Tag Archives: Capitalism and Greed

THE BEADY EYE TAKES A LOOKS AT THE WORLD:

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Evolution, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Sustaniability, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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( A ten-minute read)

Putting religious beliefs aside ask yourself or Google a question :

WHAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD?

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "what is wrong with the world today"
There is no shortage of people who know what is wrong.

The most frequently cited reason is probably the decline of religion, specifically the religion of the person writing it.

The list is endless.

Lack of respect for elders, unregulated capitalism, greed, alcohol, the economy, the rich, attachment, premarital sex, liberals, the unemployed, pride, lawyers, apathy, Starbucks.

The planet itself is fine and does what it does best which is to exist, orbit, and rotate.

The real question is what is wrong with our civilization?

We live in a world where text messages surpass face to face conversations.

We live in a world where if you didn’t snapshot it or post it to Facebook, “it didn’t happen”.

We live in a world where our self-esteem is managed by the amount of “likes” on our selfies and statuses.

We live in a world where our tv’s and cell phones get thinner and our bodies get thicker.

What happened to the world where everyone minded their own damn business?

What happened to the world where people actually knew their neighbors and didn’t fear them?

What happened to the world where people got together and lost track of time because they didn’t have their phone attached to their hip?

What happened to the world where people could voice their opinion without getting hate mail?

What happened to the world as one nation under God?

The answer I suppose depends on seeing the world within framed views of rich and poor.

What is clear is that people’s desires are contradictory, so it becomes a matter of democracy.

The problem is that most people fail to see things from other peoples perspectives. There’s no right or wrong. Just different point of views. People have become greedy and have forgotten their own truth but what happens when people stop caring.

I’m going to assume almost everyone knows that poverty is a huge problem in so many countries across the world, you’re not starving right now but you know there are hundreds of thousands of people that are.

I thought by the end of writing this, I would know what was wrong with humanity, but I don’t and I would be most grateful to anyone that can offer an explanation.

I think it was Einstein who said that ” we seem to have found the way but lost the destination”. We all seek understanding and sympathy if not empathy.

Industrial Civilization leaves us slaves to nothingness and our last days are spent in a hospital where machines are our mothers.

The only thing that is certain in life is the depravity of mankind.

As a species, we generally are self-destructive, greedy, and overpopulated.

We are the only species that hunts on a full stomach, enact genocide, and create wars by selling arms.

Unfortunately, the current technological advances are not going change the fundamental problem of what we call civilization.

Ever since the dawn of our species through no fault of our own, we have been unable to act as one : (FOR THE COMMON GOOD).

EVER POLITICAL IDEOLOGY HAS BEING BASED ON GROWTH.

We now enter a new age of TECHNOLOGY where data is feeding artificial intelligence that is, in turn, fanning advances in the world of scientific research, that is and will have far-reaching consequences on all aspect of living.

However, despite thousands of academic papers on the subject, our current civilization relies on trial and error.

The core of our present-day technology is flawed in as much as it is going to created greater inequality. While we are busy focusing on computer intelligence artificial intelligence might arrive in a living form first and bring with it unprecedented ethical challenges.

THE CORE OF SCIENCE SHOULD BE TO GENERATE KNOWLEDGE THAT OTHER PEOPLE CAN TAKE AND BUILD ON.

We need to push the frontiers of our knowledge with deep knowledge far beyond cool social apps, and neural networks that are presently trampling over moral boundaries.

We need more minds thinking about where it’s all going to end up and not allow computers to figure out for itself.

OUR CIVILIZATION NEEDS TO WIN THE RACE BETWEEN THE GROWING POWER OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE GROWING WISDOM WHICH WE WILL MANAGE IT.

EVEN IF THERE IS AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY TO HELP HUMANITY FLOURISH THERE MUST BE A LINE DRAWN SOMEWHERE.

As always it is our complacency that is the real threat to the world.

So I leave you with these questions.

How can we ensure that artificial intelligence is developed in ways that benefit all parts of society, and serves the public interest?

How can we design meaningful public engagement around the future impact of AI technologies?

FINALLY, ANY AI THAT GAINS CONTROL OVER IMPORTANT SYSTEMS WITH UNSUPERVISED INTELLIGENCE IS GOING TO POSE AN EXISTENTIAL RISK NOT JUST TO THE PLANET BUT TO HUMANITY AS A WHOLE. SO EMPOWERED IT WILL BECOME UNQUESTIONABLE.

The more AI advances into a general purpose technology that permeates every corner of life, the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in the hands that serve a few instead of the many.

Most of today’s and past world problems have their roots in Inequality.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT DO HEATHROW- GATWICK- THAMES WATER- BLACK CABS, AND 73-89-355-361 OXFORD STREET HAVE IN COMMON.

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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( A Fifteen-minute read)

THEY ARE ALL OWNED BY SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS.

While Dads Army negotiates the UK way out of the EU, 97 sovereign investors — state pension funds, central banks, and government ministries are collectively holding $12tn of  British assets.

The invisible hand of capitalism has the UK by the short and hairs.

We are a stone throw away from a crucial point in the current Brexit negotiation, should those who own Britain be nervous.

