Here is a nation that made its wealth from an Empire that exploited most of the world.
It is now leaving the European Union which was set up with the aim of ending the frequent and bloody wars between neighbors.
Reneging on its commitment to spend 0.07% of its gross national income on foreign aid because charity begins at home.
In the middle of a financial meltdown, turning its self into a parochial country on the world stage.
Agreed a four-year £16.5bn surge in defense spending in the middle of a pandemic, while 1.9 million of its people are relying on a food bank.
Spending around 160 billion to save 30 minutes by rail from London to Birmingham. (Creating around 30,000 temporary jobs.) While by this time next year there is every likelihood that its unemployed will reach 3 million must of which will be under 25 years of age.
Aid is a fundamental reaction of most individuals when they see or hear of someone in need.
This is why we have appeal’s from saving a donkey to save a penguin to save a child to donate to cancer research to donate to the poor to donate blood to relieve famine.
It is true that aid on an individual basis comes in many forms with countries’ government foreign aid reflecting our collective compassion.
It is also true that Aid is sometimes abused both by the recipient and the giver.
Perhaps the toxic environment caused by the excesses of the tabloid media over the last 30 years and now social media has something to do with our harding attitude that Aid starts at home. But with our inability to act as one on climate change we will all have to become better at emergency aid and rather worse at development aid.
Indeed financial aid over the last 30 years or so has proved to be “an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.” However, in the long run when it comes to aiding it’s cheaper to send them the money rather than them having to come to claim it.
Aid politicized economies and therefore it often comes with a price of its own.
Rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products and create beneficial trades with aid amounts being dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products.
Britain and the USA only believe in free markets that work in one direction.
Aid may be bilateral and multilateral if it is bilateral happens when: the given is from one country directly to another; and multilateral: when is given by the donor country to an international organization such as the World Bank (WB) or the United Nations Agencies (UNDP, UNICEF, UNAIDS, etc.) which in many cases they are the ones who distribute it among the developing countries.
The proportion is currently about 70% bilateral 30% multilateral, according to the World Bank statistics.
Even though the relationship between globalization, development, poverty, and foreign aid is not always clear, as long as the poorest countries are not integrated to work in their own development process, the world has not benefitted or learned from globalization especially from developed neighbor countries, who can give support in many conditions to work from the same goal, the success of development.
Paradox as aid to Africa has grown, the continent has actually become poorer rather than better off.
Of all the aid given to developing countries the smartphone allowed trade to take place without a middle man, and to know the market price has done more than all the billions.
Trade, not aid, it doesn’t have to mean money all the time.
Trade has a long-term impact on international co-operation.
Trade helps developing countries to maintain their dignity,
Trade establishes a strong impression in the international market,
Trade promotes the economical improvement of the country
Trade requires investment first.
Trade is treated as an inefficient distributor of resources. The benefit of trade is mostly confined to an elite group of people in the country.
Thoughtful aid can de accelerate this process.
It is not so much trade vs aid – but what quality and type of aid are given.
But more importantly for us to see the difference it makes. We should be aiding poorer countries to do things themselves, not doing things for them.
( See the previous post on the Solution on how to finance and distribute Aid while maintaining the Mantra Charity starts a home.)
It seems the brightest people are no longer attracted to politics.
John Donne wrote in “For Whom the Bell Tolls”: “No man is an island, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
All human contributions appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
With the current pandemic and economic depression, algorithmic entanglement will stratify the populations of countries with barely a question asked.
Now is the time to challenge and examine their underpinnings, by introducing a software program to examine every algorithm in order to establish whether it is a friend or foe. They must be audited yearly to log and access the contents of their programs, and to be issued with health certificates.
It is not possible to go back to test or analyze why decisions are made by algorithms.
They are learning from the environment surrounding them and once they learn we have no way of knowing to any degree – what rules and parameters they are following at which point we have no way of controlling them or knowing how they react with other algorithms.
You only have to look at the stock exchanges, where they are already trying to outwit search other.
So you can be certain that there is going to be a stock exchange crash not caused by the Economic Depression but rather algorithmic greed for profit.
At the moment it seems that while they are out of sight they are out of mind.
But as we are going to see with any covid-19 vaccine and its distribution, algorithms will create their own rules and inevitably polarize society as a whole.
Where the decision is taken by an algorithm (as to who gets vaccinated or how safe it is when the algorithm could be hacked.) is at stake. Apportioning responsibility to any particular segment of code will be almost impossible.
Because they have no knowledge of what they are even being judged on, they will look for supremacy over each other.
Neither the companies using them nor the people making them take responsibility for how they can wreck lives and reinforce stereotypes.
The people making the algorithms don’t take responsibility for users of their code and the people using algorithms place responsibility on the creators.
Self – regulation is no longer viable because the larger the environment into which they are embedding themselves, the more unpredictable they will become.
