A common complaint about representative democracy is that it creates a distant class of lawmakers who will often collude with vested interests, or become so detached from the lives of the general public, that they will make decisions that the public does not support. By contrast, in a Direct Democracy system, such corruption of decision-making is impossible if every citizen is an equally powerful participant in the process.
However, it does not make any sense to think that direct democracy is somehow ideologically predisposed in any particular direction.
Direct democracy is simply a median-reverting institution.
It pushes policy back toward the center of public opinion when legislatures move too far to the right or left or is it, in fact, an opportunity to organize a kind of socio-ecological revolution to break away from the western development model of politics.
We know that every political system man has invented is open to corruption.
It is obvious that modern western democracies are now confronted with a change in culture mainly due to the integration of migrants, globalization, terrorism, and artificial intelligence.
Direct Democracy is presented as a solution to these challenges mainly by Social Media with its partitions and manipulation of voters with false news and software bots that amplify specific conversations on Twitter and Facebook by posting videos, photos, and biased statements targeting particular hashtags and wordings.
Resulting in phony debates, nurtured by cliches and prejudices that are destabilizing the political systems we have had for hundreds of years.
At what cost?
One of the obvious cost is Brexit and the not so obvious Donald Trump.
It is simply impossible to have direct democracy as the common Googlefied smartphone citizen does not have a grasp of political understanding nor the cognitive capacities to achieve direct democracy.
However, this view cuts against democracy in general.
As it implies that politicians always know better than the average citizen.
This is far from the truth when one looks at the current state of the world that is crying for some common action.
Politicians don’t necessarily show expertise and interest and certainly don’t know all the issues and are not always well informed.
They depend on shortcuts and have to ask other politicians and experts.
This morning I received an email from John Taylo in response to my last post ( The Beady Eye ask’s: Does anyone really know what quantum chips will do.)
He sums up the situation by saying and I quote
” We have yet to invent a political system that will harness the knowledge of mankind. if AI can be used for the benefit of all to reduce poverty and increase living standers of all without wrecking the planet it will be ……. Only dreaming”
I replied “What a dream”
Perhaps I should have said ” Where do dreams come from. Look around you. That is where dreams come from. The only planet we know. ”
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT IS THE STANDING OF DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD TO DAY AND IS IT SOCIAL MEDIA THAT IS ALIENATING US FROM THE VOTE.
Democracy has many strengths, including the capacity for self-correction, but the question is can it survive social media.
The word ‘democracy’ has its origins in the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: ‘demos’ meaning whole citizen living within a particular city-state and ‘kratos’ meaning power or rule.
Democracy of sorts had existed for centuries but there is no absolute definition of democracy. The term is elastic and expands and contracts according to the time, place and circumstances of its use.
Meaningful democracy only arrived at a national level in 1906, when Finland became the first country to abolish race and gender requirements for both voting and for serving in government.
Even in established democracies, flaws in the system have become worryingly visible and disillusion with politics is rife. Yet just a few years ago democracy looked as though it would dominate the world. The combination of globalization and the digital revolution has made some of democracy’s most cherished institutions look outdated.
It is far short of the settled, comfortable state of maturity that many of its early adherents expected (or at least hoped) it would be able to claim after decades of effort.
Just a few years ago, Facebook and Twitter were hailed as tools for democracy activists, enabling movements like the Arab Spring to flourish.
Today, the tables have turned as fears grow over how social media may have been manipulated to disrupt the US election, and over how authoritarian governments are using the networks to clamp down on dissent.
They are fast becoming tools for social control.
So has democracy’s global advance come to a halt, and may even be in reverse.
The notion that winning an election entitles the majority to do whatever it pleases no longer holds water.
Since the dawn of the modern democratic era in the late 19th century, democracy has expressed itself through nation-states and national parliaments. People elect representatives who pull the levers of national power for a fixed period. But this arrangement is now under assault from both above and below.
From above, globalization has changed national politics profoundly.
From below Modern technology is implementing a new modern version with national politicians surrendering more and more power to Social Media.
For example over trade and financial flows, to global markets and supranational bodies, and may thus find that they are unable to keep promises they have made to voters.
International organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, and the European Union might have extended their influence, but they no longer have the power to implement what they preach.
There is a compelling logic too much of this:
The fragility of the United Nations influence elsewhere has become increasingly apparent with the state of the world.
How can anyone Organisation or a single country deal with problems like climate change or tax evasion?
National politicians have also responded to globalization by limiting their discretion and handing power to unelected technocrats in some areas. The number of countries with independent central banks, for example, has increased from about 20 in 1980 to more than 160 today.
So is the power now in the hands of multi Clongormentts like Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Mircosoft etc.
Certainly, the perception that democracy in decline has become more widespread than at any time during the past quarter-century. Erosion of freedom over the past few years, adopting smarter methods for m of subversion
There are four main sorts of Democracy.
Direct democracy
Representative democracy
Constitutional democracy
Monitory democracy
A liberal democracy (that is, one that champions the development and well-being of the individual) is organised in such a way as to define and limit power so as to promote legitimate government within a framework of justice and freedom.
Social media is a double-edged sword it allows us to speak truth to power but on the other hand, it allows power to manipulate public opinion and polarize the electorate.
Citizens use it to speak truth to power, and authoritarian governments use it to spread misinformation.
Twitter users got more misinformation, polarizing and conspiratorial content than professionally produced news.”
They fake petition signatures. They skew poll results and recommendation engines.
Rather than a complete totalitarianism based on fear and the blocking of information, the newer methods include demonizing online media and mobilizing armies of supporters or paid employees who muddy the online waters with misinformation, information overload, doubt, confusion, harassment, and distraction.”
And yes, governments are increasing their efforts to censor the internet, but that’s because they recognize that the internet poses a threat to their control.
Every authoritarian regime has social media campaigns targeting their own populations.
If the liberal world order is indeed coming apart under pressure from
the authoritarians, the future of democracy will be deeply affected.
Social media firms are “largely immune from responsibility” in the legal sense, but that “in the court of public opinion it is a different matter, and future US/EU legislation seems likely if they don’t address these issues in a meaningful way.
So what is the answer?
Is social media basically good, or does it have a “negative impact on society”
There are no gatekeepers when you publish via your social profile, (outside of each platform’s terms of use) – you can write anything and anyone has the chance to view it.
Social Media has truly democratized media and given everyone a medium through which to be heard.
It has also opened the system up to those who would exploit it to push their own agendas. The platforms are now looking to police this, but it’ll likely always play a part.