Given the uncertainty over taxes on imports and market access, when you wake up one morning and your investment is worth 20 percent less than the previous day, that’s going to have an impact on investors who are starting to question the future of Britain as an ‘investment hub’ in Europe.

The gap between the rhetoric of the economic recovery and Brexit negotiations is beginning to make the young of Britain to reject the status quo.

We live in an era where heated rhetorical battles are fought over terms that have lost clear meaning.

It is this morass rhetorical debate that defines what is wrong not just with Brexit but what is wrong with capitalism and socialism.

There is no need for a referendum or survey to tell you the truth. You don’t need jargon or ideology for a case against the status quo.

Surely it’s time for England to focus its imagination on not making the past more beautiful than it ever was, rather than imagining a better future by focusing on what is truly critical.

The creation of real stakeholders in the country. Not just the rich but among it’s poor.

The big misconception of the EU is that it has to do with money.

All knowledge centers must be connected together to imagine a world in new and exciting ways.

Walling yourselves in for personal security and economic security will be a disaster in waiting.

Before Brexit barely a day went by without a major multi-billion dollar fund from one petro-state or another making some splashy acquisition.

You could say that London financial center for all attentive purposes turned a blind eye to – from  – why – where or how the money was acquired.

Chinese: firms bought up British assets worth $11.3bn (£9bn) last year and have spent nearly $50bn in the last decade on acquisitions into the country.

Norway:  It bought 73-89 Oxford Street — a development currently under construction — for £276.5 million and spent a further £124 million buying 355-361 Oxford Street.

The Norwegian fund — which is worth roughly £720 billion — already had a significant footprint in London, and owns a 150-year lease on roughly 25% of Regent Street, another of London’s most recognizable shopping streets.

The fund also owns parts of New Bond Street, properties on Savile Row, the street famous across the world for its tailors.

Outside London, it owns half of Sheffield’s Meadowhall shopping center.

As well as spending £400 million in London, the Norwegian fund bought a €1 billion (£850 million) office development in Paris and spent around $665 million (£534 million) on office spaces across New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco. It also purchased two further UK properties for a combined £5.7 million, with one retail unit, and one described as being used for “logistics.”

It also has 70 percent stake in five properties in Tokyo, Japan.

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund, known as PIF, is turning the PIF into a global giant by giving it ownership of state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, which is preparing for what could be the world’s biggest IPO.

The PIF is also behind several large real estate developments in the kingdom, including a new city called Neom that will be built on the Red Sea Coast, an entertainment city on the edge of Riyadh and another tourism project on the Red Sea.

The fund is also an investor in some of the kingdom’s largest firms, including Saudi Telecom Co., Saudi Arabian Mining Co., and National Commercial Bank. It also took a 16.32 percent stake in Almarai Co., the country’s biggest dairy producer, last year as the government supports national companies and develops them into regional and global leaders.

The UK will need inward investment, particularly when it leaves the EU. The main problem is that these funds are lack transparency.

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) remain, significant investors, with the assets of the top 10 now amounting to c.$5.5trn.

At the macroeconomic level, the rise of SWFs illustrates the seriousness of current-account imbalances in the global economy that have their origin in the managed exchange rates operated by some of the countries in surplus.

The accumulation of reserves for investment by SWFs should not become an end in itself. 

A more specific concern raised by SWF investment in equities relates to the opaque way in which some SWFs function and their possible use as an instrument to gain strategic control. This concern sets them apart from other types of investment funds. More specifically, there is unease that – whatever the original motivation – SWF investment in certain sectors could be used for ends other than for maximizing return.

For example, investment targets may reflect a desire to obtain technology and expertise to benefit national strategic interests, rather than being driven by normal commercial interests in expansion to new products and markets.

By the same token, holdings could influence decisions by companies operating in areas of strategic interest or governing distribution channels of interest to the sponsor countries.

More generally, business and investment decisions could be influenced by the political interest of the SWFs owners.

Although in most cases, SWFs are portfolio investors and have avoided taking controlling stakes or seeking a formal role in decision-making in companies, concerns have been raised about the possibility of SWFs seeking to acquire controlling stakes in companies.

National security considerations have been acknowledged by some SWFs owners, who request clarity and certainty about investments that can be made and which areas might be “off-limits” to SWFs.

Since SWFs are managed independently from a country’s foreign exchange reserves, they are excluded from transparency mechanisms.

While they have existed for more than fifty years, over the past decade they have rapidly expanded to become a source of investment of systemic importance. They can offer a source of investment and market liquidity at a time of real pressure. Yet, as state-owned investment vehicles, some can raise questions about the risk that these investments may interfere with the normal functioning of market economies.

The longer-term impact of Brexit cannot yet be seen but you may rest assured that it will have its pro and cons when it comes to SWF who sole purpose is to generate income.

However, they are only part of the mix when it comes to who owns what in the UK there is another Sovereign wealth fund called the crown.  

The monarchy is still one of Britain’s most valuable institutions, with a value of £57 billion to the UK.

The 89-year-old’s estimated personal fortune, largely inherited from her family, is about US$425 million ($673 million), according to an analysis by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s a mere 3 percent of the wealth of the richest Briton, Gerald Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster.

