Category Archives: The Future

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. GOLLY GOSH ARE WE BEGINNING TO REALIZE THAT WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING .

17 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Disconnection., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Post - truth politics., Post-Covid-19, Purchasing Power., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Aid., World Leaders, World Politics

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(Three-minute read) 


“WE NEED TO DO”

IS PROBABLY THE MOST USED TERM IN CURRENT DAY CONVERSATIONS – POLTICALY OR OTHERWISE.

Against the background of a doubling of the world population every thirty-odd years, it’s no wonder that we find ourselves facing intractable problems and we need to do something about them.    

The Covid-19 pandemic so far has only killed a mear 800,000 while ongoing wars over 100 million in the 20th century.

We now live in a world of lip service, (used by silent data collection – profit-seeking – algorithms that could not give a shit), are run by corporations, the manipulators of the need-to-do, in order to promote consumption, whatever the cost, long term, or short term. 

The recycling of plastic alone is an example. We are told that we need to recycle plastic by companies that continue to produce it in the trillions of tons.  

I am not sure about you, but I am a little ashamed to be human right now.

Why? 

Because none of our world organizations, governments, the current crop of leaders have at their core a true understanding that we all live and rely upon the planet to be able to kill each other, love each other, and propagate more of us. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic shining a light onto societal and economic systems all across the world, exposing the flaws of a capitalist society we are still driven by greed, religious beliefs, social media, advertising. 

The pandemic-induced health crisis has rapidly ignited an economic crisis with yet unknown consequences for financial stability, and all is being played out against the backdrop of a climate crisis that cannot be addressed by “business as usual.

We are now facing problems all of which have to be resolved at the same time, otherwise, we will simply be solving problems in one place while creating new ones elsewhere.

So golly gosh the COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating all these problems and what are we doing about it other than convene world leaders in a virtual format to seek action and solutions for a world in crisis. (The united nations on the 17 Sep- 5 Oct) 

You can rest assured what we will witness as we did with the Paris climate change is countries promising virtual undertakings, with no means of enforcement, or transparency.   

Some years ago 150 countries set a list of goals to be achieved by 2020 to improve the world’s biodiversity, not one was achieved and humanity is now at a crossroads. 

Why?

Because countries will virtually promise whatever when it does not cost them arm and a leg. Virtual multilateralism is a joke in the extreme when we need value creation instead of value extraction when the pillars of our world are being shaken to the core.

The COVID -19 will cost trillions while reversing climate change will save trillions.

We all know that we need to grasp the opportunity to fix the system. If we don’t, we will stand no chance against – an increasingly uninhabitable planet – and all the smaller crises that will come with it in the years and decades ahead.

It’s used to be challenging and difficult to make predictions especially about the future now its child play  —  BLEAK 

What can we the people of the world do?

We are incapable of acting as one for obvious reasons, but every one of us needs a habitable planet. We could weaponize our buying power to accelerate actions on biodiversity for sustainable development. 

By doing so the world of profit would change. 

What can countries do? 

To realize that we are not as unique as a species and that the risk extinction has never been greater.  Stop god wobbling as there has been nothing like what we are now looking at in human history. 

Don’t trade with countries that breach environmental sustainability.

The like hood of either of the above happening is zilch.     

So the world of profit has to be taped into, in order to reboot the numerous we need to do.

(See the previous posts on a World Aid Commission of 0.05%)

We need to rise up and speak up!

So all I’m saying is that communication needs to start now not tomorrow. 

Transparency needs to start now not tomorrow.

Yes we are all different and what we do with our differences needs to make a difference.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S; ARE WE FOOLING OURSELVES WHEN WE SAY UNIVERSAL VALUE’S?

06 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2019: The Year of Disconnection., 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Digital age., Disconnection., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Modern Day Communication., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Purchasing Power., Reality., Religious Beliefs., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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(Five-minute read) 


Never in history is such a question more important. Unfortunately, we live in a world of distractions.

In my previous post to this one, (THE HARDEST THING OF ALL TO SEE IS ALREADY THERE.)   I attempted to say that the truth has no past.

By this, I meant that the truth is reality, and therefore religion and the state must be separated.

Only then can one hope for value with the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. A value is considered universal when it goes beyond laws and beliefs; rather, it is considered to have the same meaning for all people and does not vary according to the societies that have evolved. 

 In fact, cultural relativism is a belief that opposes the existence of universal values; proposes that a value can not be universal because it is perceived differently in each culture.

Given the ambiguity of the term, the existence of universal values ​​can only be understood as the values ​​that have to do with the basic requirements of the human being. Such as Fresh Air, Freshwater, Food, Clean Energy. 

Now with AI infiltrating our lives, it seems that the faster we travel, the importance of there place is getting lost.

It seems because there are no universal moral values, our command of science simply can not coexist with morals, and our internet fed imaginations 

We talk about the central issues of our times: A universal pandemic, an economic depression, continuing wars, climate change, migration, artificial intelligence, rising inequalities, erosion of the power of the vote, loss of individualism, loss of connection to ecosystems, to mention just a few of the problems to define any values that are universal.

We have many governments doubling down on the blame game and brinkmanship. 

We have bioengineering which alone is now much greater danger than a nuclear war. 

We have the maldistribution of wealth. 

We have world leaders unwilling to see beyond the next election. 

We have the extinction rebellion. 

We have non-transparent digital data.

We have 10.000 to 130,000 species going extinct each year.

We have a population of 7.7 billion   

We have extreme weather and biodiversity loss.