To make democracy work, we must be participants, not simply observers.
One who does not vote has no right to complain.
Here are a few questions to mull over.
What can be done to fight citizens’ political alienation and distrust?
Are representative democracy and greater public participation the answer or do we need to think beyond current practices?
How can the cultural and historical factors involved and reflected in present developments help us look into the future?
What knowledge is needed to understand and inform decision-making in the future?
Which values are and which values must be at the base of decision-making?
If we are indeed heading for a Smartphone Algorithms Democracy:Who, or What will be in control.
The algorithms behind social media platforms convert popularity into legitimacy, creating echo chambers, overwhelming the public square with multiple, conflicting assertions.
Today, social media acts as an accelerant, and an at-scale content platform and distribution channel, for both viral “dis”-information (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false) and “mis”-information.
“Populist” leaders use these platforms, often aided by trolls, “hackers for hire” and bots, on open networks such as Twitter and YouTube.
Sometimes they are seeking to communicate directly with their electorate. In using such platforms, they subvert established protocol, shut down dissent, marginalize minority voices, project soft power across borders, normalize hateful views, showcase false momentum for their views, or create the impression of tacit approval of their appeals to extremism.
And they are not the only actors attempting to use these platforms to manipulate political opinion — such activity is now acknowledged by governments of democratic countries.
In addition, advanced methods for capturing personal data have led to sophisticated psychographic analysis, behavioral profiling, and micro-targeting of individuals to influence their actions via so-called “dark ads.” to self-censor or opt out of participating in public discourse.
Currently, there are few options for redress. At the same time, platforms are faced with complex legal and operational challenges with respect to determining how they will manage speech, a task made all the more difficult since norms vary widely by geographic and cultural context.
Every democracy needs its justice system, so we must “catch up with the modern world”, to cope with the social media.
In reality, old power structures still have power, they just have it in new spaces.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the Bin.
The internet has loosened our collective grasp on the truth.
It is a fact of the internet that ( with a new social media user, every 15 seconds,) every click, every view and every sign-up is recorded somewhere.
So what exactly is Social Media:
Is it a term relating to gatherings of people that prefer to exist in groups?
Or
Is it the dustbin of idle world gossip.
Not on your Nelly> With billions of people glued to Facebook, Whats App, We Chat, Instagram, Twitter, Weibo and other popular services, social media has become an increasingly powerful cultural and political force, to the point that its effects are now beginning to alter the course of global events.
This is what it is to-day:
Social networks earned an estimated $8.3 billion from advertising in 2015.
A 2011 study by AOL/Nielsen showed that 27 million pieces of content were shared every day, and today 3.2 billion images are shared each day.
On WordPress alone, 91.8 million blog posts are published every month.
It’s estimated that video will account for 74% of all online traffic in 2017.
Google processes 100 billion searches a month.
91.47% of all internet searches are carried out by Google.
60% of Google’s searches come from mobile devices.
To carry out all these searches, Google’s data centre uses 0.01% of worldwide electricity, although it hopes to cut its energy use by 15% using AI.
By 2014, Google had indexed over 130,000,000,000,000 (130 trillion) web pages.
Facebook statistics
Facebook adds 500,000 new users every day; 6 new profiles every second.
79% of all online US adults use Facebook.
76% of Facebook users check it every day.
The average (mean) number of friends is 155.
Half of internet users who do not use Facebook themselves live with someone who does.
Of those, 24% say that they look at posts or photos on that person’s account.
There are an estimated 270 million fake Facebook profiles.
The most popular page is Facebook’s main page with 204.7m likes. The most liked non-Facebook owned page is Christiano Ronaldo’s with 122.6m.
There are 60 million active business pages on Facebook.
Facebook has 5 million active advertisers on the platform.
Facebook accounts for 53.1% of social logins made by consumers to sign into the apps and websites of publishers and brands.
Twitter statistics
500 million people visit Twitter each month without logging in.
There is a total of 1.3 billion accounts, but only 328 million are active,
Of those, 44% made an account and left before ever sending a Tweet.
The average Twitter user has 707 followers.
But 391 million accounts have no followers at all.
There are 500 million Tweets sent each day. That’s 6,000 Tweets every second.
Twitter’s top 5 markets (countries) account for 50% of all Tweets.
It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to go from the first Tweet to the billionth.
65.8% of US companies with 100+ employees use Twitter for marketing.
77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand when their Tweet has been replied to.
You tube statistics
300 hours of video are uploaded to You tube every minute.
People now watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos every day.
More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices.
The average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes.
The user submitted video with the most views is the video for Luis Fonsi’s song ‘Despacito’ with 4.36 billion views.
YouTube sees around 1,148bn mobile video views per day.
In 2014, the most searched term was music. The second was Minecraft.
9% of U.S small businesses use Youtube.
You can navigate YouTube in a total of 76 different languages (covering 95% of the Internet population).
Instagram statistics
There are 800 million Monthly Active Users on Instagram.
Over 95 million photos are uploaded each day.
There are 4.2 billion Instagram Likes per day.
More than 40 billion photos have been shared so far.
90 percent of Instagram users are younger than 35.
When Instagram introduced videos, more than 5 million were shared in 24 hours.
Pizza is the most popular Instagrammed food, behind sushi and steak.
24% of US teens cite Instagram as their favourite social network.
Pinterest statistics
Pinterest has 200 million active users each month.
31% of all online US citizens use the platform.
67% of Pinterest users are under 40-years-old.
The best time to Pin is Saturday from 8pm-11pm.
In 2014, male audience grew 41% and their average time spent on Pinterest tripled to more than 75 minutes per visitor.
LinkedIn statistics
LinkedIn has 500 million members.
106 million of those access the site on a monthly basis.
More than 1 million members have published content on LinkedIn.
The average CEO has 930 LinkedIn connections.
Over 3 million companies have created LinkedIn accounts.
But only 17% of US small businesses use LinkedIn.
Snapchat Statistics
Snapchat has 178m active daily users.
60% of them are under 25.
In 2016, $90m was spent on Snapchat ads.
47% of US teens think it’s better than Facebook, while 24% think it’s better than Instagram.
That’s your fill of social media statistics for now, with just a tiny fraction of the weird and wonderful stats and facts available out there.
It’s easy to get dragged into the drama and other negative aspects of social media.
Social media is built for polarisation and extremes.
The basic engagement mechanisms of popular social media sites like Facebook drive people to think and communicate in ever more extreme ways.
Social media is a collective term for all the websites and online services that are erasing national borders and distances.
