Because they no longer guarantee life and the pursuit of happiness.
I am not talking about you can’t please all the people all of the time.
I am talking about when they come together in the United Nations an out of date organisation with no secure means of funding other than begging. Only when signatory nations are prepared to follow suit with firm domestic policies is a UN aspiration somewhat effective. This never happens on global issues as they are afraid of paying the political price.
On something as fundamental as changing the source of energy which is going to cost trillions. Only governments coming together will there be any effect. They are supposed to be a trustee of the natural resources that citizens depend on for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In modern society, of course, much of the complexity in our lives is placed there by governments, supposedly acting to “help” us avoid failure or to “protect” us from failure.
Instead they are eroding our liberties by collecting reams of information from your digital footprint. Our societies where you’re free to be whatever you want, feels less and less so each year.
They are selling climate dispensations, flogging off natural resources and revenue earning industries to sovereign wealth funds for short gain profits.
Some failures were obviously. They are failing to adequately address global warming. It seems to me that Politicians seem to think that the Marketplace will take care of it.
More visible recently were the bailing out of high-profile banking institutions which are still considered by the government to be too big to fail without threatening the long-term well-being of consumers and the broader economy.
They have created confusing missions that are not be communicated and embraced, and are were easily undermined by rank corruption and unethical conduct, or are beyond careful monitoring through performance measurement and management. They don’t ‘know’ enough to enable them to make effective decisions about the best way to allocate scarce resources with the top appointees unqualified to lead.
The days are gone when many economists believe in the efficient market hypothesis, which assumes that the market will always contain more information than any individual or government.
The implication is that market prices and market movements should be free from interference because markets cannot be improved upon by individuals or governments. However we all know that the invisible hand of the market place will not bring about the changes necessary.
Which brings us back to the United nations. An organisation so infiltrated by lobbying groups that it is danger onto itself.
The world is in a mess due to greed, and democracy as we know it is under attack from unbridled consumerism and Social Media. We have to accept the reality that markets are not motivated by the priority of care. Nor is it the United nations.
Why don’t we the voters demand better representation?
We must demand that the United Nations pass binding people resolution placing a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions , on all Foreign exchange transaction over $20,000 on all other form of Capitalist Activities that function for profit for profit’s sake.( see previous posts)
This is the only way we can take care of our world make Greed pay for it.
More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, sparking a crisis as countries struggled to cope with the influx, and creating division in the EU over how best to deal with resettling people.
Under the terms of the EU’s deportation deal 202 people from Greece to Turkey have to-day being forcibly returned to Turkey.
On the island of Lesbos, which lies just across the Aegean Sea from Dikili, the 136 deportees boarded two Turkey-bound boats in what some witnesses described as a “sedate state”. On Chios, a Greek island farther to the south, violence briefly erupted as police attempted to transfer selected deportees to a third ferry.
The calmness of proceedings belied the horror of what they represented.
“This is the bargaining and bartering of human bodies,”
Only two of the 202 deportees were Syrian. The rests were mostly Pakistanis, and so could have been deported back to Turkey under pre-existing international agreements, or Afghans, who the Greek government claimed had elected to return to Greece of their own accord.
“It is absolutely mind-boggling that neither the media nor human rights organisations had access to the detention facilities to monitor the asylum procedures,” said a Human Rights Watch spokesman.
The first day of deportations has been met with affirmative statements by credible international organisations, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who confirmed that all procedures were regular and rights of deportees were observed.
Even as the expulsions were under way, a rubber dinghy with about 40 men, women and children arrived from the shores of Turkey, and on the other side of the Aegean dozens of others were arrested trying to follow in their wake.
Turks are now putting up blue tarp to stop the prying eyes of the press.
The conflict in Syria continues to be by far the biggest driver of migration. But the ongoing violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, abuses in Eritrea, as well as poverty in Kosovo, are also leading people to look for new lives elsewhere.
Europe needs to be reminded that Deportation from Europe has a dark history.
Without genuine transparency over the enacting of the EU-Turkey deal, pictures alone won’t be enough. Amid this crisis, children are the most vulnerable of all. Many are travelling with their families, while many others are on their own. Every one of them is in need of protection and entitled to the rights guaranteed under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This is an appalling deal.
We that is Europe is responsible in more ways that one for the Crises. If we were less concerned and not driven by fear we would have set up proper immigration enter channels and now of this would now be necessary.
Our world organisation like UNICEF can only stand by and appeal for funds.
There are still millions caught in situations of conflict, displacement, poverty and underdevelopment – the main causes of the crisis
“It’s what happens when the media is not looking that will matter most.”
Tensions in the EU have been rising because of the disproportionate burden faced by some countries, particularly the countries where the majority of migrants have been arriving: Greece, Italy and Hungary.
In September, EU ministers voted by a majority to relocate 160,000 refugees EU-wide, but for now the plan will only apply to those who are in Italy and Greece.
Another 54,000 were to be moved from Hungary, but the Hungarian government rejected this plan and will instead receive more migrants from Italy and Greece as part of the relocation scheme.
The UK has opted out of any plans for a quota system but, according to Home Office figures, 1,000 Syrian refugees were resettled under the Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme in 2015. Prime Minister David Cameron has said the UK will accept up to 20,000 refugees from Syria over the next five years.
Let me ask you.
What would you do to escape ISIS and the Taliban?
Even if we have taken in the odd million.
Shame on us all. That we can’t offer at least temporary sanctuary.
“The journey is difficult but we have no choice,” We have to endure.
The question however is, what (if any) form is worthwhile having or is what we have worth keeping.
I ask this because we are now traveling in some of the Earth,s most unforgiving environments where consensus democracy is just beginning to take hold.
We are entering a period in the world thanks to Social Media where old grudges are arising to the surface and are now threatening to destabilize world peace.
We are also entering a biomedical and silicon society with the recombinant DNA enabling the manipulation of life as its genetic essence.
Physics and Math with the help of computer power is not only revealing how the world works but how the Universe was formed with magnificent and dangerous ways to exploit it.
Perhaps because we are the invasive species of all it’s time we have to ask ourselves is Science and the game changing technology collaborating to destroy democracy or enhance it.
Is it still true to say:
Compared to dictatorships, oligarchies, monarchies and aristocracies, in which the people have little or no say in who is elected and how the government is run, a democracy is often said to be the most challenging form of government, as input from those representing citizens determines the direction of the country. The basic definition of democracy in its purest form comes from the Greek language: The term means “rule by the people.” But democracy is defined in many ways — a fact that has caused much disagreement among those leading various democracies as to how best to run one.
Our governments have made education a chain and ball of debt that locks the mind into materialism.
Instead of looking after their citizens they put ( under the miss comprehension that growth will cure-all ) the Economy first when they should be hanging their heads in shame when one citizen through no fault of his or her own lives life and died in poverty.
There is little point in maintaining a nuclear deterrent if you have to live out you life on the bread line. What’s the point if you all but wiped out before the button is pressed.
I recently visited Singapore Zoo. The youngest zoo in the world.
It sported a simulated Rainforest, a tropical Polar Bear and hundred of school children which will never see any of the Zoo residents in the wild. I could not shake the feeling that I was looking at our feeble attempts to show what was left of values. Perhaps it is because I was seeing a generation becoming bereft of connection to nature.
The caused of our separation from all these things pervade every aspect of our lives.
The rise of personal computer in the form of smart phones solely promoting free-market capitalism rather than equality, and values that count.