I ask myself why is it that with so many of us tryin’ to improve society, not that much changes but I hope that we don’t make changes to satisfy the noisemakers.

Rather than separating one problem from another, we need to connect them.

i.e. Climate changes to war and war to climate changes. 

The question remains.

> How do we the current guardians of the planet achieve a balance between living our lives and the life of the planet, that allows us to live them in the first place. 

 It is no longer that logic alone will solve the problems, nor protests, or political will but within functional societies, we do still have the ultimate weapon – VIEWING AND BUY POWER  and both are available in every type and form of human culture.

They must be added to the deep emotions of religion if we are to achieve change.

The life of now economies and pay later must come to an end if we are to avoid the hazards of the future. 

If Extinction Rebellion wants to be heard, it will not do so on top of bamboo towers stopping newspapers to be deliveries, or sticking themselves to windows. 

It must use social media digital platforms to encourage its supporters to use their buying power to attack profit for profit sake. 

Certain human characteristics as valuable – life regardless of whether or not it is believed in said characteristic.  

PROFIT WITHOUT CONTRIBUTION TO UNIVERSAL VALUES IS THE ENEMY. 

With these weapons, we can effect change and avoid the hazards to come.

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

 

 

THE BEADY ASK’S THE QUESTION TO WHICH THERE IS NO ANSWER: WHERE IS THE WORLD GOING?

11 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Digital age., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., G20., G7., GDP., How to do it., Human values., Humanity., Inequality., Life., Micro v Macro Economics., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The current state of our oceans., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Trade Agreements., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economic Depression., World Economy.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

The answer lies basically in this question -why is it that governments can afford a fighter plane, but teachers need to hold a bake sale to buy school supplies.

Understanding how the balance of payments work is key to understanding the monetary leverage that one country holds over another. Based on the modern method of money creation, the functionality of the balance of payments is really a zero-sum game.

Wealth used to be defined as the accumulation of human time and labor.

This is why human time and labor are consolidated under ideologies (eg. Socialism, democracy, communism, etc.), which are framed with borders around cultures, religions, and historical significance. Time and labor are consolidated as a measure of GDP.

World GDP can now be considered the measurement by which human time and labor are used to manage the debt which is a product of the money creation process.

As Yanis Varoufakis says ” It is pointless to continue to do macroeconomics analysts focusing on a single country”  “It is not any more trading volumes or fiscal data it is the ebb and flow of financial capital”

There was or there is no need for the Coronavirus to expose still more flaws in economic structures. Inequality is to be seen in foodbanks, people sleeping on the street, the color of your skin, not least the increasing precarity of work, owing to the rise of the gig economy and a decades-long deterioration of workers’ bargaining power.

A Clap will not save nine, but thanks to Covid-19 the bastions of global Capitalism are on hold.  

There has never being a more important time to effect change to Capitalism.

So will or can we use the current state of emergency to start building a more inclusive and sustainable economy.  

If we don’t, we will stand no chance against the major crisis – an increasingly uninhabitable planet – and all the smaller crises that will come with it in the years and decades ahead.

Capitalism is facing at least three major crises.

A pandemic-induced health crisis that is rapidly igniting an economic crisis with yet unknown consequences for financial stability and all of this is playing out against the backdrop of a climate crisis that cannot be addressed by “business as usual.”

The COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating all these problems with governments playing a leading role, in delivering immediate solutions in the short term. However, the solutions are still not designed in such a way as to serve the public interest over the long term, and therefore they will not lay the foundation for a robust and inclusive recovery.

With reports on the seriousness of the coronavirus evolving each day if not each hour, the eyes of commerce are on epidemiology.

The effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine could become yet another one-way relationship in which corporations reap massive profits by selling back to the public a product that was born of taxpayer-funded research.

The ongoing coronavirus crises are forcing governments to cash out in order to keep businesses, workers, and their economies afloat, but extending loans to businesses at a time when private debt is already historically high. Flooded the world with liquidity without directing it toward good long term investment opportunities like renewable green energy will result in the money ended up back in a financial sector that was (and remains) unfit for purpose.

The ability of companies to service any of this debt is debatable never mind the economies of countries.   

This time, rescue measures absolutely must come with conditions attached, bailouts should be designed to steer larger companies but to reward value creation instead of value extraction, preventing share buybacks, and encouraging investment in sustainable growth and a reduced carbon footprint.

It was the high private debt that caused the global financial crisis in 2008. The result of this has been to erode the very public-sector institutions that we need to overcome crises like the coronavirus pandemic.

On top of these self-inflicted wounds, an overly “financialized” business sector has been siphoning value out of the economy by rewarding shareholders through stock-buyback schemes.

If one really looks at Capitalism at its basic modeling – its beating heart is profit for profit sake.

To day’s Capitalist Economics is set up with this mantra, not to serve people’s needs, or to protect the environment, or to spread the rewards, rather to enslave people to the world of consumption- produce something at the lowest cost to produce the highest profit.     

Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, the economic uncertainty it has sparked will likely cost the global economy trillions in 2020, the UN’s trade and development agency, UNCTAD, said on Monday.

What is clear is that if politics and trade wars emerged as uncertainties in recent years, now a third leg in the stool holding up global confidence has suddenly gone wobbly.

It is also clear this is going to be a slow-rolling, highly consequential event, that has all the ingredients required for internal strife in many countries.

It is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of these diseases jumping from animals to humans in the years ahead.

It is clear that we need to invest in ending the over-exploitation of wildlife and other natural resources, farming sustainably, reversing land degradation, and protecting ecosystem health. 