Social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.
They are used to spread information about dramatic events or to warn others about risky routes. When refugees reach a new country, they can also use social media to contact their fellow countrymen who are already there and find out about things like permits, authorities they can turn to or what things cost.
They have subsumed and gutted mainstream media.
They have undone traditional political advantages like fund-raising and access to advertising.
They are destabilizing and replacing old-line institutions and established ways of doing things, including political parties, transnational organizations and longstanding, unspoken social prohibitions against blatant expressions of racism and xenophobia.
They are helping to create surprisingly influential social organizations among once-marginalized groups. For Example : Brexiters in Britain to ISIS in the Middle East to the hacker collectives of Eastern Europe and Russia.
Each network in its own way is now wielding previously unthinkable power, resulting in unpredictable, sometimes destabilizing geopolitical spasms.
Through this new technology, people are now empowered to express their grievances and to follow people they see as echoing their grievances.
THE QUESTION IS:
IS SOCIAL MEDIA NOW THE JUDGE AND JURY AND THOSE THAT RUN ITS ALGORITHMS ARE NOW THE REAL WORLD POWER BROKERS.
If it wasn’t for social media, I don’t see TRUMP AS PRESIDENT OF THE US.
This has to be the scariest ACHIEVEMENT about Facebook/ Twitter.
Not that Facebook may be full of lies (a problem that could potentially be fixed), but that its scope gives it real power to change history in bold, unpredictable ways.
But that’s where we are.
It’s time to start recognizing that social networks actually are becoming the world-shattering forces that their boosters long promised they would be — and to be unnerved, rather than exhilarated, by the huge social changes they could uncork.
This should come as no surprise.
Facebook and Twitter have become the new TV, where businesses can’t control their messaging as they once were able to do with TV ads.
In a way, we are now living through a kind of bizarro version of the utopia that some in tech once envisioned would be unleashed by social media.
Online campaigns directed at GOVERNMENTS OR FOR THAT MATTER AGAINST BRANDS can be a lot more effective than writing. Pay-to-play strategy by letting posts run and gain organic traction before boosting them.
Efforts to fight this dismaying trend are obviously worth pursuing, but is it time to give our due to the new political activism – Social Media. The king of communication.
As it becomes increasingly commercialised there is a risk that people – particularly young people – will see social media content as being politically and commercially independent.
What it means to get caught in a Twitter storm. Facts tell, but stories sell.
In actual fact, the very opposite is true.
When you sign up for Facebook, you also accept a business model that can use information about what you do and how you feel, for example in marketing.
One terrifying example is how the terrorist group ISIS uses social media to recruit new supporters. Potential ISIS fighters can be invited to join private Facebook groups where they are put into contact with individuals who are active in Syria.
However if used in a responsible manner it s also a new tool for democracy.
More people can express their views and form opinions. There are also examples of individuals who have quickly succeeded in raising large sums of money for those in need.
The Impotence of Social Media is in its nucleus accumbens.
People tend to follow the behavior of the group.” If other people have liked a post, new viewers will be more likely to like it too. And that popularity can feed on itself, changing their behavior to try to get social approval, respond to headlines without any in-debt knowledge of what the headline refers to.
A single ‘like’ can make a social-media post more popular.
Many social media sites share more of the higher-ranked — or more popular — posts. As a result, “people are more likely to see what others have positively rated,” what’s in those photos is socially acceptable.
Skip pictures with few likes.
Likes can have a subtle but significant effect on how teens interact with friends online.
The important take-home message here, is that Social media shapes how we perceive the world around us.
When people express themselves through social media, they communicate collectively.
Members of social media communities direct raw emotions into particular interests. These audiences show their interest and approval by liking, sharing and commenting. And those mechanisms drive future social media behavior all driven by algorithms that drive participation and attention-getting in social media, the addictive “gamification” aspects such as likes and shares, invariably favoured the odd and unusual.
What are the results?
How polarised and divided nations are becoming.
The smartphones and web applications were increasing people’s
passions while also driving them to polarising extremes.
Political figures around the world are more polarised.
Language is more crude.
Sharing is becoming competitive, pushing participants to one-up each other.
Where Facebook or Twitter (viewed on mobile devices) has become for many people the sole source of news. Article will have a MUCH higher chance of converting to a sale!
You’ve engaged them, you’ve educated them, you’ve entertained them with social networks. (Communities of people (or animals) that are interrelated owing to the way they relate to each other.)
In humans, this can involve sharing details of their life and interests on Twitter or Facebook, or perhaps belonging to the same sports team, religious group or school.
I rest my case.
The functions of social media have transformed into something we have never anticipated.
Social media has transformed into political tools, increased global awareness, and offered a quicker way to spread information.
People have the power to abuse social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to promote radical ideas. So what.
Once you gag people’s right to speak freely, you place a mental shackle on the subconscious mind.
If you want to influence others to act upon what you have to say, treat social media communications with the same degree of importance as those that are face-to-face.
Social media to a great extent is a reflection of life. Without education for the sake acquiring knowledge the mind looks for it else where.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.
Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.
However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.
Our world is rapidly changing. Markedly defined by the Internet.
We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.
With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.
We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.
Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.
These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.
Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.
A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.
Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.
All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.
With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.
There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.
However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.
It is what we are doing with it is the problem.
Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit.
We need a new consciousness for a different world.
Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.
We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.
We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.
Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.
I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.
it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.
0.05%
On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.
This fund would be a perpetual source of money.
It could replace the begging Organisations.Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.
It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.
Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.
It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.
Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start.
All suggestions appreciated.
All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.
If we look at England going headlong to join Greece, (which has olive oil and sunshine against cider and gray skies) one has to wonder why all those that voted to stay in the EU have gone silent.
Why is this?
Where are the 48% that voted to stay in the EU?
It seems that England’s pending departure from the European Union, is driven by memories of the Empire rather than its people.
We all know that it built a fortune on the British Empire, however it used it to create pervasive banking and finance institutions, including many large value traders. It is this trade potential that made such a large economy.
Now just because it was unwilling to fight its corner we are witnessing a form of collective up in the clouds lunacy. As if Democracy is unable to reconsider a decision once vote on.
If anything one has to admire the bull dog determinism of a country that has giving many things to the world both good and bad to enact the result of a non legal binding Referendum that was won by 52% to 48%.
What can one say other than, you might like to turn your thoughts to the millions of people who will be directly affected but weren’t allowed to vote. (Not just the under-18s, but also the UK residents who come from other countries in the EU, and the UK nationals living in other parts of the EU…) The 10 million or so remain voters who didn’t show up to the polls should feel ashamed.
