≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAYS. IN ORDER TO TURN THE WORLD AROUND FROM SELF DESTRUCTION WE MUST BUILD A WORLD ON TRUSTING EACH OTHER NOT ON POWER.
We can all see that we must change the direction we are presently persuading our lives before it’s too late. There is no point in living in a world looking over one’s shoulders afraid of being attacked just because we have not the ability to share our lives.
To achieve a peaceful world we must share its resources.
Build shared prosperity by extending the hand of friendship, building hospitals, health systems centres, retirement homes, rehabilitation facilities, schools, with grants free of charge or repayment.
We must make richer societies provide a bigger portion of its wealth to building trust between communities, cultures, countries, tying the world together, not pushing it apart for the sake of I am all right JACK.
The old proverb is true “ YOU CANNOT EAT MONEY “ but you can eat-away trust, which is exactly what Mr TRUMP & Mr PUTIN are doing for no reason other than self glorification.
WHO WANTS TO LIVE ON A WORLD RUN BY MACHINES FOR MACHINES.
NOT ME.
STOP THESE WARS AND START BUILDING TRUST. THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL WE LEAVE SOMETHING WORTH WHILE BEHIND.
THESE ARE THE WORDS OF FELLOW HUMAN, WHO IS RECOVERING FROM A TRIPLE BYPASS NOT A ARTIFICIAL GENERATED ASSHOLE ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS AND ABUSE CHUCKED INTO THE BIN.
THERE IS NO FUTURE UNLESS WE WAKE UP AND GET RID OF THE PRESENT WANKERS THAT THINK THEY ARE RUNNING OR RULING THE WORLD.
REPLACING THEM WITH LEADERS THAT HAVE VISION NOT GDP.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IF YOUNG PEOPLE CANNOT BUY A HOUSE, CANNOT EDUCATE THEIR CHILDREN FOR FREE, CANNOT EARN A LIVING, CANNOT ASPIRE TO UTTER THAN BEING DIGITAL CITIZEN FEED BY SOCIAL MEDIA.
THERE IS NO FUTURE DRIVEN BY CAPITALISM CONSUMPTION, CONSTANT WARS, OR WALL STREET PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAkE.
INFINITE GROWTH ON A FINITE PLANET IS NOT POSSIBLE.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN 10% OWNING THE WEALTH OF THE WORLD.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN IGNORING CLIMATE.
LIVE IN A NOW AND NOT YET LIFE.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN ALLOWING UNFEELING GENERAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO RULE THE WORLD.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN TURNING A BLIND EYE TO GENOCIDES – RWANDA AND NOW PALESTINE.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN AMERICA FIRST.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN SEE EIGHT YEARS OLD PEOPLE BEING ARRESTED AND CLASSIFIED AS TERRORISTS BECAUSE THEY ATTENDED A MARCH SUPPORTING PALESTINE.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN DEPORTING REFUGEES.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN A WORLD WHERE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND IDOLS GOVERN SOCIETY.
THERE IS NO FUTURE UNLESS WE OVER COME THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT OF AGI VERSUS HUMANITY.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN ADVERTISING THAT IS BECOMING PERSONALISED.
THERE IS NO FUTURE IN ALLOWING SMARTPHONE AND PLATFORMS CREATE AND SPREAD FALSE INFORMATION.
THERE IS NO FUTURE WITHOUT ALL THAT STILL LIVES ON THE PLANET.
THERE IS NO FUTURE WITHOUT CLEAN AIR, UNPOLLUTED FRESH WATER AND CLEAN ENERGY.
THE FUTURE IS IN OUR HANDS. GRAB IT WHILE YOU CAN.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS AND ABUSE CHUCKED IN THE BIN.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS THE ENVIORMENT MORE IMPORTAIN THAN THE ECONOMY?
(Five-minute read)
With the continuation of the covid pandemic, this is going to become the big question because the two are intertwined.
If this pandemic drags on, which appears it will do with new variants, the degree of economic harm will become extreme, resulting in a different kind of “ailment” worse than the one we’re supposedly trying to “cure.”
Either way, the current shackling of the economy cannot be allowed to drag on much longer, or we will find ourselves in a full-blown global depression — and then more people will die.
