the political world.
Putting you into an “opinion bubble” by better targeting political ads and thus motivating you to actually go and vote, and become (unknowingly) an ambassador for the power that has you in its aim, exists.
Data as a Political Asset: valuable stores of existing data on potential voters exchanged between political candidates, acquired from national repositories, or sold or exposed to those who want to leverage them
Data as Political Intelligence: data that is accumulated and interpreted by political campaigns to learn about voters’ political preferences and to inform campaign strategies and priorities, including creating voter profiles and testing campaign messaging.
Data as Political Influence: data that is collected, analyzed, and used to target and reach potential voters with the aim of influencing or manipulating their views or votes.
In reality, the same problems with money and now data have existed for years, with huge amounts of personal data being sold to corporate clients. And yet, we only start panicking when we see how the illegal, or barely legal trade of ourlife patterns collected by social networks impacts our political choices.
Knowing where we spend our time, what media we watch, what books we read, what food we prefer, and what words are we most likely to use in our tweets makes the difference.
But what is it that makes the politicians “addicted to big data like it’s campaign cash”,
Unfortunately, this “addiction” to data has induced politicians and their campaign managers into the same illusion that businesses are struggling with right now:
Big data allows reliable prediction and, obviously, politics, as the very structure of societal governance, is heavily impacted.
It is, indeed, a problem.
The amount of information that companies have about who we are and what we are as social units is so huge, that it is this data reshaping the very fabric of our societies.
Most people believe — because of huge public buzz scandals like the one of Cambridge Analytica — that big data in politics serves the goals of better manipulation.
The issue of data collection in the interest of the political actors must not be reduced to just cynical Frank Underwood-style power brokers buying data on where we eat and what we watch on Netflix and who our friends are to better sell us their quotes about how they are gonna make our lives better.
The overwhelming power of the big brother that tracks our every step raises the question. If societies value equality of information, open debate, and transparency, these trends should be of concern?
One thing we know for sure is that the clear trend of getting more and more data involved in political campaigning and decision-making is there.
Without considering these questions, there is a danger that any response may have unintended consequences and fail to advance the principles we want to uphold.
Bribery is human nature and the only way to expose it is with transparency requirements that enable the media, public interest groups, and parties to engage in this debate.
The manipulation of the future political result, by algorithms is only a click away.
We will still need (yes, NEED) tons of “money in politics.”
Without big donors, how many Independent candidates will be able to go up against the dark money and deep, oligarch pockets?
Ok, let’s figure out where that money goes.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Just the other day I watched a news report on Afghanistan with shocking images of starving children.
It’s not as if this is the first time starving children grace our television screens.
It was predicted that if the country does not get aid there will be a human disaster with the loss of millions of lives.
We all could be forgiven for not remembering the Irish Potato famine that killed around a million, but not the Famine in Ethiopia 1983-85 that killed around the same number of people.
Since then the world is now confronted with the realities of climate change – streams of migration while the covid pandemic has killed 4,984,325 people so far from the outbreak to October 27, 2021, which is a contributor to our desensitization of suffering a very complex topic.
However I believe the world rich countries, paints it as something almost good, necessary, and a part of life.
The more we are exposed to these things, or let children be taught it’s normal through movies, books, and so forth, the initial shock becomes less and the stark colors in which they were viewed, become duller.
This may raise in some readers’ minds the question of what we ourselves actually believe.
Take our belief in God.
He or she or it is becoming nothing less than the process of opening our lines of contact with the unknown potential of the universe. God represents the direction of our wonder – not the destination.
Which leads to no easy answers, just more questions.
However, if we humans could come together in harmony with the real universe, our troubled species would have its best chance to enjoy this jewel of a planet, unique probably in all of the cosmos.
The hope of this happing in a throwaway world is negotiable, leaving people feeling defeated and powerless.
Every daylight hour we are bombarded by pleas for help to save something, now including the planet. Suffering seems to abound and we see it so often on the news or in movies that we’ve become desensitized.
“I think if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.”
