Tag Archives: Community cohesion

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S WHAT HAS CAPITALISM ACHIEVED

07 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by in Capitalism, Humanity., Unanswered Questions., WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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To understand the role of capitalism in modern economic times you must understand the word Growth.

Growth at any cost.  Which we are just coming to apprentice thanks to the Internet.

For a long time nothing much happened till Wheat conned humans into growing it.

It is not my intention here to address Money and Power. It is sufficient to say that money leads to power and corruption and that all three intermingle in the notoriously subject of Economics.

What I want you to do is to look at Capitalism that founded states and ruined them, opened up new horizons and enslaved millions, moved the wheels of Industry and drove hundreds of species of plants and animals into extinction, plundered the earth resources for profit, promoted science, all to the dethronement of a sustainable planet and ask yourself is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

There can be no doubt without some system the human race would descend into barbarism based on nothing but self-interest.

Our cultural output throbs with this notion of self-interest. Just look at the present Refugee problem facing the European Union.

So would the collapse of Capitalism lead to misery?

Capitalism in all its credulity and inequality reflects mans barbarous nature. Indeed the horrors of ISIS are trumpeted so vehemently by the western press precisely because they fill this narrative.

However a dog eat dog world with which capitalism and the state justify themselves is in part a fallacy.

In fact nature teems with co-operation – both between animals, between species and within the ecosystem as a whole.

We are the same, but it is no coincidence that where we do co-operate these areas are dominated by capital and constructed in a way that systematically reward the uglier sides of our common nature.

We know that the world in unfair where the few have too much and the most have too little.

The feeling that Capitalism, inequality, and injustice are inevitable and the idea that to struggle for a better world is naive is coming to an end.

If we could only entrench the cooperative compassionate and empathetic sides of our nature as dominant values in society we would redesign our Capitalist world – to a world worth while living in.

The current state of our planet is affording all of us this opportunity.

How can we tackle the world problems ?

A good place to start would be to get Capitalism to pay for it.

By placing a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over ($20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all Drilling Wells.  This would create a perpetual pot out of Profit for Profit sake that could fund the inevitable cost of climate change.

In doing so we would redistribute the world’s wealth from the whole of the world. ( see previous Posts)

Sooner than later we are going to exhaust the raw materials and energy of the planet Earth. What will happen then?

Which is why, whenever the opportunity arises, we must be prepared to seize it.

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THE BEADY EYE TAKES A LOOK AT WHAT HUMANITY HAS ACHIEVED TO DATE.

28 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by in Environment, Humanity., Sustaniability, Technology, The Future

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The most accurate simulation of the human brain ever has been carried out, but a single second’s worth of activity took one of the world’s largest supercomputers 40 minutes to calculate.Men’s and women's brains are wired differently

SO LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED SINCE WE CAME DOWN OUT OF THE TREES AND STOOD UPRIGHT.

( I am sure there will be many gaps in what I write here so you will have plenty of ammunition to comment. Those of you who are shadow people lead by the like button feel free to press it. )

Right: On your marks we off.

At first we were of no significance till we discovered that we could walk up right, discovered fire, tools, and language. We became foragers/ hunters with no hierarchy spreading all over the world providing there was a land bridge developing new weapons and new clothing due to climate change and perhaps unfriendly rivals.

All that changed when we began to devote our efforts to manipulating the lives of animals and plants. The Farmer had arrived. More babies to be fed, so we burnt down forests and planted wheat thus becoming wheat slaves living in settled artificial enclaves dedicated to growing wheat.

Because of this we discovered writing and numbers, money and religion.

This lead to placing a material value not just on possession but on ourselves resulting in a conscious effort to create laws, customs, procedures, to run societies.

By this time with the human brain going into hibernation due to all the information that needed to be stored we are well on the way to creating religious gods, empires, armies, taxes, etc  Thus the arrival of bureaucracy, rulers, social division, ruling classes, slaver, gun power, the wheel and sea worthy ships.

Of course building, pollution, masculine dominance and exploration were now in full swing and it’s not long before the world is dividing into Empires of different cultures, different languages, different belief, most still using their legs and horses with the odd set of wheels to get around.

The Roman empire broke up, the Mongol empire went to pieces, the Chines empire built a wall, America and Europe did not know each other existed. Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world.

90% of humans lived in a single mega world ; the world of Afro- Asia the rest lived in America, central America, the Andean world, the Australian world, islands of the Pacific.

They were all swallowed up by the Afro-Asian world.

Resources were plentiful. Till along came How Much is it.  Money the foundation of Greed and cooperation between strangers drastically reducing diversity. The first step to we becoming US against the Rest.