However, if you combine the pandemic with the other major crises Climate Change the Environment wins hands down.
Why?
Because in the long run if the environment is not protected it will inevitably lead to the depletion of economic resources and the destruction of the earth and human life.
In this world, humans are not here for only survival there are many other aspects that are necessary for the lives of humans. The economy is not, and never was intended as, “an end in itself”.
Everything that belonged to humans came from the environment but we can live without an economy, but not without our environment!
We’re all in this together.
There’s just enough truth to that to convince the average citizen — but the more insidious (and, I believe, likely intended) effect is to promote public docility;
To persuade us to go along with any and all directives issued by the authorities.
An economy is good only insofar as it satisfies our needs for freedom to enjoy the actuality of living, not valuing profit over life itself. On the physical level, human lives literally depend on the economy; not only for paying the bills and preparing for retirement but for healthcare itself.
With no economy, there is no point in having a good environment. everything in the history of the world created by humans came from the environment.
A “healthy” economy is an indicator of a “healthy” society. They live side by side.
If the goal of government policy is only “to slow the spread of infections”“
If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.” — Guy McPherson.
The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease. Government handling of any public emergency — if those in power are rational and just — will be balanced with their handling of the economy.
Pope Francis said on Sunday that people are more important than the economy, as countries decide how quickly to reopen their countries from coronavirus lockdowns.
What do you think the economy is?
It is people but unfortunately, with our present system of capitalist economies, people do not benefit equally from its growth. Essential workers versus the unemployed, shareholders versus self-employed, foodbanks versus dialing a meal, the list is endless however without humans, how can we hope to repair anything?
To remove these inequalities is impossible but an economy based on universal basic income for all would allow people to look after themselves rather than state handouts.
Providing inflation was controlled it would go a long way to leveling up.
Instead, the possibility of dictatorial governments using technology data is now on the cards. This fear is exacerbated by the average person’s lack of reflection on just what “the economy” is, and what it means to both individual freedom and the public good.
History has shown us we shouldn’t underestimate the threat to our liberty arising from the government’s response to Covid. There’s no reason to assume that after the pandemic — if there is an “after” — all democratic governments will voluntarily relinquish their newly acquired power.
Sure the government’s first obligation is to ensure people can survive both Climate change and the virus but without the means to change the way we live our lives it will be meanless.
So it’s time for the media to make the cost of human life better understood.
It’s time for the advertising industry to stop promoting consumption for profit.
It’s time to regulate Profit for-profit technology such as non-transparent Algorithms.
Either we are really all in this together or we are not.
Of course, together will remain only words till we address the weakness which is at the heart of any nation-state project ( Like the current Vaccination program)
The vast majority are unable to participate because of a lack of compensation, by the capacity ( notably economic) of the capitalist system to ensure that everybody enjoys certain equality of access to material well-being. A Basis Universal income would rectify that.
Modern societies can easily get by without cultural integration, tolerating a situation of competitive pluralism of values without automatically sinking into anarchy feared by the sociological tradition of inequality, if given the means to do so.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse are chucked in the bin.
We, humans, live on an ecologically fragile planet with limited resources that must be sustained for future generations we must move humanity to an alternative world system — one committed to social justice, deep democracy, environmental sustainability, a safe climate, and planetary health.
The COVID-19 pandemic contains the fuel for social change – verbal with little imagination as to what to change.
History tells us that social changes can occur quickly once economic, political, social structural, and environmental conditions have reached a tipping point.
Humanity is now obviously at a crossroads or perhaps several crossroads: one is business-as-usual which is sure to result in dystopia; another is a shift to some variant of green capitalism, which is gaining considerable support; and finally an eco-socialist vision that, while muted at this time, will hopefully become stronger as the need for it becomes more apparent to the mass of humanity.
Thanks to Covid -19 the world is off-balance – and it will remain so for years to come.
Far from settling into a ‘new normal’, we should expect a COVID-19 domino effect, triggering further disruptions – positive as well as negative – over the decade ahead.
It has underscored the interconnectedness of our natural, social and economic systems, and provided a stark reminder of the scale of systemic risks that can build up when we allow weaknesses and negative impacts to accumulate over time.