Most of us in the west are crying to have our needs met, and eventually adapting to them not being met. Perhaps such an upbringing is necessary in our cultural democracy contex. We are prepared from birth for a competitive dog-eat-dog economy. That expresses itself in greed by the continuing the imperative need to convert all natural and social into money.
All aspects of our present day democratic culture conspire to strip us of our connection and belongingness.
Property rights, Surveillance, Debt based financial systems where money is scarce, religious indoctrination, a legal culture of liability, Racial, ethnic, national chauvinism, deskilling jobs hat leave us as passive helpless consumers of experiences.
An Internet of everything that most impertantly is a metaphysics that tells us that we are discrete, separate selves in a universe of others.
As this world of separation crumbles so will Democracy.
Because of the atmosphere of scarcity is everywhere everything must change.
To appreciate the sweep of change and magnitude you only have to look at Climate change (perhaps its time to put a monetary value on the sky and people will not treat it like a free dump.) and the billions being spent by the Candidates for the President of the USA.
Ted Cruz $65 million
Mareo Rubio $ 17 million
Jeb Bush $104 million
Ben Carson $39 million
Chris Christie $19 million
Donal Trump $6 Million
Hillary Clinton $100 million
Bernie Sanders $42 million
They are transforming modern-day American democracy into a form of theater and television ads. The correlation between big money has condensed democracy into buzzwords, glitz, the main currencies attracting attention on our television screens.
With the wealth of the 62 richest people in the word now standing at over $2 trillion which is the cumulative worth of the poor half of the world population we have Google, Facebook, Twitter and other Corporate giants building technologies with artificial neurons that can learn on their own.
These may in time exhibit intelligent behaviours virtually indistinguishable from those of its human masters.
The question is longer what phone should I get? It’s what ecosystem should I join if any as they could all become the same.
Privacy is going out the window.
There are vats of coli bacteria churning out medical insulin, plastic polymers and food additives that might go where they are not wanted.
Limited world resources and being snapped up by sovereign wealth funds and hedge funds.
Algorithms buy and sell share and currencies making a mockery of the stock exchange.
Fusion power is light years away.
Not everybody is happy with the high-tech changes.
The Web is weakened the foundation principles of Democracy or if not reshaping them.
Our World Organisation are out of date, setting in motion a sequence of events that will change the history of life which is one contingent tale, liable to be rerouted at anytime. ( See previous posts)
We left with the question can capitalism Democracy deliver change.
Not on its own as it is based on greed, power, corruption, non transparency, taxies, to name just a few of its ticking cogs. God forbid its is left down to this man.
There is only one way we can achieve a better world.
Scrap the United Nations which has become a begging Organisation of worthless resolutions.
Replace it with a World Aid Organisation that is financed by Capitalism with a 0.05% world aid commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions.
This would create an Organisation with genuine clout and save Democracy.
I hope this blog will awaken those who are not already conscious. All comments welcome.
The World faces a range of terrifying crises from the threat of climate change to terrorist breeding grounds.
The question is what if anything is our world organisation the United Nations doing about it other than showing its true colour as a failed Organisation which is in need of radical reform or total replacement.
The organisation is now a black hole into which thousands of taxpayers money along with human aspirations disappear to be never seen again.
We all know that it has turned into a farce with no accountability and manifestly incompetent in the light of new technology the current situation it finds its self in is in dire need of fresh thinking.
If you look closely there are few countries willing to commit troop to peacekeeping duties. these days the deployment of troops only adds to the problems of a country and do not address the creation of stable and democratic institutions.
Example are abundant in recent years – Mali, Haiti,
United nations troops know nothing about counterterrorism and are under explicit instructions not to engage in it. They lumber along without any clear goals or exit plan diverting attention from deeper socioeconomic problems, crowding out governments, costing billions, with the unnecessary lost of lives.
Soon there is be the election of a new Secretary General.
Its time for all its members not just the permanent members of the security council to evaluate just what they want out of the United Nations.
The organisation is a Remington typewriter in a smart phone world.
If it is going to advance the cause of peace, human rights, development, and climate it needs a leader genuinely committed to reform.
Perhaps it is time for it to merge with Nato. One way or the other we need more than ever a World Organisation that is led by people for ” whom doing the right thing is normal and expected.
IF THE WORLD IS TO HAVE ANY HOPE AND WE THAT LIVE IN IT ARE TO PASS THE MANTLE OF EQUALITY OF LIFE BEFORE GREED DEVOURS US ALL WE HAVE TO STOP EVOLVING DEMOCRACY BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE SHARE THE BLAME AND MAKE CAPITALISM PAY RATHER THAN EXPLOITING. (SEE PREVIOUS POSTS)
( A one minute obligatory read if you are interested in the planet you live on) .
It is not amazing that the contemporary world is marked by a growing number of problems that are genuinely Global in scope.
Yet instead of addressing them we spend our time discussing ISIS, North Korea, Mr Putin, Worthless Trump, Air Brain Palin, The price of Oil, Stem cells, New Planets billion of light years away, the list is endless rubbish.
In the mean time we have the spread of Zika virus, a blizzard to beat all blizzards, thousands of Refugees, billions being spend of Presidential Campaigns while Inequality spreads like a cancer.
So forgive me for thinking we must be one of the most selfish, stupid, technology driven like button idiots that ever existed on this planet.
Based on the Best current science we are looking down the barrel of a gun with the bullet fired.
There could be no more extreme than current weather patterns, melting glaciers, sea level rising, megadroughts, desertification, deforestation, food supply disruption, famines, infectious disease, mass migration, social upheaval, economic distress, political instability.
All conflict multipliers that will turn Earth into an unlivable cauldron of I am alright Jack.
It seems that few realise how dire this situation has become or is becoming.
All down to human activity that continues to prune the evolutionary tree of life with gay adabondament.
And if that is not enough evidence that we are heading full speed to oblivion. The last Global Biodiversity Report presented some hard facts that the population of vertebrates that include mammals, birds, reptiles, sharks, rays, and amphibians – living within the tropics declined by 59% from 1970- 2006.
Just in case that has not sunk in what they are saying is that more than half of the vertebrate population between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer has disappeared in the last 36 years.
They also found that birds in Europe declined by 50% since 1980. Birds in North America declined by 40%.
Just one more hard fact that it is time to open our eyes. All plants species the foundation of the food chain upon which we depend – are currently ” threatened with extinction.
Yet humans around the world are either unaware of the situation or have their heads buried in the sand, when we should be taking immediate action.
Our consumerist economy that promotes the endless acquisition of products over the conservation of nature would need 1.5 Earths to meet the demands we currently make on Nature.
You might not still appreciate just how bad things are. By 2048 there will be virtually no more wild caught seafood. Our oceans are dying from Lake Erie to the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Mexico the coastal water of Australia New Zealand, dead zones are growing. The Baltic is already Dead. 60% of all coral reef have being turned in to white ghost towns.
I have being lucky in my life to have traveled both by sea and land extensively.
Experiencing nature first hand let me tell you that there is a critical threshold that once crossed will result in a sudden and irreversible change. A tipping point that will arrive overnight. There is no technology that can restore it to its original state.
I might sound overblowing and alarmist but look around you. We have little real knowledge of how the ecosystem works but just because we can’t see the catastrophe doesn’t mean it not real.
After all 99.9% OF MATTER is empty space, yet no amount of squinting will reveal this fact to the naked eye.