It is clear that the virus is already robbing the world of carbon reduction and it’s only a matter of time before climate change dwarfs the impact of COVID-19.

It is clear that all country’s fates are intertwined.

It is clear that if there is some message here, it’s that this is totally predictable other than without proper oversight, that AI may replicate or even exacerbate human bias and discrimination, cause potential job displacement, and lead to other unintended and harmful consequences.

It is clear given the growing importance of this powerful technology, AI regulation should not be designed in a haphazard manner. As governments struggle to keep up with the unprecedented speed and scale of technological change, companies are facing a crisis of trust amid the growing “techlash” and are increasingly being called on to self‑regulate the technology they are developing and deploying.

It is clear despite vast efforts worldwide to address the symptoms of the coronavirus pandemic, the root causes have been largely ignored, to rebalance the needs of people, the planet, and animals.

It is clear that there’s a lot still to learn about the virus – and therefore how extensive its impact on the global economy could become. Some of the most basic aspects of the virus remain unknown. It all depends on the eventual scale of the epidemic, and at any given point, no one has been able to say whether it has peaked. We don’t know whether it will burn out, like SARS, or come back seasonally like the flu.

It is clear that the impact on markets not to mention human behavior is far from normal never mind the new normal. We are operating in the uncharted territory and the stark reality is that we as a species are unable to act as one. 

It is clear that the last thing we need to hear from brands is that we all in this together. They are simply trying to remain relevant and in demand. They need to rethink engagement data-driven empathy no longer cuts the ice. 

It is clear that Humanity must become the killer app.

It is clear that we’re living in a world of transparency and in such a world inequality cannot be tolerated.

It is clear that nowadays, it is no longer enough for a business to figure out how it was going to turn a profit. The social goals of the business – are not mere “add-ons or marketing ploys” they must be “part of the DNA of the business.”

It is clear that an unregulated algorithm-driven world will put its riches into the hands of the few. 

The problem that we have is not globalization it is a lack of global governance, a lack of means to address global issues.

To solve social problems such as pollution, poor nutrition, and poverty, climate change, you name it there is only one solution.

At the end of Yanis Varoufakis, The Combination That Changed Capitalism Forever, he promotes the establishment of what he calls a political movement that he calls a progressive international movement that is globally and act like activists locally by using purchasing power, he also puts forward a vision of Capitalism where there is no stock exchange, replaced by private ownership and Greene every bonds backed by treasuries.

The green energy bonds are a must So the young generation is able to buy into the process that creates their destiny. 

Purchasing power as an economic power to effect change, unfortunately, is visible and like all things that are visible will not work due to greed, cultural differences, etc.     

THE SOLUTION MUST BE INVISIBLE AND APPLICABLE WORLDWIDE.  

To create a perpetual ongoing fund that spread the cost fairly to tackle climate change and inequalities worldwide. 

Make a profit for profit sake pay by placing a 0.005% commission on all, Hight frequency trading, on all foreign exchange transactions over £50 thousand, on all sovereign fund acquisitions, on all gambling and world lottos, on all consumption advertising, on all dividend payments.   

Profit for a Purpose- with-Purpose.

Nearly a third of the world’s oceans and land areas could be placed under environmental protections without harming the global economy.

You cannot put a price tag on nature, but a recent independent report, commissioned by the Campaign for Nature charity, found about $140bn (£110bn) a year would be required by 2030 to place 30% of land and sea under protection.

Achieving the target of 30% protection would lead to increased economic output of between $64bn and $454bn a year.

The benefits to humanity are incalculable and the cost of inaction is unthinkable. 

To younger generations, the state of the planet is even more alarming but if they
don’t get their proveable faces out of their smartphones and their fingers out of where the light shines we all going to witness horrors unimaginable. 

It is clear that a coalition of old folks in the establishment won’t cut it.

All our efforts have to be inclusive, integrating all stakeholders, the earth and all that live, grow, and die on it.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHEN IT COMES TO WORLD PROBLEMS WHY IS IT THAT WE HUMANS ARE UNABLE TO APPRECIATE THE GRAVITY THEY PRESENT.

03 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Big Data., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Digital age., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., homelessness., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Micro v Macro Economics., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., Telling the truth., The common good., The current state of our oceans., The essence of our humanity., The Future, THE FUTURE OF OUR OCEANS/SEAS, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economic Depression., World Leaders, World Politics

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(Twenty-minute read)

As global citizens, the news is packed with statistics and updates on the challenges we face. Most of these challenges have existed from time memorial and are too large to be solved by one person at a time and if they affect huge numbers of people we are numb by their enormity.  

Photographs can be effective for a while. They capture our attention — they get us to see the reality, to glimpse the reality at a scale we can understand and connect to emotionally. But then there has to be somewhere to go with it.

“There is no constant value for human life.”

Granted that certain global issues cannot be solved by on-the-ground, grassroots-style projects like human rights, climate change, wars, etc. 

So is it a perception problem? 

No matter how hard we try we are unable to perceive the whole earth never mind the Universe as one.   

We witness this many times in history when the value of a single life diminishes against the backdrop of a larger tragedy and now we are once again witnessing it with COVID-19.

We all go to great lengths to protect a single individual or to rescue someone in distress, but then as the numbers increase, we don’t respond proportionally to that.

We don’t scale up, even when we’re capable. 

There’s a hard limit to human compassion. The human mind is not very good at thinking about and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals. As the number of victims increases, our empathy, our willingness to help, reliably decreases.

We seem unable to prevent our past from impacting our present?

However, our current behaviors are not shaped by past events but by mass media in the form of social media which is creating self-limiting beliefs.