Indeed software engineers will soon be extinct.
America’s 45th president likes to tweet.
He does this because he sees it as a way to bypass the ‘dishonest media’. Regardless of how you may want the world to be, the learnings from bulk text feeds are as close as we can really get to how the world actually is.
We must open our eyes to the power of algorithms and how dangerous they can be when unchecked.
These issues are not strange. The software can play you for a fool, but we’re still in the early stages however, they are as of now present in our lives making idiotic shopping recommendations, misclassifying pictures, and doing other senseless things.
History is not a predictor of the future – but knowledge can be – we can’t rely solely on mining historic data to draw conclusions; we need to incorporate expert knowledge.
We are Tick Tocking and Clicking our way to no return.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The present Covid-19 Pandemic might be warping our sense of reality however there is another pandemic that is shaping and will shape our future reality.
We – in many ways, things are way better than they were thanks to technology.
We can work from anywhere because we have the Internet and we have Zoom and all of those platforms.
If you are able to say technology, on the whole, has done well, it probably means you’re in a fairly privileged position.
There’s still a huge digital divide.
Even – there are billions of people who don’t have access to the Internet.
On paper, algorithms sound like the pinnacle of efficiency, but as they’ve become more ubiquitous, there’s a difference between potential and reality both must be separate for the survival of democracy and the forthcoming distribution and administration of any covid-19 vaccine worldwide.
The reality is that Algorithms will be used to distribute and decide who will get the Covid-19 vaccination.
When it arrives algorithms will continue to reflect the biases that it has been and is being trained into machines that are learning a representation of the world that is skewed.
Some will say that Data is neutral. It’s just numbers. It’s just data but the past dwells within our algorithms and the flaws that are in our technology are what’s the algorithm’s information it’s taking in.
I am not just talking about the U.S. presidential election in a few day’s time.
We have already seen artificial intelligence being used in voting or politics how they extend beyond the realm of computer vision.
If we’re defining success by how it’s looked like in the past and the past has been one where men like Donal trump were given an opportunity to Twitt falsehoods, spreading them with the aid of Facebook and others it’s no wonder who gets hired or fired?
Do you get that loan? Do you get insurance? Do you and I pay the same price for the same product purchased on the same platform?
Automating inequality.
Before a human looks at your resume, it gets vetted by algorithms written by software engineers who are involved in the system (without changing the system itself he the engineer is still going to reproduce algorithmic bias and algorithmic harms.)
Any sorts of algorithmic tools that are intended to be used, again, have to be verified for nondiscrimination before it’s even adopted.
We now have an AI system – right? – that can classify skin cancer as well as the top dermatologists but to change society to change what AI is learning in order to create what can be realized is going to be trusted into our lives by the inevitable economic depression.
So a Covid-19 vaccine is going to transfer real power into the world of Data and we can’t fight the power you don’t see, you don’t know about.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We should be warier of their power. People don’t need to understand something to do it. The algorithm does it for them.
They’re are increasingly determining our collective future.
We are already halfway towards a world where algorithms run everything.
With the current Pandemic, it is, not who will survive, but how and at what cost, not just to economic systems but to our hard-earned freedoms.
Times will be rough as society tries to come up with an appropriate balance between who gets the jab.
When algorithms involve machine learning, ( like track and trace ) they ‘learn’ the patterns from ‘training data’ which may be incomplete or unrepresentative of those who may be subsequently affected by the resulting algorithm.
Modern algorithm developers are focusing on creating algorithms that learn and develop with the data that they encounter. Machine learning is the next step that they are aiming for, with the algorithms deciding the input and outputcompletely.
One of the world’s most used algorithms right now is the search engine algorithm of Google. It determines what people find in their internet searches and is the basis of the entire SEO industry, where people try to ensure that they show up in the top spot.
However, algorithms are much more prevalent than that- the Apple FaceID algorithm decides whether you are who you say you are.
Social Media algorithms tuned to your desires and want’s ensures that everything on your feed will be of interest to you without you knowing what data these algorithms use and what they aim for.
(Google’s search algorithm is more closely guarded than classified secret documents)
It is very convenient for people to follow the advice of algorithms if your high-frequency trading on the stock exchange but some algorithms limit people’s worldview, which can allow large population groups to be easily controlled.
This is why many of the issues raised in this post will require close monitoring, to ensure that the oversight of machine learning-driven algorithms continues to strike an appropriate and safe balance between recognizing the benefits (for healthcare and other public services, for example, and for innovation in the private sector) and the risks (for privacy and consent, data security and any unacceptable impacts on individuals).
Algorithms are being used in an ever-growing number of areas, in ever-increasing ways, however, like humans, they can produce bias in their results, even if unintentional.
They are bringing big changes in their wake; from better medical diagnoses to driverless cars, and within central governments where there are opportunities to make public services more effective and achieve long-term cost savings.