It’s no secret that the world is falling apart as we know it, people are becoming desensitized to the events that are shaping our society.
Desensitizing is a tool, and the world uses it to change and shape our thinking, alter our perspective and mold us into the way they want, too emotionally exhausted to feel anything.
Just because it’s “normal” in today’s age, should we be in less shock, disgust, or lessen the intensity of emotion towards it?
What’s the harm?
It is not something to just succumb to, we must choose what we allow it to impact because it takes us farther away from the rawness and reality
It is how we use it and allow it to affect us that any understanding of this relationship can we hope to achieve behavioral change.
Indeed, the world is in a chaotic and cruel place but what happens to us that we lose the deep sense of caring – something that would have been abhorrent to us in the past is not despicable anymore. We accept the fact that this is what the world has become
But it is not about pictures or videos anymore.
We are simply desensitized to tragedies happening around us because they are becoming less like tragedies and more like everyday actions.
It is very easy to point fingers at platforms such as Facebook, & Twitter. But both of them are flexible and adaptable, they are not an omnipotent force governing what the people chose to say or think.
As far as it goes, Social Media platforms are objective viewers of the world.
They are merely tools used by the people.
The question is, what are we allowing ourselves to become desensitized to?
Being sensitive is first and foremost allowing oneself to feel in great depths.
We become lethargic and we cannot hope to change behavior without first implementing a re-sensitization effort.
As our world undergoes anthropogenic changes, it is critical to examine how these changes affect our well-being and our relationship with the natural world.
What do we do when all of the chaos, all of the destruction of the world is shoved in our faces day after day?
We wonder why there isn’t a better way to go about things?
We can’t let our sensitivity be the darkness that sits on our shoulders.
Sensitivity helps us acknowledge our own consciousness.
We need to remember that it is a tool and that we do have a lot of control over it, but without thought, it appears we don’t have much control over it at all.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We all know that we must shift the direction of the way we live life on Earth.
Sadly, this does not seem to be the case and hence, social conflict and civil unrest seem inevitable.
We all know that what is needed is a coordinated global response and bipartisan domestic response not just to the current pandemic but also to tackle climate change.
As Schwab writes: “The new technology age if shaped responsively and responsibly, could catalyze a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a truly global civilization.
Yes, we are in a fourth industrial-technological revolution with regulators guilty of sleeping by allowing AI to develop financial weapons of mass destruction turning the world into a digitalized market for the sake of short-term profit.
Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.
Each time you run a Google search, scan your passport, make an online purchase, or tweet, you are leaving a data trail behind that can be analyzed and monetized. Computers are already making decisions based on this information.
In less than 10 years computer processors are expected to reach the processing power of the human brain. Socialism for the Rich and Capitalism for the Poor.
Think of apps that track how much you eat, sleep, and exercise, and being able to ask a doctor a question by simply tapping it into your smartphone.
In the future, will it ever be possible to be offline anymore?
So are the technologies that surround us tools that we can identify, grasp and consciously use to improve our lives? Or are they more than that: powerful objects and enablers that influence our perception of the world, change our behavior, and affect what it means to be human?
It is therefore worthwhile taking some time to consider exactly what kind of shifts we are experiencing and how we might, collectively and individually, ensure that it creates benefits for the many, rather than the few.
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At the heart of discussions around emerging technologies, there is a critical and central question: what do we want these technologies to deliver for us?
The fourth Industrial revolution is widely taken to be the shift from our reliance on animals, human effort, and biomass as primary sources of energy to the use of fossil fuels and the mechanical power this enabled.
It however can also be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines.
It represents entirely new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even our human bodies -. examples include genome editing, new forms of machine intelligence, breakthrough materials, and approaches to governance that rely on cryptographic methods such as the blockchain. It’s just not very evenly distributed.
More people in the world have access to a mobile phone than basic sanitation.
The complexity of these technologies and their emergent nature makes many aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution feel unfamiliar and, to many, threatening.
Indeed, it is certain that the governments know this, but instead of helping the poor they are making it harder for them to survive and it is certain that sooner or later when the bubble burst, there will be few survivors.