What does matter is that our fears accurately track the totality of the evidence presented.
This is why solving the problem ought to be on the top of the list of all superpowers in the world.
The likelihood of this happening is the same as asking is the Pope a Catholic.
Even if it does happen, nobody, no Government, no World Organisation, no Country, no Economy, no joe soap has the will or money to rectify a world that is bent on self-destruction.
This is why we must create a World Aid Fund. ( see previous posts)
It is the only solution that is non Political, spreading the cost across all beliefs all colours evenly.
Go on press the like button if you are one of the Googlefied that think you are living on the Planet. If on the other hand you are truly alive get involved and leave your thoughts.
It’s only right that I follow the last series of posts on what is Wrong with a post that asks the above question.
BECAUSE ITS MONEY THAT IS AT THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM.
I guess the answer to the question “What is wrong with capitalism today?” is dependent on who you ask.
Capitalism works for capitalists.
The Problem is 90 percent of us are not capitalists, we are employees.
Without us noticing, we are entering the post capitalist era.
We need to reexamine the models that have gotten us to this point.
Complete change will not happen overnight. Nor will it be built on the back of one investor or one innovative entrepreneur.
It will be something that business owners, investors, political leaders, consumers and entrepreneurs must all work together toward.
Currently, our planet is on track to fly past the 2 degrees Celsius warming that scientist have repeatedly warned marks the safe range for humans on this planet, but at the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy.
The old ways will take a long while to disappear but millions of people are beginning to realise they have been sold a dream at odds with what reality can deliver.
The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phoney and fragile as East Germany did 30 years ago.
Why should we not form a picture of the ideal life, built out of abundant information, non-hierarchical work and the dissociation of work from wages?
So are we witnessing the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism?
Is technology creating a new route out or is it consolidating power into the hands of a few like Google, Microsoft and Apple?
Will its future be shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours?
Will Capitalism as we know it be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through because of what Information technology has brought about in the past 25 years.
It is blurring the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages?
Or is the current wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.
These are all questions to be answered before we see what I call post capitalism.
The Questions are numerous, and there have been hundreds of books, papers, and talks on the subject few however with any positive suggestions.
Before I put the only suggestion that is viable lets start with what is wrong with the present state of Capitalism.
Here is way I see what is wrong;
Today capitalism isn’t about real markets and commodities with the price mechanism being fixed by competing supply and demand, now today it is about casino economics. You throw the dice and when you loose … all that global connectivity means you lose globally. We are all in this together – that is why we call it a global economy – oh apart from the 0.1% – they are the ones throwing the dice. We are just the ones picking up the tab when the bets don’t come off.
Although economics likes to think of itself as a science in reality it ignores the fundamental laws that govern science – the first two laws of thermodynamics. This isn’t a smart thing to do. There actually are limits to growth.
They told us wealth creation was a trickle down theory but in reality it is a trickle up theory. The rich really do get richer and richer and it is not down to merit. The question is what is going to stop them: war or politics?
The big problem is humans are human, both doing bad things and good things. Capitalism only works if enough of us do the right thing.
The price mechanism is faulty unless it includes the environmental cost now and in the future of our consumption. This it doesn’t done at present and we are free-loading off nature.
Often we think it is the only way to do things. It is not the only way to even do capitalism! Alternatives exist, other brands are available. There are even other ways of thinking about economics that we don’t even call capitalism; they may be a bit racy for us right now so lets start with re-imagining what a good effective form of capitalism could be like if humanity fully realized its role and impact upon the planet that sustains it.
Modern capitalism is so big and complex that who can say that really understand it.
I don’t.
But I do understand by building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, Google and such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.
Never has humanity been better fed, lived longer, used more energy and had more stuff than today so what is wrong.
One of the fundamental faults of capitalism is the basic axiom that if everybody tries to accumulate as much property as possible the general interest of the people will be served.
All this seems to do is create exploitation.
The problem with capitalism is that it isn’t very good as what it says it is good at, spreading wealth, enabling good technological progress and helping us become more human, more free.
Adam Smith – you know him graces the back of the £20 note – founding father of modern capitalism back in the 18th century – hero of Margaret Thatcher. When he famously asserted:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
What Smith was talking about was the idea that self-interest – the rational underpinning of economic man – was not only good for you but for everybody else – society.
Unfortunately the line between self-interest and greed is always fine – and we are human man not economic man and we find it very easy to cross that line – or certainly some of us do – lets call them the 0.1% – the 700,000 of us who have a lot – somewhere north of $5 million each.
The consequence of this trend as it unwinds over time is that wealth progressively becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
The rich get richer – that’s that 0.1% again. Or to put it another way wealth stays with those that are born to it and the idea that merit – how good you are at something – determining your economical price in the market place, or wages as most of would say, becomes far less important than we thought.
In fact there are plenty of things wrong with capitalism.
Those that shout this apparent self-evident reality the loudest own the media, the means of communication, they own your stability through the derivative bets they hold and they are telling you don’t blink – this is the natural way of things , capitalism the way we see it, the way the 0.1% see it.
So the more we have of everything, food, power, stuff, the more energy we must use (even if we get more energy-efficient in doing things).
The nitty-gritty of it is we have fucked up the world with Capitalism idealism.
I don’t approve of Communism or Socialism either, the truth is that every system is flawed.
I think a system which is based on an assumption that man is basically piggish and therefore only fit to look after his own needs; such system impedes rather than promotes the good within each person.
Geographers have away of describing this situation it is called the IPAT equation.
Impact = population x affluence x technology. You note there is no Money in the equation.
The impact.
Physicists would call it entropy, biologists pollution and economists externalities – is of an order defined by how many of us are using how much however efficiently.
If you want impact in a nutshell it is climate change, it is salinization of soil, it is depleting geological resources , it is reducing biodiversity.
There really are limits to growth.
Capitalism is a perpetual motion machine, striving for more and more growth makes us in the long run weaker not stronger. Well, if only we were all-knowing, rational and optimal in our behavior maybe it would be so. But we are not.
In the past the trend towards greater and growing inequality has been neutered by war – nothing equalizes society more effectively than war – we do tend to be all in it together at such moments.
Today in our global economy is held together with a digital architecture that enables the reduction of wealth to so much digital code life has become one big transaction.
The most spectacular aspect of this transactional world is the derivatives markets.
(A derivative is a bet on a price changing within a market – say interest rates, or currency exchange values or a commodity price such as that for coffee. The value of all derivatives worldwide in 2013 is thought to be about $1.2 quadrillion although nobody knows exactly as, a like a lot ordinary betting the betters don’t want necessarily want to admit to it.)
So that is $1,200,000 billion laid out in bets about what may or may not happen.
Billions of transactions.
Let’s quickly remind ourselves. The global economy – the real economy – is worth about $85 trillion – that is about 7% of the notional sum bet on what that economy will do.
Now, take a deep breath and think about it.
If you don’t now believe that we could have another global economic crash in the style of 2008 – a massive bursting asset bubble – you need to think again and cast your eyes to Asia – you might be wondering where much of that quantitative easing – free money that the US and the UK created ended up. Try property speculation in Asia.
We are quickly reaching the tipping point where growth in GDP in any particular country comes at the expense of growth in GDP of another.
We do not have global organizations capable of managing these tension points nor are societies willing to curb growth and consumerism.
Capitalism as currently practiced is simply not sustainable.
