THE BEADY EYE: Here’s a Question. Is it time to redefine what it means to be a Nation. Part Two. ( This post is from unknown quest writer)

12 Friday Dec 2014

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Part Two:

Right: In this post lets look at the question from a different angle, and I have to say that there are so many components to this subject it is difficult to stay on one track at a time.

The Statement below confirm the above.

The first democratic government was established in Athens in 490 BCE and we are still embroiled in the same controversies that have raged from the earliest days of the Holy Roman Empire. How much power should the church influence on the state? Where is the balance between personal freedom and interests of the state? How much regulation of religion should government impose?

I think it is reasonable to say that we will all agree that the role of the state has changed profoundly in recent years. So much so that it is insufficient that we simply need to find a new language to describe the changing interface between democracy and collective identity?

National identity has also been weakened and is now just one of a number of significant ways in which people think about themselves.

Why should nationhood be understood as intrinsically tied to hegemonic notions of identity?

Are we all going to end up as Digital Citizen?

The worsening crisis of austerity is coming hand in hand with a collapse in democracy and the erosion of freedoms effecting the very constitution of our identities, national or otherwise.

As second and third generation of immigrant children are born immigration modifies the political vision of nationhood – citizenship is the last step in the journey from immigrant to identity.

We need to think outside of the state and we need ‘the nation’ to do it.

States have become much more interdependent and are no longer able to regulate political, economic and social processes within their borders, despite a continuing pretense of sovereignty they are driven more and more by their Economies rather than by their people.

This also means that nation-states may constitute a terrain upon which the increasingly autonomous nexus of state and corporate power can be challenged, and some measure of democratic agency reclaimed.

If the nation-state can embody a heterotopic space that permits identification through processes of willed negotiation and division, guaranteeing the possibility of the present to always be changed, then it might still serve as a tool for resistance against states becoming Corporate Bodies driven solely by profit at all costs.

Oil is what drove the industrial revolution and since then the world has already consumed half the available supply on the planet. Potable water is also running out, as are other raw materials. In this scenario a rags to riches story is the icing on a cake that few will actually taste. For those seeking to construct an alternative against the determined pursuit of infinite growth? We need to look into our own religious and national identities to find pathways toward peace and equality in the world.

Sovereignty of nations and Citizenship rights gained now present an impediment for profit-mongering for global business. They are a threat in the path of wresting complete control of fast dwindling resources. Sovereignty Wealth Funds are the glowing example of what is going on.

The ‘New World Order’ under WTO-GATT was launched to ensure that the rich would continue to get richer even as the pie began to crumble.

The destructive power of neoliberal globalization—which confidently pronounced nation-states to be redundant along with the modes of political agency associated with them—now seems not only willfully blind, but recklessly passive and reactive in the face of neoliberalism’s agenda-setting activism.

Nation-states are used by elites as key drivers of neoliberal globalization, often in concert with (rather than in opposition to) transnational structures oand institutions.

To ignore the contestation over what it means to be national, is to play into the hands of those across the political spectrum who, precisely because of the two-faced trickery of the ‘neoliberal nation’, have found themselves abandoning democracy for the imperial illusions of certainty, security and purity.

Ever since 9/11 a new public enemy had to be invented. Islamic jihad stepped up just in time. Overnight, friends became foes and vice versa. The Bin Ladens were partners with George Bush Sr. in an oil company in Texas. Osama Bin armed and abetted by the CIA became a champion jihadi in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

After the defeat of the Soviets, Osama turned against America and soon graduated to the post of the elusive arch enemy, taking care to pop up on videotape a few days before Bush’s precarious re-elections, to guarantee him victory.

In oil rich countries that dared to nationalize, the fatwa was out. So fell Mossadegh in Iran in 1956, Saddam Hussain in Iraq in 2003, and Gaddafi in Libya in 2011.

The coup in Venezuela to displace Hugo Chavez failed but in the Middle East the sectarian conflicts of Islamic jihadis could be used to weaken any nation state.

Today Osama is dead but his Al Quaeda, morphed into ISIS, can still be used in various theaters to serve the interests of America, Saudi Arabia, Israel and their allies, as it was in Libya and now in Syria.

If occasionally they behead some white reporters it only adds to the dread of the jihadi and serves to sell weapons, or buy sovereignty.

In the 20th Century, of the estimated (and this is hardly a firm figure, understated if anything) 120 million people who were killed in wars and war-like acts (terrorism is war, generally upon civilians, by a non nation-state)

So faced with the fluidity of neoliberalism, what role remains for the nation?

These hasty observations of mine fail to acknowledge the continuing role of Capitalism in propping-up invisible forms of state domination and its function as part of a critical bio politics of the world.

It has being my option in other postings that the power of Social Media is going to lead to more integrated forms of urban protest and industrial action to combat the flexibility of neoliberal capitalism: As frustrating as it can be to define, and particularly for those ashamed to belong to a particular nation, ignoring the national as a key political category per se is to fall for a trick that the global citizens of the 1% have exploited in securing their version of globalization.

Take Europe for example.

Here we are all continuing in denying the basic reality that Europe’s tomorrow depends upon how immigrants and their children experience Europe today.

The functioning of the European welfare state depends upon the labor and indeed the civic good will of immigrants—which in Europe often means Muslim immigrants.

The problem for modern states is to reconcile state power and social diversity, so that the relation between the state and the individual can be more direct. This is what Social Media is capable of achieving.

In the mean time we have Fundamentalist movements with symbiotic relationship with modernity. They may reject the scientific rationalism of the West, but they cannot escape it. Western civilisation has changed the world. Nothing – including religion – can ever be the same again.

The global modernising forces of technology and commerce are locked in a profound struggle against the backward-looking ethno-religious forces of religion and localised culture (“Jihad”).

Identity within a society provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives. The more people manage to have their basic needs met, the more interested they become in actively self-governing themselves.

The birthplace of modern democracy America is systematically being dismantled through a crises of identity that is defining it image in the world.

It recent wars, torture, drones and the continuing existence of Guantanamo Bay all contribute to its present day image.

Because of this America seems unable to collaborating together to stalemate any functional democratic process that could substantially improve people’s lives and move towards a just, peaceful and fear-free future. The very model of how democracy is supposed to work in America is not allowing it to be America again.

There is no argument that our Identities need to be reconfigured, as do our world organisations in order to put peoples first and material wealth second.

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Here’s a Question. Is it time to redefine what it means to be a nation?

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

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Citizenship., Communities, Community relations, Europeans, global climate change, Globalization, Identity, Immigration, Interculturalism, Multiculturalism, National borders, National identity, Nationhood, Politicians, Population mobility, Sovereignty, transnational relationships, Tribalism, Western economies

This is a vast subject governed by innumerable historical beliefs some of which are set in concrete and blood so I am going to discuss this subject in two parts.

Part One:

If I happen to offend anyone that has lost or might suffer the loss of a love one in defense of their Nation with anything I write in these posts I apologize.

I am not advocating that we should abolish the sense of Nationhood rather that we must look at what it means as there is going to be in the next hundred years a massive remix of people whether we like it or not.

Population mobility is accelerating and across the globe, people have become far more able and willing to re-locate in search of better employment prospects and a higher standard of living; or increasingly as a lifestyle choice where borders have remained open to them.

The theory of development that has been force-fed into dominant economic discourse all over the world is now contributing as to one of the main reasons we see immigration. With the predictions of climate change in the future this immigration can only increase.

In 2010 there were 214 million international migrants and if they continue to grow in number at the same pace there will be over 400 million by 2050 (IOM 2010).

Forced migration, where people have to move as a result of climate change, conflict and war, threaten to dwarf these numbers.

For the world as a whole at the moment 13% primarily considered themselves as “citizens of the world”, 38% put their Nation-State first, and the larger remainder put local or regional identities first.