The European Industrial Imperial steamroller gradually obliterated our uniqueness.

The Spanish quashed the Inca, Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigate the globe, Marco Polo gave the Vatican a Chines map of America, they sending Columbus off to discover it, while Queen Vic with the help of Darwin, Livingstone, Nelson, expanded the British Empire with ball and chain, cannon.

At this stage there is no evidence that history is working for the benefit of humans. Science, engineering, flight, medical advances, power, religious rightness, profit, wealth, corruption, greed and reckless plundering of the earths resources, ignorance, and credit now come into play.

Empirical observations are being put together with the help of mathematical tools.

All of this cost money and it did much more than just charting the universe, mapping the planet and cataloging the animals than did Galileo, Columbus and Darwin. If there had being no funds or these geniuses and they had not being born we would be still waiting on some others to do so.

Of course none of the above is in strict chronological order and I have left out, Michelangelo Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, William Shakespeare, Bach, Confucius, Aristotle, Newton, to mention a few but I hope you get the gist.

I grow sick and tired of all the same old lies
I might be a little young, so what’s wrong?
You don’t have to be old to be wise

— Judas Priest

Anyway it is suffice to say that European imperialism was entirely unlike all other imperial projects.

So here we are. WE CREATED THE WORLD THAT YOU SEE AROUND YOU.
After numerous wars and two million years of being marginal creatures, thirteen odd billion years after the big bang we have arrived at the Capitalist creed OF THE FREE MARKET and a belief that Science which is about 500 years old can solve all our problems.
The question is how many people want to live in a world that you see around you.
We need to ignite a second cognitive revolution. It is unclear whether bio engineering could really resurrect Neanderthals. Tinkering with our genes won’t necessarily kill us. But we might fiddle to such an extent that we would no longer be Homo sapiens.
ayn rand apollo 11 human achievement day
In a previous post I asked what do we want to become. A human who stood on the moon and saw a dying world that could be so beautiful if we learned to share.
                                               Paradise Lost or Found.
Unlike other animals, we humans need to create the means for our physical survival as well as our spiritual well-being. We need to figure out how to acquire food, build shelters, cure illnesses, build cities, travel to the Moon, and create everything that deserves the label “civilization.”
Take a moment to look around you. Reflect on your own achievements and take pride in them. Reflect on the virtues that have allowed you to achieve the things you value.
The potential for human achievement is endless, but only if we truly value achievement and appreciate that the achievements we create in our modern world are manifestations of the moral virtues we each create in our character. Not Twitter, not Face book, not the internet, or the web of everything, not Google, not Apple.
If there’s one thing that many science and reality-minded people tend to do quite a bit, it’s over analyze every little detail.
The answer is right in front of your eyes . Open them.
We must tap Greed by creating a World Aid Fund by placing 0.05% commission on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transactions, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20.000. on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all new Drilling wells. ( See previous Posts)

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THE FUTURE OF TAXATION.

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

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Tax Due Warning - A single, angled spotlight reveals a...

A common thief does not typically act with greater force or stealth.

I would guess like me you have tried to get your head around the taxes you pay without much success.

With the rising inequality concerns maybe it time you did as taxation has a future that will affect you and your love ones.

But where, and in what guise? Let’s have a look.

Slow population growth is depressing income growth, which leads to higher taxes.

Virtually every government could pay off its debts by taxing wealth.

Luckily for the rich such taxes are often politically unacceptable.

In other words, fiscal problems are best regarded as problems of dysfunctional governance by governments that are selling off state assets into Privatization until there will not be enough national wealth to pay off any debts.

Anyway for the purpose of this post it is essential that we try to appreciate the difference between real taxes and current (or nominal) taxes.

The real tax over any significant period is the level of government spending in relation to national output. The higher public spending as a percentage of GDP, the higher the real tax. That amount must in time be transferred from private to public hands—be it now or later.

The current tax, for its part, is the amount actually paid to a government in any given period, and is almost never equal to the real tax.

Got it. No. Shame on you. Try again.

A current tax lower than the real tax (that is, a public deficit) implies higher current taxes in the future, while a current tax higher than the real
tax (a public surplus—a phenomenon observable in only three of the past 50 years) implies lower current taxes in the future.

Now. You have.

So the stated political orientation of the administration presiding over a gap between current and real taxation—be it social democratic or of the supply side right—does not matter.

Because deferred taxes are simply claims against the public.

There are two ways to meet these claims:

1) higher current taxes in some future period or 2) inflating the claims away.