THIS IS SOME OF WHAT IT OWNS.

The Crown Jewels 140 ceremonial objects boasting a spectacular 23,578 precious gemstones

The Queen privately owns an 18,433-hectare estate called the Duchy of Lancaster.

It is administered separately from the Crown Estate. Part of that is the Savoy Estate, a stretch of prime real estate in central London which houses the iconic Savoy Hotel.

Sandringham House, an 8,000-hectare estate in Norfolk.

Balmoral Castle, 20,000-hectare Scottish estate.

The Duchy of Lancaster also holds around a dozen historic properties, including Lancaster Castle and Pickering Castle in Yorkshire.

The Duchy delivers an annual income of around £18 million ($25.5 million), which is paid directly to the ruling monarch.

Regent Street & St James’s Market, London: The Crown Estate owns the entirety of Regent Street in London, one of the UK’s best-known shopping streets. It also owns prime retail property across the UK in locations including Oxford, Exeter, Nottingham, Newcastle, Harlow, and Swansea.

The Crown Estate owns around 106,000 hectares of farmland across the UK.

The Crown owns the rights to salmon fishing and gold mining in Scotland.

Windsor Castle & Great Park, Berkshire: The 6,400-hectare Windsor estate in Berkshire is part of the Crown Estate’s portfolio.

The Crown Estate holds around 11,000 hectares of forestry in areas including Berkshire, Somerset, and the Cairngorms in Scotland.

The Crown Estate owns a £1.1 billion offshore energy empire which includes 30 wind farms.

The Crown Estate announced in June last year that it returned a record £328.8 million ($464 million) to the Treasury in 2016 as the value of the overall estate rose to an astonishing £13.1 billion ($18.5 billion).

England might do well to pay attention to Micheal Collins words.

I quote.

” The object in building up the country economically must not be lost sight of. The object is not to be able to boast of enormous wealth or of a great volume of trade for their own sake. It is not to show a great national balance sheet, nor to point to people producing wealth with the self- obliteration of a hive of bees. The real riches of the Irish nation will be the men and woman of the Irish Nation the extent to which they are rich in body and mind and character.”

Or perhaps both the EU and England should take a feather out of the way E Bay Works.

You are only as good as your product and feedback. E Bay did not just create an online market it created a self-governing community.

Apple has shifted its tax liability in the UK to Ireland.

Amazon dominates retail in the UK.

Google dominates the browser market

There are currently no less than 97,000 properties owned by foreign firms in England and Wales.

The NHS is increasingly being infiltrated by American health providers.

The major public utilities – energy, railways, and water – are all to a significant degree foreign-owned

Nuclear power stations are owned and managed by the French company EDF (something the French would never allow in their own country) and that Hinckley Point C is a joint French/Chinese project.

If there anything to be learned from the above it is that we have a clash of mindsets: one pragmatic, the other dogmatic.

Neither understands the other.

Those incompatibilities are being played out today in front of our very eyes in the phony war over the negotiation. The EU is still of the belief that it runs the negotiation. It will not show flexibility because that’s not how it works. The UK, on the other hand, will not do as it’s told. That’s not how the UK works.

It will not comply with the EU’s negotiation strategy of meekly signing up to a large financial settlement before being fobbed off with a lousy trade deal. The UK would rather be damaged than humiliated by the EU.

The EU believes it will win because it refuses to believe the UK will walk. It will sign whatever is put in front of it. But this is to make the exact mistake that it has always made; it’s a misjudgment of how UK politics work.

The clearest indictment of the status quo is the status quo itself.

The Basic necessities such as food shelter are what’s needed, not Aircraft carriers.

Britain has suffered from decades of under-investment in public infrastructure.

Britain has deep structural problems. Manufacturing has been hollowed out. The gap between the richest and poorest parts of the UK is wider than in any other major EU country.

An excessive reliance on consumer spending focused on the bigger picture:

The only choice in a subsequent referendum that would be acceptable to many citizens is that between what the UK and EU actually agree in the withdrawal agreement and no deal whatsoever.

There is today, a very real risk of a no-deal outcome. This would be a traumatic and disruptive exit and bad for both sides. We have to hope this doesn’t happen.

Each side truly believes the other is deluded.

We cannot retreat from the world. We have to make sure that we get the best of our imaginations – while not letting our imaginations get the best of us.

Another vote is inevitable.

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: ARE WE IN AN AGE OF OVERPRODUCTION OF THE FALSE -V- TRUTH WHICH CANNOT BE CONSUMED.

26 Saturday May 2018

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Capitalism, Environment, Evolution., Fake News., Google it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Modern day Hero., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Religion for a digital age., Robot citizenship., Technology, The cloud., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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( A six-minute read )

Modern day technology with its Artificial Intelligence does not point in any single direction. However, the gap between words and deeds is growing.

In times such as ours where there is a slow disengagement of truth, we need to be reminded that our central calling, our main task on the planet, is survival, which with the ever-growing use of AI gives rise to a host of new ethical problems and dilemmas.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of technology in the future"

With most of us chocking on non-truths, new technologies, and AI, the earth and our living conditions on the planet are worsening faster than ever.