There is no getting away from it that Identity is becoming more multi-faceted and whereas multiculturalism has been firmly rooted in racial constructs, ideas about difference has developed in other directions.

Sexual orientation, gender, faith and disability and other aspects of identity are now firmly in the public sphere and contributing to notions of personal identity alongside national identity.

Identity is increasingly complex. As well as the now routine hyphenating of nationality, faith and ethnicity, the consequence of people from different identity groups sharing the same society has also led to the growth of ‘mixed race’ or multiple identities.

This group is now the fastest growing minority in Britain and many other countries.

Inter-marrying, building new virtual networks, and creating real and tangible personal relationships at all levels is currently changing nations from the inside out. ( What once was Christian will be Muslim. What once was American will be Spanish Mexican, What once was German will to Northern African and so on.)

States – and especially their political elites – have inevitably tried to cling to the idea of clear national boundaries and governance and any suggestions of the loss of sovereignty or the advent political plurality are quickly contested. (For example the recent Resignation of the Israel Government over changing its Constitution to place Jews in a privileged position of citizenship. )

There are now 20 cities with more than 1 million foreign-born people and another 59 cities worldwide with a presence of 100,000 or more foreign-born residents.

These include 11 cities with an immigrant presence of between 500,000 and 1 million people, for example in Argentina, Canada, USA, Russia and Israel (Clark, 2008,). This is not simply about numerical growth however, migrant communities are also increasingly diverse and this inevitably leads to much greater complexity within nation states, particularly in the Western economies, which are often the target countries for migration.

The extent of population movement is such that all western economies are now characterized by ‘super’ or ‘hyper’ diversity with cities, like London, Stockholm, Toronto, New York and Amsterdam with over 300 language groups.

This is beginning to re-define our notion of multiculturalism which had previously been seen as the then essentially White countries coming to terms with migrants from a limited number of former colonies. Relationships are now much more complex and community relations are multi-faceted, no longer simply revolving around majority/minority visible distinctions underpinned by distinct sociology-economic positions (Cantle 2012).

The reality is however that national and cosmopolitan identities now also need to sit alongside each other – they are not opposed – something that multiculturalism has never acknowledged.

Governmental responses to date have been ambivalent.

The changing nature of personal identities, with the separate components shaped by increasing diversity in terms of faith, present locality, and ethnicity – as well as an apparently declining sense of nationality is changing what it means to be Irish, English, French, American. Take your choice from Australia to Canada and you finds this taking place.

For the most part, Governments have attempted to reinforce their view of national identity through such measures as the teaching of national history and promoting national citizenship and identity. By steadfastly retaining the pretense of the integrity of national borders and governance, and by attempting to deny the interdependence brought by globalization, they reinforce a fear of ‘others’.

They appear not to want to grasp or lag behind the current reality of multi-faceted identities within their communities and may well find that the new phenomenon of social media will begin to create new transnational relationships which transcend traditional power structures.

Already there is clear evidence of a decline in traditional democratic traditions across Europe, with election turnouts and political party membership in decline. There is also some evidence of the growth of new political movements from the indignados in Spain to that led by the comedian Grillo in Italy and the current lack of trust and disconnection from mainstream parties suggests that these movements could grow still further.

In the UK, along with many other countries, there have been attempts to restrict immigration and to ensure that those immigrants that do come are able to speak the native language and past various tests based on attitudes and knowledge of customs and history (Cantle, 2008).

There has been little by way of any systematic attempt to engage with globalization through intercultural education and to enable people to become more at ease with diversity and globalization

Identity remains promoted on the basis that it is fixed and within boundaries.

Sen, Suggests that conflict and violence are sustained today, no less than the past, by the illusion of a unique identity (Sen, 2006).

He argues that, the world is increasingly divided between religions (or ‘cultures’ or ‘civilizations’), which ignore the relevance of other ways in which people see themselves through class, gender, profession, language, literature, science, music, morals or politics. He challenges ‘the appalling effects of the miniaturization of people’ and the denial of the real possibilities of reasoned choices.

Interculturalism should be part of this response and has been proposed on the basis of a progressive vision (Cantle, 2012) to support the necessary changes, replacing multiculturalism which became completely out of step with this new world order.

The era of transnational relationships, the growth of diasporas, new and pervasive international communications and travel, mean that such policies are no longer tenable. ‘Interculturalism’ can provide a new positive model to mediate change across regions and nations and recognize the multivariate relationships across all aspects of diversity.

When power resides with a global elite, and the economic crisis links our fate across borders, we are, it seems, all ‘citizens of the world. A ‘global village’ mediated through electronic communication.

Globalism, global civil society, global consciousness and cosmopolitanism were to sweep away tribalism of nations to clear the path for a new and better world in which humanity would finally achieve unity and share happiness.

Globalization frees and unites us. Increased freedom of movement, a revolution of communication, the hyper-acceleration of cultural production, have together created a fertile ground for innumerable imagined communities, unrestricted by the limits of geography.

What is now called globalization is only the backlash of an age-old process, constantly fostered by capitalist expansion, which started with the constitution of rival national units, at least in the core of the world economy.

It is very hard to find any trace of this optimistic view of globalization

For me the world economy is evidence of the pervasive ideas of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization as panacea for all the problems our countries faces today.

World-wide solidarity among workers, disadvantaged and oppressed appears to remain an ideal than a reality and anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise in the many parts of the world.

The world is certainly globalized and is still globalizing but the old nations and nation-states have not withered away.

If you take Europe it does not exist except as a discursively constructed object of consciousness so it follows that Europeans also do not exist as a people with shared past, other than conflict. Europeaness consists as much in the way of values, interests,and beliefs, modes of justification, etc are mediated and negotiated as in a specific set of identifications. European identity or being European has not seriously undermined the centrality of nationalism in the modern world.

There is little point in contesting the ‘emptiness’ of so many arguments for global citizenship. It is easier to be a global citizen if you are secure in your rights as a national citizen.

The logic that ‘only if the rich get richer will the poor live better! is a joke.

So why are Nation-states forfeiting their sovereignty in order to support global and regional markets, by selling their natural resources and future infrastructure to Sovereign Wealth Funds. The idea that the Welfare State has failed its citizens is sold through the mechanism of the Public Private Partnership, to pave the way for the take over of public assets by private interests.

The handing over common owned resources by interlinking of rivers, mining projects and disinvestment corroborated by the stock market fly in the face of Nationhood. (see previous Posts) For example in 2007, the total volume of trade by private corporations world over was over $1171 trillion. The sum of the earnings of all countries was a mere $66 trillion, almost twenty times less!

It needs to be understood that the financial power of the multi-nationals’ private business is huge.

The sovereignty of the state is no longer linked to a territory, nor are today’s communication technologies or military strategy, and this dislocation does in fact bring about a crisis in the old European concept of the political Nation.

The nation’ is frequently presented under the banner of Globalization as an outdated inconvenience, a domain of racism and intolerance.

New kinds of national identity are being forged.

A conversion from an ethnic to a multicultural and cosmopolitan community are evolving with alternative forms of belonging. That modernity is almost unthinkable without capitalism (despite any such attempt to render modernity as a democratizing force tied to a conception and experience of time).

Divisions in society are no longer based on citizenship, but rather on economic factors: access to employment, housing conditions and education opportunities.

So is it time for us to redefine the meaning of Nationhood. To rewrite and rethink our individual and collective destinies. Can we turn away from the future of the past and embody the logic of a future to come.

States now need to come to terms with the new circumstances that confront them.

The composition of western societies has become far more dynamic and complex. Ideas about personal and collective identity have inevitably begun to change as a consequence.

While states attempt to assert their relevance in a global age through both multiculturalism and top-down nationalism, new models of identity and strategies of participation need to be developed to deal with the co-existing phenomena of national experience and cosmopolitanism.

We all know that it is all but impossible for races and cultures that have differences going to the root of their immigration to be assimilated into a united whole.