Inflation, which generally induces a shift of wealth from private to public hands, is the functional equivalent of a tax increase. These relations do not follow from any policy or ideology, but are purely matters of arithmetic.

Any clearer.? It’s of no matter.

Because what appears on the surface to be public debate over the appropriate level of taxation—and this goes on all the time—is in fact political maneuver by interested constituencies to get out of the line of fire of inevitable tax increases while deflecting the higher taxes onto someone else.

Now you have.

Different taxes do have different allocative effects.

Future taxes will perpetuate or even compound the misallocative effects of the present tax system.

Taxes in the next ten years, even though considerably higher than today’s, will nonetheless be insufficient, in all likelihood, to fill the revenue gap that opened wide during the last ten.

Inflation is all that remains to look forward to.

For a governments it will be like letting go to the pull of gravity.

Most wealth has already been subjected to income and other taxes, perhaps multiple times. It doesn’t seem fair to the holders of that wealth to suddenly pay additional taxes on assets that they thought were in the clear, and such taxes would signal that previous policy has failed.

It seems to me that on both ends of the political spectrum there is remarkably little concern with the allocative effects of taxation in its various forms.

However it matters how you tax if we are to halt the growing inequality in our life styles as over the next 10 to 15 years current taxes will increase mightily. Why?  Because our own consumption, fueled by debt, outstripped our incomes in recent years, while foreign savers, predominantly from Asia/China/and the Far East financed the bulk of new investment in our economies.

Why aren’t foreign savers put off by double tax on capital income?

The answer is that they would be, if they paid it. But they don’t.

Another reason it that the massive fiscal stimulus that have been pumped into our economies by Quantitative easing and the selling off of state Assets (To Sovereign Wealth Funds, see previous posts) will in their wake pull up current taxes or spread inflation, another form of higher taxation —whether consumers or savers, suppliers of capital or suppliers of labor, or both in a maelstrom of inflation.

When income from labor is saved rather than consumed, the income from that saving (now capital income, in economic terms) is taxed again.

This “second” tax on saving makes the tax cost of capital income greater than that of labor income spent on immediate consumption. The two separate layers of income tax imposed on corporate earnings and then again on dividends distributed to shareholders actually imply a third tax on corporate profits. This goes far toward explaining why we don’t save.

What can be done:

What is needed is a shift in the burden of taxation away from capital income and onto consumption.  In short, some form of consumption tax should be the predominant national tax.

The problem with a value-added tax is that people can to a considerable extent earn their incomes in one tax environment and spend them (either at retail on vacation or wholesale in retirement) in a different (and VAT-free) environment, so that ultimately both their incomes and their consumption are untaxed.

Value-added taxes and payroll taxes are analogous to an income tax that is imposed territorialy, whereas a tax on consumed income is imposed on worldwide income, minus the component of saving, and is therefore a tax on the worldwide consumption of a taxpayer.

(Turnover-type taxes such as sales taxes and value-added taxes are widely and correctly understood as consumption taxes. So is any tax that does not reach capital income.)

A tax on consumed income is an income tax in which personal saving is deducible from taxable income, thus excluding capital income and leaving only the amount of income that is consumed subject to current taxation.

In stead of contemplating such a tax in many EU Member States we got political, academic and public debate on wealth taxation which always gains traction in times of strained public finances.

The question is who ultimately bears the burden of wealth taxation (tax incidence)

The existence of a blurry frontier between capital and labor, income for the high-income earners, the role of transparency and automatic exchange of information in facilitating tax compliance and the serious political economy constraints makes any form of wealth tax unworkable.

Just imagine the difficulty to evaluate one’s wealth and the administrative costs along with the risks of tax evasion and capital flight.

Many people have become distressed about their taxes because they have been led to believe that the property they acquired would not he taxed to the extent that it has been. Accordingly, they have paid prices for the property that have reflected those expectations. They may be the reasons they are “mad as hell” simply because they feel that they have been misled by their government and that they not only have had to give up taxes but also have had to give up wealth in terms of reduced market prices for their property.

Economics have performed the heroic task of measuring wealth for eight leading economies: the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Australia.

Their estimates reveal some striking trends. For instance, wealth accumulation in these eight countries has risen relative to yearly production.

Wealth-to-income ratios in these nations climbed from a range of 200 to 300 percent in 1970 to a range of 400 to 600 percent in 2010. Behind the changing ratios is some bad news, namely that slow productivity growth and but also some good news — that relative peace and capital gains have preserved wealth up to now.

Virtual economies pose a real-world tax compliance risk, even if citizens aren’t purposefully shielding their money.