While Brexit likely does not reflect the sentiment of the entire electorate the result of the referendum reflects how democracy works in England.
Once the largest empire in the world its is now a shell of what it once was.
It’s too late now, but on such an important decision one would have thought that voting should have been compulsory, with a minimum majority of at least 60% to win.
Who in their right minds would run a yes-no one-off vote on such a big and complex issue? Only mad dogs and English men in the noon day sun.
Did the outcome really represent the will of the entire electorate?
Not by a long shot.
If only more_____ (fill in your choice of young people, ethnic minorities, Londoners, Scots, university graduates, etc.) had voted, then Remain would have won. At least that’s the argument.
Of course, UK voters did not have one million chances to vote to stay in the EU. They had one, and a majority of those who cast a ballot opted to leave.
There is a longstanding unwritten constitutional principle in England if you don’t participate, your voice is not heard.
Yet, when Britain renegotiates its status, with the European Union the borders will not change.
Do you know why?
Because Britain needs an open line to Europe. The most that will happen is a limit placed on immigration, something that the didn’t need to leave the EU to achieve.
So I ask where is the voice of the younger generation – which voted overwhelmingly in favor of remaining in the EU – that ultimately will bear the cost of the xenophobic pipe dreams sold to their parents by cynical politicians.
Have you all being seriously duped by a dream that wants you to believe that your standard of living will rise as a result.
What you are seeing is less secure employment, more social disease and mental health…and generally a cost of living that very few people can afford unless your one of the top 10%.
Which begs the question, is this what happens in a limited 2 party ‘democratic’ state (first past the post being the least democratic of all voting systems) when the people have lost faith in both parties?
Without the EU apparatus, your trading leverage is massively weakened, meaning that many of the free trade agreements you will sign outside of Europe will end up being less beneficial, especially in the extent that they impact upon the young.
I’m curious about exactly what England (notice I didn’t use the term UK) has to offer Europe or any free trade partner.
Heavy industry and mining is a shell of what it once was, as is the textiles industry. The auto industry is in many ways being propped by their EU agreements. Every one of your rural industries has another source within Europe itself.
You don’t have many natural resources, and even those you do have like North Sea oil will have its boundaries tested when you leave. I’m assuming this will extend to fishing boundaries as well. England, the entire UK for that matter, will be a pretty small place.
London’s status as a banking capital may be worth squat now as well. Banks will leave England as quick as they can buy new buildings in other cities.
The lost of the clearing of euro-denominated derivatives, will ultimately force tens of thousands pounds in revenue out of London and break off a key part of the City’s infrastructure.
On top of all of this we are now witnessing what I happen to think it a VERY bad idea to hand your laws into the hands of the politicians, especially when they are already rich autocrats.
All this assumes that the legislation that would be required goes through either of the houses, which is in and of itself an iffy proposition, especially with Scotland promising to block and obstruct and rest assured that the Northern Ireland DUP will more than likely be looking for additional bribery blood money to vote on any agreement.
Throughout the course of human history, wealth, or the lack thereof, has driven social unrest. The frenetic pace of change has caused enormous social disruption as entire industries and employment have migrated to lower cost centers in Asia and other developing regions.
Perhaps England should take a leaf form Isaac Goldberg, who said
” To blind oneself to change is not therefore to halt it”.
This is what England can look forward to, deal or no deal.
Your politicians say;
It simply isn’t possible to wind back the clock. The forces that have been unleashed cannot be restrained. Turning inwards, however, will not solve the problem.
A disunited Europe alienated from a disunited UK can only lead to sorry state of affairs.
With profit seeking algorithms, Capitalism as we know it is going underground, isolation will not stop this taking place.
Perhaps now is the time for the European Union to consider jettisoning the UK relationship altogether. However the EU has shown it tends to move with a glacial pace, so the thaw will be over several decades that will bleed not just your productivity, but the aspirations of the young.
The blow dealt to European unity may prove fatal but it is beyond a doubt that England will certainly feel the chill winds from the UK’s new isolationist policy.
I have always felt the UK should have try again to renegotiate the terms of its membership rather than an either / or referendum.
Now it appears that this is not possible as the damage has already been done, to an almost irreversible extent, the conditions of re-entry would not be favorable, and the cost of rejoining would be high.
The gap in EU-UK positions is wide, the risks of escalation high, and the room for compromise limited.
In or out will now weigh on Britain’s economic prospects for years to come.
If Brexit talks collapse the most likely reason will be not be money. (One way or the other the UK will pay a hefty bill for leaving EU.) The main reason is that any future relationship between Britain and the EU will take years to negotiate. The architecture of this relations depends on whether England honors the commitments which England entered into freely.
UK politics are now in a state of chaos, with European politics following suite so it is highly unlikely (whether England honors its commitments or not) that the twenty remaining EU countries will agree to anything other than to agree to disagree.
You only have to look at the Irish/ Northern Ireland border.
No other country is going to feel the fallout from the UK’s vote to leave the European Union more than Ireland. It remains at the mercy of the unfolding drama in its closest neighbor and the consequences are mind-boggling.
Brexit is not occurring in a vacuum.
Public opinion is being reshaped by Brexit however it will be the cost of inflation that will cause panic, with corporations shift their bases of operation to Europe, costing thousands of jobs it will result in more than disturbances on the street.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
IN A WORLD THAT IS LOSING ITS GRIP THE TROUBLE IS KNOWING WHAT TO GET A GRIP OF.
There is nothing new about this, other than the manner and the pace it is happening at where facts are deemed less important than beliefs.
For Example: In an age of Post – truth politics we now have a President of the USA that appears not to care whether his words bear any relation to reality.
The declining societal respect for facts, the rise of deceptive partisan media outlets are creating an echo chamber effect in public discussion.
If people only knew the truth, we wouldn’t have the problems of global warming, economic recession, poverty, War, any Famine.
Most people now get their news about the world around them pre-digested and customised by social media. They do not get the breadth of information supplied by an even moderately impartial news source.
Material is allotted them not by whether it is true but by whether they might like it.
Which is institutionally biased, and more vulnerable to the dissemination of lies.
Something must be surely be done about this.
Our post-truth era, in short, need not be an obstacle to taking common action.
Feelings trump facts and the power of truth as a tool to solve problems is being diluted by False News. For example the EU is now in danger of breaking up due to a campaign of blatant misinformation.