However, the Government should produce, publish, and maintain a list of where algorithms with significant impacts are being used within the Central Government, along with projects underway or planned for public service algorithms, to aid not just private sector involvement but also transparency.
Governments should not just simply accept what the developers of algorithms offer in return for data access.
This is now an urgent requirement because partnership deals are already being struck without the benefit of comprehensive national guidance for this evolving field.
Given the international nature of digital innovation, governments, should establish audits of algorithms, introducing certification of algorithms, and charging ethics boards with oversight of algorithmic decisions.
Governments should identify a ministerial champion to provide government-wide oversight of such algorithms, where they are used by the public sector, and to co-ordinate departments’ approaches to the development and deployment of algorithms and partnerships with the private sector.
Transparency must be a key underpinning for algorithm accountability.
Why?
Because it will make it easier for the decisions produced by algorithms to be explained.
(The ‘right to explanation’ is a key part of achieving accountability and tackling the ethical implications around AI.)
Why?
Because they are also moving into areas where the benefits to those applying them may not be matched by the benefits to those subject to their ‘decisions’—in some aspects of the criminal justice system, for example.
Because algorithms using social media datasets like ‘big data’ analytics, need data to be shared across previously unconnected areas, to find new patterns and new insights.
It’s not COVID-19 that will fuck us all its Profit-seeking algorithms.
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.
Never in history is such a question more important. Unfortunately, we live in a world of distractions.
In my previous post to this one, (THE HARDEST THING OF ALL TO SEE IS ALREADY THERE.) I attempted to say that the truth has no past.
By this, I meant that the truth is reality, and therefore religion and the state must be separated.
Only then can one hope for value with the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. A value is considered universal when it goes beyond laws and beliefs; rather, it is considered to have the same meaning for all people and does not vary according to the societies that have evolved.
In fact, cultural relativism is a belief that opposes the existence of universal values; proposes that a value can not be universal because it is perceived differently in each culture.
Given the ambiguity of the term, the existence of universal values can only be understood as the values that have to do with the basic requirements of the human being. Such as Fresh Air, Freshwater, Food, Clean Energy.
Now with AI infiltrating our lives, it seems that the faster we travel, the importance of there place is getting lost.
It seems because there are no universal moral values, our command of science simply can not coexist with morals, and our internet fed imaginations
We talk about the central issues of our times: A universal pandemic, an economic depression, continuing wars, climate change, migration, artificial intelligence, rising inequalities, erosion of the power of the vote, loss of individualism, loss of connection to ecosystems, to mention just a few of the problems to define any values that are universal.
We have many governments doubling down on the blame game and brinkmanship.
We have bioengineering which alone is now much greater danger than a nuclear war.
We have the maldistribution of wealth.
We have world leaders unwilling to see beyond the next election.
We have the extinction rebellion.
We have non-transparent digital data.
We have 10.000 to 130,000 species going extinct each year.
We have a population of 7.7 billion
We have extreme weather and biodiversity loss.
I ask myself why is it that with so many of us tryin’ to improve society, not that much changes but I hope that we don’t make changes to satisfy the noisemakers.
Rather than separating one problem from another, we need to connect them.
i.e. Climate changes to war and war to climate changes.
The question remains.
> How do we the current guardians of the planet achieve a balance between living our lives and the life of the planet, that allows us to live them in the first place.
It is no longer that logic alone will solve the problems, nor protests, or political will but within functional societies, we do still have the ultimate weapon – VIEWING AND BUY POWER and both are available in every type and form of human culture.
They must be added to the deep emotions of religion if we are to achieve change.
The life of now economies and pay later must come to an end if we are to avoid the hazards of the future.
If Extinction Rebellion wants to be heard, it will not do so on top of bamboo towers stopping newspapers to be deliveries, or sticking themselves to windows.
It must use social media digital platforms to encourage its supporters to use their buying power to attack profit for profit sake.
Certain human characteristics as valuable – life regardless of whether or not it is believed in said characteristic.
PROFIT WITHOUT CONTRIBUTION TO UNIVERSAL VALUES IS THE ENEMY.
With these weapons, we can effect change and avoid the hazards to come.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
If one takes a look at the state of the world which has gone through two world wars, numerous pandemics, natural disasters, you could say that its present state all boils down to us, our sense of belonging, our values, our separate cultures, greed, and power.
There is little point at this present moment in us dragging up our past history to ANSWER these questions other than it shows that colonization and slavery contributed to the world’s woes and that we are unable to act as one.
Take climate change.
There is no hope of reducing co2 emissions until we understand what being a human being means.
Until we begin to understand each other there is no hope of tackling any of the current world problems.
So in this post, I am concerned with what has happened in recent times to produce the current century of a world preoccupied with crisis management.
9/11 is my starting point.