Added to this is the humungous amounts of money governments are borrowed to keep the government running in the absence of real economic growth.
Since the financial crash and before interest rates were kept at near-zero levels for most of the decade in the run-up to the crisis with the West governments encouraging speculation and risk-taking.
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Currently, there are three big areas of concern: Inequality, Security, and Identity.
Inequality.
62 individuals controlled more assets than the poorer 3.6 billion people combined, half the world’s population.
Unequal societies tend to be more violent, have higher numbers of people in prison, experience greater levels of mental illness, and have lower life expectancies and lower levels of trust.
An important potential driver of increased inequality is our reliance on digital markets – increase unemployment.
Security.
The combination of the digital world with emerging technologies is creating new “battlespaces”, expanding access to lethal technologies and making it harder to govern and negotiate among states to ensure peace.
The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution also offer expanded capabilities for waging war which is increasingly accessible to both state and non-state actors, such as drones, autonomous weapons, nanomaterials, biological and biochemical weapons, wearable devices, and distributed energy sources
It’s not a question of if non-state actors will use some form of neuroscientific techniques or technologies, but when, and which ones they’ll use.
Identity, voice, and community.
Already, digital media is increasingly becoming the primary driver of our individual and collective framing of society and community, connecting people to individuals and groups in new ways, fostering friendships, and creating new interest groups. Furthermore, such connections transcend many traditional boundaries of interaction.
Unfortunately, expanded connectivity does not necessarily lead to expanded or more diverse worldviews.
Emerging technologies, particularly in the biological realm, are also raising new questions about what it means to be human.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the first where the tools of technology can become literally embedded within us and even purposefully change who we are at the level of our genetic makeup.
The very reason why people are residents in taking the covid jab.
Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and biology at Harvard University, stated that cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind”.
If we have the courage to take collective responsibility for the changes underway and the ability to work together to raise awareness and shape new narratives, we can embark on restructuring our economic, social, and political systems to take full advantage of emerging technologies.
This can only be achieved through the ideology of. Live and let live.
In 1969 a man stood on the moon.
The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Birth.
This means that for 222 out of 239 years – or 93% of the time – America has been at war. The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.
It’s no wonder that the world is Fucked up.
One only has to look at the current withdrawal from Afghanistan to see the benefits of War.
This has important implications for how policymakers ought to treat future wars that are inevitable as the world struggles to feed its present direction of economic growth at whatever cost.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
While we watched a postponed Olympics game unfold in Japan with barely one in 10 Japanese wanting it to happen, a pandemic is exposing gaps with graphic honesty in a world that has long been overdue for systemic reform of its economic, social, and technological structures.
All require a global-to-local response and long-term thinking; all need to be guided by science and need to protect the most vulnerable among us, and all require the political will to make fundamental changes when faced with existential risks.
Beyond the obvious short-term impacts of climate change and Covid (such as loss of life, a profound hit to economic and social activity), both are casting a long shadow into the future.
If we remain passive and ununited to the emerging risks, we may lose a historical opportunity to shape the new normal that we want, rather than the one we would be left with.
At the moment the economic risks dominate perceptions, with a prolonged global recession a top concern.
However, if either Covid-19 or Climate change eclipses sustainability on the public agenda where are we then.
What we will be left with are critical non-economic risks concerning the sustainability of life on earth and all that live on it.
On the environmental front, even with an expected 8% drop in global emissions for this year, the world would still miss the 1.5°C targets to avoid a planetary catastrophe.
If we are to truly recover from the pandemic and its impacts, then it will not be about putting things back together to how they were –we are in the midst of a historic event that will change many aspects of our world.
The long-term societal impacts of both, such as an exacerbation of inequality and changes in consumer behaviors, the nature of work, and the role of technology – both at work and at home – will change our way of life forever, for us as individuals, as a workforce, and as a society.
We were unprepared for Covid that was predictable. We are not preparing for Climate change that will create substantial societal consequences for the long term, now being felt by people worldwide.