The lost of truth has many roots, and indeed it is a human failing not to seek it out. Life at this juncture is practically unimaginable without the technology we enjoy today.
A large amount of social media feeds on getting strangers to follow each other’s random thoughts or tracking our idle page visits to target advertising, and as a society we seem more than happy to provide.
If you OK-ed the latest update for your Facebook app on your phone, you’ve given Facebook permission to read your text messages?
Everybody knows Google has questionable privacy rules, but Gmail is a really good email provider, and most people don’t tend to make their Twitter private.
Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. Unorganized knowledge is the king, driving Climate Change, down to the survival of the cutest.
The continued societal focus on economic growth, both personally and as a society driven by algorithms for profit are all forcing a consumer society.
With the continued societal focus on economic growth, privacy is now arguably subject to consumerism. Critical thinking is sacrificed in favour of having feelings, reinforced by soundbite.
The problem is that Facebook (which has somewhere in the region of 2 billion users) and other so-called net works do not see themselves as media companies and are for the most part run by algorithms that have put artificial intelligence in charge of spreading False News.
As capitalism really gaining a grip on everyday life technology is a society constant. The majority of the Facebook users tend to share every mundane detail of their lives.
The inverted distinction between public and private.
What can we do about it?
We’ve built an awesome, sprawling web of technology with a astonishing bit rates entering the human mind and emotions through eyes, ears and even noses, all creating an accelerating escalation of intensity which is now out of control.
In a world increasingly devoid of person to person contact we are becoming more and more attached to morally ambiguous technologies. Given such biases it is no wonder we are unable to even agree on facts.
Precious little is said about the human, societal and environmental impact of such intense and increasing post-truth politics.
Are we more or are we less?
What is happening to our relationships, to our sensitivities, to our abilities to be moved, to our abilities to perceive?
Content is no longer a fixed format so there is no provenance as to what is true or false. With countervailing views filtered it is no wonder we get like clicks or news to boost hits.
Most of us now get our news on social media with anyone becoming a publisher. This information revolution can now play havoc with political falsehood.
So when Trump says we need to go to war now. We won’t know if he’s telling the truth.
What then?
We might even see this proliferation of belief systems and worldviews as an opportunity for human development. We can agree to disagree and still engage in pragmatic action in the world.
Modern democracy is not indeed flawless, but so far it is the most advanced political system the human kind could come up with. However the features of modern democracy for which we consider it as the most ‘human’ form of governance now comes with shortcomings.
These shortcomings like poor access to institutions, low-level of participation, rising level of elitism, ossification of state authorities, etc., are often the root of discontent among the public. Such reasons are making the discontent more than just and as a matter of fact.
But without opposition and discontent, there can be no democracy.
We as an audience must take into account the nature of media and subsequently different sources before making any assumptions on the content itself. Things like lack of critical thinking, an absence of fact-checking before accepting statements, inability to put things perspective and so on, provide opportunities for the rise of unpleasantly phenomena like post-truth and post-truth politics.
The concept of ‘post-truth’ has reached a point of saturation in present-day popular discourse and media punditry. Driven by digitally mediatized representations of reality and social interaction. Resulting in many of our world organisation becoming irrelevant.
Democracy requires a citizenship that meets, deliberates and interacts without fear and hatred. It requires organisations that give people a “voice” and a feeling that they have a stake and some influence in the system.
The pervasiveness of presumed causal linkages between environmental degradation, violent conflict and human mobility has been utilized by policy makers and pundits to shape public opinion.
Democracy now needs online innovation.
When Microsoft created Windows, it created the possibility of multiple lenses or views of any issue. Why not build on that? Before we all become Twit’s.
The problem which remains is purely one of logic.
The world is populated by other people who aren’t you. This is one of the major tools of democracy.
What does post-truth tell us about the current and future state of democratic engagement and of democracy itself?
Truth must no longer legitimize the politics of Brexit and Trump. No matter how democratic it is, the rug must be pulled out from under Post – truth politics. We have lost our power to them; we cannot lose our truth too.
The pervasiveness of presumed causal linkages between environmental degradation, violent conflict and human mobility has been utilized by policy makers and pundits to shape public opinion about the predicament we are now in.
What can be done?
“Take back control”
The least we can do to make the United Nations a place where minds, hearts and nations connect for the sake of so many people all over the world.
Obviously, don’t vote for fibbers.
Bombard social media platforms to remove filters.
Create an Online Political platform for the Truth.
Remember that knowledge is power.
All comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
You might think this is a stupid thing to contemplate.
But just look around you.
Every minute on the web there is a new petition to vote on.
People are invited on Facebook and twitter to vote and for that matter to get killed ( as reported on the Shooting in Germany)
And now Hillary Clinton has just released a mobile game app that allows the user to build your own campaign headquarters by completing ” Fun” challenges to earn credit stars which you can cash in a virtual shop. You get a free Autograph and a Trump or False Quizzes and a lovely virtual plant to be watered.
You don’t have to be a genius to know what is behind the App.
And just the other day Paddy Ashdown in the UK set up a new political group called MoreUnited.UK which intends to support political candidates it agrees with – regardless of their party affiliation – with cash and on-the-ground campaigners.
So where or what next.
This is a serious question as the world is shaped by big, powerful forces or trends that nobody can control.
These forces are now driven by technology.
Right now these forces are driving the biggest change in 500 years and I don’t have to tell you that they are not all good despite the new environmental spirit.
Governments are preoccupied with cloaking democratic sovereignty in order to do business for the kept classes. A source of great social unrest, state violence, and public pressure for institutional reform. I.E. the English referendum to leave the European union.
The modern capitalist system has been charged more and more by its critics with crushing the spirit and substance of representative self government.
The subject of capitalism versus democracy is back.
Market failures are having political effects: they are breathing new life into demands for fresh thinking and a new democratic politics that, so far, has not happened on any scale.
Capitalist markets have been a mixed blessing for democracy in representative form. The dynamism, technical innovation and enhanced productivity of the free market have been impressive. Equally notable with the free market is the rapaciousness unequal ( class-structured) outcomes, reckless exploitation of nature.
Pauperism mixed with plutocracy is today a feature of practically every democracy on our planet.
Enough is Enough.
With the gap between the rich and poor grows even wider there is political trouble ahead.
This is why every form of democracy worth its salt has stood against the presumption that the wealthy are ‘naturally entitled to rule.
Is capitalism the only moral economic system or a deeply flawed socio-economic system that has to be addressed by more government intervention and control? Or is it foundations no long based on individual rights? Each individual is an end in themselves and not a means to achieve the wishes of others.