Both AI and technology are begging for attention in order to be harnessed to our common values rather than profit for profit sake.

This is a debate that is only just beginning.

Since time memorial man does not seem to be able to ” help ” his selfishness, the desire to stand out.

They say that we are stuck with our character, we can’t evolve beyond it or without it.

So let’s not ask what is wrong with modern-day society, but ask where it is leading us?

It seems to me that we are living in a period where the overproduction of truth and non-truth cannot be consumed.

We are tranquilized with trivial.

We can’t control our own actions and there is no control over the actions of others.

So are we going to end up living with an inner sense of chaos that robot will not have?

At the moment we are split in two we have the awareness of our splendid uniqueness, but yet we end up feeding worms.

However, if the fear of death is removed by Technology we will lose the ability of our self- preservation.

( Anxiety is something we all share, now more than ever – normality is a neurosis.)

Then it will become impossible for us to have the ability to organize our own perceptions and our relationships to the world.

If we remove the idea of death, we remove what it means to live.

So is technology and AI going to create a greater social- historical truth, by omitting religious and spiritual ideas for our lives?

To do so it must replace what in our conscious life is called fear.

Our present-day fears are fashioned out of the ways in which we perceive the world. So we continue to design societies of symbolic action systems with structures of statuses ( Likes, Hits, Followers, Tweets, Posts, ) and roles, customs, and rules for behavior designed to service vehicles for earthly heroism. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the cultural hero-system if frankly, magical, religious, primitive or secular, scientific, technological driven or not.

The question is how conscious are we of what we are doing to earn our feeling of heroism?

Is there a need to create a larger theoretical structure to society?

Or is it too late as there is no harmony that unites different positions so that the sterile and ignorant polemics can be abated.

The crises of modern society are precise that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up.

We have been unable to this day to give an overall sense of heroism to any present-day capitalist industrial society mainly because of inequality.

As profit for profit sake dons the cloak of AI it is disguising the way society sets up its hero system with virtual reality and false promises.

Indeed it will not be far into the future when Robots will invent reasons for anxiety even where there is none to allow humans to exist.

The fear of death is a biological and evolutionary problem. It is an expression of the instinct of self-preservation, which functions as a constant drive to maintain life and to master the dangers that threaten life.

If AI removes the fear of death what will our mental functions be- will it be just living in the moment.

All historical religious address themselves to how to bear the end of life.

If we remove death, our biology and evolution must transfer into Trans-humans.

Will we really be able to call such hypothetical trans-humans “human” at all?Image associée

We must be more realistic about our situation in nature.

(Just look at Donal Trump who has more trouble with his lies than others.)

If we don’t do so we are we all going to end up as children living in others dependence – or on Artificial Intelligence.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : SOCIETY CAN NOT LET IT SELF TO BECOME A SEPARATE ENTITY FROM NATURE.

07 Monday May 2018

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Innovation., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Privatization, Sustaniability, Technology, The cloud., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World

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( A six-minute read)

If we ever wanted more evidence that we are now on the cusp of an event that is going to have a disastrous effect on society we only have to look at what is happening in the world at the moment.

Every advance in technology is moving us further and further from our attachment to nature.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of society"

Years of Capitalism for profit has produced – Pollution/Waste/ Excessive production/ Wars/ Climate change and technology in the form of AI. All asking the question is Capitalism obsolete?

It is not working for the vast majority of humanity.

Now faced with the arrival of Artificial intelligence, which if not regulated will control market forces, with the super-rich oligopoly of data billionaires reaping the wealth of automation and profit-seeking algorithms to the detriment of us all.

The more AI advances into a general purpose technology that permeates every aspect of life the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in the private hands rather than of the many.

Indeed there is already a case for nationalizing AI.

Its very pervasiveness is invading not just democracy but our private and social lives.  Causing wars and exploitation of not just us but our economies – High-Frequency Trading, Sovereign Wealth funds, Currency trading, Trade Agreements, down to what toilet paper you wipe your arse with.

Its inability to spread the wealth, to tackle inequality and poverty not to mention its exploitation of privacy and democracy have recently seen -FaceBook.

No company should be allowed to possess an exclusive cutting edge technology or core AI platform. Indeed with Deep learning, we are now beginning to see programmers feeding computers with learning algorithms that expose them to terabytes of data resulting in software writing software.

THERE IS NO DISPUTING THAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO NEED THE POWER OF AI TO RESOLVE FORTHCOMING PROBLEMS.

But it must serve society as a whole instead of the private capitalist operating in their own self- centered interests.

It must be brought under social control by Regulation with the creation of a virtual world strongroom, where a copy of all original AI algorithms, software programs are required by law to be lodged to be held and vetted re there compliance with our core values.

As I said in a previous post;

We need to create a class of ‘algorithmic auditors’ — trusted representatives of the public who can peer into the code to see what kinds of implicit political and ethical judgments are buried there and report their findings back to us.

This is a good idea, though it poses practical problems about how companies

can retain the commercial edge provided by their computerized secret sauce if

they have to open up their algorithms to quasi-official scrutiny.

It is very unlikely that this will happen. We are however in danger of

App exploitation not only for profit but when there is no immediate cash peril –

culture, education, and crime.