There is one thing for certain our attitudes towards traveling, commuting, and consumption will change employment prospects.
So what lessons can we distill, that can feed into your own future scenario, resilience, and business continuity planning?
Profit for profit’s sake will have to be regulated.
No longer can businesses plunder the earth for finite resources to produce worthless short-term material satisfaction. We know that we will have to build back better and address deep systemic vulnerabilities that have been allowed to develop over the last decades.
Left unchecked, there is a real risk that inequalities and social deprivation will increase
Therefore, the challenge to return to the ‘new normal’ is as much a psychological as an economic choice.
The timing and speed of the economic recovery, dependent as it is on solving the health crisis, is likely to exacerbate inequality, mental health problems, and lack of societal cohesion. It is also likely to widen the wealth gap between young and old and pose significant educational and employment challenges that risk a second lost generation.
A golden rule of politics is that the timing of a decision is almost as important as the decision itself.
“Timing is everything”, but it is also the element that is hardest to get right.
Of course, we need to focused on the climate, sustainability, and on societal risks, such as inequality, mental health, the lack of social cohesion and inclusion. If we do not do this, then the gaps in inequality – especially financial – are likely to remain and increase destroying all efforts of a green economy, a sustainable economy, or any other form of the economy whether it is socially driven or ever man for himself.
We are already seeing record levels of unemployment due to lockdown measures, to control transmission and are re-learned hard lessons, particularly that social deprivation determines health outcomes.
So it is time for preparation, for a world of shocks which is likely urging to ramp up economic activity, regardless of impact, to recover at any cost.
Much depends on what governments, societies, and businesses will do next. This should be a long-term change in attitude in the historic public vs private debate.
I urge you to take the time to weigh the potential risks and benefits based on your situation before making a decision you could regret for the rest of your life.
We must draw on all our strengths to build back a better world.
It’s time for all avenues of communication to be taking the lead.
The New Normal is knocking at the door and the door is already open.
Change is simple and it’s not easy.
Step 1: Do you want to change?
Step 2: Do you know how to change?
Step 3: Are you willing to give a change time?
Anyone who has ever changed has gone through the process. We need all three steps, and if we miss one, we get none.
The new normal in the end will look like we want it to look.
The life you thought was boring, is the life you’re hoping to get back to right now.”
Ultimately, public health is a political choice. A choice we are now confronted with, and one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.
Hopefully, hold on to that sense of shared humanity.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We are at a pivotal moment in human history not because we still don’t really know where we come from, or if we are alone in the Universe, or do we really matter.
It is, of course, impossible to put into a sentence or a paragraph what is wrong with the world never mind the Universe.
But it’s possible to describe our world in a word. Beautiful and we humans occupy an extraordinary place in it.
The strange fact is that in this age of information when data is our currency of communication, most of us have no idea how to picture the world never mind the universe.
The last time the Western culture shared a coherent understanding of our world I would say, was away back in the middle ages, when Galileo discovered that we were not the center of the universe.
Now with climate change and the current Pandemic, it is as if we have just started to see the world in color, and that changes, not just what is far away, but what’s right here.
This discovery of the state of our plant challenges us to reframe everything and there is little point in learning a lot of science unless you can do something valuable in life with that knowledge.
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There is only one image of our world that shows us this.
The photo shows no countries on our planet, only landmass, oceans, and clouds.
Our endless preoccupation with nations and racial or ethical groups is completely misleading our intuitions.
This image shows our glorious plant in its true state without language in all its forms, cultural identification, religious beliefs, all are just tools, to shepherding ourselves successfully through the coming state of the world
This is going to require tremendous creativity, combined with more than a large dose of common sense, which unfortunately down the centuries and now is lacking in the collective management of our planet Earth.
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However, we live in a world where all information is freely available at the click of a mouse, so what has changed?
We’re seeing a lazy entitlement wash over the world where everyone feels as though they deserve what they want from their government the second they want it, without thought of repercussions or the rest of the population.
