Category Archives: World Economic Depression.

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

11 Saturday Jul 2020

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

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(Twenty-minute read) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capitalism is facing at least three major crises.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is clear that Humanity must become the killer app.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE SOLUTION MUST BE INVISIBLE AND APPLICABLE WORLDWIDE.  

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

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

Profit for a Purpose- with-Purpose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

03 Friday Jul 2020

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

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(Twenty-minute read)

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

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

“There is no constant value for human life.”

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

So is it a perception problem? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which issues are the most urgent?

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

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

FOOD.

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

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

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

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

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

HEALTH.

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

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

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

EDUCATION. 

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

HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS. OCEAN CONSERVATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

What if anything can be changed? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a few suggestions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next, we have the advertising industry.

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

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

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

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

Lastly, we must address inequality.   

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

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

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

(see previous posts)

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

We can’t eat drink or shit data.

 

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT ARE MODERN DAY VALUES AND THEIR ROLE IN OUR LIVES.

20 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Future Education., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Poverty, Reality., Reverse racism., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economic Depression., World Leaders, World Racism

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(Twenty-minute read) 

This is a vast subject which is not possible to address in an 800-word blog.

However, values role’s in our lives and their importance is not always fully understood.

Values are the things that are important to us, the foundation of our lives.

What I am interested in here is exploring the influence of technology and its advancement and how it now relates to the modification of cultural values.

Technology commonly exerts a strong influence on daily practices, changing the way values are carried out with each new development.

Will this in the end ‘kill’ our social cohesion and will groups of people be left out? Or will our social interaction become extensive and will our relationships get better? Are there any common values left? 

These are all questions that can’t be answered yet and can only be answered in the future. 

Technology is all around us.

It is so pervasive in our everyday life that it is impossible to get away from it.

It has become almost invisible so that most of us don’t know how to interact in the real world or with our environment, but it is how humans are using technology that is so devastating our common values. 

Before COVID-19 we were already isolating ourselves from physical contact with smartphones.

The virus has pushed us further apart with social distancing, online education, and social platforms replacing almost all forms of entertainment.   

Are we connected better nowadays with social media, or are we worse off?’

One of the aspects of culture and values is social interaction between people. How we behave to one another and in which way we do that. Social media has taken a big role in our social interaction. We no longer have to speak to a person to know what they are doing. We just look on twitter of Facebook. 

Social media and smartphones both are turning us into non-empathic couch potatoes and it is this passive use of technology that is the reason technology is ruining not just our values but humanity itself. 

With the arrival of COVID-19 ( His “epidemic”) technology isn’t allowing the young generation to truly embrace our humanity while creating a gap between generations. 

The real connection such as visual and emotional expressions aren’t shown anymore, because we are looking at a computerized display. This way messages could be understood differently than they should be, because they don’t get to know the real meaning behind the message.

If Facebook was a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest country in terms of population. 

Now is the opportunity to realize this and that we must use technology as a tool, not reality.

Our overbearing dependence on technology can be detrimental to society.

It is not the be-all and end-all of everything. Everyone is entitled to their own values, attitudes, and beliefs.

For example. From the outside, the cultural values ​​of a group can often be difficult to understand. 

In India, 80% of the population practices the Hindu religion. For the believers of this religion, the figure of the cow is venerated and should not be sacrificed. In western culture, this is a strange cultural value, since cows are a source of food and not of worship. 

or

Some people may see great value in saving the world’s rainforests. However, a person who relies on the logging of a forest for their job may not place the same value on the forest as a person who wants to save it.

——————————————————————————————-

Before the coronavirus crisis exploded and confronted us with a life-and-death threat to every corner of our planet those who worked in what could be called taken for granted jobs we not valued neither in money terms or the essential services they provided to us all.

As a result, society discovered new heroes.

Times of crisis bring out the best in us. Superficial concerns fall away and we rediscover what really matters: Our values.

Now that the Pandemic in the western world is coming under control (we hope) and the murder of a colored man in the USA our worldwide values which have been honed by decades of biased history are coming under the spotlight, not just our personal views but societies as a whole.

BUT WHAT ARE THOSE VALUES AND HAVE DUG DOWN TO CORE VALUES AND WILL WE PUT THEM INTO ACTION?

It is easy to compile a list of personnel values and at the same time aspire to universal values of peace, human dignity, equal human rights, and freedom values.   

They are at the core of our being. They are our motivators, our drivers, the passion in our hearts, the reason we do the things we do and feel the way we feel. They help us to make better choices in life, develop healthy patterns of behavior, and form and maintain meaningful personal relationships.

They are the compass guiding everything we do – our choices and our actions.

So, if we want to change the world for the better, then we have to change
our own behaviors.

Living by your personal values sounds easy—at least in theory. Your values, after all, are simply the things that are important to you in life, so it should be natural to live by them.