It is my view that a Nation without a written Constitution that enshrines equality across the board can no longer offer Nationhood.

Because the concept of Citizenship and Sovereignty that emerged during the 17th/19th Century have become outdated and remains to this day significantly flawed.

The state remains a very powerful force in the lives of many people and is the most significant unit of democracy in the developed world. For many, being a citizen of a particular state, having absorbed the traditions and cultures, being subject to its laws and economic regulation and taking part in the polity, a sense of belonging is still very evident. This is a key point.

As an elite of politicians, businessmen and media executives literally fly over the great unwashed it is important to recognize that the nation, by now understood as both an antagonistic and unequal grouping as well as the potential for collective sovereignty, really is dead for many of those in positions of global power.

Nationalism will have to develop a new way of comprehending the world.

The answer to all of this will have to wait for the next post.

Why?

Because our Politicians are driven by the economy and not by what their people need to live fulfilled lives.

In the Corporate world Nations only exist in the contested space of conversation. In part two we will address this concept.

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WHERE DO WE GET OUR Thought’s FROM:

08 Monday Dec 2014

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Artificial Intelligence., conceptual thinking, global climate change, positive thinking

Increasingly today, we are being asked to analyze environmental projects or activities whose effects will be spread out over hundreds of years. Prominent examples include: global climate change, radioactive waste disposal, loss of biodiversity, thinning of stratospheric ozone, groundwater pollution, minerals depletion, and many others.

Recently I posted some thoughts on Artificial Intelligence and the changes that technology will bring to our existence.

Now before I go any further perhaps this post should carry a warning that you might end up confused.

WHERE DO WE GET OUR THOUGHT FROM.

Here I am not talking about what frames our thoughts. Like your present circumstances or your culture, your education, and the like. What I am interested in is exploring the source of thoughts.

You might ask why. The answer is that there is not much mental shelf space left in the world to tackle its problems as we are all attracted by anything that commands our attention.

So lets hope the following commands your attention.

I suppose the first thought is that Human beings require language in order to become conscious of a thought. Language is indispensable for us in order to get access to thought. On the other hand, language – because of its sensible character – obscures thought (which by itself is insensible).

Perhaps Artificial Intelligence will be able to circumvent the obstacle of language and access concepts and thoughts directly.

Now there is a thought for you.

There are multiple versions of reality science but very few of them address or make comments on the purpose of the universe or the reason for life.

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. – James Allen (author of As a Man Thinketh)

THAT LEADS ME TO THE GREATEST THOUGHT OF ALL: Creation itself must have been an act of thought.

Long before the Big Bang which is mathematically indescribable there had to be a thought that brought the BIG BANG into consciousness?

From where did it come? Not the Big Bang, but the thought to create it in the first place.

These things are not explained by science. Consciousness does not come from a combination of chemicals as it is a non-material energy.

So we must ask ourselves just how we can convey a certain piece of information to someone else if we are not able to represent this information to ourselves in conscious thought.

The Big Bang as a single point or particle falls well short of supplying any conceptual thought of what caused it in the first place.

For years, we’ve heard about the power of positive thinking, but without the ability to communication of one’s own thoughts to another which appears to be entirely dependent on representing and recording one’s own thoughts to yourself we can never raise ourselves to the level of specifically conceptual thinking.

If we disregard how thinking occurs in the consciousness of an individual, and attend instead to the true nature of thinking, we shall not be able to equate it with speaking.

Power of thinking denote a special mental capacity.

First, language is used to assist memory, or the representation and recording of one’s own thoughts; and second, it is used as a required vehicle of communication of one’s own thoughts to other people human. Language is needed to develop and/or employ our faculty of reasoning, on the one hand, but at the same time reason has to be presupposed to a certain degree in order for language to be possible.

But then again language is not required to grasp or become aware of thoughts about invisible things – does not by itself imply that the thoughts themselves could not be without language. Like the slips of the tongue, a blush full face, or mere movements of a face muscle, can only too well convey information about the thoughts or attitudes of the conveyor, and even indirectly about what these thoughts and attitudes are about.

Therefore thought depends in certain ways on language, or on symbols in general.

If you consider it we cannot find a convincing reason for the indispensability of language for thought.

However sense-impressions determine almost by themselves the course of our ideas, as is the case in animals.

So is it going to be possible for Artificial Intelligence to invented language without reason? Through symbols that we use to memorize ideas in such a way that we can call them up more or less at will.

So where does that leave us.

Without senses we would never think of them. So does it mean that language constitutes thought, so that the latter could not be without the former?

The power of pure thinking can set the stage for some inspiring change.

O! Just in case you have had a thought don’t blame me. Shut down the left hemisphere of your brain that controls speech and thought and perhaps you will have discovered Artificial Intelligence. As positive thinking changes the brain in a physical way, pure thinking can do the same.

Let’s have your THOUGHTS.

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people generally discount the future

there are that the universe consists of pure thought

When you understand how the brain works somewhat better, you can use that information to literally enhance your own perspective, broaden your own sense of your capacities and, with that awareness, learn to focus on other things knowing that if you focus on other things consistently you can change what’s there. You can change the way that real estate is used.

”When you understand how the brain works somewhat better, you can use that information to literally enhance your own perspective, broaden your own sense of your capacities and, with that awareness, learn to focus on other things knowing that if you focus on other things consistently you can change what’s there.

You can change the way that real estate is used.”

how to reboot our brains in a positive, pure direction

Or does it merely mean that we could not become aware of our thoughts or could not grasp them without language?

A new perception would let these images sink into darkness and allow others to emerge. without symbols we would scarcely lift ourselves to conceptual thinking.concept is first gained by symbolizing it; without symbols we could not become aware of things that are physically absent or insensible.

What will money look like in the future.

06 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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alternative monetary system, Apple, Banking, Bitcoin, CASH, Cryptocurrencies, Electronic payments., Facebook, Google, Money, Money of the future, Twitter

At the moment there is a lot of hysterical futuristic crap been written, about the money of the future.

” We will be making payment with the blink of an eye” and the like.

” The cash register is coming to an end?” Not so far-fetched.

When it comes to money, there’s a lot of change going on.

Over 5000 complementary monetary experiments are already under way around the world…

Everybody knows that electronic currencies is changing the form of our conventional national currencies. (smart cards, e purses,etc.)

It seems more than likely that our current model will be replaced by electronic payments.

However the question remain whether today’s governments will allow money to disappear or we have to wait for them to fade out – or be thrown out – of existence. One way or the other there is no doubt that in a few years or several decades the hardened walls of the banking and government institutions running our economies are in for a shock when a new monetary system arises that is entirely private and not run by states.

Its shape and features will ultimately be decided by the market. Free market monetary systems, in which the supply of money is outside political control, are likely to be systems in which money proper is a commodity of limited and fairly inelastic supply.

But it also seems improbable that a completely free market would grant any private entity the right to produce (paper or electronic) money at will and without limit. The present system is unusual in this respect and it is evidently not a free market solution. Neither is it sustainable.

Future economic historians will pity us for having worked under a strange and inefficient global patchwork of local paper currencies – and for having naively believed that this represented the pinnacle of modern capitalism.

Today, every government wants to have its own local paper money and its own local central bank, and run its own monetary policy (of course, on the basis of perfectly elastic local fiat money). This is naturally a great impediment to international trade and the free flow of capital. They are parastatal dinosaurs, joined at the hip with the bureaucracy and politics, bloated and dependent on cheap money and state subsidy for survival. They are ripe for the taking.

The world is ready for an alternative monetary system, and when the present system collapses under the weight of its own inconsistencies, there will be something there to take its place.

Money however is one of society’s most embedded, ancient institutions anchored in trust and the race to win that trust is on.

So there are many questions to be answered.