Modern market capitalism has shifted recently with the emerging supremacy of money markets and the financial system over the actual trade of goods. Under this, you’ll make more money trading in derivatives than actually physically trading in commodities.
Capitalism, or the recent move into financial market dominated capitalism.
The “new capitalism” is based on mathematics rather than trade; credit default swaps over goods and services; when odds are stacked in the favor of big banks because of hedging, derivatives and CDS’s; when there is little to no penalty for market manipulation by investment banks, power brokers, Ponzi schemers … these inefficiencies in the market cause redistribution of wealth to the people in power who design the system.
The mass media is becoming more and more an opiate, an aid for living the unexamined life. replace it (capitalism)?”
Through the millions spent in lobbing reasonable controls upon business have been removed. The desire for economic success and the influence of the powerful elite have ruined the mass media.
Our political problems have deepened with the demise of unions as an effective political force, the continued growth in the belief in the desirability of pyramid economics and class structure (which has been sold by a media controlled by those at the top of the pyramid), and the dependence of our two-party system upon those at the top of the pyramid for funds to cover their election expenses.
Around the world the gains of increased productivity are wasted by this pyramid structure.
For over 40 years I have watched the gradual drift in the minds of the average person from an understanding of our political economic reality and the need for corrective actions.
Those who dominate the means for the production of ideas have served their class well.
This endless cycle of production and consumption for profit is suicide and profit is pretty pointless when we run out of things to burn and things to eat.
I would suggest a world government dedicated to seeing that: (a) everybody was properly fed, clothed, and housed; (b) everyone worked and received a fair return for their work with none receiving too much; (c) intellectual development for all to be encouraged; (d) businesses are the servant to man; (e) the production of war materials end; (f) the ending of all exploitation, including one region by another or one class by another; (g) and the ending of a press which is controlled by those who make up the ruling class.
We is needed is a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet.
Capitalism is not and has never been designed to work in an environment dominated by market controls, regulations, artificial barriers to entry, monetary manipulation and a myriad of other government interventions.
It is Profit at any cost and having taxpayers bail it out when it goes wrong simply means the risk has shifted from corporation to state, or you and me.
Many would say that means a broken model.
Has a new model started. It all depends on what kind of capitalism we are talking about and what force will be applied either at the ballot box or on the barricades or by the Smart Phone or the Gun.
Another question raised about the proposed strategy is whether it actually adds up to the defeat of capitalism.
Do the numerous tactics described above, most of which focus on what not to do, really do the job? How will capitalism actually be defeated? It’s true that many of these recommendations are about what not to do.
this strategy calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization and putting them into building a new civilization. The image, then, is one of emptying out capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and meaning from them until there is nothing left but shells.
To think that we could create a whole new world of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution or the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy.
Our new social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations.
Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinable, because of the inexorable materialist laws of history.
It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and because we know what we’re doing and how we want to live, what obstacles have to be overcome before we can live that way, and how to distinguish between our social patterns and theirs.
To achieve change we need unlimited finance. Where can we find this? We don’t have to look far.
If a new socialist democratic system is to emerge:
We must place an World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $ 20,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. This will created a perpetual funded Fund to address the damage Greed and Profit for profit sake has done. ( See Previous Posts)
Who do we achieve this.
Our lives have been shaped by developments which most of us couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.
In effect, they are nine distinct psychological orientations toward the world that structure our perceptions, expectations, and demands whenever and wherever other human beings may be involved. These instincts represent our most basic assumptions about how the social world works, and that includes how the political world works.
With the power of our Smart phones the new political weapon of the future.
In the next decade upwards of 100 billion objects from smartphones to street lamps and our cars will be connected together via a vast ‘internet of everything’. This will impact every aspect of our lives.
The interfaces to all our devices from phones to computers, cars and home appliances will be highly intelligent and adaptive – learning from our behaviours and choices and anticipating our needs.
We have to see the world through issues and action.
It does not belong to me or you or any Generation, to any Religion, any Terrorist, any Government, any algorithms, any Holograms, any World Monopoly whether its called Google, Face Book or Twitter, or any Sovereign Wealth Fund ( see previous Posts)
It belongs to Wall Street.
Who was running Wall Street? Humans or machines?
If you thought “humans”, you were woefully out of date.“
Humans just found a new way of being greedy.”
But that not the subject of this post.
There’s a strange relationship between the city and the city dweller. We love it and still recognize that it’s a monster. All that emotion, all the combined suffering and indifference, glory and greatness, bypass the brain and go straight into the heart.
The city cuts straight to the core. Look into some people’s eyes, and their sadness, their pain, is almost palpable.
The city inspires us to see glory beneath the grime and wonder within the wasteland.
But the truth is, the world cannot be organized. To let the world in, you have to let in a world where nobody has the answers.
I think there’s a fundamentalism about technology. Technology itself isn’t going to save us. Technology is wonderful, but it’s a tool.
The world is complex and we all know what is wrong.
What is wrong comes in many forms, shapes, sizes, and it is effecting all of us.
There are a million things going on that are all signs that the people who are the most educated and capable of enlightened action are stunningly unengaged.
Its called Inequality. Created by us which is destroying the world we live in.
It is the root of most of the problems facing the world.
You might have read recently that Finland’s government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic income of 800 euros (£576) a month and scrap benefits altogether, which according to Bloomberg, would cost the government 52.2 billion euros a year.
During the Banking Crisis I advocated that it would have been cheaper for Ireland to have given every voting citizen a Million. It could have been placed in a Government controlled account. Made available to the citizen over a period of 30 years to avoid inflation. Irish Citizens would have been required to cleared all his or hers debts, look after their own health, education, while scrapping all benefits.
It would have stimulated the economy in a controlled manner rather than bailing out worthless banks.
The National Audit Office in the UK said that the Uk spent £850 billion on the bank crises in 2009. That would equate to a £26,562 and fifty pence spend by every taxpayer in the UK.
THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK will begin its €1.1 trillion quantitative easing programme today, the last big weapon in its armoury to get the euro zone going and fend off deflation. None of the newly invented cash will actually be headed to the pockets of EU citizens.
The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks:
Quantitative Easing for the People’ is one of the cornerstones of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership platform in the UK.
The basic idea is simple: A hypothetical Corbyn government would instruct the Bank of England to create new electronic money (the modern equivalent of printing it) to fund public investment projects. The vehicle for doing this would be the ‘National Investment Bank’, which would be charged with funding public investment. The NIB would issue bonds that the BoE would be commanded to buy.
Compared this to the living wage an informal benchmark, set at £9.15 an hour in London and £7.85 an hour in the rest of the UK. It is not a legally enforceable minimum level of pay, like the national minimum wage. ( 48 hours a week on average = 439 euros.)
An ‘inner voice’ tells me that this idea is a step in the right direction to spread the wealth of a nation. Perhaps he should call it regional quantitative easing, but it wont address the bigger world problems.
Realistically we must think of some imaginative ways to create liquidity in the world economy other than secret Trade Deals.
Sometimes it takes just one human being to tip the scales and change the course of history.
In this series of posts we will look into its heart beat of Inequality.
My aim is to stimulate serious academic interest and to inform the developing world. My ambition is to stimulate serious academic interest and to inform public debate on the essential issues. We can’t just wait for the tipping point to be reached so we see clarity as we stare into the abyss.
In no particular order let,s start our Journey to a better world.