Without understanding that Muslims believe that Allaha is the ultimate arbiter of their existence 9/11 was rightly or wrongly declared an act of war against Iraq.
Since then we’ve all been living in the shadow of the World Trade Center that unbridled the economic, cultural, and military power of the US – America First.
The result is continuing wars Iran, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan that are not clashes of civilizations but a clash of ideologies, values, and cultures.
Take Isreal- Palestinian.
It has been referred to as the world’s “most intractable conflict”, with the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip reaching 52 years.
There can be no peace between Muslims and Non-Muslims because what is happing in Israel goes beyond it.
The world is now preoccupied with crisis management so even if the Palestinian case is settled it won’t stop there.
Worldwide wide it is consumerist capitalism versus religion and tribal fundamentalism.
So if religion determines what we believe what does race tell us?
Nothing when it comes to COVID-19 it is non-races no matter whether you are Muslim or Christian the price of faith means nothing if you are dead.
All of us no matter what race you are, Black or White, Christian, Jews, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, call ourselves after the country we are born in only if the expression of religious beliefs is enshrined in the countries constitution with equal rights and freedoms. Where one can be our race and practice our religion.
A sense of self maybe?
Perhaps it is a race that makes us different from others.
The Irish were considered as being subhuman to the British many years ago before the Great Famine in the 1800s.
Lived segregated cultural traditions do not work. 700 hundred-odd years later, even in a Europen union setting Northern Ireland remains a divided society by religious beliefs, and a border created by colonization.
If we were paid a visit by another race that was intelligent to get here in the first place they would not give an F… what race we were or had been.
Not until the human race understand that is one race will there be any hope in addressing the present problems we all face.
This will remain so till there is a solution to the Israelis and Muslim Palestinian conflict which in my opinion can now only be solved with a one-state solution, not two-states which has no hope of removing the inherent flaws and injustices or resentment of both sides.
All are intertwined forces that are both tearing apart and bring together the world.
What am I saying here is that the Middle East conflict is not just over religion or race it is also over land.
The 9/ 11 atrocity claimed nearly 3,000 lives and shocked the world but now many people are unable to remember the date of the tragedy – 11 September 2001 – 19 years ago the beginning of the Iraq invasion. An invasion that totally and utterly did not understand that Islam is not their religion, it is their life and remains so to this present day.
Instead of world leaders making an effort to prevent the Iraqi invasion according to Mr. Bush, there were no options but to use force which has now lead to one of the most inhuman periods in our recent history.
Recent work also shows that Islamophobia in the West is abetting the Islamophobia in China, with global leaders willing to stay silent about the treatment of Muslims.
These days what one hears over and over is the phrase ” What is needed is “
On top of this, we now have a world pandemic, climate change, America, and Britain first, the erosion of any long term policies by social media, the smartphone, and unregulated artificial intelligence, with religion shrinking in a digital world run by Five Titanic digital companies, run for profit.
It might not be possible to carry on in a world of two deities God and Allah.
If you ask me it’s all ridiculous the last ones standing to go to heaven and who will be there to greet them, is God, Allah, or Jesus? It just doesn’t make sense, intellectual, religious-philosophical, or any other sense.
The world whether it is China and the Muslim or whatever has to come together in new ways.
Wars that are now seen by moderate Muslims as virtually and ultimately as a war against Muslims and Islam across the ethic board.
What does the word Islam actually mean?
It means surrender.
And if we want a world worth living on, surrender is what we will all have to do in the end.
Shalom in Hebrew means peace.
Hebrew: shalom aleichom meaning-peace be upon you.
Arabic: salam alaikum meaning-peace be upon you.
So take the knee, not to race, not to religion, but tothe planet.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucks in the bin.
The answer lies basically in this question -why is it that governments can afford a fighter plane, but teachers need to hold a bake sale to buy school supplies.
Understanding how the balance of payments work is key to understanding the monetary leverage that one country holds over another. Based on the modern method of money creation, the functionality of the balance of payments is really a zero-sum game.
Wealth used to be defined as the accumulation of human time and labor.
This is why human time and labor are consolidated under ideologies (eg. Socialism, democracy, communism, etc.), which are framed with borders around cultures, religions, and historical significance. Time and labor are consolidated as a measure of GDP.
World GDP can now be considered the measurement by which human time and labor are used to manage the debt which is a product of the money creation process.
As Yanis Varoufakis says ” It is pointless to continue to do macroeconomics analysts focusing on a single country” “It is not any more trading volumes or fiscal data it is the ebb and flow of financial capital”
There was or there is no need for the Coronavirus to expose still more flaws in economic structures. Inequality is to be seen in foodbanks, people sleeping on the street, the color of your skin, not least the increasing precarity of work, owing to the rise of the gig economy and a decades-long deterioration of workers’ bargaining power.
A Clap will not save nine, but thanks to Covid-19 the bastions of global Capitalism are on hold.