How will own the money? How much freedom will they allow, when freedom is so attainable? How will they treat banks when, with merely a download, anyone can be their own bank? What will they have to say about currencies which compete with their own?

What exactly is money?

Economic Textbooks define money by what it does, not by what it is – e.g. Functions of Standard of Value, Medium of Exchange, Store of Value, etc…. Money is an Agreement, within a Community, to use something as a Medium of Exchange.

Take the dollar.

It has lost over 92% of its value since its initial issuance in 1913. After the revaluation in 1934, the dollar dropped another 41%. The very volume of dollars in the world has given many people a conviction that the currency is worthless and doomed to lose its status as a global reserve currency and turn into toilet paper money by letting the printing presses run wild.

“Short-termism” is programmed by the interest feature of our conventional money.

1.3 trillion of it is traded in foreign exchange markets every day. 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stock markets of the world combined.

Only 3% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to real goods and
services. 97% is purely speculative.

What happened is that ‘speculative’ trading (i.e. trading whose sole
purpose is to make a profit from the changes in the value of the
currencies themselves) has all but taken over the foreign exchange
markets. The currency market has become the biggest single market in the
world. Foreign exchange transactions purchases and sales of
currencies) today dwarf the trading volume of all other asset classes,
even of the entire global economy.

2/3 of all human beings who ever reached the age of 65 are alive today are looking at unfunded pensions liabilities now $3.5 Trillion in the OECD countries alone. Three times the GDP of the USA.

Not to worry as long as all major corporate decisions are made with a short-term horizon => long-term sustainability is going to be an illusion.

85% of all insurance payments worldwide compensate natural disasters. For times more people die in natural disasters than in all war and civil disturbances combined.

69% of professional biologists say we’re in ‘sixth extinction’ – we are in the process of losing 30%- 70% of the planet’s biodiversity by 2030 due to the actions of humanity!

Back to Money:

The latest smart phone technology is revolutionizing the payment process with the death of the wallet not far off.

Remittances are a gateway drug to Twitter, Facebook, Google, to achieve financial inclusion in the future.

Facebook is readying itself to provide financial services in the form of remittances and electronic money. It wants to become a utility in the developing world.

If Ireland’s central bank becomes an “e-money” institution it will allow Facebook to issue units of stored monetary value that represent a claim against the company.

Obtaining an e-money authorization in Ireland would require Facebook to hold capital of €350,000 and segregate funds equivalent to the amount of money it has issued. Facebook is already authorized for some forms of money transfer in the United States, allowing it to process payments for developers who charge users for in-app purchases.

Facebook takes a fee of up to 30 percent for such payments, and these fees account for about 10 per cent of its revenues. It recently reiterated its commitment to expanding its mobile payments and wallet products, which have yet to be widely adopted by consumers.

In 2013, the company facilitated $2.1 billion worth of transactions, almost exclusively from games.

I personally am not surprise that it is viewed with skepticism as a payment vehicle, when you look at all the crap one sees on Face Book – Would you trust Facebook to handle your money.

Google is registered in the UK to issue electronic money, in a process similar to the authorization which Facebook is seeking in Ireland.

Google and its NFC-driven Wallet, and PayPal are well on the way to providing digital payment that can move between two people as they pass each other on the street, or between two people on opposite sides of the Earth – with no difference between the character of the two payments.

Vodafone has acquired an e-money licence for the phone company to operate financial services in Europe.

Twitter, Square, PayPal, Apple are also in the race to replace Money.

The question of ‘what’s next?’ Depending on how it’s answered by governments, it might be very exciting or very frightening.

The importance of digital – potential changes in payments, branch banking, financial advice and the use of social media will accelerate change in the industry, most likely to the benefit of fast-moving incumbents.

New technologies are threatening to disrupt existing models in retail financial services; the pressure of increased operating and capital costs reducing capacity in wholesale banking; and a struggle for growth and profitability in insurance waning customer loyalty as their biggest challenge.

The banking system fundamentally makes money by keeping customers confused, making the lion’s share of profits from fees and charges, not from banking. They will have to think no longer of themselves as mere providers of financial products and services and enablers of transactions. They will need to be solution providers that play a greater role not just at the moment of transactions, but before and afterward as well.

The global e-payments value reached $256 billion in 2012, and is expected to grow three-fold by 2014 to a total of $796 billion. An average person touches his / her smart phone 150 times in a day.

So it’s no wonder that the single biggest area of investment is mobile apps for tablets and smartphones, with the ultimate target to consolidate everything you carry on you till financial transaction that involve buying something is paid for by simply saying your name.

And before I sign off we have Cryptocurrencies,

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency with no centralized authority

Bitcoin is regulated by code, which determines how quickly new Bitcoins are generated without the intervention of humans. Bitcoins are stored in a wallet that resides on your computer – or a hosted wallet service off in the cloud, if that’s your preference – and transactions are nearly instantaneous. It’s the prototype for whatever improved implementation overtakes traditional currency in the future.

In the meantime, the debasement of paper money continues.

In the end, It’s great news that non-banks are challenging the traditional banking monopoly.

I leave you with a few Quotes;

“Maybe money is unreal for most of us, easier to give away than things we want. ” Lillian Hellman.

“Money is the only substance which keep a cold world from nicknaming a citizen “Hey You”. Wilson Mizner.

“Money is the poor people’s credit card. Marshall McLuhan.

“Money is what you’d get on beautifully without if only other people weren’t so crazy about it” Margaret Case Harriman.

” Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us; its value is found only in that which it can purchase. As to corporal enjoyment, money can neither open new avenues of pleasure, nor block up the passages of anguish. Disease and infirmity still continue to torture and enfeeble, perhaps exasperated by luxury, or promoted by softness,. With respect to the mind, it has rarely been observed that wealth contributes much to quicken the discernment or elevate the imagination, but may,by hiring flattery, or laying diligence asleep, confirm error and harden stupidity.” Samuel Johnston.

“Remember money has no sign of human worth.” Robert de Mayo Dillon.

How Much Can A Government Borrow? Should we the Citizens have a say?

04 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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Budget deficits, Central Banks, Governments borrowing, National debt

With public sector debt increasing around the world, an important issue to consider is just how much can governments borrow?

The clock is ticking. Every second, it seems, someone in the world takes on more debt.

Unfortunately, the manner in which the debt level is conveyed to the general public is usually very obscure.

Couple this problem with the fact that many people do not understand how the national debt level affects their daily life, and you have a center piece for discussion, and which could be written on till the cows come home

The debt, and the developed world’s willingness to borrow to fuel growth, is an indicator of the wildcat figures we now see in almost every country.

The world is in hock up to its neck.

Is the sky’s the limit? Who is going to pay it? How is responsible?

Does voting or paying taxes implies consent.?

There is no easy answer.

Since we are subjected to the government’s impositions whether or not we vote — opting out is forbidden — any given individual may have cast a vote purely in self-defense, for the perceived lesser of two evils. And paying taxes certainly cannot signify consent, because the penalty for nonpayment is theft of one’s property, imprisonment, or (should one resist) death.

The amount governments can borrow depends upon many factors such as the level of private sector savings, confidence and expectations of future growth.

So what is the National debts. Or as governments like to describe it the National Debt Per Person.

A Simply explained,

The government generates a budget deficit whenever it spends more money than it brings in through income generating activities such as taxes.

In order to operate in this manner, the Central Bank has to issue treasury bills, treasury notes and treasury bonds to compensate for the difference. These are then placed on the market with varying interest rate of return and repayment terms to the Investors. As the rate offered on treasury securities increases, corporations are viewed as riskier, also necessitating an increase in the yield on newly issued bonds. This in turn will require corporations to raise the price of their products and services in order to meet the increased cost of their debt service obligation. Over time, this will cause people to pay more for goods and services, resulting in inflation.

By issuing these types of securities, the government can acquire the cash that it needs to provide governmental services.

The national debt is simply the net accumulation of the government’s annual budget deficits.