The year 2016 I hope will mark a turning point in human history: Helped by climate change because Capitalism will start to be forces to pay for raping the world.
So let’s start Not with Climate Change but WHERE WE LIVE.
IT MATTERS:
The scale of environmental impact of meta cities and mega cities on their hinterlands is significant and is likely to be a cause for concern in coming decades.
The emerging human settlements of the 21st century are Slums also known as shantytowns, squatter cities, and informal settlements.
These places can teach us about where, for better or worse, urban life appears to be headed. “Squatters are the world’s dominant builders,”
They are the Emblems of profound inequality.
When one appreciates this fact one is forced to ponder whether these slums were designed to supplant, integrate or ignore human rights concerns of the world’s poor.
Are they maintained solely as a source of cheap labor or just transitory phenomenon characteristic of fast growing economies — it is impossible to mitigate the expansion of slums in the developing world.
Even if urban poverty is preferable to rural poverty life in the slum constitute a form of poverty trap for a majority of their residents.
In 2005, there were 998 million slum dwellers in the world. If current trends continue, the slum population will reach 1.4 billion by 2020.
It will for the first time equal the world’s rural population.
Although it is difficult to predict on which day or month this radical transformation will occur, what is certain is that this milestone will herald the advent of a new urban millennium: a time when one out of every two people on the planet will be a “city-zen”
At the moment more than 53 per cent of the world’s urban population lives in cities of fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. One out every three city dwellers – nearly one billion people – lives in a slum. Slums are emerging as a dominant and distinct type of settlement in cities of the developing world.
By 2020, all but 4 of the world’s largest cities will be in developing regions, 12 of them in Asia alone. While still few in number, these metacities point to new forms of urban planning and management, leading to the growth of city regions and “metropolitanization”.
Inequality has a direct bearing on patterns of urbanization.
The rich in most countries live a world apart from the poor, with homes in protected urban enclaves and access to the latest technology, the best services and the most comfort. The rest, especially slum dwellers, live in the most deprived neighborhoods, struggling to gain access to adequate shelter and basic services, such as water and sanitation. Many slum dwellers also live under the constant threat of eviction.
Such stark differences and divisions can be found among regions and countries, but also within countries and cities. Especially in the developing world, urban zones of poverty and despair commonly skirt modern cosmopolitan zones of plenty.
If current trends are not reversed, cities will become more and more spatially divided, with high and middle-income residents living in the better-serviced parts of the city
Cities are, and will continue to be, sites of extreme inequality.
China’s recent gains in economic growth and industrialization have in many cases exacerbated environmental problems in its cities. Economic growth has increased consumer purchasing power, with the result that Chinese cities, such as Beijing – once the bicycle capital of the world – are now teeming with motor vehicles, a leading cause of air pollution. There are 1.3 million private cars in Beijing alone, an increase of 140 per cent since 1997.
Since the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, cities of the developed world have become increasingly concerned about their vulnerability to acts of terrorism but this is not the reasons that cities are going to have to change.
Various dimensions of urban poverty is the main treat.
Inadequate and often unstable income, which impacts people’s ability to pay for non-food items, such as transport, housing and school fees. Poor quality, hazardous, overcrowded, and often insecure housing Inadequate provision of basic services (piped water, sanitation, drainage, roads, footpaths, etc.) which increases the health burden and often the work burden.
Inadequate, unstable or risky asset base (non-material and material) including lack of assets that can help low-income groups cope with fluctuating prices or incomes, such as lack of access to land or credit facilities. Inadequate public infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals.
Limited or no safety nets to ensure basic consumption can be maintained when incomes fall and which can be easily accessed when basic necessities are no longer affordable, such as public housing and free medical services.
Inadequate protection of rights through the operation of the law, including regulations and procedures regarding civil and political rights, occupational health and safety, pollution control, environmental health, protection from violence and forced evictions and, protection from discrimination and exploitation.
Voicelessness and powerlessness within non-responsive political systems and bureaucratic structures, leading to little or no possibility of receiving entitlements to goods and services; of organizing, making demands and getting a fair response; and of receiving support for developing initiatives. Also, no means of ensuring accountability from aid agencies, NGOs, public agencies and private utilities, and of being able to participate in the definition and implementation of urban poverty programmes.
In light of recent evidence, even if governments collectively manage to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 – as per the Millennium Development Goals and targets – this achievement will be insignificant in relation to creating “cities without slums”, a stated objective of the Millennium Declaration.
Assuming that the leaders who developed the slum target were aiming to address a major development issue, policymakers should adjust the benchmark to reflect the reality of slums of today and tomorrow.
Viewed through a human rights prism, All fair-minded people, of course, would hope for improving the lives of slum dwellers. Unfortunately, looking closely as far as housing rights are concerned, any improvements far out-number their benefits.
These are a few things we can no longer afford to ignore.
Which practices and policies will steer us in the right direction?
How do we effect change within and beyond the halls of government?
Both formal and informal systems of property rights may be necessary to curb the rapid growth and informal systems of property rights may be necessary to curb the rapid growth of slum areas worldwide.
Slum dwellers should be given title deeds for their plots, in order to liberate the “dead capital” they are sitting on – to enable them to get loans from banks.
Overall, there has been very little theoretical and empirical economic research about how the public policy challenges posed by slums in low-income economies should be addressed.
It appears the United Nations Goals’ are flaws.
The question is how to address them.
Three shortcomings stand out as particularly.
The organisation is out of date, skint, and totally infiltrated by Capitalist values.
The United Nations have strong incentives to maintain the status quo. Unless radically brought up to date and reformed it has no alternative but to maintain the status quo.
Without changes to the United Nations or any other World Institutions the reversal of the lack of governance to represent the people of the world, it is unlikely that any attempts at any form of big push or coordinated investment will have the desired effects.
This is a hidden threats to sustainability.
All changes need financing.
Whether it be Climate Change or giving dignity of a respectful if not equitably life to all, there is little hope of addressing the world problems when so many look at so few. Inequality is incurable.
The only way to lessen its effects is to tap into Greed itself. (See previous Posts)
I believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.
You can’t settle for drops in the bucket. It won’t do to wrap up your garbage, it won’t do to send the contribution. Those are all fine, but it’s not going to make a huge change. It’s just not. It’s going to take all you’ve got too really understand that the stakes are very high.
If you don’t believe me the Sunday Time this week in letters and e mails reported that an organised party of about 60 from the Uk visited the European Parliament in Strasbourg. At the end of the tour each visitor was handed an envelope containing 200 Euros. Apparently each EU MEP is allowed 110 visitors a year, which equates to 22,000 Euros per MEP. With 73 UK MEP,s that in turn adds up to 1.6 million euros.
More than 11m homes lie empty across Europe – enough to house all of the continent’s homeless twice over – hundreds of thousands of half-built homes have been bulldozed in an attempt to shore up the prices of existing properties. There are 4.1 million homeless across Europe, according to the European Union.
Its no wonder that millions turn to daft fantasy – turning the Star Wars films into digitally enchanted Manichaean belief systems. There is a sleazy materialistic, shallowness about it all. We hear much more from them all in 2016.
Let’s address the elephant in the room first.
Profit for the sake of profit has to pay whether its climate change, inequality of opportunity or terrorism.
Education plays a uniquely critical role in addressing the challenges we face.
What we’ve really lost sight of is an education system that teaches how to ethically, effectively and intelligently engage with the world which we will address in the next post.