There has never being a more important time to effect change to Capitalism.
So will or can we use the current state of emergency to start building a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
If we don’t, we will stand no chance against the major crisis – an increasingly uninhabitable planet – and all the smaller crises that will come with it in the years and decades ahead.
Capitalism is facing at least three major crises.
A pandemic-induced health crisis that is rapidly igniting an economic crisis with yet unknown consequences for financial stability and all of this is playing out against the backdrop of a climate crisis that cannot be addressed by “business as usual.”
The COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating all these problems with governments playing a leading role, in delivering immediate solutions in the short term. However, the solutions are still not designed in such a way as to serve the public interest over the long term, and therefore they will not lay the foundation for a robust and inclusive recovery.
With reports on the seriousness of the coronavirus evolving each day if not each hour, the eyes of commerce are on epidemiology.
The effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine could become yet another one-way relationship in which corporations reap massive profits by selling back to the public a product that was born of taxpayer-funded research.
The ongoing coronavirus crises are forcing governments to cash out in order to keep businesses, workers, and their economies afloat, but extending loans to businesses at a time when private debt is already historically high. Flooded the world with liquidity without directing it toward good long term investment opportunities like renewable green energy will result in the money ended up back in a financial sector that was (and remains) unfit for purpose.
The ability of companies to service any of this debt is debatable never mind the economies of countries.
This time, rescue measures absolutely must come with conditions attached, bailouts should be designed to steer larger companies but to reward value creation instead of value extraction, preventing share buybacks, and encouraging investment in sustainable growth and a reduced carbon footprint.
It was the high private debt that caused the global financial crisis in 2008. The result of this has been to erode the very public-sector institutions that we need to overcome crises like the coronavirus pandemic.
On top of these self-inflicted wounds, an overly “financialized” business sector has been siphoning value out of the economy by rewarding shareholders through stock-buyback schemes.
If one really looks at Capitalism at its basic modeling – its beating heart is profit for profit sake.
To day’s Capitalist Economics is set up with this mantra, not to serve people’s needs, or to protect the environment, or to spread the rewards, rather to enslave people to the world of consumption- produce something at the lowest cost to produce the highest profit.
Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, the economic uncertainty it has sparked will likely cost the global economy trillions in 2020, the UN’s trade and development agency, UNCTAD, said on Monday.
What is clear is that if politics and trade wars emerged as uncertainties in recent years, now a third leg in the stool holding up global confidence has suddenly gone wobbly.
It is also clear this is going to be a slow-rolling, highly consequential event, that has all the ingredients required for internal strife in many countries.
It is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of these diseases jumping from animals to humans in the years ahead.
It is clear that we need to invest in ending the over-exploitation of wildlife and other natural resources, farming sustainably, reversing land degradation, and protecting ecosystem health.
It is clear that the virus is already robbing the world of carbon reduction and it’s only a matter of time before climate change dwarfs the impact of COVID-19.
It is clear that all country’s fates are intertwined.
It is clear that if there is some message here, it’s that this is totally predictable other than without proper oversight, that AI may replicate or even exacerbate human bias and discrimination, cause potential job displacement, and lead to other unintended and harmful consequences.
It is clear given the growing importance of this powerful technology, AI regulation should not be designed in a haphazard manner. As governments struggle to keep up with the unprecedented speed and scale of technological change, companies are facing a crisis of trust amid the growing “techlash” and are increasingly being called on to self‑regulate the technology they are developing and deploying.
It is clear despite vast efforts worldwide to address the symptoms of the coronavirus pandemic, the root causes have been largely ignored, to rebalance the needs of people, the planet, and animals.
It is clear that there’s a lot still to learn about the virus – and therefore how extensive its impact on the global economy could become. Some of the most basic aspects of the virus remain unknown. It all depends on the eventual scale of the epidemic, and at any given point, no one has been able to say whether it has peaked. We don’t know whether it will burn out, like SARS, or come back seasonally like the flu.
It is clear that the impact on markets not to mention human behavior is far from normal never mind the new normal. We are operating in the uncharted territory and the stark reality is that we as a species are unable to act as one.
It is clear that the last thing we need to hear from brands is that we all in this together. They are simply trying to remain relevant and in demand. They need to rethink engagement data-driven empathy no longer cuts the ice.
It is clear that Humanity must become the killer app.
It is clear that we’re living in a world of transparency and in such a world inequality cannot be tolerated.
It is clear that nowadays, it is no longer enough for a business to figure out how it was going to turn a profit. The social goals of the business – are not mere “add-ons or marketing ploys” they must be “part of the DNA of the business.”
It is clear that an unregulated algorithm-driven world will put its riches into the hands of the few.
The problem that we have is not globalization it is a lack of global governance, a lack of means to address global issues.
To solve social problems such as pollution, poor nutrition, and poverty, climate change, you name it there is only one solution.