If you adopt the view that capital belongs to everyone it is the only moral system because it respects the volitional reason of the individual to engage with others and further their own happiness as they see fit and it allows them to fail and learn from the consequences if they should make a mistake.
But the above is no longer true as we enter a new form of Capitalism which Oliver Stone recently christened as ‘ SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, ROBOT TOTALITARIANISM .
POKEMON GO’S collects names and locations of the user. It can also access the contents of your USB storage, your accounts, photographs, network connections, and phone activities, and even activate your phone when it is on standby mode. It reserves the right to share all the data it collects with a third parties such as advertisers. It is a sinister trade-off for playing a game that you think is free.
So the question asked in the heading of this blog is more than serious.
Are Politicians representing or will they be able to represent the people in the future?
In democratic election campaigns, do political parties any longer compete freely for votes?
Do Political parties (in this world of fast developing technologies) any longer provide a way for voters to easily identify a candidate’s positions?
As Parliaments gain greater control, the issues on which they disagree often are not goals so much as means: how best to keep the economy growing, protect the environment, and maintain a strong national defense.
Such competition is one of the hallmarks of democracy.
Parties’ views on government’s role often depend on the specific issue or program in question.
A political party use to be a group of voters organized to support certain public policies. The aim of a political party is to elect officials who will try to carry out the party’s policies. This is no longer true.
In the modern age where everything is connected to everything.
The United States has a two-party system.
Political parties are often a standard by which a country’s political freedom can be measured. Some countries have only one political party. In China, for example, there is only one party, the Communist Party.
Democracies usually operate under either a two-party or a multiparty system. Like the United States, Britain has a two-party system. The major parties are the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, though there are active third parties.
Multiparty systems are common in Europe and other parts of the world. In this system, three or more parties each enjoy substantial support from voters. France, Germany, Israel, and South Africa are just a few examples.
In these countries there may be many parties representing a wide range of political views. Because of the number of competing parties, it is sometimes difficult for any one party to get a clear majority of the votes. In such cases, leading parties that can agree on general policies form a coalition (a combination of parties) to run the country.
In the past 30 years, party membership has dropped significantly across Europe, whereas other forms of political participation have developed.
Social Media has rapidly grown in importance as a forum for political activism in its different forms.
Social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube provide new ways to stimulate citizen engagement in political life, where elections and electoral campaigns have a central role.
Personal communication via social media brings politicians and parties closer to their potential voters.
Although the presence of social media is spreading and media use patterns are changing, online political engagement is largely restricted to people already active in politics and on the Internet.
Social media has reshaped structures and methods of contemporary political communication by influencing the way politicians interact with citizens and each other. However, the role of this phenomenon in increasing political engagement and electoral participation is neither clear nor simple.
In the past few years, the way that citizens communicate with one other about politics has been fundamentally altered by the emergence of social media.
In view of recent political developments as diverse as Occupy Wall Street in the United States, the rise of Indignados in Spain, protests in Moscow and Tehran, and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, it has become increasingly clear that social media are now intertwined with political activity.
However we know surprisingly little about exactly how social media affects political participation.
We are only beginning to scratch the surface of developing theories linking social media usage to political participation.
At the same time, the data being generated by users of social media represents a completely unprecedented source of data recording how hundreds of millions of people around the globe interact with politics.
The M5S Movement in Italy has evolved rapidly to become a significant political player by using social media to engage like-minded people in virtual and real life political action.
The impact of social media on political communication.
New ways of building an online campaign and the trend of personalisation in politics. The possibility to communicate directly with voters via social media is groundbreaking and essential for the development of citizens-initiated campaigning.
Well known cases such as the Obama Presidential campaign, the Arab spring uprisings and UK Uncut demonstrations.
A new concept of virtual political support.
Freedom became capitalism’s self-celebration which it largely remains.
Yet the reality of capitalism is that the mass of employees are not free inside capitalism or any other system for that matter to participate in the decisions that affect their lives ( e.g., what the enterprise will produce,what technology will it use, where production will occur, and what will be done with the profit workers’ efforts help to produce)
In fact their exclusion from such decisions modern-day employees resemble slaves and serfs.
Parliaments and universal suffrage have accompanied capitalism – an advance over serfdom and slavery. An Advance undermined by inequality of opportunity and income a discomforting fact mostly overlooked.
It is not likely that Capitalism is going to disappear in the near or distant future.
There is every likelihood with the arrival of AI ( Artificial Intelligence) that democracy as we know it will be eroded further.
At the moment it all boils down to Smart phone Democracy.
Perhaps in the near future we see a Smartphone political party.
Which might not be a bad way to go provided everyone has a Smart phone and everybody is requested to vote on any project that costs us the taxpayers and the nation over a billion.
The world we live in and on has and will continue to face many threats from extinction to survival till its demise in 6.5 billion years from now.
We all know that most of its present day problems have being created and propagated by us humans.
Some are easy to eradicate others not so.
WHY? Because global wealth concentrates is now in fewer hands resulting in inequality destroying our attitudes to world problems.
There is little need to state that there are many form of Inequality.
It come dressed in all colors along well beaten paths.
But one form for me leads to many of the others and that is Income Inequality.
(The income from capital continues growing faster than the income from labor.)
While Economists are conditioned to believe in the optimality of the market the newest economic inequality numbers, which ran counter to the expectations of almost all experts, are frightening.
.That’s why they have been in denial for so long that change is not likely in the short run.
But we have to try, because getting this wrong means that economists promote machine-like models that suggest that it is simply some invisible mechanism (or maybe an invisible hand) that ensures that workers don’t get paid very much, that owners make high profit rates, and that the economy will be just fine under these conditions.
Market forces alone cannot determine who gets wealthy and who doesn’t.
Owners of capital seek higher returns through speculation in financial assets, in effect bidding up prices in an eternal quest for ever higher returns, returns that can’t be matched by investments in productive capital (the returns from which have been declining for decades).
Economics can no longer be accepted as a discrete, coherent discipline. It through inequality has left millions impoverished laying in its wake.
As a result there is tremendous anger, disillusionment and fear. All of which are corrosive to democracy.
Just look at the unfolding elections in the USA.
Nearly total disillusionment with established politics due to a dysfunctional government, with the Republican party now barely a political party with a candidate that has risen out of the poplar base called Trump that the establishment could not squash. The main stream spectrum of world politics is moving to the right. Neoliberal policies have led to declines and near stagnation.
You can rest assured that we are going to see a very ugly scene.