Each of us, it seems, believe that we are above average. People want to believe the present is different than the past. But while we humans passionately believe that our own current circumstances are somehow unique, not much has really changed since the inarguably brilliant Isaac Newton lost a fortune in the South Sea Trading Company bubble of 1720.
“What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.” ~H. L. Mencken
Because history suggests that we are going down for the count.
Our painting now has a wash of money, a random application of religion and the Gun with a transparent over wash of humanity.
I think it would be a grave injustice to speak of the human species ( Other than ISIS and their like) as in some sense evil, even though we are destroying the environment so efficiently at the present time.
The nature of humankind is to expand its population, to gain security, to control, to alter. For millions of years that paid off without undue damage.
But then what happened was, as we developed a modern industrial capacity, and then the techno scientific capacity to eliminate entire habitats quickly and efficiently, we succeeded too well and at long last we broke nature. And now, almost too late, we are waking up to the fact that we have overdone it and that we are destroying the very foundation of the environment on which humanity was built.
Its time to add a healthy dollop of Earth to our canvas.
One frequently quoted piece of evidence against a Christian green ethic is the command to our first parents to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ (Genesis 1:28).
How should we interpret this?
Does this mean we should be thrilled at increasing populations?
Well, to start with, ‘filling’ is not the same as over-filling. We should also remember that it is only in the last 100 years, that over-populating the world has become a real prospect.
In giving us “dominion”, God appointed us as His stewards or care-takers, and will hold us accountable for the way we discharge our responsibility, just like the husband-men and talent-holders in Jesus’ parables (Mat. 25:14-30, Luke. 20:9-16).
It does not matter whether you are a believer or not the ‘State of the Planet’ makes clear that we are unique in terms of our destructive potential, and we alone must change our behavior in response to moral beliefs and challenges.
People with or without religious belief can (and do) recognise and accept that we have a role as Stewards. It is agreed by ALL RELIGIONS that humans are not simply answerable to future generations for their management of nature, but that they are answerable to the one God who created them in his image so that they would manage the earth on his behalf.
The key or ethical argument – an argument of stewardship, an argument of handing on a world as rich as the one we inherited does not need any religious belief.
The rate at which species are becoming extinct as a consequence of human activity is staggering.
The problem is all around us and we are all part of the problem.
The problem now is recognising this fact. It can be the first step in becoming an active part in the solution
Human beings have created derelict industrial sites, open-cast mines, scrap yards and polluted rivers and beaches. Our current actions are producing greater and more rapid changes than ever before.
There is some pallet of colors to pick from. Soil erosion and loss of fertility. Deforestation Water-quality pollution Waste. Generation and global toxification. Human and cultural degradation. Alterations of earth’s energy exchange with the sun – green house gasses keep in too much heat resulting in global warming.
Our life-styles tend to keep us isolated from the awesome power and beauty of creation. Consequently we loose sight of its wonder, and as a result, we have a poorer understanding of the mess we ARE ALL IN.
Most of us are disconnected from our actions and their environmental effects.
We seldom if ever see our food growing, because it comes from shops. Few people who buy petrol from garages have ever seen an oil production platform or refinery. We may claim to deplore environmental damage, but by acquiescing in the system makes us accomplices in the crime.
We can just continue with the inevitable consequences of ignorance and greed, thoughtlessly bending the world to creating more bits of garbage to amuse ourselves…
No matter which course we take knowledge does not lead automatically to action.
The time has come… to destroy those who destroy the earth.
Why is it that the activities of our one species, aiming at no more than living in reasonable comfort and avoiding hunger, should cause such devastation on the rest of the natural world?
The answer is in our back ground wash, and how it has being applied with greed and corruption of power by all societies.
By now we should understand which of humanity’s activities inflict the greatest damage on the diversity of animal and plants of this planet.
But the problem is we are self centered and look like remaining so.
The average American consumes 40 times as much energy as the typical third-world inhabitant and the average European some 20 times as much.
One European uses as much energy as 20 Bangladeshis.
In short, a change to our societies, our economics, and our politics and our world organisations is needed.
Here is a snap shot of what the Paris Climate Change Conference 2015 is up against.
Qatar :
Qatar’s carbon emissions per capita are the highest in the world and three times as high as the United States’. Qatar, gas prices in Kuwait are among the lowest in the world, while GDP is among the highest. This, coupled with a lack of public transit infrastructure, makes road travel the sole means of mobility for both citizens and businesses moving goods. According to the Global Footprint Network, the average Kuwaiti uses 22 times more resources than the country provides per person.
Ireland:
A fuel farm on the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland, grows rapeseed (canola) plants to ultimately make biofuel.
In 2008, however, Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions per capita were the second highest in the European Union.
Agriculture is the largest source of emissions, but emissions from vehicles have more than doubled since 1998.
However, there have been improvements in recent years: 2009 was the second year in a row in which transport emissions declined, and an increase in renewable sources of energy in the early 2000s reduced emissions from the energy sector by 10 percent in 2009.
Yet Dubai, a city of 1.5 million people (many of whom are immigrants seeking their fortunes, like the workers pictured above), the world’s largest shopping mall, and an indoor ski resort, currently gets all its energy needs from the burning of natural gas, which is why it ranks third on Global Footprint’s list.
Denmark :
A Danish farmer surveys his Christmas trees shortly before they are sold in December 2008.
Denmark’s carbon emissions are half that of the United States’, but its cropland (the amount of viable land that can be used to produce crops) requirements are much higher. Because so much meat is eaten per capita in Denmark, the country must import a large amount of grain—so much that it would take up 215,000 square feet (2 hectares) of land per person, or 2.5 times more land than the country has.
United States :
New York City twinkles at night, with Fifth Avenue and Broadway clogged with cars.
If everyone lived like the average American, the Earth’s annual production of resources would be depleted by the end of March, the Global Footprint Network’s report said.
Americans’ love of road trips, suspicion of public transit, and growing energy demands fuel the country’s high per-capita carbon emissions.
Belgium :
A Belgian farmer drives his tractor in this undated photo.
Belgium’s biocapacity of cropland is extremely low, so much of its food must be imported. This begins to explain Belgium’s high ranking on Global Footprint’s list.
Australia :
A lumberman cuts down a karri tree, a type of eucalyptus, in Western Australia.
Australians emit 28.1 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per person, one of the highest per-capita rates in the world. In addition, the country’s demand for wood, food, and pasture uses the equivalent of 753,000 square feet (7 hectares) of land per person, nearly four times greater than what is available on average around the world.
Canada :
Canada’s biocapacity is 14.92 hectares per capita, 5.5 times average global consumption. So if the world’s resources were as abundant everywhere as in Canada, we’d have more than enough to go around.
Even so, Canada’s cities are energy hogs. The country has the seventh highest rate of carbon dioxide emissions per capita. Total greenhouse gas emissions in Canada rose 24 percent between 1990 and 2008.
The Netherlands :
Sheep near a village in the Netherlands will go toward feeding Dutch citizens, yes, but for the most part, the Dutch consume more than they produce.
The small country, with its high population density and relatively little land area for crops and pasture, consumes six times more resources (energy, food, and more) than it is able to produce, and about three times more than the Earth overall is able to sustain.
God only know what China, India, and Russia and the rest of the world would add.
What ever it is we must spread the riches of World more evenly.
This can only be achieved by making Profit for profit sake create a World Aid Fund ( see previous posts) to tackle the Inequalities, Correct the damage to the climate, and protect what is left.