No one has a clue on how to manage the Planet. The only way forward is a consumption tax regime.

 

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ARE YOU A YOUNG OR OLD MUSLIM?

24 Sunday Aug 2014

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If you are reading this I firstly want you to know that I could not care whether you are young or old, a practicing Sunnis or Shias, a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim from what ever Sect, my only concern is that you have an open mind.

I don’t propose to know much about the roots of pure forms of any religion especially Islam.

However the history of all religions that are based on books, (the texts of which are open to widely varying interpretations, process which often involves outbidding them in a contest for greater “authenticity” ) has led to conflicts and suppression of all other beliefs.

Why do I say this?

Because I am from a country that to this day after seven hundred years of struggle against an occupier and civil war, is still effected by interpretations, bigotry, suffering, and death, that has nothing to do with Muslim who you could count on one hand.

So in this post I am not going to lecture on past history, but suggest solutions to present day conflicts.

My purpose here is to highlight some of the reasons we find ourselves in such a mess with the Arab world.

We all have a right to our own opinions so please feel free to comment.

Religious extremism is a conduit for misery, not its fundamental cause.

The trouble with religious extremism or dictators is when it comes to politics both do not allow the give-and-take of parliamentary discourse. Nor do they protect minorities, allow a free press, create independent courts, universities, trade unions, and support woman emancipation.

Why Arab countries have so miserably failed their 350 million people is down to sharing of wealth.

Economic stagnation bred dissatisfaction, and unemployment, and electronic media allowed the young to see outside stirring up a revolution in attitudes that now cannot be un-invented.

We cannot now simply stamp out the Jihadist cause or impose prosperity and democracy.

We must appeal to the majority to make their voices heard to allow pluralism, education for all, and open markets to be re established, rather than being trapped either in stagnant repression or cycles of strife, that are interlinking.

No conflict since the Second World War has caused such widespread damage to the worlds cultural heritage, not to mention 300,000 dead.

The plantation of a Jewish state in Palestine drove a physical wedge between Arab countries and provided an excuse for the military dominance by Israel destabilizing the whole region.

There is no solution to this wedge other than one state for all.

However three-quarters of the world has suffered colonial rule and it should not now tolerate ISIS.

If necessary the free world( it will not be able to stand by like it did in Rwanda, or hide behind UN resolutions) must come to the aid of its fellow Arab Muslim citizens to stop any form of ethnic cleansing or Extermination.

In doing so we will uphold the sanctity of life, and the values of freedom, not democracy at the point of a gun.

It takes openness for societies to progress, to have closed minds and politics together is a recipe of disaster. War has many components, of which the battle is only one element.

Jihadists that declare an eventual global caliphate that knows no borders which is led by a former student theology and warlord that has given himself the title the successor to the PROPHET MUHAMMAD UNDERLINES THE SORROWFUL CONDITION INTO WHICH ARAB POLITICS HAS SUNK.

ALL I CAN SAY IS INSHALLAH TO US ALL.   History rarely sleep securely.

HERE IS ONE OF THE GREATEST QUESTIONS OF OUR TIME.

23 Saturday Aug 2014

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Some time ago I posted:

Big Data is leading us to Cultural De-Acceleration.

We are becoming increasingly “digitized.”

When you ask somebody from the industry, “What is Big Data?” they will usually reply that this describes the challenge that companies that collect and analyse the high volumes of Internet data face. This “big data” technically refers to the specialized tools required to store and analyse.

However, this response says very little about the significance of today’s digital revolution.

When the Sloan Digital Sky Survey started in 2000, its telescope collected more data in its first week than has been amasses in the entire history of astronomy.

Wall-Mart in the USA handles more than 1 million customers transactions every hour, feeding its databases with 2.5 petabytes- the equivalent of 167 times the books in the America’s Library of Congress.

Facebook has over 40 million photos and God only knows what Google is up to.

The point is that the world now contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is growing bigger and more rapidly.

In recent years Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and there like have spent $15 billion buying up software companies specializing in data management and analytics.

Data has become the new raw material of big business.

The trail of clicks is valuable and can be sold and you would indeed be an idiot to think that it is having no effect on your life.

The way that information is managed touches all areas of life.

What is true now is that more of our lives and activities are being stored digitally.

Like any technology, knowledge can be used for social good or to make things worse for people. Digital monopolies will wield considerable power.

There is likely to be a power imbalance if this kind of new capability of “knowing” is not well-handled by society.

There is no reason to think that the changes we are witnessing today will be any less disruptive than the Industrial Revolution.