Their solutions are the same old failed tactics.
When both parties kowtow to money, the people’s needs are ignored, and
politics becomes illegitimate.
You might say that redistribution of wealth is theft. But Redistribution of investment Profit for Profit’s sake is not.
You might think that 21st century technology such as the internet is going to change everything. But it is money that is writing the laws, the behind the door trade agreements, through lobbyist undermining democracy. This is happening all over the world.
There is no clear relationship between the total value of capital and profitability.
Whether distributions of income and wealth are partly shaped by social and political relationships – class conflict if you will – or mostly by “market forces.”
The forces of technology are what they are.
Take the contemporary communication technologies it can be used for various purposes, to increase surveillance, to increase power, control or it can be used for to empower people. Technology does not care you can use it both ways.
The technological connectedness is a myth.
If there is to be a rebalancing. The current trade agreements could be designed for the people. They are not.
They are however designed for the benefits of investors. They are not trade agreements except very marginally. That is the reason that they are keep secret, not quite totally as the details are being written by corporate lawyers and lobbyist.
They are however up to now effectively secret from the population.
We can fix the problem, but it will take bold steps. It will take a combined movement not splintered movements to force change. This is highly unlikely.
There is hatred and anger about just about all institutions.
There is only one way to effect redistribution.
Place a World Aid commission on all financial and acquisition activity that are made for the sake of profit. ( See previous Posts)
It is us the tax payer that bailed out the Banks, that paid for the research to create the internet. Are we getting any return on the investment. No.
The question however is, what (if any) form is worthwhile having or is what we have worth keeping.
I ask this because we are now traveling in some of the Earth,s most unforgiving environments where consensus democracy is just beginning to take hold.
We are entering a period in the world thanks to Social Media where old grudges are arising to the surface and are now threatening to destabilize world peace.
We are also entering a biomedical and silicon society with the recombinant DNA enabling the manipulation of life as its genetic essence.
Physics and Math with the help of computer power is not only revealing how the world works but how the Universe was formed with magnificent and dangerous ways to exploit it.
Perhaps because we are the invasive species of all it’s time we have to ask ourselves is Science and the game changing technology collaborating to destroy democracy or enhance it.
Is it still true to say:
Compared to dictatorships, oligarchies, monarchies and aristocracies, in which the people have little or no say in who is elected and how the government is run, a democracy is often said to be the most challenging form of government, as input from those representing citizens determines the direction of the country. The basic definition of democracy in its purest form comes from the Greek language: The term means “rule by the people.” But democracy is defined in many ways — a fact that has caused much disagreement among those leading various democracies as to how best to run one.
Our governments have made education a chain and ball of debt that locks the mind into materialism.
Instead of looking after their citizens they put ( under the miss comprehension that growth will cure-all ) the Economy first when they should be hanging their heads in shame when one citizen through no fault of his or her own lives life and died in poverty.
There is little point in maintaining a nuclear deterrent if you have to live out you life on the bread line. What’s the point if you all but wiped out before the button is pressed.
I recently visited Singapore Zoo. The youngest zoo in the world.
It sported a simulated Rainforest, a tropical Polar Bear and hundred of school children which will never see any of the Zoo residents in the wild. I could not shake the feeling that I was looking at our feeble attempts to show what was left of values. Perhaps it is because I was seeing a generation becoming bereft of connection to nature.
The caused of our separation from all these things pervade every aspect of our lives.
The rise of personal computer in the form of smart phones solely promoting free-market capitalism rather than equality, and values that count.
Most of us in the west are crying to have our needs met, and eventually adapting to them not being met. Perhaps such an upbringing is necessary in our cultural democracy contex. We are prepared from birth for a competitive dog-eat-dog economy. That expresses itself in greed by the continuing the imperative need to convert all natural and social into money.
All aspects of our present day democratic culture conspire to strip us of our connection and belongingness.
Property rights, Surveillance, Debt based financial systems where money is scarce, religious indoctrination, a legal culture of liability, Racial, ethnic, national chauvinism, deskilling jobs hat leave us as passive helpless consumers of experiences.
An Internet of everything that most impertantly is a metaphysics that tells us that we are discrete, separate selves in a universe of others.
As this world of separation crumbles so will Democracy.
Because of the atmosphere of scarcity is everywhere everything must change.
To appreciate the sweep of change and magnitude you only have to look at Climate change (perhaps its time to put a monetary value on the sky and people will not treat it like a free dump.) and the billions being spent by the Candidates for the President of the USA.
Ted Cruz $65 million
Mareo Rubio $ 17 million
Jeb Bush $104 million
Ben Carson $39 million
Chris Christie $19 million
Donal Trump $6 Million
Hillary Clinton $100 million
Bernie Sanders $42 million
They are transforming modern-day American democracy into a form of theater and television ads. The correlation between big money has condensed democracy into buzzwords, glitz, the main currencies attracting attention on our television screens.
With the wealth of the 62 richest people in the word now standing at over $2 trillion which is the cumulative worth of the poor half of the world population we have Google, Facebook, Twitter and other Corporate giants building technologies with artificial neurons that can learn on their own.
These may in time exhibit intelligent behaviours virtually indistinguishable from those of its human masters.
The question is longer what phone should I get? It’s what ecosystem should I join if any as they could all become the same.
Privacy is going out the window.
There are vats of coli bacteria churning out medical insulin, plastic polymers and food additives that might go where they are not wanted.
Limited world resources and being snapped up by sovereign wealth funds and hedge funds.
Algorithms buy and sell share and currencies making a mockery of the stock exchange.
Fusion power is light years away.
Not everybody is happy with the high-tech changes.
The Web is weakened the foundation principles of Democracy or if not reshaping them.
Our World Organisation are out of date, setting in motion a sequence of events that will change the history of life which is one contingent tale, liable to be rerouted at anytime. ( See previous posts)
We left with the question can capitalism Democracy deliver change.
Not on its own as it is based on greed, power, corruption, non transparency, taxies, to name just a few of its ticking cogs. God forbid its is left down to this man.
There is only one way we can achieve a better world.
Scrap the United Nations which has become a begging Organisation of worthless resolutions.
Replace it with a World Aid Organisation that is financed by Capitalism with a 0.05% world aid commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions.
This would create an Organisation with genuine clout and save Democracy.
I hope this blog will awaken those who are not already conscious. All comments welcome.
It’s only right that I follow the last series of posts on what is Wrong with a post that asks the above question.
BECAUSE ITS MONEY THAT IS AT THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM.