It seems like people don’t actually want democracy anymore, they want a dictator who agrees with them.
The sickest and most grotesque NEWS TOPPING THE CHART, dominating our attention and the news cycle, dividing and recruiting us into its ever more polarized camps, giving us a skewed view of how other people in the world really think, act, and live.
It seems like our new brave world is JUGED by a group of people that represents 0.01%, who take refuge in their own precious identity politics with us buying more and more into a worldview that is disconnected from cold data and hard facts?
The impact of the pandemic is showing despite loud warnings that continuing economic growth is incompatible with sustainability.
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So let’s take a look at the state of the world.
Even if we did stand on the moon it is a sad read and any solutions will not be found in religious beliefs or technology or in politics but in learning from history.
There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed., tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved. Over 37 (or 42) million people have by killed by wars in the 20th century. Three times more people have been killed in wars in the last 90 years than in all the previous 500.
Over 35 major conflicts are going on in the world today.
There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.
Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.
Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined.
33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes. 35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied.
1/3rd of the world’s labor force is unemployed or underemployed.
1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor.
3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty.’
Women account for 70 percent of the world’s people who live in absolute poverty.
800 million people lack access to basic healthcare.
1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people, or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity.
870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.
Over 100 million people live in slums.
The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57%.
The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.
Poor countries (which contain 4/5th of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid.
Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.
Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years.
60% of the world’s coral reefs, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.
More than 20 percent of the world’s known 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct.
Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.
Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.
An estimated 40-80 million people will be forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands.
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The reality no matter how one looks at it, is that the old assumptions that provided the unifying ideas within our cultures are eroding because of our technological advancement, and although we are seeing what may prove to be the emergence of a new worldview consensus based on the Critical Theory it has not solidified its hold on society as yet.
With technology and Algorithms, our cultures have and are continuing to accept the idea that objective truth is inaccessible and that truth itself is, therefore, relative and personal, but how we conduct ourselves is just as important — even more important is how we do it sustainably and so far we have made a great job of it.
The world is now facing a collision of not just climate change but is colliding with finite resources in a much that the current economic growth could end or totally collapse in the not-so-distant future.
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But a free and functioning democracy demands a populace that can sustain discomfort, tolerate dissatisfaction, be charitable and forgiving of groups whose views stand in contrast to one’s own, and most importantly, that can remain unswayed in the face of some violent threat.
The words ” We Need” are only words. They should be replaced the words ” Action Now”
Why?
Because we also need to be clear in our own hearts and minds about the solution to the world’s problems. If we are to do anything we must break the alignment between theological advancement – climate change and pollution.
The world is at a crossroads as the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the global economy have combined with increasing polarization and highly charged elections.
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So what will we do?
Probably have a conference.
But if you could change the world, what would you do?
We live our entire lives as aspiring presidents, aspiring movie producers, aspiring artists, aspiring authors, aspiring human rights activists, aspiring world-renowned scientists, and aspiring thought leaders while we sit in front of our TV screens, walk around glued to Smartphones, or Ipads that fed us pictures of climate change, wars, the covid pandemic, racism, political/economical collapse.
All Encouraging us on one hand, to think that the world is more violent than it really is while on the other hand promoting the glamorous life of people that believe that they are better off than we are;
What I fear is that we’re seeing now is a loss of that ability to handle discomfort and dissatisfaction.
What I would do is help people think for themselves.
While governments introduce more and more taxes to pay for inequality/economic growth charities competing to raise funds to save almost everything, from adopting everything from a child to a fish or animal to a plant, in the real world.
Taxes form a key ingredient in the social contract between citizens and the economy but How taxes are raised and spent can determine a government’s very legitimacy.
Health programs:Military: Social Security:Interest on the national debt: Education programs: Food and agricultural benefits: Pensions. Government machinery.
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Our new world now needs solidarity more than ever to make the world a better place.
Presently in a year when the world is fighting a pandemic, the Olympics in Japan will once again show us what we are capable of in sport to bring our true authentic selves to every situation. ( See: Post – The Olympics games show be permanently hosted in Greece.)