We’re going to end up reinventing what it means to have a human society.

Who you actually are is now determined by where you spend time and which things you buy.

Big data is increasingly about real behavior and by analyzing this sort of data, scientists can tell an enormous amount about you. They can tell whether you are the sort of person who will pay back loans. They can tell you if you’re likely to get diabetes.

I am not a Edward Snowden.

If we handled Big data correctly it will bring massive benefits to us all – to our cities, to our environment, to our health, to almost everything.

Yet we also need a system that is flexible and adaptable enough to allow for bright ideas and social, business, and research entrepreneurship to build a better future, i.e. without getting tangled up in unthinkingly risk-averse bureaucracy and red tape. Without the rich getting richer and the poor living in a desert of ignorance.

We want to ensure that there is a high trust system for data sharing, not one that mitigates many of the risks.

We need to think of solutions that are sound and strong, but not brittle.

What kinds of principles and solutions are they?

There are many problems to be resolved. 

Who owns, controls, or has decision rights about data? Is it the collector of the data? Certainly they may have a financial interest.

The person who the data is about?

They certainly have an interest.

In order to reap the benefits of the data revolution, it is clear that existing databases will be re-used and new databases will be created.

But then, who owns the resulting data? The re-user?

Will they be owned by the entity disclosing or collecting the data, or will they be open by default?

What about collective ownership of data, such as IWI data?

How are intellectual property rights arrived at from the data managed?

Who has decision rights over data? The collector? Provider (if different)? The person or entity that the data is about? If there is a data commons, who makes decisions.

Who is the data custodian and what are their obligations?

Who will look after the (newly created) databases?

For instance, who is responsible for the processing and storage of the data?

Where and how will data be stored, and for how long?

Who will provide safeguards for data quality and data accuracy?

Who is accountable when data gets stolen?

Who will have the authority to decide on those data access rights?

What happens to data if the custodian gets liquidated or sold off (to another
business overseas)?

Can the liquidator on-sell the data to pay off creditors?

How do we protect the digital rights?.

We are living in a pluralistic society with differences in cultural backgrounds and value perspectives,which are spread all over the world and exposed to different cultures. These cultural differences influence our privacy perceptions and the types of data we are willing to share.

How could we maintain our cultural diversity and be an inclusive society in which the digital rights of ever one are protected?

What will be the social contract for a data-driven future?

The value of data no longer resides solely in its primary purpose. Value also resides in the re-use of data.

What do you give consent to when we cannot even imagine what possible future value that data may have?

Most data re-uses haven’t been imagined when the data is first shared, which raises the question of how individuals can give informed consent to an unknown.

Do individuals need to opt-in to an open-ended, multi-purpose arrangement?
Or are there perhaps other possible arrangements for informed consent we might be able to create?

Do children have digital rights to consent before a certain age?

What about you, and your family’s, rights when you die? Do we need digital wills?

Do we need the ability as individuals to opt out in the digital age, similar to how we can decide to opt out of target marketing campaigns of telemarketers?

Do we have a right to revoke our consent with the use of our personal data? How could this be arranged?

Will the digital footprints and breadcrumbs you have left earlier in your digital life, such as the public posting of sensitive pictures, haunt you for the rest of your life or even beyond?

How do we ensure the best outcome in a global environment where digital data crosses borders?

The Internet has, with a few notable exceptions, no borders and the digital world is truly global.

There are major questions, even on a domestic scale about the provenance and ownership of data, but these are amplified when global sharing is considered.

There are times when governments do not want your consent.

This is obvious in cases like policing and protecting children from child abuse.

There is no need to protect the privacy of some individuals.

But there are more challenging cases.

What if we could use personal health data to do research, to save lives?

What about when governments and insurance companies want to use shared data to manage their own interests?

Perhaps there is a life-threatening medical condition that a small number of people have. We want to profile them and compare them to others without the condition. But nobody wanted to opt in to share their data, though the risk to their privacy is small.

When do your interests in privacy outweigh other people’s interests or the collective interest? To track pandemic outbreaks. Who would give emergency consent to open all personal data to help stop the spread of this deadly disease?

Big data is big business for the criminal fraternity too who are adapting well to our digital future. Identity theft is increasingly common.

Like most things in this world the management of Big Data it is beyond control.

Along with Science and technology Big Data is out running our Morality.

There are a host of challenges and tensions for any society that wants
to play in this space; the sorts of challenges that we need to consider when people come asking to have and link up your data.

Challenges to safety from theft, bullying, or persecution; challenges to your autonomy and choice; challenges to freedom from interference from well-meaning (or otherwise) businesses and governments.