At the end of Yanis Varoufakis, The Combination That Changed Capitalism Forever, he promotes the establishment of what he calls a political movement that he calls a progressive international movement that is globally and act like activists locally by using purchasing power, he also puts forward a vision of Capitalism where there is no stock exchange, replaced by private ownership and Greene every bonds backed by treasuries.
The green energy bonds are a must So the young generation is able to buy into the process that creates their destiny.
Purchasing power as an economic power to effect change, unfortunately, is visible and like all things that are visible will not work due to greed, cultural differences, etc.
THE SOLUTION MUST BE INVISIBLE AND APPLICABLE WORLDWIDE.
To create a perpetual ongoing fund that spread the cost fairly to tackle climate change and inequalities worldwide.
Make a profit for profit sake pay by placing a 0.005% commission on all, Hight frequency trading, on all foreign exchange transactions over £50 thousand, on all sovereign fund acquisitions, on all gambling and world lottos, on all consumption advertising, on all dividend payments.
Profit for a Purpose- with-Purpose.
Nearly a third of the world’s oceans and land areas could be placed under environmental protections without harming the global economy.
You cannot put a price tag on nature, but a recent independent report, commissioned by the Campaign for Nature charity, found about $140bn (£110bn) a year would be required by 2030 to place 30% of land and sea under protection.
Achieving the target of 30% protection would lead to increased economic output of between $64bn and $454bn a year.
The benefits to humanity are incalculable and the cost of inaction is unthinkable.
To younger generations, the state of the planet is even more alarming but if they don’t get their proveable faces out of their smartphones and their fingers out of where the light shines we all going to witness horrors unimaginable.
It is clear that a coalition of old folks in the establishment won’t cut it.
All our efforts have to be inclusive, integrating all stakeholders, the earth and all that live, grow, and die on it.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As if the world does not have enough problems regardless of the application, genetic engineering is a very controversial topic in our society.
According to most religious doctrines, life begins at conception, not anymore.
When digital technology took over the world, things we perceived as science fiction became reality. Today the same thing is happening with Genetic Engineering.
Life is made up of just four alphabets that give the instructions, and when we change the guide book we change the being carrying it.
As we are seeing it does not matter what religious beliefs you have or otherwise, the current coronavirus is not fussy who it infects.
We are on the verge of being able to transform, manipulate, and create organisms for any number of productive purposes.
Human genetic engineering may soon be possible. It might well be in its infancy from changing the course of our lives. From medicine to agriculture, to construction and even computing, we are within reach of age when manipulating the genetic codes of various organisms, or engineering entirely new organisms, promises to alter the way we relate to the natural world.
Genetically engineered food is a divisive topic that is deeply embedded in the ongoing debate around climate change, sustainability, and food security.
There are many pros and cons regarding this topic and there are many powerful arguments for and against genetic engineering and gene therapy.
We already improve crops and animals. Why not humans?
Evolution is a change in the inherited characteristics of a population of organisms from one generation to the next.
This happens anyway and genetic enhancement is just speeding up this natural process.
We will have to make difficult decisions in the future on whether we want to play god in order to be able to fight deadly diseases and colonize another planet, grow enough food, replace exhausted resources.
Of course, the big question is.
Is it wrong to play god by effectively creating and changing life?
Altering genes to improve strength, beauty or intelligence undermines the moral and legal idea that all humans are equal, creating further inequality in society – those who are genetically engineered and those who are not.
These individuals would have no say in this, but when they arrive at the pearly gates will they be allowed to enter.
Genetical engineering is an extremely controversial issue without even considering the views of religions. The ethical question becomes even more daunting when we consider genetic engineering as it applies to animal life, particularly human life.
One could say that God has no say about any of this?
The Bible does not directly address the issue of genetic engineering, because genetic engineering was unknown at the time that the Bible was written, so there is a concern that a bold pursuit of advances in genetic engineering is motivated by defiance of God.
God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and overall the creatures that move along the ground.’
The gift of life is a product whether it comes from God or not and can be reproduced and modified to make a better product. So where are we with the artificial manipulation, modification, and recombination of DNA or other nucleic acid molecules in order to modify an organism or population of organisms.
It is my belief that genetic engineering has promised to better mankind, and it is our ethical obligation to research it but not exploit it.
Determine the genetic material of embryos in humans limiting the chances of children’s autonomy to determine their own destinies.
This means that the entire life of children is changed irrespective of their wish. This practice is immoral in nature because it is an unnatural way of molding the life of a human being to become what they themselves do not wish to be, resulting in social inequalities.
All raises a number of significant ethical issues.
From genetically modified crops, using less water to speeding up the growth of plants to adapt to the global warming problem, to the overall life expectancy of animals and humans, to designer babies, to the development of new diseases, or to miscarriages, to resistance against antibiotics, to political decisions, to the uses of genetically modified bacteria for making biofuels, to the use of genetically modified seeds to increase yields and also make plants more resistant to pests, to the whole ecological system, to human behavior.