It represents a true coming together not separation, in a true spirit of humanity.
Without this coming together there will be no new world but a world run by algorithms that will not treat us as equal.
But how can you take on the problems of the world when there’s so much to do already?
In science, we have been staggered by revelation after revelation that things are not what we previously thought them to be, and beneath each layer of reality we have unpeeled lies another. It is not hard to piece together all this information to comprehensively picture what the end times will look like.
If so, what are we to do about it?
The only way to beat the attention economy is to opt out of it.
As the growth models of countries cannot be sustained Countries need to overcome political hurdles to invest in infrastructure and human capital.
How?
One way is to publish the information about political capture so that the public can hold politicians to account for reforms.
Because the only way for human rights to persist is for everyone to collectively agree to accept that things don’t have to go their way 100% of the time.
Freedom can only exist when you are willing to tolerate views that oppose your own when you’re willing to give up some of your desires for the sake of a safe and healthy community when you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your way and that’s fine.
Finally, we must accept that world problems will always be with us.
The world has woken up to the need to curb emissions and invest in climate resilience. But we all need to move faster down this path, we now have less than 100 days to go until the UN climate summit, Cop26 arrives in Glasgow.
Five years on from the Paris Agreement, and with countless evidence that the climate crisis is worsening, the negotiations will focus on nationally determined contributions to stop the world from warming above 1.5 degrees. But as the countries confer with each other, it will be the people of the world who have the most to say: we need action, need more of it, and need it now.
They will not address nature and climate as one.
HOW CAN YOU GET INVOLVED?
We know that the production of energy is the biggest contributor to global warming.
If we want action not promises to reduce carbon emissions in twenty years in thirty years there is no reason that non-repayable grants could be made available to everyone to convert to green energy by installing solar panels.
So why not use the tools that are available to demand our governments to do so on
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Emails to cop26@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic, it’s impossible to measure the price of A GLOBAL DEPRESSION OR THE COMING CLIMATE CHANGE, NOT TO MENTION THE SURGING INEQUALITY DRIVEN BY AI.
But rest assured that it will be the young generation that will be saddled with the bill and the consequences and few countries are likely to be left unscathed by the covid -19 outbreak’s financial ramifications.
We have conveniently forgotten if you remember before the pandemic we had a financial meltdown in 2008.
Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, economies were all operating on borrowed money with all of them amassing debts away beyond their annual tax revenues to the point that their budgets were consumed entirely by interest payments.
Greece was on the verge of causing the Euro to collapse while England was in the grips of an austerity program that resulted in Brexit the cost of which has no definitive figure.
90% of this was big banks creating debts world-wise in the knowledge that they would have to be bailed out by the taxpayers. (Too big to fail is a phrase used to describe a company that’s so entwined in the global economy that its failure would be catastrophic.)
While Wall Street hedge funds, with credit default swaps and sovereignty wealth funds, we’re making hay while the sun-shined, world debts were doubling.
Take Iceland for example. German banks pumped $21 into its banks, Sweden $400 million, England around $30billion, the Netherlands $300 million, Oxford University a mere $50 million. Iceland’s banks went bankrupt. The government couldn’t bail them out because it didn’t have the money. Instead of being too big to fail, they were too big to save. Iceland never resorted to austere budget cuts that are so prevalent in Europe.
They imposed capital controls. They let the banks fail.
Iceland’s economy successfully survived a sovereign bankruptcy and government collapse.
However, Iceland’s government today is spending a back-breaking 17.3% of its tax revenue just to pay interest on the debt.
Without a doubt, Iceland was and is the canary in the coalmine for the sovereign debt crisis that is now unfolding across the world right now.
With investors around the world suddenly wake up to a sobering reality of a major default… bigger than Iceland in 2008. It won’t be long before we see countries defaulting because of the amount of government borrowing to fight Covid-19
So what happens when governments themselves ceased to be credible?
This might be something that had been considered preposterous only months ago but when one looks at what is only the start of a global depression it is now very much on the cards.