The national debt level is one of the most important public policy issues. When debt is used appropriately, it can be used to foster the long-term growth and prosperity of a country.

However, the national debt must be evaluated in an appropriate manner, such as comparing the amount of interest expense paid to other governmental expenditures or by comparing debt levels on a per capita basis.

Today’s budget deficits can impoverish future generations and it is utterly absurd to pretend that debts to the amount of trillions are binding upon millions of people who are not yet born or were not born when the debts were incurred. The National Debt Per Person.

Take for instance the UK Debt.

During WWII, UK national debt increased from £7.1 billion to £21 billion. In the early 1950s, UK public sector debt increased to over 200% of GDP much higher than in the financial crisis 2008-11. Could the UK borrow 200% of GDP again? The real national debt to-day is closer to £4.8 trillion, some £78,000 for every person in the UK. Around £2bn of First World War debt remains, which is one graphic illustration of the legacy of this war on our nation and the long-term effects of high debt.

The UK Treasury will pay back the £1.9 billion ($2.9 billion) outstanding war loan perpetual bond on March 9, 2015. This is the successor to the loans that were sold to the public in 1917 to help finance World War I( 120,000 individuals holding them) Britain will also pay off other historical debts, some of which date from the 18th century. Eight undated government bonds remain outstanding. UK would also pay back £218 million ($341 million) of debts dating back to the so-called South Sea Bubble in 1720, created to reduce and consolidate national debt.

The US government has racked up $16 trillion in debt.

The US debt is now bigger than the entire US economy.

Does it matter? After all, world governments owe the money to their own citizens, not to the Martians.

The rising total is important for two reasons.

First, when debt rises faster than economic output (as it has been doing in recent years), higher government debt implies more state interference in the economy and higher taxes in the future.

Second, debt must be rolled over at regular intervals. This creates a recurring popularity test for individual governments, rather as reality TV show contestants face a public phone vote every week. Fail that vote, as various euro-zone governments have done, and the country (and its neighbors) can be plunged into crisis.

To pay back one million dollars, at a rate of one dollar per second, would take you 11.5 days.

• To pay back one billion dollars, at a rate of one dollar per second, would take you 32 years.
• To pay back one trillion dollars, at a rate of one dollar per second, would take you 31,688 years.

That’s five hundred and twelve million years. Yes, 512,000,000 years for 15 trillion.

What to be done? Not much on a global scale.

To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt…We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.

On a national scale all government spends over 6 billion could be posted on-line with their pros and cons for the population to approve or disapprove.

No human being, in the history of the world has ever amassed a trillion dollars.

There’s never enough time to do all

the nothing to do. A lie told 100 times becomes a truth.

If you have any interest have a look at the below. If you don’t I would not blame you with all the rest that going down in the world at the moment.

http://youtu.be/TSDIHPTJels

http://youtu.be/C8xAXJx9WJ8

http://youtu.be/fk9IZ9R1XEg

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Perhaps the next century—we all be in a permanent identity crisis, constantly asking ourselves what humans are for.

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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Artificial Intelligence., Google, Steven Hawkins

You no doubt heard Steven Hawkins recently prediction that the human race as we know it will come to and end with the creation of a Super Artificial Intelligence.

He could be right.

Over the past 60 years, we have seen mechanical processes replicated behaviors and talents we thought were unique to humans,

We are not just redefining what we mean by AI—we are redefining what it means to be human. ( Greed v Poverty. Muslim v Christian. Wealth v Benefits. Black v White. War v Peace. Health v Consumerism. Life v Death. Gratification v Pain. Space v Sustainability, Climate Change v Profit. To mention just a few)

It will be long before we’ve have to change our minds about what sets us apart. (ISIS v The Rest.)

Every day we are being forced to surrender more of what is supposedly unique about humans and we will spend the next decades doing so.

Indeed, the grandest irony of all, the greatest benefit of an everyday, utilitarian AI will not be increased productivity or an economics of abundance or a new way of doing science—although all those will happen.

The greatest benefit of the arrival of artificial intelligence is that AIs will help define humanity. We need AIs to tell us who we are.

In order to appreciate this we are we going to need a large dose of artificial smartness. Smartness is focused, measurable, specific.

If you think about it, much of the technology humans interact with is about putting you in a particular bucket. This is exactly what Online marketing is about. Making finer and finer distinctions as to which bucket you belong in.

The long-term scientific goal of artificial intelligence is human-level intelligence as it Artificial immortality is to the goals of modern medicine.

AI has attracted more than $17 billion in investments since 2009. Last year alone more than $2 billion was invested in 322 companies with AI-like technology.

Every time you type a query, click on a search-generated link, or create a link on the web, you are training the Google AI.

Each of the 12.1 billion queries that Google’s 1.2 billion searchers conduct each day tutor the deep-learning AI over and over again. With another 10 years of steady improvements to its AI algorithms, plus a thousand-fold more data and 100 times more computing resources, Google will have an unrivaled AI.

At first glance, you might think that Google is beefing up its AI portfolio to improve its search capabilities, since search contributes 80 percent of its revenue. But I think that’s backward. Rather than use AI to make its search better, Google is using search to make its AI better.

My prediction: By 2024, Google’s main product will not be search but AI.( See My Flip board ” Silent Wittiness to Google Ambitions.)

Where are we at the moment?

Parallel computation, bigger data, and deeper algorithms generated the 60-years-in-the-making overnight success of AI. As these technological trends continue—and there’s no reason to think they won’t—AI will keep improving. The smarter it gets, the more people use it. The more people that use it, the smarter it gets.

Our AI future is likely to be ruled by an oligarchy of two or three large, general-purpose cloud-based commercial intelligences offering more like IQ as you want but no more than you need.

It is transforming the Internet, the global economy, and civilization. It is enliven inert objects, much as electricity did more than a century ago.

There is almost nothing we can think of that cannot be made new, different, or interesting by infusing it with some extra IQ.

Non-Inheritable Neural Architecture intelligent machines will increasingly replace knowledge workers in the near future.

Many knowledge workers today get paid to do things that computers will soon be able to do. AI will increasingly move up the skill ladder to replace the middle-class workers.

There’s no way a human can keep on top of all possible financial instruments in the world or is it possible for doctors and nurses to stay on top of medical innovations.

Every success in AI redefines it.

A child born today will rarely need to see a doctor to get a diagnosis by the time they are an adult. Computer Medical diagnostics is a potential “game changer,”

At this very moment it is possible to have you DNA sequence read by 23 and Me (for a fee.)

Curious. Go on try it.

Find out if you are a suitable partner, what you are most likely to died from, WHETHER YOU ARE going to win the lotto – sorry not true.

We are still a ways off from equaling the processing power of the human brain.

An AI program may be able to write code to manipulate the stock exchange but not the lotto draw. It is still not able to “solve the problem of common sense, of endowing a computer with the knowledge that every 5-year-old is still a few years off.

Representations are the fruits of perception. Recognizing the centrality of perceptual processes makes artificial intelligence more difficult, but it also makes it more interesting, for the two types of process are inextricably intertwined.

As AIs develop, we might have to engineer ways to prevent consciousness in them—and our most premium AI services will likely be advertised as consciousness-free.

In fact, the business plans of the next 10,000 start ups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI.

So Is he Right.

New utilitarian AI will also augment us individually as people (deepening our memory, speeding our recognition) and collectively as a species.

Will it replace us.

Rather you than I too comeback in a few hundred years.

Food will differently be different. manufacturing materials will differently be different, clothes, money, or any branch of science and art will have changed beyond recognition.

Concepts without precepts are empty. The essence of human perception lies in the ability of the mind to hew order from chaos. Perception goes on at many levels.

AI perception will be rigid, inflexible, and unable to adapt to the
problems provided by many different contexts.

Cognition is infused with perception. If there is none neither human or non human will know which is which. Therefore there will be no interaction between humans and artificially intelligent beings other than war.