Continuation on the current pathway will, over time, only lead to deeper and deeper crises, including an ever-escalating climate change crisis, the result of growing greenhouse emissions spewed by the capitalist treadmill of production and consumption.
Combating both climate change and global capitalism go hand-in-hand however the raw truth is that Capitalism will certainly not consciously permit the eventual demise of global capitalism and the emergence of an ecosocialist world system promoted by many.
In previous posts, I have advocated that without funding all alternatives will fail whether they are green capitalism and existing climate regimes, including the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, which is not sufficient to mitigate climate change in any serious way.
How can we expect the system that created the problem to solve the problem?
Despite the daunting difficulties that much of humanity currently faces, and will continue to face over the course of this century capitalism today continues unabated to pump Co2 into the atmosphere and will continue to do so after the Climate Summit this year in Scotland. (By the deadline of December 31, 2020, only 70 out of 192 countries had presented their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs): the individual commitments made to fight against climate change.)
One doesn’t have to have to be a delegate to this summit to know that if we manage to get on top of the current Pandemic which is bleeding the coffers of countries endeavoring to save their economies the emissions will triple on returning to anything that looks like normal.
Of course, we will be told that we have learned the lesson that Green is the way forward. It is true to say that the construction of ecosocialism needs to be based upon a commitment to a long-term sustainable balance between sociocultural systems and the natural environment but it is also true to say that the capitalist world system continues to self-destruct due to its exploitative, oppressive, socially unjust, and environmentally unsustainable practices – this will continue with artificial intelligence to plunder the earth for a profit with machining mining called data, fed to machine unregulated algorithm, making us all but powerless.
Ecosocialism constitutes a vision against the mal-distribution of resources on a global scale that capitalism produces is bound to keep alive, notions of social justice and equality, deep democracy, and socialism in oppressed classes.
It is only by spreading the cost of change fairly that we can reinvent capitalism.
We could adopt a universal wage and let people fend for themselves but this won’t change our habits.
It is time to envision future scenarios and strategies for achieving an alternative world system.
Once again here’s how.
Because we live in different cultures, transparency is vital to address the main problem – Inequality in all its forms.
To do this the cost of change has to be spread fairly.
This can only be achieved by making a profit for profit sake contribute.
Not by taxation, IMF loans, foreign aid, or begging charity aid programs.
The UN is now relied upon by the international community to coordinate humanitarian relief operations due to natural and man-made disasters in areas beyond the relief capacity of national authorities alone.
We currently have the technology that maximizes profit and future profit, like high-frequency trading that runs 90% of world stock exchanges.
THERE IS NO REASON NOT TO PLACE A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE TO CREATE A PERPETUAL FUND TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER PRESSING WORLD PROBLEMS.
ALL OF ITS AID WOULD BE GRANTED NON-REPAYABLE.
THIS FUND COULD BE ADMINISTERED BY ELECTED MEMBERS.
ALL PROJECTS OTHER THAN DISASTER RELIEF WOULD BE SUBJECT TO APPROVAL AGAINST A WRITTEN EARTH CONSTITUTION THAT TRULY ALIGNS MARKETS WITH THE NATURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS ON WHICH WE ALL DEPEND.
It is about building real resilience, driving equitable and sustainable growth, and reinventing capitalism itself.
PROJECTS THAT MEET THE REQUIRED PERMATERS WOULD THEN BE ELIGIBLE FOR FUNDING.
TO AVOID CORRUPTION AND LOBBYING ALL APPROVED PROJECTS ARE PLACED IN A TELEVISED YEARY DRAW.
50,000 – 100,000
100,000 – 250,000
250,000 – 500,000
500,000 – 1 MILLION
1 MILLION AND GREATER.
Here is a suggestion that could be funded.
Products Labeling.
Marketers use labeling for their products to bring identification to impart information to the consumer about the product. They allow customers to know about the item and give necessary messages including ingredients, instructions, and uses.
Why not their carbon footprint with a symbol showing their contribution to Carbon emissions.
Human and nonhuman, have a natural right to sustenance.
( See the previous posts on a world aid commission.)
All human comments and imagination appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Since its creation, Capitalism has been reinventing itself.
If we look at COVID-19 through the lens of disaster capitalism, it promotes free-market, for-profit corporate solutions that may succeed in creating company profits but ultimately fail in terms of democracy, fairness, and justice.