What can we do about it?                   You tell Me.

 

ON WE MARCH LEAVING FUTURE GENERATIONS THE PROBLEMS OF INEQUILITY

30 Monday Jun 2014

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This is a vast subject on which millions of knowledgeable words have been written down the centuries with little or no effect.

I am sure you will agree however no matter who was writing it is the people who are in pursuit of social change, and constantly bring attention to issues of equal rights and privileges, are often the people who do not have them. The ones who suffer daily from different levels of multidimensional inequality are the ones that see it is impossible to be politically equal.

The source of present day conflicts. 

The majorities at the bottom of the apex, with very limited power, are unable to make choices that would bring them to their ends. 

It is easy for us to say what should be done, but few of us can carry out what needs to be done.

ALL THOSE WORDS AND VOILA! WHERE ARE WE TO DAY?

With a Capitalist market which is earthly constructed that can only dole out earthly rewards.

If we continue to have so many social and economic inequalities our standard of living seems to be declining because we aren’t economically equal.

Some say in order to remove inequalities we must increase the minimum wage to a living wage. This will indeed save the middle classes and in doing so could reduce the need for food banks, social welfare benefits, and the like. In my view it would be a mistake to focus on growth and let inequality take care of itself, not only because inequality may be ethically undesirable but also because the resulting growth may be low and unsustainable.

Equality will not stop inequality of opportunity, education, health nor will it take people out of poverty. It will only move the reasons for inequality to a higher plane.

The drive to higher and more sustainable growth does not in itself support efforts to the redistribute of wealth.

There is an argument that a re-distributive system will slow innovation on quality of life improvements. Further, re distributive policies rely on the wisdom of the ‘redistributor.’ Freedom to choose those resources has been moved to the bureaucrat and politician and will ultimately lead us down the path of financial protectionism.

Now you might not agreed with the content of the above Paragraph but it is already in progress with more and more countries turning to Sovereign Wealth Funds’ (SWF) to protects their futures.  ( See Previous blogs)

These Funds have no outside beneficiaries or liabilities (beyond the government or the citizenry in abstract) they invest their assets, either in the short or long-term, according to the interests and objectives of the sovereign sponsor.

More and more Governments around the world see SWFs as an insurance policy for a potential future problem.

Political equality the most value of democratic theory. The idea that all have the capacity to make political and moral decisions and that we are equally qualified to rule is a long way off, if ever has long gone out the window.

What are the chances now that we have the start of Climate change that we can act as one. Fat chance of that coming about as the Climate is a salable product- CO2 carbon credits ( not worth the paper they are written on)

There is much work to be done Globally in a tight time frame if we don’t want mass immigration.

Development is about people: either poor people have ways to become richer where they are now, or they can become rich by moving somewhere else.

Rest assured that with CLIMATE CHANGE THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

With this in mind, it seems that most of these theories about re distribution of wealth come from fairly elite class perspectives and, in turn, tend to be more pessimistic about bringing change to the inequalities they are evaluating.

When in fact what will happen is that these SWFs will reach out to each other taking advantage of the forthcoming crisis forming partners or in “clubs.”capital.

These funds that Sovereignty Wealth Funds bring to the table are committed to improving their investment capabilities not reducing income inequality. They have taken advantage of the financial crisis by acquiring valuable human resources which has nothing to do with improving the quality of living for the masses.

If not Capped they will along with Climate Change they will rewrite the map of global.

There is only one solution. Make Greed Contribute. ( See previous Blogs)

 

 

WE LIVE IN A WORLD STILL FUMBLING IN DARKNESS

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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Today “governments are everywhere embracing the free-market gospel, but should we leave the Capitalist free Market to handle Climate Change.

The answer is no.

History tells us so.  History Does Not Show that Business Forces Make Companies Efficient. Some claim free markets lead to greater prosperity than other economic policies.

I say that the selfish simply spend the extra money on themselves thereby setting an example for others that if you want a more affluent lifestyle you should be selfish. Left to regulate themselves in terms of climate change and the environment they are all ready turning both into products for Profit.

If we need pollution control, we don’t want it regulated by industrial companies.

We can choose to eat, drink and be merry today and die tomorrow; or we can choose to put limits on what we do today in order to live tomorrow. 

Consumer Choices Aren’t The Best Means For Citizens To Make Binding Group Decisions

There is more to life than merely increasing one’s money as fast as possible. A sense of security and dependability has some human value also.