It’s important to remember that throughout history humanity has experienced no shortage of pandemics and deadly viruses but despite the similarities, of these pandemics some of the differences are now even more striking.
The economic fallout from these pandemics was barely noticeable. (The same can be said of the Spanish Flu of 1918.)
What is making the COVID-19 pandemic so unique is not the virus itself, but our collective responseto it. Governments in their zeal to control society, have destroyed the global economy on a scale the modern world has never seen. These losses are unprecedented in modern history. The loss of human life that can never be recovered is regrettable but there’s a degree of anxiety now that’s well beyond the health scares which are still very serious and concerning.
If we take a look for example at the USA.
Its economic loss is more than twice the total monetary outlay for all the wars the US has fought since September 11, 2001, including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
Closer to home.
Millions out of work, industries losing billions, and that’s just the beginning. Transportation companies losing billions in market value with tourism the restaurant and foodservice industry decimated with real estate defaults looming.
Further afield the so-called least Developed Countries, whose economies are driven by the sale of raw materials, will not be spared either. Latin American region as similarly vulnerable.
In addition to global poverty, the pandemic has adversely affected vaccination rates, HIV transmission, gender equality, education, and more. Unfortunately, these problems won’t be reversed overnight—or anytime soon.
When will things go back to normal?
Never.
Our society is fundamentally flawed, with a devastating financial storm more than likely on its way we cannot simply hit the reset button and go back to normal.
As we go about rebuilding our society for a new day, it is absolutely critical that we focus our efforts on healing the wounds of the people who suffered most.
We all know that the distribution of wealth is key to any recovery and we are going to witness in this pandemic and subsequent economic depression how inequality is the main cause s of why our world is in such a mess.
So if we want a world worth living in we must address the distribution of wealth along with education.
( The Solution.
Embedding equity and empathy into our cultures by reimagining schools and the introduction of a Universal Basis Living Wage.
Rather than preparation education (to enter a world of I am all right Jack ) we should be promoting core values education.
This education should be free to all paid for by the state. Not designed by wealthy white men paying the minimum wage, awarding themselves dividends, launching profit-seeking algorithms, running plundering sovereignty wealth funds, leaving the young generation with massive debt.
After two decades of progress around the world, nearly 37 million people have lost significant amounts of income and are now living on less than $1.90 per day.
There is little point in governments spending billions on projects that enrich the few while their citizens have to resort to food banks, social welfare, etc.
While Countries’ debts are ballooning exponentially, due in part to combating Covid-19, the fourth industrial revolution in the form of Technology is eroding the opportunities of earning a living or sharing in the profits of automation, machine learning, etc.
It is not possible to stop the erosion but it is possible to share the wealth in a fair and meaningful way with a guaranteed income that would cut government costs while stimulating economic recovery.
By scrapping the concept of the welfare state a form of structural inequality and replace it with a government-guaranteed payment to provide financial security
Cash is the best thing you can do to improve health outcomes, education outcomes and lift people out of poverty.
It would stop people from emigrating not just to other countries but to cities.
The social welfare state is what prevents the poor from building their wealth to better their lives.
How could it be financed?
Place a 0.05% aid commission on revenue made by profit-seeking algorithms and tax the top 1% and allocate 10 to 12% of GDP directly to the universal income payments.
The benefit would automatically rise with national prosperity and inflation.
The simplicity of the program means it would also cost governments less.
It is inevitable. If we don’t we will rebuild an exclusionary society.)
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Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. are all in the top 10 spenders, all conjure money out of thin air and funnels it to the government.
There will be inquiries. How long of a sentence does someone get for railroading his nation’s economy? Life? 30-years? 10-years?
Where should we begin to rebuild our lives?
There are a number of possible futures however if we don’t take this opportunity to build a future that is more humane we will slide into something far worse.
The responses so far to the pandemic are simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises.
The overriding priority remains to save lives.
However, understanding human behavior in its wider economic context is necessary if we are to solve climate change or if we are to tackle future pandemics problems all created by our economic structure.