So he is right.

The Future of the Consumer Society will decide our Future.

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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Economic practices, environmental degradation, Future, Human impact, Internet, Social Media, Sustainability, The environment, The Future of Mankind, Universal Electronic Voice, Visions of the future.

The world-wide spread of extremely resource-intensive lifestyles and economic practices has become one of the most important challenges we face.

There is an increased awareness of human impact on the environment, however, the rate of environmental degradation is still on the rise.

Although many people are uncomfortable with the way things are, they are not motivated to act on their beliefs because they see no other way.

The environmental discourse is still confined to a relatively small minority
of elites and ‘experts’, and it remains incredibly top-down but there are no experts as we are all dancing on the edge of acceptable risk.

Is economic growth making us happier?

What type of change is possible?

By addressing things such as human well-being and the meeting of the needs in environmentally in a sound way, the discourse brings economy down to the grass root level of everyday life.

It enables us to ask questions such as:

How do we change the present day short-shortsightedness which is the source of most modern environmental and economic problems?

Messages of environmental risk should be effective in relaying seriousness and immediacy, but arguably, they are also in danger of breeding hopelessness and fatalism. Although many people are uncomfortable with the way things are, they are not motivated to act on their beliefs because they see no other way.

This is tragic because the way in which we perceive the future has a significant influence on the choices we make.

It affects our values, attitudes, coping mechanisms, expectations feelings, motivations and behaviors. The very act of articulating a future presents a tendency and inclination, which increases its likeliness of occurrence.

Could it therefore be possible to produce a set of different outcomes by providing engaging, lucid and optimistic alternative ecological future narratives?

I have posted many posts on the Subject but let’s try an other approach.

Suggest an inexpensive tool that could make a difference.

Sufficient living questions the connection made between growth and quality of life.

The last time climate change happened was approximately 55 million years ago and it took 1000 years to recover from the level of elevated carbon after the extinction of dinosaurs.

Imagine a world without pollution and waste: Products are made from materials that are beneficial for humans and their surroundings. Imagine a world where humans can be glad that their actions benefit those around them.

It seems that people are not good at providing (quasi) exact statements of the future, but they can be better in stating whether the past trend will change and in which direction.

Over a hundred species are still becoming extinct everyday. One and a half acres of rain forest is still disappearing every second.

These problems are link to a lack of ideas concerning how to deal with environmental problems and the future of our society.

It is always useful to conceive futures in a generational paradigm, because we find it easier to think of futures in terms of our children and grandchildren’s lifetimes. The decisions we make in the next 20 years will determine the fate of the earth and human civilization for centuries to come.

In this context, online news gives a quick overview on what is happening in the world and the use of the Internet as information source has become an inherent part of everyday life leading to a sort of “big brother feeling” of being observed.

Unfortunately, most of our ecological future narratives are ambiguous or inherently pessimistic.

For instance, one of the most popularized means of living within nature are ‘sustainable futures. However this vision lacks clarity or a consensus over what it means to live ‘sustainably’. Moreover, a proliferation of ‘sustainability’ definitions leave some to regard it as a landfill dump for everyone’s environmental and social wish list.

In a sense of powerlessness. people perceive the environment to be a single totalising entity that is ‘out there,’ enabling them to remain emotionally distant, despondent and in a state of resignation.

High levels of non-engagement are further exacerbated by the lack of faith in the institutions tasked with combating the problems. People are choosing not to dwell on ecological problems by using reflexive strategies of non-engagement with global issues including the future.

The apparent lack of desirable alternatives is highly dangerous.

Could it therefore be possible to produce a set of different outcomes by providing engaging, lucid and optimistic alternative ecological future narratives?

In other words, if governments continue to think in four-year election cycles, businesses work from one financial year to the next and stock markets re-start everyday there is no hope of achieving anything.

When imagining futures, we also need to invent time for change.

What is needed is long-term thinking that reconciles itself to a planet that is 4.6 billion years old?

We support in the capacity to imagine and articulate preferred outcomes, which in turn mobilise action and creates an opportunity for the visions to embed themselves as possibilities in reality. As opposed to the current approach of endlessly treating symptoms of a much deeper problem that is both out of sight and out of control.

Each and every individual needs to be actively (and creatively) involved by, possibly, visualising, spreading and implementing ideas of alternative societal models. We need a method that enables us to think beyond existing societal models.

While Industrial welfare state mainly defends business-as-usual change can only be achieved in the world to-day by what I call,

– An Universal Electronic Voice that demands change –
# UEV- Universal Electronic Voice.
When we want to enable consumers to execute truly effective change it is central to empower them to understand their role as important actors in the field.

This is beyond governments, and our present day world institutions.

Governments: Because before they can mend a road there is an other government. Institutions: Because they have turned into gossip shops with no funds, run by the market.

We need to re-define what it meant by people power.

A unified electronic voice will do just that resulting in a movement that unified our cohesive efforts. That will enable the ‘democratisation’ of modern environmentalism that are fixated on finding solutions to one that imagines entirely new possibilities

The debate over climate change and whether it is being influenced by man’s activity has ceased. The prevailing view is that climate change is real and that it is influenced by human activity. The link between rising consumption and climate change is becoming clear and opposition to consumerism is growing.

Images of the future in which the Universal E Voice should be used as tools for making images become part of reality, it can be used to direct actions and decision-making.

Of course none of the above has any hope of becoming a reality unless we tap into the world of greed.

This can only be done by a collective demand to place a world aid commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency trading, Sovereign wealth funds acquisitions and foreign exchange transactions over $20.000, creating a perpetual funded fund. ( see previous posts)

As such UEV(universal electronic voice) does not describe the actions needed to achieve the described future however it would be the first step in the right direction to be heard. We all know timescales are the best until after the critical period is over and we have the benefit of hindsight.

Now it the time to combine all of those how are Whining on the Internet and Social Media into one voice.

With the rather elusive and volatile character of the Internet creating a focus point for the over strain user of the Net when it comes to selecting individually important and relevant information to establish a collection pool offering one voice has many difficulties to over come.

Perhaps # UEV- Universal Electronic Voice might to the trick.

I am all ears to any suggestions.

The mere fact that more of these devices are constantly introduced to the market and the ways in which they are advertised show that yet again a different perception of the future.

This is only the top of the iceberg.

What more ecologically benign consumption and production patterns would mean in practice? is another question to be discussed.

And to what extent it is fruitful to talk about economy beyond the social? Is another in dire need of serious discussion.

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THE FUTURE OF TAXATION.

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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Business and Economy, Community cohesion, Consumption Tax, Distribution of wealth, Fiscal stimulus, Inequility, Inflation, ongoing Privatization of the world, Over-consumption, Political spectrum, Sovereign wealth fund, Tax, VAT, Wealth Tax

Tax Due Warning - A single, angled spotlight reveals a...

A common thief does not typically act with greater force or stealth.

I would guess like me you have tried to get your head around the taxes you pay without much success.

With the rising inequality concerns maybe it time you did as taxation has a future that will affect you and your love ones.

But where, and in what guise? Let’s have a look.

Slow population growth is depressing income growth, which leads to higher taxes.

Virtually every government could pay off its debts by taxing wealth.

Luckily for the rich such taxes are often politically unacceptable.

In other words, fiscal problems are best regarded as problems of dysfunctional governance by governments that are selling off state assets into Privatization until there will not be enough national wealth to pay off any debts.

Anyway for the purpose of this post it is essential that we try to appreciate the difference between real taxes and current (or nominal) taxes.

The real tax over any significant period is the level of government spending in relation to national output. The higher public spending as a percentage of GDP, the higher the real tax. That amount must in time be transferred from private to public hands—be it now or later.

The current tax, for its part, is the amount actually paid to a government in any given period, and is almost never equal to the real tax.