Here are some more questions to get you started:

  1. What’s important to you in life?
  2. If you could have any career, without worrying about money or other practical constraints, what would you do?
  3. When you’re reading news stories, what sort of story or behavior tends to inspire you?
  4. What type of story or behavior makes you angry?
  5. What do you want to change about the world or about yourself?
  6. What are you most proud of? 
  7. When were you the happiest?

Think about our most important values and to act on them.

Living your values is about more than the big, long-term goals, however, it’s also about the small, day-to-day decisions. Putting them into action each and every day will have a powerful impact on our own wellbeing, the wellbeing of the groups and communities we belong to, and the wellbeing of the whole world.

The passive use of Technology is the reason technology is ruining our Humanity. 

Why is technology ruining humanity?

The only reason people do things is that life gives them the opportunity to do so. Which by extent, whether they know it or not, implies that people value their life.

Behind every use of technology is a person, as behind every murder, there is also a person.

We are about to pass through a long and very painful period of adjustment which is fraught with danger at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.

As the noose of technological enslavement tightens on humanity will our values have any value?

They say that innovations in technology can save the world and is extending democracy. I say that it is concentrating even more power in the hands of a tiny elite.

Personal Values are formulated by a variety of influences, environmental influences including upbringing, religion, friends, family, peers, and, education not by algorithms, virtual reality.    

Until we get better at using technology as a tool I think we’re cooked, we’re going to continue to extinct species and we’re going to continue to dig the hole deeper of the whole eco-social crisis.

If you just hold your cell phone for 30 seconds and think backward through its production you have the entire techno-industrial culture wrapped up there.

You can’t have a smartphone an I pad or use Social media without everything that goes with it. You see mining, transportation, manufacturing, computers, high-speed communications, satellite communications, it’s all there, you see and it’s that techno-industrial culture that’s destroying the world.

The only way we’ll be able to responsibly harness the fruits that technology bears are with a renewed attitude of cooperation and care for the most vulnerable among us.

Technology has given us the tools to reshape how we live in the world; if it also changes the way we interact with our neighbors, it can be transformational.

Technology can inspire progressive social policies. When 62 billionaires have as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, it’s clear that political principles are skewed toward the influential in business.

Overall, technology has the potential to reduce suffering, fight disease, and level the playing field for the poor if we use it as a tool, not as values.

Values are immensely powerful!

We know that human history is full of hideous, horrible acts, but it is important it explains why things are the way thy are. The problem is that is it not taught in schools without warts so no one gets a free pass.

History is the past it cannot be changed.   

But mature humans don’t live in the past and we need to start seeing each other as fellow humans. If we do so maybe we can start addressing the real cause of inequality in our societies which is our present economic systems. 

However, you don’t have to go into the future to see what is happing.  In the last forty years, we have wiped out 40% of our wildlife, acidified our oceans, pumped CO2 into the atmosphere, destroyed vast regions for livestock, ignored world natural disasters all for the sake of short term profits.  

If we don’t have a fucking healthy biodiversity-ecosystem there will be no need for profits or values.

With world economies, slowly reopening, I won’t hold my breath as it is easier to keep viewing thinks as black and white and profit for profit sake, not Clickbait.       

We all deserve to be treated as human beings of worth.

However because values are culture-bound, what’s good for one culture may be (and often is) deemed an abomination by another.

Herein lies the ultimate irresolvable dilemma.

Culture gives us prescriptions for appropriate conduct. When judging values, we should not speak in terms of right or wrong, black or white rather we should look at competing values in terms of better and worse.

Who’s to say what my values will be in 2030?

When I hear competing values shouted by a person from a different culture than mine, I hope to take a deep breath, realize that he/she is simply expressing a deep need they have, and then perhaps I can share my values and needs without fostering judgment, evaluations of their character, or moralistic analysis.

In the end, compassionate dialogue changes live, not right/wrong judgment, or taking the keen. 

All comments valued. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

16 Tuesday Jun 2020

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

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(Twenty-minute read)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is clear that serious reflection is in order.

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

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

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

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

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

Now is the Time for a Revolution in Economic thinking.

A new definition of the “Bottom Line.”

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

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

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

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

The pandemic will continue to change the economic and financial order

forever.

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

ways that will become apparent only later.

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

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

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

The pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of open borders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Normal Economy is Never Coming Back.

This much is certain:

Just as this disease has shattered lives, disrupted markets and exposed the competence (or lack thereof) of governments, it will lead to permanent shifts in political and economic power in ways that will become apparent only later.

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

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

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

One of humanity’s greatest weaknesses is greed. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

01 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Civilization., COVID-19, Digital age., Economic Depression., European Commission., European Union., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Innovation., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., POST COVID-19., Stimulus package., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, World Economic Depression.

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(Four-minute read) 

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

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

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

Creativity is the Most Crucial Factor for Future Success.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do you find creativity?