Both are socially driven.
With every week that passes, we learn more about the virus and understand more about how to defeat it. But the more we learn, the more we realize how little the world yet understands about the true nature of the threat – except that it is a shared one that we must all work together to defeat.
Now is the time to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization…
The world is “not at the mercy of the virus called covid, but the fuse is burning on the bomb – Climate Change.
It is at the mercy of Profit for profit’s sake that must be harnessed to affect change.
(See previous posts)
At the end of the day, the Icelandic people are responsible back in 2008 for their collapse. They were never bailed out. They were stuck with the bill.
It does not take a genius to describe the changes that are needed.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
BECAUSE The world we now have is a tragic begging world.
WE MUST BECOME PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVITY.
Because humanity is entering a new age, where we are faced with not only existential risks from our natural environment but by those of our own creation.
Two hundred years ago we didn’t understand the basic causes of a Pandemic.
Because the world is now so interconnected (with a vastly increased population than any time in our history) pandemics have more opportunities not only to spread new diseases but to originate new sources.
Because we are reaching “The Precipice” a time where we’ve reached the ability to pose an existential risk to ourselves, which is substantially bigger than the natural risks, the background that we were facing before.
Because we need to understand our vulnerability and determine what steps must be taken to end this pandemic.
Because just a few years ago more than one bomb was created.
One in the hands of a few decision-makers that could destroy civilization the other the Internet, not in the hands
The current bombs are created by our continuing abuse of the planet we live on. They are not in the hands of deranged dictators or impeached presidents but in the hands of a system of exploitation called capitalism now becoming more and more driven by profit-seeking algorithms.
Because we think everyone’s interests matter equally, approaches to improving the world should be evaluated mainly in terms of their potential for long-term impact.
Because there are vast differences between the effectiveness of working on different global problems we need better global prioritization.
Because as technology improves and the world economy grows or shrinks, it is getting easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale.
(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.)
Because Covid-19 is showing us that there are many available avenues for improving the world, in terms of social value.
Because now there is much uncertainty around the value of specific options.
Because not enough cause prioritization is done, from the perspective of total social welfare.
The reasons are endless.
However to build the new field of ‘global priorities’ and to try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them we need to start understanding that just as the fate of gorillas currently depends on the actions of humans, the fate of humanity may come to depend more on the actions of machines than our own.
Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans. This could ultimately lead to machines that are much better at these tasks than humans.
(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but they also pose catastrophic risks. How one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood.)
Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls.
If AI research continues to advance without enough work going into the research problem of controlling such machines, catastrophic accidents are much more likely to occur. Nonetheless, work on mitigating many risks remains remarkably neglected.
Prioritization research appears to be in its infancy. With common prioritize interventions almost zero it remains impossible to assume some common world values.
Why is this?
Once again the reasons are numerous – but they can be encapsulated in the word inequality, in all its forms.
Causes have to be made before developing a deep understanding of an area that required prioritization – climate change for example.
Covid-19 is shining a light on the need to develop world health versus biological research – which received very little attention up to now.
While billions are spent making AI more powerful, there are fewer than 100 people in the world working on how to make AI safe.
AI could lead to extremely positive developments, presenting solutions to now-intractable global problems, but they also pose severe risks.
Humanity’s superior intelligence is pretty much the sole reason that it is the dominant species on the planet. If machines surpass humans in intelligence, then common beliefs could easily originate from websites.
This is why it is necessary that we create a list ranking of which problems we think are most pressing for people. That promotes civilizational resilience, mitigating great power conflict, or laying the foundations for the governance of outer space.
If you have read this post you could not be blamed for thinking that the idea of creating a new list of global problems is worthless. BUT ALL THE TALK, AND AGREEMENTS IN THE WORLD ARE WORTHLESS UNLESS THEY ARE FUNDED TO BECOME PROACTIVE.
( See previous posts recreating such a fund – 0.005% world Aid Fund, before the current third revolution of Artificial Intelligence, invents the machine with intelligence that far surpasses our own.)
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