We all know that there is little point to any thing if we are not alive.
Its time to change from selfie square heads, and like button pressers to searchers.
Where there is poverty we must find it. Where there is pain we must find it. Where there is abuse we must find it. Where there is modern day slavery we must find it. Where there is inequality we must find it. Where there is pollution we must find it.
In fact its time to find what is of value to us all.
Don’t be a square head contribute. All comments are valued.
Our painting of the world now has three elements Money, Religion and the Gun, but how do we knit them together into our modern-day canvas.
We need a large brush of Humanity. We should endeavor to apply humanity as another wash, somewhat like the magnetic field that surrounds the earth in order to give color to the voices, of Humans.
We are all attracted and attached to one another. Money, Religion and the Gun all melt into the background when we apply Humanity.
The continuing changes in the spread, reception, interaction, sharing, and understanding of global information have altered the process of human and technological communication.
The last few decades have seen a growth in the role of the English language around the world as the lingua franca for economic, scientific, and political exchange.
Since its conception, the Internet has, so it seems,revolutionize the ways of human communication. It is the rise of computer-mediated, communication and the Internet, more than anything else, which has and is reshaping the WORLD.
It enables rich (or technology able) countries to take monopoly over the content generated on the Internet and it is becoming a form of cultural and linguistic imperialism in which western values dominate.
Which is one of the reasons why the world is like this – a Mess.
Our application of Human Language will have to be in a medium that is not permanent as you can only recognize and describe language change once it has occurred. So it will be like the Aurora communicating, untouchable, here to-day gone to-morrow.
The Language of Globalization is a relatively recent term used to describe the changes in societies and the world economy that result from dramatically increased international trade and cultural exchange.
However, this term as a concept is being use now in a wider way to describe all aspects of global human existence – social, cultural, educational and political.
The Web/Internet is a process by which the experience of everyday life, marked by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, is becoming standardized around the world.
It has come to define a level of economic, social and cultural activities that have outgrown national borders and markets through either industrial combinations and commercial groupings that cross national frontiers, international agreements that reduce the cost of doing business in foreign countries, or cultural influences of certain societies on others.
Globalization offers huge potential profits to companies and nations but has been complicated by widely differing expectations, standards of living, cultures and values, and legal systems as well as unexpected global cause-and-effect linkages.
In it Capitalist form it has led to the formation of terrorists groups, wars, unsuitability and poverty along with inequality, climate change, driven by outrageous individual and corporate Greed.
To put it simply, information technology has been termed as the medium of a new, and fourth revolution in human communication and cognition, matched in significance only by the prior three revolutions of language, writing, and print (Harnad, 1991).
Information technology impact on how people interact, access information, and share information akin to the Bi Sheng revolution about 900 years ago in ancient China (Song Dynasty). This impact is occur much more quickly than anticipated, leaving all of our World Organisations in need of radical overhaul.
Globalization is believed by some to lead to an end of a cultural diversity as it imposes sameness in the countries of the world; where everyone in the world is the same when we are far from it.
Globalization has been viewed primarily as an economic phenomenon, involving the increasing interaction, or integration of national economic systems through the growth in international trade, investment, and capital flow. However, this definition has expanded to include also cross-border social, cultural, political, and technological exchanges between nations and in particular.
It was hoped that electronic used for communication between groups who have no other language in common, would erode Inequality and take millions out of poverty. To most extent it has done this, removing the middle man, opening transparency to remove corruption.
Unfortunately it is driven by global corporations that are being dragged through Social Media to table of responsibility. While the rest of us are being turned into modern-day slaves bound together by Debt Bondage.
Despite all its apparent benefits, globalisation has some downsides which could possibly derail the world.
Of course years ago none of this mattered as the great unwashed were unaware that they were being ripped off.
Giddens (2000) defined globalization as a separation of space and time, emphasizing that with instantaneous communications, knowledge, and culture could be shared around the world simultaneously.As Paolillo (1999: 1) puts it, in his introduction to a paper on the virtual speech community: ‘If we are to understand truly how the Internet might shape our language, then it is essential that we seek to understand how different varieties of language are used on the Internet.
About 85% of the world’s important film productions and markets use English and 90% of the published academic articles in several academic fields, such as linguistics, are written in English.
The Internet is bad for the future of many languages but it might be the saving grace of many others. It can also argued that the Internet must evolve its own principles and standards in order to grow and maintain as a newly emerging linguistic medium (Crystal, 2001)
It must not be transformed from a tool for information processing and display for the few to make money but become a free tool for all.
It’s important to recognize, though, that it’s our nonverbal communication—our facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, posture, and tone of voice—that speak the loudest.
When your nonverbal signals match up with the words you’re saying, they increase trust, clarity, and rapport. When they don’t, they generate tension, mistrust, and confusion.
Perhaps this is the problem with modern-day communication. The way you look at someone can communicate many things, including interest, affection, hostility, or attraction. Eye contact is also important in maintaining the flow of conversation and for gauging the other person’s response.
You need physical space to communicate many different nonverbal messages, including signals of intimacy and affection, aggression or dominance.
Emotional awareness enables you to:
Accurately read other people, including the emotions they’re feeling and the unspoken messages they’re sending.
Create trust in relationships by sending nonverbal signals that match up with your words.
Respond in ways that show others that you understand, notice, and care.
Know if the relationship is meeting your emotional needs, giving you the option to either repair the relationship or move on.
Our body language, expressions, and words can sometimes fire different signals all at the same time.
Our task is not to make societies safe for globalization, but to make the global system safe for decent societies.
Over many centuries, human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts.
Recently, the pace of global integration has dramatically increased.
Unprecedented changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology have given the process new impetus and made the world more interdependent than ever.
All giving rise to the question:
Why is our world in such a mess and our World Organisations so helpless to do anything about it.
The Answer is simple and can be summed up in one Paragraph.
Self Interest, no long-term planning, greed, unsustainable consumption, religion beliefs, drugs, guns, inequality and our out of date reactionary World Organisations which are not funded and have zero power to do anything about it.
At the turn of the Millennium, the atmosphere of optimism at the end of the Cold War and the confidence that globalization would “lift all boats” led to the belief that extreme deprivation could be overcome without any major change in global economic governance.
Now, after two decades of increasing inequalities and having reached or surpassed many of the planetary boundaries identified by science, it is extremely difficult to argue that the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) can be achieved without affecting some privileges of the rich and powerful.
This won’t happen without social and political struggle.
The good news is that the emerging global consensus is not any more on the side of plutocracies.
The Globalization of Politics, of Culture and of Law sweeps away regulation and undermines local and national politics, just as the consolidation of the nation-state swept away local economies, dialects, cultures and political forms.
Globalization may well create new markets and wealth, but it is a source of repression and a catalyst for global movements of social justice and emancipation.
Even as it causes widespread suffering, disorder, and unrest and now threatens the very atmosphere that we all rely on we carry on regardless of its consequences.
It is beyond comprehension, that we all sit in front of our TV, walk about with our Smart phones and worry about personnel satisfaction when the very world we live in is going to rack and ruin.
In the global partnership for development the focus has shifted towards private sector involvement while minimizing the goals for fair trade, debt relief and neglecting the regulation and control of capital movement.
Multinational corporations manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money, technology and raw materials move ever more swiftly across national borders. Along with products and finances, ideas and cultures circulate more freely.