They appear so real to the extent that we cant hardly tell whether its a self-limiting belief or a real one, as a result, we are unable to see the world correctly, so we look on as millions die. 

Numbers simply can’t convey the costs, there’s an infuriating paradox at play.

We know that we must protect the Earth but are unwilling to pay the cost of doing so.

Our problem is to replace the false beliefs we acquired with the right one.

Which issues are the most urgent?

And can one person, really, truly, make that much of a contribution?

Here are some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of if not there are living in coco land. 

FOOD.

One in nine people in the world goes hungry each day.  

It has been estimated that if women farmers could be given the same resources as men, millions of more people could be fed. 

How can it be 2020 and people are still going hungry?

Nutritious food is often more expensive. Visit your local supermarket and compare the price of a punnet of strawberries to a chocolate bar. 

Even though approximately 12.9% of the world is undernourished, about 30% of the adult population is overweight.

HEALTH.

In a world of more than 1 billion people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 per day) and 2.2 billion living on less than $2 per day (2011 data)

The reality is far more complex. Untold hundreds of millions of people lack access to essential health services, in fact over half of the world population do not have basic health care. We are a long way from the universal right to health.

Communicable diseases were responsible for 71%  of deaths, and low-income countries are the most severely affected. 

EDUCATION. 

It’s estimated that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school. 

HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS. OCEAN CONSERVATION

The earth is full. Full of our waste, full of our demands.

The economy is now bigger than the earth, unimaginable, unattainable, and unsustainable. There is no infinite growth possible on a finite planet because nature sets the rules and individual issues mean nothing if they are not attached to nature.  

There are countless studies and evidence all around you indicating that the coming crises are inevitable.

If an economy grows at 2% per year, it will double in 35 years. 

Imagine twice as much human economic activity as we now have. Can our planet sustain this? Do we need to do this? Why would we want to? Why are we doing this?

Even though a lot of us know that it makes no sense to try to grow endlessly and outstrip the only planet we have. 

What if anything can be changed? 

We all know that the road to global decarbonization must involve renewable energy.

Although the Paris agreement’s goals are aligned with science, alarming inconsistencies remain between science-based targets and national commitments.

Its a no-brainer in the current emerging global political climate.

Rather than tackle mitigation measures economies are now due to Covid-19 returning to pumping more not less carbon into the atmosphere.

Climate stabilization must be placed on par with economic development, human rights democracy, and peace.       

From a money perspective, we can’t help it—we live in a grow-or-die system.?

Currently, we have a system that provides humans to have an innate cost/benefit assessment tool called the smartphone operating at all times. 

Here are a few suggestions.

It is now vital that we consider the motivation and funding sources of those who are shaping our worldview. 

Money must be created without debt so it doesn’t force us to grow and consumer beyond our means.

New Money must no longer enter circulation as credit, that is, as debt.

It will simply be money spent into circulation by the government as a permanently circulating exchange medium to enable the country’s economy to function.

This money will be equity on the national balance sheet and be our commonwealth.

It will replace bank-created debt-money ending the privilege of commercial banks to create and issue what we use as money.

Then we have trillions in the form of pension investment funds that are nontransparently invested. If we demanded that these funds were moved from fossil fuel industries to green energy industries whose returns are going to be massive we would be reducing carbon emissions by millions of tonnes.

Next, we have the advertising industry.

All advertising that does not promote sustainability should be curtailed by law.  We must turn the direction of humanity towards thriving not consumption for profit.  

With the coming economic depression, we do have room for growth—the growth of community cohesion and commons conservation. We can grow our efforts to educate our children, care for our people, and care for the planet. We can grow into a more just, caring, sustainable society. 

Because we are careering into a world of a few haves and billions of have -not.

Access to information owned by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, to name a few, must become transparent and available to all as the interactions of all our individual worldviews shape the condition of humanity.

Lastly, we must address inequality.   

There are now 65.3 million people displaced from their homes worldwide.

Think about that number: 65.3 million. Can you even imagine it?

It’s now or never that we make a profit for profit’s sake contribute to a World Aid fund.

(see previous posts)

As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth has enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”

We can’t eat drink or shit data.

 

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: ARE WE ENTERING AN ERA OF DO IT YOURSELF ECONOMICS, BASED ON PEOPLES INTUITIONS.

16 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Enegery, Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Micro v Macro Economics., Modern day life., Populism., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economic Depression., World Economy.

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(Twenty-minute read)

I am no economist but you don’t have to be to realize that long before the Covid-19 Pandemic, the state of the global economy was already in disarray, now with viruses the economic problems to come are in general as serious as they have ever been.

To deal with the accumulated liabilities history suggests some radical alternatives, including a burst of inflation or an organized public default, one way or the other the economic fallout defies calculation.

It makes sense with everything happening at once to take a hard look at the coming economic depression. (which is going to be deep and long)

It will require not just governments to be more visionary to lead the way out of the crisis but new economic thinking to rethink the whole Globalisation of economies before they disappear into the world of digital data and become difficult to measure, or tax.

The question, of course, is what form that will take and which political forces will control it.

We all know that economic relationships are complicated and changeable. The influence of anyone variable in an economy is not easy to isolate even with the use of sophisticated data. This is why economists are unable to agree on any course of action when it comes to deciding how the economy actually works and how it ought to work.

Even if they could agree countries have different moral and political judgments.

What I see is that we entering an era of doing it yourself economics, based on people’s intuitions,but unfortunately macroeconomic is choosing between inflation or unemployment.