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

Any creative ideas and comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE WILL NEVER HAVE A PERFECT WORLD, BUT WE DO STILL HAVE A WORLD OF INDESCRIBABLE BEAUTY.

21 Thursday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Disasters., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Evolution., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Aid., World Economic Depression.

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(Ten-minute read) 

There is no such thing as a perfect world here or anywhere else especially when it is inhabited by a species that thinks that it can survive at the cost of all that surrounds it.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

This is true if you can behold what you are looking at while accepting that it can’t be perfect in the true sense of the earthly word. 

We might be living in history’s most peaceful era, with violence of all kinds – from deaths in wars to mass shootings, streets stabbings, in a world as interconnected and algorithmically driven that it could simply spiral out of control with an invisible virus that could kill untold numbers worldwide. 

In some sense, unlike our precedents who had gods for everything, from Wars to Famines we live a great deal of our lives in a reality of only what is visible but there is more and more becoming invisible. 

If all this were really true, it would suggest that an overwhelming proportion of the energy we dedicate to debating the state of humanity – all the political outrage, the warnings of imminent disaster, the exasperated op-ed columns, all our anxiety and guilt about the misery afflicting people all over the world – is wasted.

This is not an irrational thought.

Perhaps we should have or will have enough good reason to assume things will continue to improve but when you live in a world where everything seems to be getting better, yet it could all collapse tomorrow, “it’s perfectly rational to be freaked out,” by COVID-19.

It wasn’t so long ago that dogs gnawed at the abandoned corpses of plague victims in the streets of European cities.

With countries now endeavoring to kick start their economies, lurking behind everything else is our collective inability to act as one, to appreciate or understand that we all live on the same planet with all of its invisibility.  

Rational optimism holds that the world will pull out of the current crisis, but what if it’s the very strength of democracy – and our complacency about its capacity to withstand almost anything – that augurs its eventual collapse. 

We have created – the very engine that is so complex, volatile, and unpredictable that catastrophe might befall us at any moment. If it happens no one will remember the internet.

The worlds we live in are now so self-centered that we see charities begging to save everything from donkeys to starving children, all saturated in a media-era, that is constantly misleading us, with an advertising industry promoting unsustainable consumption for profit.   

Digital technology has unquestionably helped fuel a worldwide surge in economic growth but it has turned us into digital slaves detached from a genuine knowledge of how our world works and concern for the future.  

In these hyper-connected times, our addiction to bad news just leads us to vacuum up depressing or enraging stories from across the globe, whether they threaten us or not, and therefore to conclude that things are much worse than they are.

We live now in the Age of the Take, in which a seemingly infinite supply of blog posts, opinion columns, books, and TV talking heads compete to tell us how to feel about the news. (Including this blog.)

While the usual intractable political disagreements about the state of the planet improvements in sanitation and life expectancy we can’t prevent rising sea levels from destroying your country.

This shouldn’t really come as a surprise:

The internet economy is fuelled by attention, and it’s far easier to seize someone’s attention with emotionally charged argument than mere information – plus you don’t have to pay for the expensive reporting required to ferret out the facts.

Or, worse, is the internet with its social media platforms now counterproductive, insofar as a belief that things are irredeemably awful seems like a bad way to motivate people to make things better, and thus in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The point is that if something does go seriously wrong in our societies, it’s really hard to see where it stops.

We are not merely ignorant of the facts; we are actively convinced of depressing “facts” that aren’t true.

You might argue that comparing the present with the past is stacking the deck.

Of course, things are better than they were. But they’re surely nowhere near as good as they ought to be.

Humanity indisputably has the capacity to eliminate extreme poverty, end famines, or radically reduce human damage to the climate. But we’ve done none of these, and the fact that things aren’t as terrible as they were in 1800 is arguably beside the point.

If you start from the fact that plague victims once languished in the streets of European cities, it’s natural to conclude that life these days is wonderful. But if you start from the position that we could have eliminated famines, or reversed global warming, the fact that such problems persist may provoke a different kind of judgment.

They’d say, the world’s getting better, but it doesn’t feel like that around here.

For people to feel deeply uneasy about the world we inhabit now, despite all most indicators pointing up, seems to be reasonable, given the relative instability of the evidence of this progress, and the [unpredictability] that overhangs it.

And I would say, ‘Yes, but this isn’t the whole world!

Should we be a  little bit cheered by the fact that really poor Africans are getting a bit less poor? There is a sense in which this is a fair point. But there’s another sense in which it’s a completely irrelevant one.

When we don’t see the progress we have made, we begin to search for scapegoats for the problems that remain.

Progress isn’t inevitable, progress is problem-solving but not problem solving that addresses the whole problem.  

Everything really is pretty fragile and it is now beyond a doubt that the world is going into an economic depression. The pandemic has exposed our failings in many ways with the need to reverse that last four decades of the prevailing policies of growth at any cost.