Under American values any business with a conscience is at a disadvantage competing with companies without a conscience. These values are illustrated most dramatically by the wave of the future: telecommunications, the Internet, advanced computer technology, and the other wonders created by the exuberant American entrepreneurial spirit all unleashed by the market, by the huge transfer of public funds to private power, often under the traditional guise of “security.

We must put aside the intriguing contrast between doctrine and reality.

Meanwhile privatization proceeds apace elsewhere with Sovereign Wealth Funds taking control of the earth resources.

Control over food raises even more serious questions, in this case about survival.

Control over food supplies by foreign corporate giants is well under way, and with the agreement on telecommunications signed and delivered, financial services are next in line.

Just look at one important recent case, over considerable popular opposition the government of Brazil has decided to privatize the Vale Company, which controls vast uranium, iron, and other mineral resources and industrial and transport facilities, including sophisticated technology.

Also recently if you look a the Concentration of communications in any hands (particularly foreign hands) raises some rather serious questions about meaningful democracy.

Similar questions arise about concentration of finance, which undermines popular involvement in social and economic planning.

The free market gospel is preached (to the poor and defenseless) while protectionism through Sovereignty Wealth Funds is reaching unprecedented heights, and what are Administrations doing. Poured public funds into high-tech industry with unusual abandon.

Here we begin to reach the heart of the matter. Sovereign wealth funds activities must be caped if we want a free market and not Protectionism.

(See previous blogs)

Is inequality an inevitable product of capitalist activity?

01 Sunday Jun 2014

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There is no answer other than YES.

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it — because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords. The advent of capitalism gave individuals more control over and responsibility for their own lives than ever before — which proved both liberating and terrifying, allowing for both progress and regression.

Despite what many on the right think, however, this is a problem for everybody, not just those who are doing poorly or those who are ideologically committed to egalitarianism — because if left unaddressed, rising inequality and economic insecurity can erode social order and generate a populist backlash against the capitalist system at large.  Recent European elections hint strongly that this is happening.

In recent decades, developments in technology, finance, and international trade have generated new waves and forms of insecurity for leading capitalist economies, making life increasingly unequal and chancier for not only the lower and working classes but much of the middle class as well.

The right has largely ignored the problem, while the left has sought to eliminate it through government action, regardless of the costs.

Neither approach is viable in the long run. Contemporary capitalist polities need to accept that inequality and insecurity will continue to be the inevitable result of market operations and find ways to shield citizens from their consequences — while somehow still preserving the dynamism that produces capitalism’s vast economic and cultural benefits in the first place.

Formal or informal barriers to equality of opportunity, for example, have historically blocked various sectors of the population — such as women, minorities, and the poor — from benefiting fully from all capitalism offers. But over time, in the advanced capitalist world, those barriers have gradually been lowered or removed, so that now opportunity is more equally available than ever before.

The inequality that exists today, therefore, derives less from the unequal availability of opportunity than it does from the unequal ability to exploit opportunity. And that unequal ability, in turn, stems from differences in the inherent human potential that individuals begin with and in the ways that families and communities enable and encourage that human potential to flourish.

Capitalist societies, by contrast, have been oriented toward innovation and dynamism, to the creation of new knowledge, new products, and new modes of production and distribution. All of this has shifted the locus of insecurity from nature to the economy.

Rising inequality, meanwhile, has been compounded by rising insecurity and anxiety for people higher up on the economic ladder. One trend contributing to this problem has been the financialization of the economy, above all in the United States, creating what was characterized as “money manager capitalism”

How are we to rectify the imbalances?

A useful starting point might be the rejection of both the politics of privilege and the politics of resentment and the adoption of a clear-eyed view of what capitalism actually involves, as opposed to the idealization of its worshipers and the demonization of its critics.

We need to distinguish between growth and development: we need a

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Thank you for your response. ✨

large-scale redistribution of the staggering amounts of wealth from the very rich to the rest. Remember the bulk of the world’s population get by (just) on $2 a day, and that in the developed world, inequality is growing.

Earth will be unable to support human life when there is only standing room on the planet. Humans will die out when our sun burns out, or when the universal temperature is a few degrees above absolute zero.

I agree there is a possibility that for a few centuries or millennia, human ingenuity will allow continued material growth, but to hold this as certain or even probable is nothing but blind, irrational faith and hubris.

No matter what happens Wealth will have to find a new way to be distributed worldwide.  Some support a Wealth Tax which is totally farcical. It is Impossible to set up, too porous, too expensive, too open to manipulation politically, and otherwise.  Will never be accepted in the USA or growing Economies. Will be seen as unfair, unjust, damaging, and impossible to collect.