With countries trying to reopen their economies and given that economists can not agree or have sufficient knowledge to predict any direction one could be forgivin to ask are they performing a useful purpose in the first place.

The coming economic depression can only be diluted by the creation of a new interrelationship with the resources of the earth, their use against their value to the ecosystems as a whole not the continuation of profit for profit sake.

We must recognize that the civilizations of the world are entwined in a global economic system that is incapable of functioning for the common good of humanity, other species, and this planet, which is our home.

It is clear that serious reflection is in order.

Simply to stand back and question what has happened and why would be to compound failure with failure: failure of vision and failure of responsibility.

A sustainable and prosperous global economy needs to be grounded in the common good of all living species, not profit.

The failure of markets, institutions, and morality during the current coronavirus crisis has shown that the emergence of global capitalism brings with it a new set of risks that call for an ethical, moral change.

Leaders are now gambling with public health, safety, and the future of younger generations. They unapologetically prioritize serving themselves over the people they were elected to serve. We have to make them raise their game.

A new approach to economics is required that puts values, compassion, generosity, kindness, people, planet, and the common good at the heart of our economic system. 

Now is the Time for a Revolution in Economic thinking.

A new definition of the “Bottom Line.”

Given today’s global challenges, such as climate change, financial crises, oil depletion, renewable energy, inequality, and poverty, what kind of new economic theory is called for?

Therefore this post is an appeal to economists, academic colleagues in business, finance, management, political economy, philosophy, theology, ethics, environmental studies, sociology, anthropology, and others to come together, so that, all of us, collectively, can prescribe a working solution to our commonly shared challenges.

As we transition from a service-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, human capital will not be enough, the next generation will see large tax increases in order to pay off the national debts.

The work, of which we are a part, which is so needed, has barely begun.

The pandemic will continue to change the economic and financial order

forever.

It will lead to permanent shifts in political and economic power in

ways that will become apparent only later.

However, the coronavirus crisis has been a powerful reminder that the basic political and economic unit is still the nation-state. Countries will have to strive for a better balance between taking advantage of globalization and a necessary degree of self-reliance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a wartime atmosphere in which such changes suddenly seem possible.

Perhaps the emergency payments to individuals that many governments have made are a path to a universal basic income and universal health insurance.

The pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of open borders.

Firms that are part of global supply chains have witnessed first-hand the risks inherent in their interdependencies and the large losses caused by disruption.

Supply chains will have to become more local and robust—but less global.

The real risk, however, is that this organic and self-interested shift away from globalization by people and firms will be compounded by some policymakers who exploit fears over open borders. They could impose protectionist restrictions on trade under the guise of self-sufficiency and restrict the movement of people under the pretext of public health.

It is now in the hands of global leaders to avert this outcome and to retain the spirit of international unity that has collectively sustained us for more than 50 years.

The rise of populism in many countries further tilts the balance toward home bias.

Even after the pandemic is brought under control (which may itself prove a lengthy process). The post-coronavirus financial architecture may not take us all the way back to the pre globalization era, and the damage to international trade and finance is likely to be extensive and lasting.

The gap between rich countries (along with a few emerging markets) and the rest of the world in their resilience to crises will widen further. Economic nationalism will increasingly lead governments to shut off their own economies from the rest of the world.

Now and for a long time to come, central banks will become entrenched as the first and main line of defense against economic and financial crises. They may come to rue this immense new role and the unrealistic burdens and expectations it will impose on them.

We urgently need more and deeper conversations, dialogue, and engagement at all levels and from a variety of perspectives to bring the different cultures, civilizations, and viewpoints together, in order to find common ground and agreement on joint action.

The pandemic and subsequent recovery will accelerate the ongoing digitalization and automation of work changing the future composition of GDP.

The share of services in the economy will continue to rise. But the share of in-person services will decline in retail, hospitality, travel, education, health care, and government as digitalization drives changes in the way these services are organized and delivered.

The downturn will accelerate the growth of nonstandard, precarious employment—part-time workers, gig workers, and workers with multiple employers—leading to new portable benefits systems that move with workers and broaden the definition of employer. New low-cost training programs, digitally delivered, will be required to provide the skills required in new jobs.

The sudden dependence of so many on the ability to work remotely reminds us that a significant and inclusive expansion of Wi-Fi, broadband, and other infrastructure will be necessary to enable the accelerating digitalization of economic activity.

We cannot achieve our hopes and dreams without such conversations and dialogue. Only then can we hope for the understanding between civilizations, peoples, and points of view necessary to construct an economy that truly works for the common good.

No country or economic activity is going to be impervious to the drastic impacts of climate change.

It is cuckoo land to think that we can continue to ignore the pending disasters, compounded by the social problems, highlighted by the epidemic that has brought all manner of issues to the surface. From the coronavirus pandemic and police brutality to the marginalization of minority communities around the world, leadership is broken.

For years we have listened to their rhetoric without action that has given full rein to self-harming market forces.

The Normal Economy is Never Coming Back.

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 would be fair to say that if we are to move to Green sustainable economies the first thing that is needs is green energy that is free of costs to the user. 

The whole concept of economies becoming attached to the fundamental values required to protect and revitalize the fundamental resources of the earth that provide us all with life is idealistic and will remain so as no one wants to foot the bill to make it happen. 

However, for the first time in human history, before profit disappears into the cloud we have the technology to apply a World Aid commission of 0.005% on all activities that are in existence for profit sake only.

One of humanity’s greatest weaknesses is greed. 

One can see this throughout history, with the present-day examples personified by Wall Street and other world stock exchanges now run by high-frequency trading algorithms. 