By treating the human embryo as mere ‘laboratory material’, the concept itself of human dignity is also subjected to alteration and discrimination. Dignity belongs equally to every single human being, irrespective of his parents’ desires, social condition, educational formation, or level of physical development. To create embryos with the intention of destroying them, even with the intention of helping the sick, is completely incompatible with human dignity.
Embryology is governed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.
Human embryos produced for research purposes cannot be implanted into any woman’s womb and must be discarded after 14 days.
In evaluating these concerns, we need to bear in mind that genetic engineering is still young. Some of the possibilities, such as creating new species of superhumans or subhumans, seem highly unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future.
However, there is a need to have morally correct legislation that guides the way science develops genetic engineering otherwise it will be a Pandora’s box of dangerous genetic modifications posing a threat to humanity with the rich in a society enjoying the fruits of genetic enhancements.
EcologicalEngineering, the application of science to the optimum conversion of the resources of nature to the uses of humankind.
NATURE is being distilled—among many forms—into a network, where nodes represent species and links represent interactions between them.
Ecosystem engineering combined with genetic engineering not only impacts communities on ecological timescales but will profoundly shape the evolution of life on Earth. The complexity of an ecological community can be distilled into a network, where diverse interactions connect species in a web of dependencies.
The dynamical consequences of community structure is not yet a well-defined theory for the assembly of communities that incorporates multitype interactions.
The role of these ecosystem engineers has not been considered in ecological network models.
To unravel nature’s secrets we must simplify its abundant complexities and idiosyncrasies.
On the other hand, GENETIC engineering is entering a new phase as the available techniques become much more precise. Precise genetic editing opens up the opportunity for personalized medicine, with treatments tailored to our own unique DNA.
What is becoming possible and what will the implications be?
Just imagine a genetic engineering breakthrough that brings the dream of fixing everything from a deadly disease to environmental catastrophe into reach, simply by cutting and pasting bits of DNA.
Primarily, as with any technology, once it becomes cheap and easy, it’s going to be used more and more – so we can expect an explosion of activity and innovation around genetic engineering in the coming years.
A lot of controversy surrounds “transgenic” genetically modified organisms, resulting in bureaucratic obstacles that mean GM crops are scarcely cultivated across much of the European Union, Africa, and Asia.
For example, if a gene from a pig was inserted into a banana, will people of the Muslim faith stop eating bananas and so on.
Did you know that over seventy percent of all processed foods on supermarket shelves contain at least one genetically engineered ingredient? If you are not eating 100% organic food, you are eating genetically modified foods. It is almost impossible to avoid eating GMO foods. Presently, over ninety percent of the soybeans, canola, sugar beets, and cottonseed oil are bioengineered. Seventy-two percent of the corn is genetically altered. And more and more food products are being altered every day.
Considering every five minutes, there is a new life and every eight minutes a death and none of us last forever.
We all live for a short time in the fourth dimension of time so is any of this relevant.
Leaving apart the ethical issues, let us be optimistic for a while.
Genetic engineering hasn’t, and won’t, stop it raises ethical and moral questions to which there are, as of yet, no clear answers.
How we as a species solve these problems will tell us not only something about the global landscape of moral decision-making but will define precisely where the human race will end up over the next few generations.
It’s not an exaggeration to say genetic engineering could totally alter the way we live – and these changes won’t necessarily be positive.
While we humans are gaining the powers of the gods, we aren’t at all ready to use them. We aren’t prepared to handle these Promethean technologies responsibly.
While the advance of genetic technologies is inevitable, how it plays out is anything but.
A first inkling of where we are heading can be seen in the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry.
When genetic Engineering reaches the mass, the change is going to be permanent.
The overlapping genomics and AI revolutions may seem like distant science fiction but are closer than you think. Because we are all one species. We will ultimately need to develop guidelines that can apply to all of us.
As a first step toward making this possible, we must urgently launch a global, species-wide education effort and inclusive dialogue on the future of human genetic engineering that can eventually inform global norms that will need to underpin international regulations. This process will not be easy, but the alternative of an unregulated genetic arms race would be far worse.
Scientists today have loftier ambitions than building a new app or social media companies.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As global citizens, the news is packed with statistics and updates on the challenges we face. Most of these challenges have existed from time memorial and are too large to be solved by one person at a time and if they affect huge numbers of people we are numb by their enormity.
Photographs can be effective for a while. They capture our attention — they get us to see the reality, to glimpse the reality at a scale we can understand and connect to emotionally. But then there has to be somewhere to go with it.
“There is no constant value for human life.”
Granted that certain global issues cannot be solved by on-the-ground, grassroots-style projects like human rights, climate change, wars, etc.