As a result, laws, economies, and social movements are forming at the international level are woven together in a complex manner, making it difficult to summarize positive or negative effects.
For example, giving the business sector the key role, being a contributor to job-generating growth. This comes before the adoption of “business-binding human rights standards.
However, it also reflects a new concept for “international partnership for development,” which has been based on the following:
(1) promoting fair trade to help developing nations improve their economic performance and revenues; (2) reconsidering foreign debts, which are consuming large public budget revenues; (3) increasing development aid in quantity and quality (the aid effectiveness track was launched in 2003); (4) speeding up technology transfer to help developing nations overcome the challenges of improving development tools; and (5) addressing the issue of medicines for dangerous illnesses, which is part of commitments by rich nations towards developing ones.
However there is little point to the above if there is no funds to effect the reforms. Why adopt goals at all?
Any systematic effort to answer this seemingly elementary conceptual question has been disturbingly absent in all our World Organisations.
UN reform is endlessly discussed, but there is sharp disagreement on what kind of reform is needed and for what purpose.
UN ‘fit for purpose’, but it is important to ask, ‘whose purpose will it be fit for’?
Funding of all UN system-wide activities is around US$40 billion per year.
While this may seem to be a substantial sum, in reality it is smaller than the budget of New York City, less than a quarter of the budget of the European Union, and only 2.3 per cent of the world’s military expenditures.
We needs to move from ‘Billions’ to ‘Trillions.
Member States have failed to provide reliable funding to the UN system at a level sufficient to enable it to fulfill the mandates they have given it.
With the ongoing financial constraints, it has opened the space for corporate sector engagement.
Increasingly the UN is promoting market-based approaches and multi-stakeholder partnerships as the business model for solving global problems.
Driven by a belief that engaging the more economically powerful is essential to maintaining the relevance of the UN. This practice has harmful consequences for democratic governance and general public support, as it aligns more with power centers and away from the less powerful.
Donors’ priorities are limited to humanitarian intervention to help refugees and victims of wars and conflicts and to dealing with security concerns in countries torn by wars and conflicts.
The UN working methods reflect a bygone era.
The question of how a fair sharing of costs, responsibilities and opportunities among and within countries can be achieved in formulating and implementing a Post-2015 Sustainability Agenda is overlooked.
The goal to reduce inequality within and among countries, the goal to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, and the goal to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for development are all unattainable without funding.
The Post-2015 Agenda will only succeed if these goals include specific and time-bound targets and commitments for the rich that trigger the necessary regulatory and fiscal policy changes.
This will never happen.
The five permanent members of the Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States) enjoy the privilege of veto power. This power has been intensely controversial since the drafting of the UN Charter in 1945.
Without the veto privilege. Fifty years later, the debate on the existence and use of the veto continues, reinvigorated by many cases of veto-threat as well as actual veto use.
The UN cannot perform effectively as long as its budget remains tightly constrained.
For all the talk about auditors and oversight bodies, the UN mainly needs cash. Financial reforms must consider new ways to raise funds, including “alternative financing” such as a global system of revenue-raising must be put in place to fund genuinely international initiatives.
There is only one way to achieve this.
By placing a world Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds acquisitions and on all New Drilling licences Gas/Oil.
The foreign exchange market is the largest market in the world, with an estimated $4 trillion of foreign exchange traded per day (2011).
This means that in less than one year, currency worth 25 times the global GDP is traded.
Of this massive amount, international trade in goods and services, which requires foreign exchange, accounts for only a small percentage ($9 trillion per year) of the total trading.
A commission rate ranging from 0.005 to 0.25 percent would generate between $15 and $300 billion per year, of which a substantial amount could be allocated to promote international peace and development.
Add High Frequency Trading and SWFs not forgetting Oil and Gas Drilling and you have a perpetual funded UN.
Apart from the potential to tackle inequalities and injustices worldwide, it would trigger decisive action to protect the integrity of our planet, to combat climate change, and put an end to the overuse of resources and ecosystems by acknowledging planetary boundaries and promoting the respect for nature.
This is the only real solution.
Meanwhile exchange rate speculation accounts for at least 80 percent of the global currency market. These speculative movements, which can take place rapidly and unpredictably, threaten to empty central banks’ currency reserves and trigger financial crises such as those in Mexico (1994), East Asia (1997-98), Russia (1998), Brazil (1999), Turkey (2000) and Argentina (2001).
These crises have had far-reaching socio-economic consequences, throwing millions of people into poverty and unemployment.
Unfortunately, social achievements in reality are often fragile particularly for the socially excluded and can easily be rolled back as a result of conflict (as in the case of Ukraine/Syria/ Middle East), of capitalism in crisis (in many countries after 2008) or as a result of wrong-headed, economically foolish and socially destructive policies, as in the case of austerity policies in many regions, from Latin America to Asia to Southern Europe.
In the name of debt reduction and improved competitiveness, these policies brought about large-scale unemployment and widespread impoverishment, often coupled with the loss of basic income support or access to basic primary health care.
More often than not, this perversely increased sovereign debt instead of decreasing it.
In the United States poverty increased steadily in the last two decades and currently affects some 50 million people, measured by the official threshold of US$23,850 a year for a family of four. In Germany, 20.3 percent of the population – a total of 16.2 million people – were affected by poverty or social exclusion in 2013. In the European Union as a whole, the proportion of poor or socially excluded people was 24.5 percent.
Last, but not least, rich countries tend to be more powerful in terms of their influence on international and global policy making and standard setting. Actions by international institutions like the IMF or World Bank are shaped by their governing bodies, whose composition is directly linked to the affluence of member countries.
Similar patterns exist in donor-recipient relationships or in the dynamics of international and/or inter-state negotiations.
The results can be very tangible, as in the case of the creditor-debtor-relationship between Greece and EU and IMF, or rather subtle as sometimes in the voting behavior of smaller actors in the UN Security Council.
If we are to have a global transformation, it would require not only the mobilization of the international community but also a fair sharing of costs, responsibilities and opportunities among and within the countries of the World. Include fair trade and investment regimes and migration policies, and international financial system reforms; more specifically they include the revision of bilateral and international investment agreements, the creation of a global regulatory framework for transnational corporations, greater flexibility in intellectual property rights protection for developing countries, genuine efforts to combat tax evasion and profit shifting, the creation of a debt workout mechanism for highly indebted countries as well as the reform of existing global economic governance institutions.
Not secret Trade Agreements like the TTP and the TTIP
All countries have responsibilities in this regard, but the rich have a greater responsibility given their capacity, resources and influence in international institutions and economic governance.
A UN study has estimated that about $150 billion per year is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals, including halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, ensuring primary schooling for all children, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.
The richest 85 people in the world own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire global population.
Yes, that equation works out to: 85 > 3,000,000,000.
By the end of 2016 the wealthiest 1% to own more than 50% of the world’s wealth
People everywhere want to be free to determine their own future so we must take the profit out of war and profit for profit sake.
The Conclusion can only be:
That unless we the citizens of the Planet demand change nothing or any reform will be possible. We must make profit for profit sake provide the Funds. Take the current Climate Change Conference in Paris. With no funds any agreements to tackle the problem will be worthless.
If you agree: Join me. Get off your rear end and get involved. ( see previous posts.)
We should endeavor to apply humanity as another wash, somewhat like the magnetic field that surrounds the earth in order to give color to the voices, of Humans.
bobdillon33blog 