Got it. No. Shame on you. Try again.

A current tax lower than the real tax (that is, a public deficit) implies higher current taxes in the future, while a current tax higher than the real
tax (a public surplus—a phenomenon observable in only three of the past 50 years) implies lower current taxes in the future.

Now. You have.

So the stated political orientation of the administration presiding over a gap between current and real taxation—be it social democratic or of the supply side right—does not matter.

Because deferred taxes are simply claims against the public.

There are two ways to meet these claims:

1) higher current taxes in some future period or 2) inflating the claims away.

Inflation, which generally induces a shift of wealth from private to public hands, is the functional equivalent of a tax increase. These relations do not follow from any policy or ideology, but are purely matters of arithmetic.

Any clearer.? It’s of no matter.

Because what appears on the surface to be public debate over the appropriate level of taxation—and this goes on all the time—is in fact political maneuver by interested constituencies to get out of the line of fire of inevitable tax increases while deflecting the higher taxes onto someone else.

Now you have.

Different taxes do have different allocative effects.

Future taxes will perpetuate or even compound the misallocative effects of the present tax system.

Taxes in the next ten years, even though considerably higher than today’s, will nonetheless be insufficient, in all likelihood, to fill the revenue gap that opened wide during the last ten.

Inflation is all that remains to look forward to.

For a governments it will be like letting go to the pull of gravity.

Most wealth has already been subjected to income and other taxes, perhaps multiple times. It doesn’t seem fair to the holders of that wealth to suddenly pay additional taxes on assets that they thought were in the clear, and such taxes would signal that previous policy has failed.

It seems to me that on both ends of the political spectrum there is remarkably little concern with the allocative effects of taxation in its various forms.

However it matters how you tax if we are to halt the growing inequality in our life styles as over the next 10 to 15 years current taxes will increase mightily. Why? Because our own consumption, fueled by debt, outstripped our incomes in recent years, while foreign savers, predominantly from Asia/China/and the Far East financed the bulk of new investment in our economies.

Why aren’t foreign savers put off by double tax on capital income?

The answer is that they would be, if they paid it. But they don’t.

Another reason it that the massive fiscal stimulus that have been pumped into our economies by Quantitative easing and the selling off of state Assets (To Sovereign Wealth Funds, see previous posts) will in their wake pull up current taxes or spread inflation, another form of higher taxation —whether consumers or savers, suppliers of capital or suppliers of labor, or both in a maelstrom of inflation.

When income from labor is saved rather than consumed, the income from that saving (now capital income, in economic terms) is taxed again.

This “second” tax on saving makes the tax cost of capital income greater than that of labor income spent on immediate consumption. The two separate layers of income tax imposed on corporate earnings and then again on dividends distributed to shareholders actually imply a third tax on corporate profits. This goes far toward explaining why we don’t save.

What can be done:

What is needed is a shift in the burden of taxation away from capital income and onto consumption. In short, some form of consumption tax should be the predominant national tax.

The problem with a value-added tax is that people can to a considerable extent earn their incomes in one tax environment and spend them (either at retail on vacation or wholesale in retirement) in a different (and VAT-free) environment, so that ultimately both their incomes and their consumption are untaxed.

Value-added taxes and payroll taxes are analogous to an income tax that is imposed territorialy, whereas a tax on consumed income is imposed on worldwide income, minus the component of saving, and is therefore a tax on the worldwide consumption of a taxpayer.

(Turnover-type taxes such as sales taxes and value-added taxes are widely and correctly understood as consumption taxes. So is any tax that does not reach capital income.)

A tax on consumed income is an income tax in which personal saving is deducible from taxable income, thus excluding capital income and leaving only the amount of income that is consumed subject to current taxation.

In stead of contemplating such a tax in many EU Member States we got political, academic and public debate on wealth taxation which always gains traction in times of strained public finances.

The question is who ultimately bears the burden of wealth taxation (tax incidence)

The existence of a blurry frontier between capital and labor, income for the high-income earners, the role of transparency and automatic exchange of information in facilitating tax compliance and the serious political economy constraints makes any form of wealth tax unworkable.

Just imagine the difficulty to evaluate one’s wealth and the administrative costs along with the risks of tax evasion and capital flight.

Many people have become distressed about their taxes because they have been led to believe that the property they acquired would not he taxed to the extent that it has been. Accordingly, they have paid prices for the property that have reflected those expectations. They may be the reasons they are “mad as hell” simply because they feel that they have been misled by their government and that they not only have had to give up taxes but also have had to give up wealth in terms of reduced market prices for their property.

Economics have performed the heroic task of measuring wealth for eight leading economies: the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Australia.

Their estimates reveal some striking trends. For instance, wealth accumulation in these eight countries has risen relative to yearly production.

Wealth-to-income ratios in these nations climbed from a range of 200 to 300 percent in 1970 to a range of 400 to 600 percent in 2010. Behind the changing ratios is some bad news, namely that slow productivity growth and but also some good news — that relative peace and capital gains have preserved wealth up to now.

Virtual economies pose a real-world tax compliance risk, even if citizens aren’t purposefully shielding their money.

No one has a clue on how to manage the Planet. The only way forward is a consumption tax regime.

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Is Black Friday our worst example of unchecked consumerism.

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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Advertising industry, Black Friday, Buy Nothing Day (BND), Consumerism, Economic Growth, Media technologies., Modern global economy, Online retailers, Society, TV commercials

This year, the shopping orgy called Black Friday became untethered from Thanksgiving and floated across to the U.K., where it most assuredly did not increase happiness and gratitude. It did however exposed a society that is encouraged by its Government since Maggie Thatcher day to treat shopping as a sport.

We were all treated to woman fighting over leggings, people stampeding to get the latest TV/Smart phone/i Pad till the police had to be summoned to stop them from biting or killing each other. An extremely shameful, embarrassing thing to watch.

Many of the more extreme political movements in the world today claim that they are a response to the power and force of the modern global economy and its accompanying set of values. We should not be surprised when Social Media carries such pictures.

Today, young people are building a shared understanding of how the world works through social and other web-based media..

In 2008, a Walmart employee was killed when a mob of deal-desperate Black Friday shoppers tore the store’s doors from their hinges and stormed inside, trampling him to death. The chain was eventually fined $7000 for their role in the employee’s death — but six years and $2 million later, the world’s largest retailer has yet to pay up. I am sure the poor brighter did not collect his Loyalty points either.

The shape of the global economy, media, and world-wide society now being born is difficult to predict. On the one hand, the logic of economic growth can lead to the pursuit of short-term economic gain to the exclusion of other values.

On the other hand, a sustainable growth strategy could help ensure that the pursuit of economic growth factors in long-term considerations such as environmental impacts and human well-being.

Consumerism has is part to play in this well-being but because humans are like wildebeests the advertising industry spends $12 billion per year on ads targeted to children, bombarding young audiences with persuasive messages through media such as television and the Internet.

The average child is exposed to more than 40,000 TV commercials a year and ads are reaching children through new media technologies.

Some researchers say that consumerism is baked into our DNA, nestled in our neurons. They say our consumptive tendencies will forever evolve in response to marketing, culture, policy and changing needs on our one and only, tiny blue planet.

In light of Black Friday let’s rediscover the full meaning of the word consume.

Is it a modern American tradition gone wrong or just one more bizarre piece in the backbone of our wobbly world economy?

Now days to consume has become a negative word, but there are other meanings.

The verb to consume can also mean to enjoy avidly and to engage fully.

More and more people are coming to the realization they much prefer to consume experiences than stuff — they prefer doing over owning.

Nature has massive value that we may never be able to put a value on. This is truth, not a fad or a trend. For example if you love the ocean, share it, and don’t be afraid to consume it in the very best sense of the word. But also, fight for it. Protect it.

Black Friday has its roots in shopping frenzies. Online retailers such as Apple and Amazon have facilitated the spread of Black Friday far beyond its american frameworks, to any would-be consumer with an internet connection.