The total mortality from COVID-19 on a global scale is as yet unknown, but we have been thinking of it as a disaster for months now till the arrival of a vaccine
What exactly is the disaster, then? What makes something a disaster?
Why aren’t other more deadly causes of mortality (heart disease, cancer, diabetes) considered disasters?
Just imagine if cancer, heart disease, and diabetes were framed in the same language and sense of urgency as COVID-19.
This is difficult to imagine because chronic morbidities are a built-in artifact of the disaster that free-market capitalism has created.
A society that is organized around the principle that companies should not be prevented from making things that kill people must also accept as ‘normal’ that many people will die in large numbers from these things.
We now have what’s called Disaster \Capitlism enriching the few.
No longer able to sustain itself by selling dreams Capitalism now thrives on the management of nightmares online.
Why?
Because of several events.
The Financial Crash in of 2007–2008 – Save the banks – Save the Economy – not the people – GDP at any cost.
Covid-19 is now an opportunity to rebalance power and wealth in society.
It has exposed the need to move GDP away from growth at any cost which makes no economic sense to start saving for the rainy day and redistributing wealth to those that make it possible in the first place.
Covid-19 or rather with the arrival of vaccines Post covid -19 is an opportunity to rebalance both power and wealth in society, away from labor and towards capital or the other way away of capital to labor.
Even Diasters relief is transformed into profit and the current pandemic will be no exception as we are experiencing not one, but two disasters.
There is the virus, and then there is the societal reaction of bringing our entire fiscal and economic infrastructure to a near-complete standstill affecting the most vulnerable social and economic groups.
There’s been a lot of dithering about whether or not COVID-19 is a disaster but rest assured if big business activities have the way they will seek to create products that consumers purchase due to fear of some type of potential or impending disaster.
Over time, the termdisaster capitalism will be applied to profits made due to climate change that will generate anxiety that can only be relieved by consuming a given product.
Creating responses that may have a much more deleterious effect than the virus itself.
Now is the time to move away from GDP to the distribution of wealth.
We have witnessed the weakening labor and strengthening the power of Capital with stimulus quantitive easing and tax cuts – corporations dished out cash to their shareholders to buy up their own stock during the Financial Crises.
Which would you pick?
The current capitalist objectives of growth at any cost – GDP
or
The redistribution of economic wealth, to one and all, by the introduction of a Basic Universal living wage.
Save for the rain day
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
In these extraordinary times, I am sure I speak for world citizens that we count on our leaders to bring out their statesmanship and have the courage and imagination to think and work together to fight this pandemic in equally extraordinary ways.
We may be about to face the perfect storm:
A humanitarian disaster, global recession, severe de-globalization, the crash of healthcare systems, social breakdown, conflicting nationalism not forgetting the power of AI, and its algorithms all point to the need for value realignment.
Many of the issues have a history of a basis. So potential risks and ways to approach them are not as abstract as we may think.
How do we actually design a new system that can understand and implement the various form of preference and values of a population?
The ideal system is, of course, a balance between all the needs of the numerous stakeholders the people, and the earth we all live on.
So how do our societies reconcile their own historic aspirations while we are struggling with a world of ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE that is isolating us all into data?
Neither China nor the US, Iran, Indonesia, or any country can insulate themselves from what is to come. COVID-19 should be the exception to — not the extension of –geopolitical rivalry. It should be an opportunity to recover trust rather than advance mistrust.
HOWEVER, WHAT WE WILL WITNESS IS OUR COLLECTIVE INABILITY TO ACT AS ONE. (DUE TO A MENSTRUUM OF REASONS FAR TO LONG TO ADDRESS HERE.)
From what we see to date:
With the erosion of democratic institutions, with the rise of the right, loss of jobs, false news, rising inequality, foodbanks, our inability to tackle Climate change, stop wars, without any robust mechanisms of oversight and accountability for Profit-seeking algorithms there seems little hope for future generations.
Artificial intelligence now embedded in our daily lives has still to show empirical evidence that validates that AI technology will achieve a broad base of social benefit we aspire to.
We need a community of researchers worldwide to really understand the range of potential harms that AI systems pose. The use of data, machine learning, their applications to society – Face recognition -Track and Trace- all in use without any regulations.