Observations alone, however, will not bring transformation.

God forbid we should be naive to think that once ideas are discussed and made popular they will permeate policymaking and bring about change. In reality in a pandemic it is more than likely with a world economic depression the first thing that happens is not a radical reengineering of the economy. 

What happens is, what is dispensable, how many death can we afford before the economy suffers? Is the loss of life at a level acceptable to big business and the government?

So we will for the foreseeable future lurch forward with broken economies while millions are made scapegoats. Yes, your data will be centralized. The data doesn’t lie. Just look at the numbers, whatever happens, things could always, in principle, have been worse.

If we are not vigilant history shows, that whatever horrors the crises expose they will be covered up in the shattered aftermath.   

It took millions and millions of lives to win your freedom so why should we give it up to AI apps that are non-transparent, non-regulated, owned by you-know-who. 

To save lives Yes. To control lives NO.

We should look at things like climate change and nuclear war and pandemics as problems to be solved, not apocalypses in waiting. But they aren’t newsworthy. And you’ll rarely see a headline about a bad event that failed to occur.

Nature might be healing and the green deal looks like to way to go but a sustainable world requires that we address the world as a whole not just piecemeal solving one problem after another. 

There can be no sustainability with economies that don’t have their activities vetted against the knock-on effects they have on the whole ecosystem of our planet.    

Can this be achieved?

As I have said our problem is that we humans cannot act as one or see ourselves as a whole, inhabiting a planet that is interconnected to each and every one of us.

We will never be able to do so. 

How do we overcome this problem before the damage may not be repairable?

It has to achieve by invisibly means and on a sufficiently long timescale.

There is no reason with the computer power now at our disposal that we could not tap into the greed( profit for profit sake) by placing a world Aid commission of 0.005% on all activities that are not contributing to the health of our planet. ( See previous posts) 

Frankly, we have the knowledge so our prevailing mood of despair is irrational, and a bit self-indulgent.

Stay Alert. 

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

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: WE HAVE THE DREADED C – WORD AND SOON WE WILL HAVE THE DREADED R-WORD WHICH WILL TURN INTO THE DREADED D- WORD.

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., COVID-19, Economic Depression., How to do it., Modern day life., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Purchasing Power., Survival., The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Economic Depression.

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(Four-minute read)

Unless you already live in a cave or you are a complete and total mindless follower of the establishment media, you should be able to see very clearly that our society is more vulnerable now than it ever has been. Just as the course of the virus is uncertain, so too is its likely economic impact.

The reality is that very many people will be caught totally unaware and totally unprepared when the Economic Depression befall our generation…

Although we have all seen recessions most of us have little or no concept of an economic Depression.

A recession persists for 2 or more years.

Its starting gun is.

Two consecutive negative quarters of GDP over 6 months. A rise in unemployment of around 2%.Falls in GDP, Stock Markets, Real Estate prices, Exports/Imports, Real income, Savings rates, Industrial production, Corporate investment, Wholesale/retail sales, Interest rates falling. 

A Depression is altogether another kettle of fish.

Depression means the downturn has lasted a much longer time—usually years—with a much deeper impact.

I am not being alarmist but it’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: A Depression and it will drag on for many years.

True, that this one will not be a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort considering it lasted some 23 years.

Its starting gun is.

When GDP experiences a serious decline greater than 10%.

The Unemployment Rate spikes dramatically sometimes up to 25-40% in some sectors. Credit Liquidity dries up. Banking and Financial Crises rock the world.
Corporate and personal bankruptcies escalate. Corporate and personal bankruptcies escalate. Sovereign Debt Defaults and Bank closures cause a flight to cash, gold, or silver. International commerce and trade are curtailed as Trade Wars break out.
Desperate Currency Devaluations between nations result in a desperate “race to the bottom.” Entrenched Price Deflation replaces concerns over Inflation or Stagflation.
Civil strife sees law and order break down, crime and rioting escalate. Political tensions result in wars and a break down in societies.

Running the money printing presses day & night will not stop a Global Economic Depression. 

Unemployment in both the United States and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege. 

It’s no wonder that working-class person is scared to death they’re going to lose their house, and scared to death they’re going to lose their job and it may prove almost impossible to find another quickly.

So here are a few beady eye possible suggestions:

The sad truth is that the vast majority of people would last little more than a month on what they have stored up in their homes. 

Falling asset values and falling wages or income are a killer if you’re lumbered with high debt and interest repayments. Cash Is King in a Deflationary Environment.

Now is the time for preparation to form buying Co-ops/ Neighborhood Aid associations, Growing clubs. 

The greatest responsibility for healthcare will have to be taken on by community-based organizations and family networks, which would provide services more efficiently than the formal health system. 

Everything comes to an end, including Depressions

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