While it is easy to brush of all this behavior off as dystopian present-day phenomena, consumerism and taste-makers set the course of this nations culture, with purchasing power playing a huge role in the nationalistic negativism of or nations.

The technologies of information, stimulation, and comfort are seductive and addictive. People and their needs remain constant. Little else seems to be very stable. We are literally drowning in information. Still, the great difficulty with the empirical base of the information age is that much of the data we rely on to understand the world we live in is unverified.

So much so that the reality behind all that glam and glitter is that joy of engaging in the natural world might be forgotten.

As Pope Francis succinctly wrote: “Today’s economic mechanisms promote inordinate consumption, yet it is evident that unbridled consumerism combined with inequality proves doubly damaging to the social fabric.”

So what can we do to slow or even work against the hordes of mindless buyers?

We could and should promote a Buy Nothing Day (BND)

A global day of exercised purchasing power, where social activists or other concerned people work to counteract the rampant avarice and shopping orgy of Black Friday with a day dedicated to purchasing… nothing.

Let’s call it neoconsumerism.

Our economies are being artificially kept afloat, and despite all the signs (shuttered businesses, monetary easing, disastrous world politics and energy issues looming), businesses are now pulling out what appears to be the “final act” for the phrase BLACK FRIDAY.

Thank god there are some gnus that are still evolving.

Black Friday Shoppers

These are rich experiences worthy of consumption. Think of the parts of your life that give you immeasurable joy, yet cost nothing taking time to eat good local food and to consume nature, together, is perceived as valuable, because it is valuable.

Many of us worry about the addiction to the information streaming out of smart phones as people walk the street, oblivious to vehicular and even pedestrian traffic.

The market revolution was a boom-period in american culture derivative of advancements in technology, infrastructure, and communications, as well as the shift in public attitudes after the Great Awakenings.

The mirrors, furs, furniture, hats, and fine clothes allowed for consumers to express their individuality, not only as sovereign beings with varied tastes, but as citizens who were beginning to desire a sovereign nation.

Sovereign Wealth Funds. Alarm.

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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Business and Economy, Capitalism, Extreme poverty, Globalization, Government, Greed, Inequility, ongoing Privatization of the world, Privatization of the World., sovereign wealth funds (SWF), The European Union

<img alt=”” src=”http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/04/79/29/e0/1728.jpg”/>
This photo of 1728 is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Its back to my hobby-horse the ongoing Privatization of the World.

It is of course is happening in a clever way, with very careful paperwork, so we have the option of pretending that it’s not actually happening, right up until the bitter end.

I often wonder is it just me. You barley hear a mummer about it from any other quarter. Other than Ireland where the population has woken up to the Privatization of water.

Perhaps it’s that no one gives a tosser.

That our Governments are systematically divesting themselves of bits and pieces of their own sovereignty, by transfer of assets and service functions from public to private hands.

It’s taking place all over the world without really anyone noticing it happening — often not even the people are asked to vote formerly on the issue.

It is my contention that it is the quality of the state rather than the fact that assets are owned by the state that matters more. In developing countries with extensive market and information failures the state should play an important role in promoting equitable development over the long run not sell of their assets to the highest buyers.

At the political level privatization has been challenged by workers affected by attendant retrenchments and the restructuring of internal and external labor markets consequent upon privatization that has resulted in increased worker vulnerability, and by consumers who have often been negatively affected by increased prices based on cost recovery pricing regimes instituted as a consequence of privatization, or by reduction in service provision arising from “efficiency enhancing” measures as a consequence of privatization.

No one knows precisely how much money is held by SWFs but it is estimated that they currently own $3.5 trillion in assets, and within one decade they could balloon to $10–15 trillion. (equivalent to America’s gross domestic product, an amount larger than the current global stock of foreign reserves of the USA which is about $5 trillion.)

Imagine the biggest and most aggressive hedge fund on Wall Street, then imagine that same fund is fifty or sixty times bigger and outside the reach of any other major regulatory authority, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what an SWF is.

The rise of sovereign wealth funds (SWF) as new power brokers in the world economy can no longer be looked at as a singular phenomenon but rather as part of what can be defined a new economic world order.

This new order has been enabled by several mega trends which operate in a self-reinforcing manner, among them the meteoric rise of developing Asia, accelerated globalization, the rapid flow of information and the sharp increase in the price of oil by a delta of over $100 per barrel in just six years which is enabling Russia and OPEC members to accumulate unprecedented wealth and elevate themselves to the position of supreme economic powers.

It will not be long before transactions involving investment by sovereign wealth funds, as with other types of foreign investment, may raise legitimate national security concerns.

Concerns are growing that the purpose of the investments might be to secure control of strategically important industries for political rather than financial gain.

They on the other hand see themselves as passive, long-term investors, driven solely by the need to make a good return on their country’s surplus cash.

There is a degree of looking through the wrong end of the telescope to all this.

Sovereign wealth funds have with total assets estimated at $5.4tn as of October 2013. The funds have gained more than $750bn in additional assets since 2012 of which only $60 billion has gone to recent bank bailouts.

They are rapidly becoming owners of big chunks of American,the UK and Europe infrastructures.

Unlike the central banks of most Western countries, whose main function is to accumulate reserves in an attempt to stabilize the domestic currency, most SWFs have a mission to invest aggressively and generate huge long-term returns.

The origin of these SWFs is not even relevant, necessarily.

What is relevant is that these funds are foreign.

They are state-owned investment pools that thanks to a remarkable series of events in the middle part of the last decade they are buying up your governments services such as water treatment, parking meters, toll highways, rail links, ports, public infrastructure projects, commercial real estate all delivering a lot of cash into the coffers of sovereign wealth funds like the Qatar Investment Authority, the Libyan Investment Authority, Saudi Arabia’s SAMA Foreign Holdings, and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Some recent activity:

(The first was the announcement that the Qatari royal family is planning a large investment in the controversial £50billion HS2 rail link, focused on a major new station and housing scheme in central Birmingham.

Qatar Investment Authority, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, is soon to table a new bid to take over Songbird Estates which owns the iconic Canary Wharf tower in east London, one of the best-known modern symbols of British capitalism.

Libya’s sovereign wealth fund is suing French bank Societe Generale in a British court for $1.5 billion for allegedly channeling bribes to allies of the son of slain dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the country’s sovereign wealth fund could reach $55 billion by March next year if oil prices kept high.

Iran earned $100 billion in oil revenue in 2011. Iran is both the world leader in Shariah Compliant Finance and the world’s most active state sponsor of Jihadist terrorism.

Deutsche Bahn Seeks Sovereign Funds for the state-owned railway, is seeking to sell shares to sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia during the initial public offering. )

What is more to the point, is we’re being colonized/Privatized.

Industry today may not be regarded as such an industry tomorrow, and vice versa. Just look at the explosion of energy prices — thanks to a bubble that Western banks and perhaps some foreign SWFs had a big hand in creating.

Out side any regulation these funds are free to plunder the earth in the form of Hedge Funds( (which they have a bunch) with out anyone knowing who the funds investors are.

The point here is if these funds.

Are not regulated by the relevant international bodies determining which kinds of information about their balance sheets, management structures, investment objectives, portfolio breakdowns, and so forth should be supplied by sovereign wealth funds. The European Union could then put curbs on funds failing to comply with the standards for the publication of such information.

One way or the other they should be Capped ( See previous posts)

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Is Black Friday our worst example of unchecked consumerism.

Sovereign Wealth Funds. Alarm.

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The US government has racked up $16 trillion in debt.

The US debt is now bigger than the entire US economy.

Does it matter? After all, world governments owe the money to their own citizens, not to the Martians.

To pay back one million dollars, at a rate of one dollar per second, would take you 11.5 days.

Thank you for your response. ✨

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