Therefore there is only one solution to the problems facing us all and that is the introduction of a basic living wage for all.
Why?“
Because Cash is the best thing you can do to improve health outcomes, education outcomes, and lift people out of poverty. It’s the only solution to an economy where a small group of people is getting very, very wealthy while everyone else is struggling to make ends meet.
It would remove the problem with existing welfare programs that keep people below the poverty line a form of structural inequality.
It would also cost governments less simplifying welfare programs.
A guaranteed income would give young couples the confidence they need to start a family.
From a macro viewpoint, it would give society a much-needed ballast during a Depression.
It would offset job losses caused by technology.
What are the downsides?
Inflation.
Who funds it?
Many would support it if tech companies with profit-seeking algorithms paid for it.
High-frequency trading.
Hedge Funds, Sovereignty wealth funds, and currency trading over $50,000
Cash is King.It’s an idea that is long overdue.
Both the Current pandemic and Automation are fundamentally changing the structure of the economy. Proposals for various forms of regular cash assistance are increasingly part of the political conversation. And in fact, the cash payments of 2020 are serving as something of a real-life test of the principles behind UBI, even if there are important differences.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The covid -19 pandemic is changing everything. Unfortunately, our politicians are not used to this kind of emergency.
But they may soon find that their preferred economic cure to the coronavirus will long outlive the enemy it was intended to fight.
After all, income taxes were first introduced as temporary measures intended to address a short-term crisis and are still with us today.
As western leaders learned in the Great Depression, and after the second world war, to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone.”
The only way to achieve the above in a world that is driven by greed is by implementing a universal basic income that is funded by greed.
We all witnessed the Financial crises. How governments introduced Quantitive easing by issuing billions to banks. It did not stop it from spreading throughout a single economy, the economy of a region, or economies worldwide. Asset prices saw a steep decline in value, businesses, and consumers were unable to pay their debts, and financial institutions experience liquidity shortages.
If we learned anything it was that putting trillions into the mouths of the greedy did not help the poor. As income inequality continues to grow and the disruptive impact of technology leads to less security and stability for a growing list of industries and careers, a Universal basic income can protect people from slipping through the ever-expanding cracks in our social safety net.
THE PREPANDEMIC case for a universal basic income is both simple and seductive.
It is the most efficient way to get money into the hands of individuals and prevent the economy from seizing up completely—and because it largely cuts government bureaucracy out of the equation.
Until this year, it was mostly an idea that lived on the margins of the political mainstream, debated and discussed in academic circles, and overlooked by almost everyone else. Then, as with so many other things, COVID-19 changed everything.
Helping us overcome that challenge isn’t the only thing a UBI could do.
Take, for example, its impact on homelessness, “a guaranteed annual income would also help to make it far less likely that job loss, divorce, family conflict, domestic violence, injury, or illness result in homelessness.
UBI “could be transformational.”
“Beyond defeating the disease, the great test all countries will soon face is whether current feelings of common purpose will shape society after the crisis.”
Humans need work more than work needs us. “Poverty and income insecurity translate into expensive health care needs .“Income is the leading determinant of health.”
But the most important contribution that a UBI could make to our lives is raising our expectations of what governments can—and should—do.
It holds up a guiding point by which to assess government initiatives to alleviate poverty, to reduce income inequality, and to address precarity in the labor market.
Just as we saw a major reassessment of the role that governments should play in the aftermath of the Second World War, we may well see a similar adjustment in the wake of COVID-19.
Dead people don’t pay taxes or contribute to the GDP. They remain in permanent lockdown.
At least with UBI when a vaccine does arrive you might be able to afford to buy it and make better choices in saving yourself.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The Covid-19 doesn’t just call our bluff it is questing the way we allow our society to be run.
It is bringing into sharp relief what some of us have always known to be true. Our current way of living must end.
Capitalism and the culture of hierarchy that props it up is now extremely screwed up.
The story of Capitalism up to now has been selling your labour so you don’t end up on the streets.
We should not behave to exist this way.
We come into this world kicking and screaming for our own needs while our birth’s, and our eventual departure’s, have all been turned into a product by capitalism to generate profit. We leave silent.