We are well on the road to becoming slaves to the algorithms with computers

taking more than some tough choices out of our hands if we let them.

God forbid that some form of AI manages to become self-aware.

Such automated augury might be considered relatively harmless if its use is

confined to figuring out what products we might like to buy. But it is not going

to stop there.

Amazon Echo machine-learning services are both a powerful revenue generator that is going to remove us from any commitment to society or nature that sustains us all.

A low-cost, ubiquitous computer with all its brains in the cloud that you could interact with over voice—you speak to it, it speaks to you.

As companies build their vital machine-learning tools inside AWS, the likelihood that they will move to competing for cloud operations becomes ridiculously remote.

All technology programmers whether they are Algorithms for profit or otherwise should under Law be required to submit a verified copy of the program to be held in a virtual world strongroom, accessible to all ensuring transparency and accountability.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES GROWTH AT ALL COSTS.

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in 2018: The Year of Disconnection., Arms Trade., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Democracy, Environment, European Union., Fake News., Google it., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Poverty, Social Media., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The Refugees, The world to day., TTIP. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, Universal Basic Income, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics, WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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( A one minute read)

In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.

One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.

At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.

Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.

 

 

 

 

 

What can be done?

See the previous post on a World Aid commission.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S IT IS TIME TO RETHINK OUR MEASUREMENT OF ECONOMIC GROWTH.

27 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in 2018: The Year of Disconnection., Capitalism, Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Sustaniability, Technology, The cloud., The common good., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World

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( A three-minute read)

Right now one of the reasons our economies have to grow is because of debt.

The global economic system runs on money that is itself debt.

GDP (gross domestic product) has outlived its usefulness as a metric of economic size and is it stoking social and environmental crisis by encouraging growth at any cost.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "picture of gdp per capita"

The kind of statistics we’ve used in the past just isn’t working anymore.

With the planet warming and some resources already exploited to near-exhaustion, including many fisheries, with technology removing trade agreements, (as companies and customers increasingly transact their lives in the cloud not to mention blockchains) we need something that accounts for such factors.

GDP can no longer measure the distribution of wealth within a country.

Even where there is growth, disenchantment with how it is shared out can be seen vividly in Brexit-bound Britain. Notably, So, while its total value can go up, gains are all too often skewed to top earners. Those lower down the ladder can fall further behind in relative terms.

It does not encompass the black market, omitting a huge source of activity and income in many developing countries, including in Africa and Latin America.

We’ve got to find another mechanism to include much bigger parts of the population, and use different metrics to measure the success of a country.

So, what are the alternatives to GDP?

The WEF this week proposed a broader measure of growth called.

The Inclusive Development Index (IDI) is an annual assessment of 103 countries’ economic performance that measures how countries perform on eleven dimensions of economic progress in addition to GDP. It has 3 pillars; growth and development; inclusion and; intergenerational equity – sustainable stewardship of natural and financial resources.

However for this to truly work countries would need to be liberated from the pressures to exploit their citizens in the hunt for income to repay debts and we would need to remove the creation of debt- based money.

Another word we would have to cancel the debt of sovereign nations and move the creation of money away from the state.

Of course in a capitalist world, this is unrealistic.

China alone owns– $1.168 trillion as of January 2018 of U.S. debt.

However, the European Union which is in need of reform could do a lot to liberate its members from the tyranny of growth.

Some creative long-term thinking is needed.

It could actively downgrade consumption, by banning advertising on mobile phones, I pads and Public place, all of which use manipulation of emotions.

It could write off a reasonable chunk of the Greek debt by spread it among its members in return for solar power.

It could turn the euro into real money by insisting that all banks in the European Union hold at least 50% reserves against money lent. 90% of the money circulating in our economies is created out of thin air.  Banks lend it into existence.

It could create a basic minimum income by taxing all profit-seeking Algorithms.

It could tax plastic and sugar.

It could stop the farcical traveling circus which sees the European Parliament move between Brussels and Strasbourg every month.

It could set an example for the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, we are all to busy with I am alright Jack isolation syndrome – its grow or collapse.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE WORLD IS SICK, SICK AND GETTING SICKER.

12 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by in 2018: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Big Data., Communication., Democracy, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google it., Google Knowledge., Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( A two-minute read)

When we look at the world it is important to recognize that we are looking at the history of different civilizations, however, we all have a common story.

We are born and we die.Free art print of Unfortunate Future of The World

Today the story is the same but with more mobility in-between, however, we’ve not changed a dot and it is certain that we will go on making things that will change or existence.

With to days technology, we are on the threshold of not just a new Industrial revolution but changing how we exist and where we exist.

The outline of a mobile phone as we know has changed not just rural Africa and Asia – putting communities in touch, giving access to information and money it is now also creating Social media platforms which are in the process of disconnecting us from reality.

This week Facebook, Google, and Twitter appeared in front of Congress. After which it is obvious, that we are not asking the right questions yet, or we have not found any good answers just yet as to why our world is getting sicker and sicker and it’s not Einstine science as to why.

When it comes to the world we can not cure just one aspect of the sickness, we must address an array of inherited illness.