Such a commission would create a perpetual fund of billions almost invisibly to the markets. It would spread the cost of changing world economies fairly to achieve the desired outcome both the earth’s needs and our needs.    

It would turn a begging United nation into a giving United nation. 

No one country wants to foot the cost of change and it cannot be achieved if visible to Wall Street

Micro and Macro Economics are neither different subjects, nor they are contradictory, rather, they are complementary. The only important point which makes them different is the area of application.

A fund like this could give grants, not loans. It could buy the sunshine and turn it into energy, buy the protection of forests, freshwater, fresh air, remove the need for mass farming, reduce inequality, afford education, change our lives for the better. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHAT IS CREATIVITY AND WHY WILL WE NEED IT NOW?

01 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Civilization., COVID-19, Digital age., Economic Depression., European Commission., European Union., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Innovation., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., POST COVID-19., Stimulus package., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., VALUES, 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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(Four-minute read) 

“Creativity is a combinatorial force: it’s our ability to tap into our ‘inner’ pool of resources – knowledge, insight, information, inspiration and all the fragments populating our minds – that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world and to combine them in extraordinary new ways.” — Maria Popova, Brainpickings.

It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is propelling us to get out of commodity hell into a new age of creativity.

Creativity is the Most Crucial Factor for Future Success.

It is critical to economic growth and solving the problems of the planet.

Creativity begins with a foundation of knowledge, learning a discipline, and mastering a way of thinking.

The longer the list of ideas, the higher the quality of the final solution.

Unfortunately, all the creativity in the world without financial support to achieve sustainability that does not address the problems as a whole will only achieve further inequality.

In seeking a transition to sustainability as the organizing principle in a new world order, a piecemeal approach—emphasizing some aspects,
while neglecting others—is unlikely to yield effective, lasting results.

It requires a fundamental shift in consciousness as well as action. It calls for a fresh vision, a new dream, and new approaches for shaping evolving new realities.

We can no longer rely on governments of countries to come together on the one problem the world has that is going to affect us all for generations.

We can no longer expect us, humans, because of the or indeed without the internet to act as one.

We can no longer watch our world plundered for the sake of short term profit.

We can no longer demand change when we are unwilling to change.

WHY?

Because when one looks over the neighbor’s wall we see 

If we want a Tiger, the Amazon, Clean Air, Fresh Water, Green Energy, and Sustainable Eco-Systems, a Future, it can only be achieved in an invisible manner.

No one wants to pay for it and we know that nothing comes for free.

Widespread use of the term sustainability has led today to a growing ambiguity with the employed within a very broad spectrum of meaning, often to the point of trivialization.

The principles of sustainability are articulated in a general fashion but can receive specific operational meaning in relation to particular cases, for example, sectors of the economy, development issues, business strategies, investment guidelines, or initiatives taken by individuals.

By their very nature, sustainable principles are influenced by language, logic, and action all forcing separation, discrimination, and choice, resulting in the artificial distinction and sequencing of the five principles.

When in fact they interacting and co-defining one another.

To restore rigor to the ideas underlying the concept of sustainability we should (We have the technology) create a World Aid Fund by placing a commission on all transactions and activities that don’t contribute to the principles. ( See previous posts) 

This would raise trillions to tackle not just climate change but all other problems, infusing a common purpose, provide a common foundation, and stimulate common resolve.

All distribution of the funds would be on a grant base.

To avoid political interference and lobbying the fund revenue would be granted on a project summit bases on an annual draw of all projects deemed worthy.

To ensure that the grants are used for the purposes they are intended the fund would be open to total transparency.

It is of course totally logical that in order to establishment of such a fund a pilot scheme would have to be implemented to iron out any problems. 

The European Union has just agreed on a massive financial package to enable its members to recover for CORVID-19. 50% of this package is to be granted.

Just think what it would do if none of this money had to be borrowed in the first place.  

The concept is systemic in nature, meaning that each domain affects all the others and is affected by each in return, all are reduced to mere technicalities, an invisible fund of trillions.

Where do you find creativity?

The answer: Anywhere if you know where and how to look, in a space you yourself make.

Any creative ideas and 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 SAY’S : WE KNOW THE RIGHT WAY TO GO BUT WHY IS IT SO HARD? IS IT BECAUSE IMAGINATION IS DISAPPEARING.

09 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Big Data., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Emergency powers., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Freedom, GPS-Tracking., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Inequality, Innovation., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Tracking apps., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

If ever there was a need for imagination when this pandemic is over or is eventually under control, hopefully, imagination is going to play a massive role in redesigning not just our societies but the way we live and die on this planet.

The responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises.

If we have learned anything from Covid-19 is that global problems require global solutions, whether it is a pandemic, hunger, or access to quality education, reversing climate change, poverty, and inequality, you name it.

Imagination allows us to engage in thinking about alternatives and there is no doubt that we will need some radical changes.

Here I am referring to creative imagination the role it plays in our thinking.

The key point is that in using a term such as ‘imagining’, I am not just referring to some mental activity, but also evaluating that activity in some way, with all its relations and ramifications.

So here is your chance to submit you imagine creative ideas.

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

Where to start? 

Unfortunately, this pandemic is a present-day dystopia.

It’s not the stuff of science fiction set in some distant future or on another planet it’s damage is ongoing and will only get worse as it continues.

To understand the “real world” one has to experience it not imagine it.

At the moment there is a lot of rhetoric about using a tracking App to monitor the spread of COVID_19. In other words, unregulated squealing Apps (that are owned by private corporations) that Id people that have or had the virus. 