We live in a world where nearly everything has some kind of cost and the increased workforce automation is suggesting that things will keep getting worse.
What is considered valuable by man or the people of this world are of little or no value when one is confronted by a virus (which unfortunately some of us are witnessing this very minute) that does not discriminate any grounds.
Money, wealth, riches, gold, property, power and so on are either transitory, fading or can be destroyed in the blink of an eye and are of no value in the long term.
In the past few years, the money markets have fallen in a heap with the global financial crisis and the value of money becoming very shaky. The same can be said of shares, property and other investments. And this is nothing new for the economic cycle goes through boom and bust every seven to ten years making fortunes at one time and destroying them at other times.
However, men believe that wealth gives you the power to be able to rise above the problems and issues of the world.
How wrong he is.
The coronavirus is not the only virus we have to confront we also have to confront capitalism and the world that sustains it.
Climate Change was not enough to make the world pause.
The challenge man faces is that we think only of the here and now.
We now have a moment to consider what a rapid response to the climate emergency would look like – how we build a society that completely transforms our social order towards something that is in equilibrium with the biosphere and gives to each according to their needs.
But will more sustainable capitalism emerge from Covid-19 highly unlikely as the protection of private interest over public interest remains the same?
What the coronavirus has and is showing is that our cheapskate governments can provide far more in social programmes than they have.
While none of us can predict the future let’s hope that this time the penny drops.
The risks of Covid – 19 are now but the risks of climate change with the clock ticking needs us to wake up before the alarm goes off.
It’s not science, not protest, that will save the planet. Science alerted us to global warming but understand the nature of the world is crucial to dealing with it.
Everything has a function and our function is to fit into our world and not divorce ourselves from nature.
With the age of technology and its Algorithms working themselves into everything relentless, enabling profits to disappear far from the trickle-down effect the coronavirus is revealing heroes and villains across the world.
The markets might be paralysed with numerous industries entering a state of suspended animation the environment is getting a recovery period.
Covid -19 is showing us that on the horizon, capitalism in its current form threatens value. It is built on the premise of instant gratification.
Many businesses today are aware of this failing in mankind and play to it to great effect encouraging us to insure ourselves against the cost of living and dying but we are now trading for time and for eternity.
The corona-virus is certainly a much greater reward than the fleeting pleasures of this life.
The new WFH world that emerges from this will be intriguing – Universal Basic Income.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. IT’S TIME TO ASK SOME WHY’S?
(Four-minute read)
Don’t answer the questions below, put some thought into their overall meaning.
AGAINST THE QUESTIONS THAT THE CORONA VIRUS IS AKSING OF ALL OF US THEY ARE ACADEMIC.
We, as humans, ponder about the life around us everything in life contradict itself to the point of confusing all of us?
What we call the modern world has brought its own unique set of problems: from the Coronavirus, huge food waste to climate change to an increasing wealth divide.
The western belief in ‘progress’, that each generation will be an improvement on its predecessor, for a long time has held true.
However, it seems this might no longer be the case as life at the moment isn’t about finding the answers, it’s about examining our atmosphere. From the nature of the universe (that’s if there is only one) to the purpose of dreams, there are lots of things we still don’t know – but we might do soon.
Leaving the usual unanswerable’s aside, like what is reality, what is life, do we have free will, is the universe deterministic, what is consciousness, will there ever be a theory of everything, what happens after you die, what comes after homo sapiens? the two most common questions at the moment on our lips – Are you alright? How are you?
Old solutions to solve to run an increasingly chaotic world requires governing elites to spend a lot of time spinning and inevitably tempts them into keeping lots and lots of secrets, to include telling the public exactly what they’re doing.
Even post-Snowden, is an increasingly secretive and intrusive national security state the “new normal”?
The timing is fortuitous because I’m pondering a number of big questions these days and I’ll be interested to see not what some of the nation’s best scholars think about them but you.
So for what they may be worth, here are my top 10 Why Questions, with plenty of blame to share on all.
There’s a pattern of contradiction in most of them that lead to a series of more ‘why’.
Once there is danger, there is hope; when there’s truth, there are lies.
Why am I asking these question?
Because we all have to, not someone to get serious about real the state of the planet we all live on.
Do we really value life so much if we make death come to others?
Why is there school when we don’t learn real-world skills?