Our new technological world is removing the need to think, to read, to imagine, to function, to communicate, to earn respect, to know why is true or a false pleasure, to plan long-term.

In other words, the internet has been infected by the problems that we all suffer.

What is need is that we need to take our existence back, whether it be as consumers, as citizens, and say we actually want to have some say over how all of this technology works, because we’ve really given that over to the tech companies ( outside of China, for the rest of the world, there are five big tech companies who really run everything) that have little or no ethical interest in other than profit

Why?

Because before we become the product for internet service providers, no longer just customers. we need a social movement around this issues to stop us all being run by the same algorithms brains driven by different programs that are incapable of acting for the common good.

Greed, inequality, you name it, our political affiliation, based upon the top-level domain information of websites you visit, your sexual orientation, where you like to shop, your financial status, race, gender can now be figured out based on the information that they collect and use.

If we didn’t have the bullshit movies, TV shows and sports pumping fake feel-good emotions into our systems, we would all feel the great weight of our inaction in an era where we need to get off our fucking asses and take a stand.

All the world’s problems are not on the internet.

We’re not supposed to watch a screen that pumps fake feel-good emotions into us.

It is quite plausible in the not so distant future we will have nothing serious to contribute when the hype – intelligent software supersedes humanity with genomics, nanotechnology, and robotics. New computer chips specialized for AI will power how we engineer genes, proteins, materials. Quantum computing a million times quicker than present-day computers will change the fields of drug development, manufacturing, and material science.

It will all be very murky but the potential is truly staggering.

Its now or never that we harness all this technology for if a day comes that the final decision is left to a Robotic brain rest assured that, Hal 9000 VS Dave will come true. 

https://youtu.be/HwBmPiOmEGQRésultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of sick earth"

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. EUREKA! ARE WE ALL FOOLS TO THINK THAT A PLATFORM IS HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS USERS.

22 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Facebook, Freedom, Google, Modern Day Democracy., Social Media, Technology, The Internet., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( A six-minute read)

Facebook is simply a platform and will never be held responsible for its users.

We can’t blame tech makers for making their products so good we want to use them. We are in control. But are we?

Facebook like all other platforms has been distorted by the fortunes they have been able to earn through advertising.

Why?

Because the techniques these companies use are not always generic: they are algorithmically tailored to each person.

There can be no ethics when it comes to technological manipulation that can be sold to the highest bidder.

The problem is that there is nothing the companies can do to address the harm unless they abandon their current advertising models. Thay have little incentive to deviate from the mantra that their companies are making the world a better place.

But how can Google and Facebook or ANY PLATFORM for that matter be forced to abandon the business models that have transformed them into the most profitable companies on the planet?

Notification technology enables hundred unsolicited interruptions into millions of lives, accelerating the arms race for people’s attention. Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The company’s famous ‘likes’ feature has been described by its creator as ‘bright dings of pseudo-pleasure’.

When you consider that the total size of all global data hit 20 zettabytes in 2017.

This probably means nothing so picture this: If every 64 – gigabyte I Phone were a brick, we could build 80 Great walls of China with the I Phones needed to store all the above data.

It’s growing every second and completely out of any control.

All of our minds are being hijacked.

Our choices are not as free as we think they are. The technologies we use have turned into compulsions, if not full-fledged addictions.

Billions of people have little choice over whether they use these now ubiquitous technologies, and are largely unaware of the invisible ways in which a small number of people in Silicon Valley are shaping their lives.

We now have an internet-shaped around the demands of an advertising economy with technology platforms contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention.

Manipulating people into habitual use of their products or platforms with rewards or short-term social affirmations, while harvested valuable data about the preferences of users that could be sold to advertisers.

So what if anything can be done.

It is very common, for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences.

We’ve truly reached a new level of technological time wasting, with the young generation unable to communicate.

If we the adult world cannot wean ourselves free a good starting point would be if we are to exercise our freedom by banning,  iPhones, iPads, laptops and mobile phones from places of education.

They will become a real problem if you don’t, as they are ridiculous thing to be addicted to. It just something to use when you’re procrastinating or is it a procrastination-trap, a slate of tools destined to get you addicted.

We have to learn to deal more effectively with our emotions if we want to procrastinate less.

Such as varying the rewards people receive to create a craving, or exploiting negative emotions that can act as triggers. It makes them look like they have a life.

Social media and other addictive technologies have and are creating an attention economy, which is severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and is possibly lowering IQ.

One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before the Internet.

Drawing a straight line between addiction to social media and political earthquakes like Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, digital forces have completely upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render democracy as we know it obsolete.

The mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity – even when the device is turned off. Everyone is distracted, all of the time.

Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation and prompt an almost instantaneous and often mindless action to quell the negative sensation by looking at your I Phone, I Pad

If the people who built these technologies are taking such radical steps to wean themselves free, can the rest of us reasonably be expected to

”Chrome extension, called DF YouTube, “which scrubs out a lot of those external triggers” an app called Pocket Points that “rewards you for staying off your phone when you need to focus”

Get a life and use one.