 We recently celebrated VE day that won us freedom at the cost of millions of lives. 

In my view, such a tracking proposition is not far removed from what the Nazis did in identify Jews by marking them with a yellow star. 

It is imperative that we in their honor that we now don’t rubbish there sacrifice by becoming Data slaves. 

(As I have said in the previous post, to ensure tracking does not outlive the effort against COVID-19. Both the technology and related policies and procedures should ensure the deletion of data when there is no longer a need to hold it.)

When people feel that their phones are antagonistic rather than helpful, they will just turn location functions off or turn their phones off entirely.

Imagine living under a Chines automatism system run by a Donal Dump.

Such techniques violate some of the core values of liberal democratic regimes.)

Up to now, we thought that Capitalist Globalization was the bee’s knees when in fact it increased inequalities and undermined democracy.

Now we realize that ecological transition IS more than NECESSARY with a bottom-up economy to protect the world and not the top-down begging world we have a the moment.  

However, the big problem remains the same.

How to distribute the gains of any economy. and now the losses.  

Technology will treat people as units and as such the relentless growth and accumulation of wealth and power for the few, will continue to grow. 

Cutting-edge technologies are now powered by artificial intelligence and are fundamentally shifting the distribution of power between people who provide data and entities that can make sense and use of these data.

It will become a battle between protecting individual rights and confronting an existential threat to our collective right to health, to a basic living wage. 

Of course, all of this data helps epidemiologists model the movement and the future of the virus but beyond the privacy and data rights, there are questions of biases and discrimination built into the algorithms that power the technology. 

Machines will never be made to think like people.

We have for decades underpaid the people that we now call essential workers as interchangeable units.

Currently, the AI field is mostly controlled by corporate interests. 

As global COVID-19 cases continue to rise, the unmatched connectivity that defines our era serves as both bane and blessing. 

Let’s ask the question one more time, in taking advantage of big data to create databases to track and predict infectious risk, should we be enforcing social- distancing by squealing on each other?

If you are at risk, the odds change rapidly, you become in favor of sharing or donating data.

There’s really no way to stop the movement of microbes and we need to realize that now our citizens really need to realize that.

Mapping potential carriers with big data notwithstanding privacy concerns, analysis of personal, travel, and other data like clinical data allow accurate predictive modeling.

Imagine if we created a society where everything is predicted and determined by big data. Its presence depends on “symbolic function”, the ability to pretend that one object is another thing entirely.

It will be a massive mistake.

So is technology an imaginary friend or foe?

Will we lose that human touch?

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has changed daily life.

But what changes will last? How will we live when it’s all over? 

Even now, when we’re seeing a massive, rapid change in most walks of life — inspired by a push in science or technology, or nudged by a freak, global health emergency — it’s hard to find sound prophecy. And that’s despite access to mountains of data.

Who would have imagined that global consumerism could be crushed by the wheels of its own industry … quite so suddenly.

But perhaps this is the kind of tipping point that we secretly crave — a slowing of society.

Many people will struggle to deal with an increasing rate of change and, as a result, suffer a social or personal shock. Whether we survive the shock depends on how well we adapt.

What complicates things is that no two societies are ever fully the same.

We’re seeing that friction today, between so-called “forces” and “anti-forces.” The push and pull of people and places adapting this way or that way. But it’s nigh impossible to predict how much of that change, and its effect on daily life, will remain, and how much — or what — will change back.

Whatever happens, it won’t be on a massive scale because our regular behavior will start to reemerge.

Who will benefit more?

We might discover that work is not really part of your life or something you like to do, but something you must do exactly seven hours and 42 minutes a day. And then your real life starts.

This Pandemic will not be a ‘one-off’ event. 

Now is the time to start investing in spare capacity, in people and equipment, to cope with such events. 

( See post on setting up World Aid Depots)  

We must envision a path that allows humans to flourish by asking: how can we protect people financially, should widespread technological unemployment happen even sooner than we anticipated?

A realization among some that the dominant ways of knowing and organizing, which characterize our modern techno-industrial cultures, cannot handle the realities of living, complex, relational, human, and non-human systems.

This may help bring into focus the need to update the conceptual foundations of our cultures.

But can tech solve everything?

That raises the question of whether privacy isn’t just a cultural construct.

If your health depended on it, wouldn’t you share your data willingly?

So we need to say goodbye to our concepts of data security.

Data security is something for healthy people.

On the other hand fear of infection is limiting “in-person” interactions, forcing us deeper into an “increasingly chilling use of online systems and all-electronic communication.

Change depends on how we see ourselves as individuals and groups living through the now.

The internet might just be facilitating.

But it’s still about the real world and a reminder that you can’t eat anything on your computer screen.

In the next Pandemic and the forthcoming Depression, there will be nowhere to hide” from economic collapse in our networked world. 

Take video conferencing.

It’s fine as an exception, but as a rule, it fails to fully translate subtle forms of communication — body language below the head and shoulders. All sound is normalized, mics get muted, along with nervous hands or a lost, downward gaze.

In the end, previous pandemics have profoundly re-shaped society and despite huge advances in medical knowledge, we are once again forced to respond in much the same ways as we did to previous pandemics.

Until a worldwide vaccine we’re really back to what our ancestors would have had in terms of dealing with this kind of disease – just stay away from each other in an effort to slow down its spread.

What we’re doing now is keeping it running at any cost.

However, it is obvious that the right path in tackling both COVID-19 and climate change is much easier if you reduce nonessential economic activity.

There is now an opportunity to change course, the earth must be respected.