Why do I have to get up every morning to go to work?
Should the wealth of Economies give us all a Basic Income?
Why do we demean everything not human if it’s what brought us life?
Taking the coronavirus and climate change are we better together or in isolation?
Will Europe ever get its act together?
If opposites attract, then why is there still war?
Why Bush is president of US?
What is the reality of immigration?
What is a world without Earth?
Go through life knowing that your world could mould into a piece of grey dust at any point; an experience that dust at your high to prepare for your fault, your decline because it will come to snap at you.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
“As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social and political inequality.” Yuval Noah Harari.
Is he right?
Thanks to digital data, the state is able to have visibility on its population but is unable to govern concretely. Indeed, how can effective public policies be put in place if we can not quantify the objectives to be achieved according to the realities already observed?
The crucial problem isn’t creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms.
Consequently, by 2050 a new class of people might emerge – the useless class. People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable.
Technology is never the main driver of social progress. Technology is only an amplifier of human conditions.
Why then, do we keep hoping that technology will solve our greatest social ills?
Technology has done nothing to turn the tide of rising poverty and inequality.
Yuval Noah Harari sees the problem clearly, “The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?”
Software is eating the world. More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services.
Most of what people learn in school or in college will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40 or 50.
We need to change what we value. If we don’t our political and economic systems will simply stop attaching much value to humans. Even in an age of amazing technology, social progress depends on human changes that gadgets just can’t deliver.
What should we do?
We can’t move from the world we have to the world you want without a total paradigm shift
But what is the truth? What about reality?
Do we really want to live in a world in which billions of people are immersed in fantasies, pursuing make-believe goals and obeying imaginary laws?
Well, like it or not, that’s the world we have been living in for thousands of years already.
In order to move forward, we need to embrace technology both as a means of production and a method for producing new roles while not allowing code itself to push us into oblivion.
The world may well be becoming more equal with more technology however rather than transferring wealth from the middle-class to the tech elite it does not distribute wealth universally.
This can only be achieved by moving to Universal assets ownership.
A Universal basic salary will only fuel consumption.
I think most people really do want to believe that they’re contributing to the world in some way, but consumption without a purpose will indeed lead to creating a whole class of flunkies that essentially exist to improve the lives of actual rich people.
Of course, I can hear that Universal Asset ownership is a Socialist idea. But in a world that is now driven by the technology of detachment, we must find a way of engaging in sharing responsibility and rewards.
Sure there are plenty of ways to contribute to society, other than ownership, but, if we are to act as one people, we must be free to decide how and want to contribute.
Returning to the Question of DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP.
I think most people do not want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they will have to do next.
If the hegemony of Google is to be demonstrated, we must also understand that the company is filling digital governance that states are struggling to reclaim.
We’ve been taught for the last 30 to 40 years that imagination has no place in politics or economics, but that, too, is bullshit.
So here is a solution.
The trove of data generated by every digital citizen should not be held by governments or companies but by citizens themselves.
If not the digital companion whispering to our ears the next stage will be delimiting the good of the bad.
We already have social-style scores, anyone who has shopped online with eBay has a rating on shipping times and communication. There is a lot of data being collected with little protection, and no algorithmic transparency about how it’s analysed to spit out a score or ranking.
I am not advocating here China’s social credit system which is a vast plan to monitor citizens, judging citizens’ behaviour and trustworthiness. The potential for abuse is enormous. The Social Credit System is in large part a direct response to a collapse in public confidence in government officials and others in positions of authority.
I am advocating a system of social credits to reward projects that reduce climate change, social inequality and that promotes free education.
Why not use human wisdom, not machines, to move our world forward.
Democracy as we know it will not survive the Forth Technological Revolution unless we all have a stake in it other than the vote.
Looking at the state of the world the idea of a ‘useless class’ might feel abstract to most of us at the moment and will remain so until we use our buying power as our voting power to effect change.
Right now we’ve got upside down democracy where every decision has been made globally, behind closed doors by corporations. If the people see no point in a democracy, because it seems to have no relevance to their everyday lives and the situation in which they live them, they will not do anything to defend it or take part in its processes.
With Universal Asset ownership business can become part of the solution,
not part of the problem.
That’s a project we can all get behind.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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