There is only one solution. See my blog ” Just Look what could be achieved if we could re-focus greed” There is no other solution other than capturing the very essence of Capitalism to contribute to the world as a whole so that we protects the values of our existence on a Planet that is increasingly crying for help.

Our  inability to locate the exact instance of an occurrence does not imply it will not occur or has not occurred—-say, the moment when human DNA first appeared, or the cardinality of the continuum. It is time to place a 0.05% AID COMMISSION ON ALL FOREIGN EXCHANGE TRANSACTIONS OVER $20,000.

THE SCRAMBLE HAS BEGUN-IS SUSTAINABILITY STILL POSSIBLE

08 Thursday May 2014

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We are all living in an age where the word Sustainability more typically lends itself to corporate behaviour.

The question is whether civilization ( what ever civilization mean these days) can continue on its current path without undermining prospects for future well-being.

Can humanity alter current behaviors that are leading to self destruction.

The North America’s Iroguis had a proverb ” We have not inherited the earth from our fathers,we are borrowing it from our children.

So what’s going on? and can it keep going on in this way, on this scale, at this pace.

It will almost certainly take more cooperation and more sharing that we can imagine in a world driven by competition and individual accumulation of wealth.

Societies are unlikely to enact policies and programs that favor the future, at the expense of people living in the present, especially the poorer among us.  We have little choice but to give priority to the needs of human beings alive today.

On the other hand we classify ourselves as a Smart and adaptive species which might explain why so many important economic and environmental trends seem headed in conflicting and even opposite directions. 

To help with measurement, we should look without blinking at what is unsustainable—at practices and patterns that,  if we don’t stop them, will stop us.
The rarely voiced reality of environmental unsustainability is that we may have not just less prosperous and comfortable lives in the future but shorter and fewer lives altogether.
If it proves too challenging to feed the projected 2050 world population of more than 9 billion people, for example, it is quite possible we will not have to—for the worst of reasons.
The same can be said of “business-as-usual” greenhouse gas emission scenarios: by the time global thermometers register a hike of 4 degrees Celsius, business-as-usual will have ended a long time ago.
So to answer the Question.  It is my belief that we are all incapable of Sustainability, due to Greed.
The only way is to harness greed into contributing by Placing a World Aid Tax or commission on all Stock Exchange transactions world-wide.
This will creating a sustainable fund to distribute wealth to tackle the present day unsustainable inequalities in the world.
   

BIG DATA IS LEADING US TO CULTURAL DE-ACCELERATION.

24 Monday Mar 2014

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The most recent centuries have seen extraordinary accomplishments in improving quality of Life AND WE MUST ALL LEARN TO MANAGE WITHIN IT. 

For example: All those interested in Health will have to learn to keep up with advances in digital monitoring through wireless technologies of biological information. In doing so learn how personal feedback systems will apply to prevention rather than cure.

We hear that change is accelerating, while the pace of change is accelerating faster.

It appears to me that this is true of computational carrying capacity at a planetary level and that the two are connected, but we are also seeing cultural de-acceleration.

We are investing our energy in futuristic information technologies that are creating Big Data. Another words machines get smarter, we are getting stupider.

Breakneck development of personal technology is creating over choice, and surplus complexity. Just look at communication. We at the point of gluttony. Choosing take’s time and our time is not unlimited. Businesses are engineering complexity which produces additional revenue.

Just look at what you have to agreed to before hitting the “I agree”

Or put Cooking Pot into Google and up come 8.600,000 results.

These technologies are also the basis of NSA spying, flying robots killing people, the wholesale privatisation of biological life itself.

Now don’t get me wrong I am not against the world of technology, but Big Data is going to change our world in way we cannot image.

If the key problems facing our species were to be solved, you would have to jail most of us, and there would be less and less work.

I can hear you saying so what, what’s your point.

Sorry I can not be more specific as they are in a state of developing and need your input.

Business and technologies can be the great engines that lifts billions out of poverty but they both need a new kind of values driven ethos rather than profit for profit sake.

Technology is developing in rich countries while Tigers are disappearing.

Which of the two contributors above to you think are more important to life in regard to REWARDING us.

Is Technology creating technological deserts of inequality? Is it that is replace Poverty with Big Data which is owned by the rich?

Is Technology Privatizing the World through Sovereign Wealth Funds?

So my point is that we must bring fresh thinking to our world if we are going to avoid Inequality on a scale that is all ready out of control.

You will see from previous blogs I advocate that humans are incapable of developing a system to avoid this happening due to greed.  So before we are all writing with GOOGLE Pens that need no Education lets hear what you have to say.