So is it a perception problem?
No matter how hard we try we are unable to perceive the whole earth never mind the Universe as one.
We witness this many times in history when the value of a single life diminishes against the backdrop of a larger tragedy and now we are once again witnessing it with COVID-19.
We all go to great lengths to protect a single individual or to rescue someone in distress, but then as the numbers increase, we don’t respond proportionally to that.
We don’t scale up, even when we’re capable.
There’s a hard limit to human compassion. The human mind is not very good at thinking about and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals. As the number of victims increases, our empathy, our willingness to help, reliably decreases.
We seem unable to prevent our past from impacting our present?
However, our current behaviors are not shaped by past events but by mass media in the form of social media which is creating self-limiting beliefs.
They appear so real to the extent that we cant hardly tell whether its a self-limiting belief or a real one, as a result, we are unable to see the world correctly, so we look on as millions die.
Numbers simply can’t convey the costs, there’s an infuriating paradox at play.
We know that we must protect the Earth but are unwilling to pay the cost of doing so.
Our problem is to replace the false beliefs we acquired with the right one.
Which issues are the most urgent?
And can one person, really, truly, make that much of a contribution?
Here are some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of if not there are living in coco land.
FOOD.
One in nine people in the world goes hungry each day.
It has been estimated that if women farmers could be given the same resources as men, millions of more people could be fed.
How can it be 2020 and people are still going hungry?
Nutritious food is often more expensive. Visit your local supermarket and compare the price of a punnet of strawberries to a chocolate bar.
Even though approximately 12.9% of the world is undernourished, about 30% of the adult population is overweight.
HEALTH.
In a world of more than 1 billion people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 per day) and 2.2 billion living on less than $2 per day (2011 data)
The reality is far more complex. Untold hundreds of millions of people lack access to essential health services, in fact over half of the world population do not have basic health care. We are a long way from the universal right to health.
Communicable diseases were responsible for 71% of deaths, and low-income countries are the most severely affected.
EDUCATION.
It’s estimated that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.
HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS. OCEAN CONSERVATION
The earth is full. Full of our waste, full of our demands.
The economy is now bigger than the earth, unimaginable, unattainable, and unsustainable. There is no infinite growth possible on a finite planet because nature sets the rules and individual issues mean nothing if they are not attached to nature.
There are countless studies and evidence all around you indicating that the coming crises are inevitable.
If an economy grows at 2% per year, it will double in 35 years.
Imagine twice as much human economic activity as we now have. Can our planet sustain this? Do we need to do this? Why would we want to? Why are we doing this?
Even though a lot of us know that it makes no sense to try to grow endlessly and outstrip the only planet we have.
What if anything can be changed?
We all know that the road to global decarbonization must involve renewable energy.
Although the Paris agreement’s goals are aligned with science, alarming inconsistencies remain between science-based targets and national commitments.
Its a no-brainer in the current emerging global political climate.
Rather than tackle mitigation measures economies are now due to Covid-19 returning to pumping more not less carbon into the atmosphere.
Climate stabilization must be placed on par with economic development, human rights democracy, and peace.
From a money perspective, we can’t help it—we live in a grow-or-die system.?
Currently, we have a system that provides humans to have an innate cost/benefit assessment tool called the smartphone operating at all times.
Here are a few suggestions.
It is now vital that we consider the motivation and funding sources of those who are shaping our worldview.
Money must be created without debt so it doesn’t force us to grow and consumer beyond our means.
New Money must no longer enter circulation as credit, that is, as debt.
It will simply be money spent into circulation by the government as a permanently circulating exchange medium to enable the country’s economy to function.
This money will be equity on the national balance sheet and be our commonwealth.
It will replace bank-created debt-money ending the privilege of commercial banks to create and issue what we use as money.
Then we have trillions in the form of pension investment funds that are nontransparently invested. If we demanded that these funds were moved from fossil fuel industries to green energy industries whose returns are going to be massive we would be reducing carbon emissions by millions of tonnes.
Next, we have the advertising industry.
All advertising that does not promote sustainability should be curtailed by law. We must turn the direction of humanity towards thriving not consumption for profit.
With the coming economic depression, we do have room for growth—the growth of community cohesion and commons conservation. We can grow our efforts to educate our children, care for our people, and care for the planet. We can grow into a more just, caring, sustainable society.
Because we are careering into a world of a few haves and billions of have -not.
Access to information owned by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, to name a few, must become transparent and available to all as the interactions of all our individual worldviews shape the condition of humanity.
Lastly, we must address inequality.
There are now 65.3 million people displaced from their homes worldwide.
Think about that number: 65.3 million. Can you even imagine it?
It’s now or never that we make a profit for profit’s sake contribute to a World Aid fund.
(see previous posts)
As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth has enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”
We can’t eat drink or shit data.
All human comments appreciate. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
bobdillon33blog 