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https://embed.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: ENDING WORLD POVERTY IS AN UNREALISTIC GOAL. l’

21 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in World Aid., World Leaders, World Organisations., WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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( A twelve-minute read that could be the answer to Poverty)

You don’t have to be Einstein to recognize that inequality in all its forms is what wrong with our world. It haunts every minute of our lives no matter who you are, however  ‘Ending world poverty is an unrealistic goal’Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty around the world"

It is policy not aid which matters most in today’s world.

Why?

Because the politics of inequality in the future will be as important as the economics of the Future.

Relative poverty is unpreventable without tackling inequalities. 

The aspirations of delivering a world where the quality of education, healthcare and national infrastructure available to every person is sufficient to bestow on them meaningful hope and ambition is hopefully the aim of “development”.  I emphasize the word hopeful.

In a world in which a billion people live on $1.26 a day, with climate immigration increasing and technology Algorithms blundering the world’s wealth.

We’re going to have to realize sooner than later that if we are to avoid or end violent conflicts ( That these days has inequality as their triggers) there is only one course to follow and that is to spread the wealth of the world fairly.

Poverty is a perception – it is a status which is bestowed on people who have relatively little – even in societies of plenty. Just look at the prevailing political view on aid to middle-income countries that contain hundreds of millions of desperately poor people.

We all know that the chances of ending poverty altogether are zero.

It would potentially cost some of the world’s biggest businesses billions and would need to be agreed by a group of world leaders who, if they all went out to dinner, would be sat around the table with their calculators out arguing about how to split the bill.

In a world driven by Greed, Advertising, and now more and more by filtered Social Media, we are becoming increasingly desensitized to the blight of others.

For those working in organisations that are dependent on official development assistance, it is hard to talk about ending their dependency, but the 21st century demands the challenge is not ducked.

Too much negativity and accusation of not making any progress with aid money. Comments like Shit Holes, which imply that aid is no longer necessary are undermining our Aid agencies, which are becoming an increasingly endangered species.

So if we accept that we won’t be satisfied if we overcome absolute poverty, where do we go next?

The closer we get to ending extreme poverty, the harder it is going to be to do it.

Imagine how different the world would be if the focus of aid spending was not “ending $1.25 dollar a day poverty” but “creating a fairer and more equitable world”.

Relative poverty will always exist and it should always be at the forefront of efforts to improve our world because it demands more than the bare minimum solution, or Asshole Trumps.

Decisions taken on tax regimes, remittance flows and trade concessions are now not the fastest route to assist poor countries in their development. Inequality is at the root of the reasons why.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty around the world"

So in this world of inequalities is there any way of assisting development in a meaningful way.

Gadgets like tablets, smartphones and not-so-smart phones are multiplying five times faster than we are, with our population growing at a rate of about two people per second, or 1.2% annually.

The world is home to 7.2 billion gadgets, and they’re multiplying five times faster than we are.

The Mobile phone has done more for Africa than all Aid. No other technology has impacted us like the mobile phone.

The number of mobile phone users in the world is expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019. In 2016, an estimated 62.9 percent of the population worldwide already owned a mobile phone.

The mobile phone penetration is forecasted to continue to grow, rounding up to 67 percent by 2019.

By 2019, China is expected to reach almost 1.5 billion mobile connections and India almost 1.1 billion.

The number of smart phone users worldwide is expected to grow by one billion in a time span of five years.

It’s not that every person in the world has a mobile device, far from it; more than half of the population don’t have a mobile phone.

There are around 250 million machine-to-machine connections.

That may only be a fraction of the total number of mobile connections, but it was enough to knock us people off our perch in the man vs machine superiority stakes.

Just imaging what would happen if we were to equip everyone in the world (of voting age) with a mobile phone that could receive a basic income on a monthly basis.

Each phone with its unique pin.

With a phone that supplies a basic income we would witnessing a transformation in the way people relate to their governments.

A game-changer.

Not just a safer way to store money, but to reduce the need for Aid, to cut out corruption, to empower the poor, to eradicate inequality, to encourage closing the digital divide with the rest of the world. To give a sense of a future, information, opportunity and choice. To lift young people are currently trapped in poverty, often exacerbated by the need to contribute to their family incomes.

Explosive growth in mobile broadband use across continents would improve transparency and give a voice to citizens.

They would have a major economic, social and political impact.

So instead of the World Bank, the IMF, the Warren Buffets, the Bill Gates, the Mark Zckerbergs, the UN, Oxfam, the WTO, technology has the potential to lift people out of poverty.

There is no reason that a mobile money basic income could not be achieved with the application of a world aid commission of 0.05%. ( See previous posts)

Applying such a commission:  (On all profit seeking Algorithms, on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $50,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds acquisitions, to mention just a few of the existing Capitalist instruments that are solely designed for Profit.) would create a perpetual Fund of trillions.

Traditional banking is out of reach for many people in rural areas of developing countries, but mobile is bringing people into the financial system in droves. Financial inclusion, starting with a humble savings account, enables people to start businesses, invest in education and weather bad times.

Mobile still has hurdles to jump before it can reach all the lives of people most in need of the technology: Namely, reliable, affordable energy and comprehensive network coverage.  However you can rest assured if aid was directed to placing a communication satellite in orbit to service Africa or Latin America cell, phone use could help developing the countries within these Continents to plan electrical infrastructure.