So imagination without reality is the osmotic membrane between matter and mind, the antechamber between outside and inside, the free zone between the laws of nature and the requirements of reason.

Without, it indicates a lack of commitment to the truth or existence of what is thought of by the person or persons who invented big data. Thinking of something that is not present to the senses without commitment to its truth or falsity a Digital prison. 

Up to now, we live in a world of the short-term profit-driven corporate world, with the support of the trillion-dollar advertising industry and complicit governments who have fetishized economic growth.

If technology dominates us, not only is the whole struggle to imagine a world of equal opportunities betrayed but the opportunity is lost.

So it’ll only be when it’s all over that we’ll have the luxury of telling the story as a neatly bound series of logical events.

The impacts we’ll see from this is going to be far greater than what happened before. Whether imagery is a form of imagination, and whether supposition is a form of imagination as quick as you can imagine there is a depression of historic proportions coming.

Imagination makes our world an even more spectacular place.

We imagine even when we don’t think that we are imagining.

Everything that humans have achieved has started with the glimmer of imagination.

It is, in sum, the pivotal power in which are centered those mediating, elevating, transforming functions that are so indispensable to the cognitive process that philosophers are reluctant to press them very closely.

Why does it seem to diminish over time for all but the most creative among us?

My own ability to imagine up a story or new world seems far weaker than it used to be. Or is it?

It fails to exclude such things as remembering.

We can leave a legacy worthwhile.   So comment. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE’S ACTION PLAN. FOR A GREEN ECONOMY.

02 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., COVID-19, POST COVID-19., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, 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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(Seven-minute read)

At the moment we are inundated with rhetoric that the world is going to change due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Now the big question yet to be answered is how in the midst of a coming a Global economic depression to restate countries’ economies.

But the truth remains that few politicians are prepared to take substantive leadership towards changes that could alienate powerful interest groups that benefit from the current paradigm.

It appears that we have a brain drain as existing legal frameworks and regulations do not encourage improved environmental and economic practices or innovations.

However, issues that created a sense of solidarity among civil society and academia in
earlier decades are now back on the table thanks to the Pandemic.

While the rationale for change is clear even with the evidence of climate change, and the possibilities of future pandemics there are a number of barriers or challenges to making this transition.

Key issues affecting the rate of transition to a green economy include entrenched interests supporting the status quo, lack of data and information, organizational obstacles, reaching competitive levels of risk and return for financing, and the need to scale up.

It’s about getting everyone – from governments through to the business community – to work together to do things differently, and this requires a common language.

Whether that is at the international level, the national level, or within the business community. All levels need to be striving towards the same goals, and the indicators provide a common way of talking about this – allowing a better-managed with system corporate social responsibility.

Green Economics principles should be developed to meet the needs and vision of each country and each sector. The goal is not to simply arrive at a list of principles but to engage in discussions with stakeholders about the priorities and approaches to moving toward a green economy.

Environmental well-being contributes to economic well-being when the environment is
able to properly carry out its functions. For longterm prosperity through equitable distribution of economic benefits and effective management of ecological resources; it must be economically viable and resilient, self-directed, self-reliant, and pro-poor. 

The need for a convergence – that all sectors need to work together to deliver these goals.

The first thing to say is that a green economy would not have to be any different than the regular economy.

Supply and demand. 

What role does public policy play in encouraging and facilitating the green economy?

1. The green economy is a means for achieving sustainable development.
2. The green economy should create decent work and green jobs.
3. The green economy is resource and energy-efficient.
4. The green economy respects planetary boundaries or ecological limits or
scarcity.
5. The green economy uses integrated decision making.
6. The green economy measures progress beyond GDP using appropriate
indicators/metrics.
7. The green economy is equitable, fair, and just – between and within countries
and between generations.
8. The green economy protects biodiversity and ecosystems.
9. The green economy delivers poverty reduction, well‐being, livelihoods, social
protection, and access to essential services.
10. The green economy improves governance and the rule of law. It is inclusive;
democratic; participatory; accountable; transparent; and stable.
11. The green economy internalizes externalities.

Thanks to COVID-19 we’re going to see a huge amount of capital flood into sustainability.  It is already happening if at a slow pace.

The government can spark a clean energy economy by setting the rules and letting the private sector scale up.

Of course, finance will not be the only factor in this transition, but rather the forthcoming Economic Depression.

What better way to stimulate growth by securing self-efficiency in green energy (Energy production results in the emission of 80 percent of global carbon dioxide.)   

What better way to promote Tourism that depends on the environmental quality of a destination – i.e. – clean air, water, and land. It depends on the natural environment for its wide array of ecosystems, for example, beaches and coastal areas, mountains, and forests. 

What better way to stop pollution that has an impact on global warming has a potential cost from flooding and hurricane damage, low agriculture yields, and population resettlement.

What better way to realize that GDP is increasing while emissions are going down.

What better way to leave a legacy for the next generation.

What better way to engage the whole population.

What better way to make wealthy countries finally realize that the greenest investments also look like the wisest. 

What better way for the European Union to live up to its name ( Union) by Investing in the sunshine of the south with energy grants to establish solar farms. The north could manufacture them creating millions of new jobs in their economies, in Italy, Spain, Greece.  

The benefits arising from the green economy are extended to all levels of population and all countries, as well as interconnected among the features of mutual influence and common development: the more countries and companies “go green”, the more the economy grows; the more the economy grows through “green plans”, the more research and development on the green economy will be conducted. The more green economy dominates markets, the sooner the world will be a clean place after more than two hundred years of increasing.

That there is a need for a new model of economic development but unfortunately, that is what it is Rhetoric.

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