There are in the world already a enough used mobile phones to supply most of Africa ( Pop. 1,273,903, 985)

Unfortunately there seems to be a major barrier to people turning in their old phones to be recycled.

To give a couple of examples, a recent survey found that 63% of Canadians have an unused phone at home. And in the UK alone, people are holding on to an estimated 76.8 million unused phones.

If your used phone is a very recent model, you may want to consider sending it in to Fairphone’s recycling program.

So Technology presents as opportunity to articulate a broader and more sustainable vision.

It is essential that we take it.

Poverty shouldn’t be a Catch 22 but in reality, for some, it is.

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THE BEADY ASK’S: WHERE DO YOU THINK POVERTY CAME FROM AND WHERE IS IT GOING TO END UP.

19 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in Poverty

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( A twenty-minute read if you want a world worth living in)

Most of us were taught that poverty started with the Industrial Revolution.

For the most part this is true but it did not happen in the isolation of the British Empire.

This story is powerful in its simplicity but if we rewind to about 1500 people living in South America, India, and Asia were much better off than Europeans. In fact Europe was just emerging from the dark ages.

China and India controlled most if not nearly all the world economy.

The Question is how did this change and why?

I put it down to Christopher Columbus and shoddy geographical calculations.

On his second outing in the Caribbean he was looking for gold and as a result the Spanish invasion killed must of the islands inhabitants. Then came a bloke named Cortes who ripped off the Aztec of Mexico,followed by Pizarro yet another Spanish conquistador with an unquenchable thirst for gold.

A total of over  185,000 kilograms of gold and 100 million kilograms of silver were pilfer from Latin America and pumped into Spain and then used to pay for Spanish war and debts.

(A 100 million kilograms of silver invested back then @ 5% would amount to $165 trillion to-day. More than double the world’s total GDP to-day)

This wealth allowed Europe to grow its economic wealth beyond the China or India.

The result was Europeans outsourced its labour into wars and colonization reducing the population of the rest of the world by slavery, epidemic diseases and massacres while enjoying the rich life.

(  Free Slavery labour benefited the USA Colonies by over 222.5 million hours)  Britain pay compensation of over £20m to slave owners equivalent to £300 million to-day which tell us nothing of the total value they produced.

The Silver was turned into cotton and sugar and spices. Cotton being the key raw material for the European Industrial Revolution.

The Surviving slaves got nothing.

Indeed without the slave colonies of the New world there would have being no market for the Industrial goods.

You could say that the above is rather a simplistic explanation but development in Africa and Latin America was effectively stolen by Europe.

So where are we to-day.

  • Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
  • The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
  • Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
  • Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
  • 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).

Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this?

Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization and technology are global decisions, policies, and practices.

Formulated by the rich and powerful.

These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.

As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle.

The poorest are also typically marginalized from society and have little representation or voice in public and political debates, making it even harder to escape poverty.

The amount the world spends on military, financial bailouts and other areas that benefit the wealthy, compared to the amount spent to address the daily crisis of poverty and related problems are often staggering.

To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources.

This has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade.

Now we are looking at a new form of Poverty currently being created by a few monopolies. I call it Algorithm Poverty.

Around the world, in rich or poor nations, poverty has always been present. In most nations today, inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—is quite high and often widening.

The causes are numerous, including a lack of individual responsibility, bad government policy, exploitation by people and businesses with power and influence, or some combination of these and other factors.

Inequality will affect social cohesion and lead to problems such as increasing crime and violence. Almost half the world—over three billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day and at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

And we wonder why the world is in a state of chaos.

Around 21,000 children die every day around the world. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty.

Food aid (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the economy of the recipient nation.

Free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe.

Poverty leads to hunger. There are many inter-related issues causing hunger. They include land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor crop yields, etc.

Solving world hunger in the conventional sense (of providing/growing more food etc) will not tackle poverty that leads to hunger in the first place.

Further, there is a risk of continuing the poverty and dependency without realizing it, because the act of attempting to provide more food etc can appear so altruistic in motive.

To solve world hunger in the long run, poverty alleviation is required.

For the first time in our history Technology offers us a chance to distribute the world’s wealth fairly.

Without Trade agreements, Aid, Repayment, Corruption, Power Brokering by NGOs, United Nations Begging, Bureaucratic interference, or any other hidden agendas.

It could be both implemented and funded by the very Algorithms that are going to spread poverty. ( See previous Posts)

It requires the large capitalist monopoly platforms to supply a free basic mobile phone to every person register as citizen of a country world-wide.

On registration the people would be allocated a pin number.

This pin would allow them to access a monthly Basic non repayable no strings attached Income payment.

There is no other way of ensuring that our world can fight poverty and climate change.

Most of the causes of hunger are found in global politics.

People are hungry not because the population is growing so fast that food is becoming scarce, but because people cannot afford it.

The number of people overweight or obese is now rivaling the number of people suffering from hunger around the world.

Its time to get off our fat asses and share our wealth not push it around to create more wealth.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

If you want a world worth something in the future now is the time to start creating it. Solve                                             World Poverty once and

For all.

It can be done with the press of a button.

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