I guess the answer to the question “What is wrong with capitalism today?” is dependent on who you ask.
Capitalism works for capitalists.
The Problem is 90 percent of us are not capitalists, we are employees.
Without us noticing, we are entering the post capitalist era.
We need to reexamine the models that have gotten us to this point.
Complete change will not happen overnight. Nor will it be built on the back of one investor or one innovative entrepreneur.
It will be something that business owners, investors, political leaders, consumers and entrepreneurs must all work together toward.
Currently, our planet is on track to fly past the 2 degrees Celsius warming that scientist have repeatedly warned marks the safe range for humans on this planet, but at the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy.
The old ways will take a long while to disappear but millions of people are beginning to realise they have been sold a dream at odds with what reality can deliver.
The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phoney and fragile as East Germany did 30 years ago.
Why should we not form a picture of the ideal life, built out of abundant information, non-hierarchical work and the dissociation of work from wages?
So are we witnessing the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism?
Is technology creating a new route out or is it consolidating power into the hands of a few like Google, Microsoft and Apple?
Will its future be shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours?
Will Capitalism as we know it be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through because of what Information technology has brought about in the past 25 years.
It is blurring the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages?
Or is the current wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.
These are all questions to be answered before we see what I call post capitalism.
The Questions are numerous, and there have been hundreds of books, papers, and talks on the subject few however with any positive suggestions.
Before I put the only suggestion that is viable lets start with what is wrong with the present state of Capitalism.
Here is way I see what is wrong;
Today capitalism isn’t about real markets and commodities with the price mechanism being fixed by competing supply and demand, now today it is about casino economics. You throw the dice and when you loose … all that global connectivity means you lose globally. We are all in this together – that is why we call it a global economy – oh apart from the 0.1% – they are the ones throwing the dice. We are just the ones picking up the tab when the bets don’t come off.
Although economics likes to think of itself as a science in reality it ignores the fundamental laws that govern science – the first two laws of thermodynamics. This isn’t a smart thing to do. There actually are limits to growth.
They told us wealth creation was a trickle down theory but in reality it is a trickle up theory. The rich really do get richer and richer and it is not down to merit. The question is what is going to stop them: war or politics?
The big problem is humans are human, both doing bad things and good things. Capitalism only works if enough of us do the right thing.
The price mechanism is faulty unless it includes the environmental cost now and in the future of our consumption. This it doesn’t done at present and we are free-loading off nature.
Often we think it is the only way to do things. It is not the only way to even do capitalism! Alternatives exist, other brands are available. There are even other ways of thinking about economics that we don’t even call capitalism; they may be a bit racy for us right now so lets start with re-imagining what a good effective form of capitalism could be like if humanity fully realized its role and impact upon the planet that sustains it.
Modern capitalism is so big and complex that who can say that really understand it.
I don’t.
But I do understand by building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, Google and such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.
Never has humanity been better fed, lived longer, used more energy and had more stuff than today so what is wrong.
One of the fundamental faults of capitalism is the basic axiom that if everybody tries to accumulate as much property as possible the general interest of the people will be served.
All this seems to do is create exploitation.
The problem with capitalism is that it isn’t very good as what it says it is good at, spreading wealth, enabling good technological progress and helping us become more human, more free.
Adam Smith – you know him graces the back of the £20 note – founding father of modern capitalism back in the 18th century – hero of Margaret Thatcher. When he famously asserted:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
What Smith was talking about was the idea that self-interest – the rational underpinning of economic man – was not only good for you but for everybody else – society.
Unfortunately the line between self-interest and greed is always fine – and we are human man not economic man and we find it very easy to cross that line – or certainly some of us do – lets call them the 0.1% – the 700,000 of us who have a lot – somewhere north of $5 million each.
The consequence of this trend as it unwinds over time is that wealth progressively becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
The rich get richer – that’s that 0.1% again. Or to put it another way wealth stays with those that are born to it and the idea that merit – how good you are at something – determining your economical price in the market place, or wages as most of would say, becomes far less important than we thought.
In fact there are plenty of things wrong with capitalism.
Those that shout this apparent self-evident reality the loudest own the media, the means of communication, they own your stability through the derivative bets they hold and they are telling you don’t blink – this is the natural way of things , capitalism the way we see it, the way the 0.1% see it.
So the more we have of everything, food, power, stuff, the more energy we must use (even if we get more energy-efficient in doing things).
The nitty-gritty of it is we have fucked up the world with Capitalism idealism.
I don’t approve of Communism or Socialism either, the truth is that every system is flawed.
I think a system which is based on an assumption that man is basically piggish and therefore only fit to look after his own needs; such system impedes rather than promotes the good within each person.
Geographers have away of describing this situation it is called the IPAT equation.
Impact = population x affluence x technology. You note there is no Money in the equation.
The impact.
Physicists would call it entropy, biologists pollution and economists externalities – is of an order defined by how many of us are using how much however efficiently.
If you want impact in a nutshell it is climate change, it is salinization of soil, it is depleting geological resources , it is reducing biodiversity.
There really are limits to growth.
Capitalism is a perpetual motion machine, striving for more and more growth makes us in the long run weaker not stronger. Well, if only we were all-knowing, rational and optimal in our behavior maybe it would be so. But we are not.
In the past the trend towards greater and growing inequality has been neutered by war – nothing equalizes society more effectively than war – we do tend to be all in it together at such moments.
Today in our global economy is held together with a digital architecture that enables the reduction of wealth to so much digital code life has become one big transaction.
The most spectacular aspect of this transactional world is the derivatives markets.
(A derivative is a bet on a price changing within a market – say interest rates, or currency exchange values or a commodity price such as that for coffee. The value of all derivatives worldwide in 2013 is thought to be about $1.2 quadrillion although nobody knows exactly as, a like a lot ordinary betting the betters don’t want necessarily want to admit to it.)
So that is $1,200,000 billion laid out in bets about what may or may not happen.
Billions of transactions.
Let’s quickly remind ourselves. The global economy – the real economy – is worth about $85 trillion – that is about 7% of the notional sum bet on what that economy will do.
Now, take a deep breath and think about it.
If you don’t now believe that we could have another global economic crash in the style of 2008 – a massive bursting asset bubble – you need to think again and cast your eyes to Asia – you might be wondering where much of that quantitative easing – free money that the US and the UK created ended up. Try property speculation in Asia.
We are quickly reaching the tipping point where growth in GDP in any particular country comes at the expense of growth in GDP of another.
We do not have global organizations capable of managing these tension points nor are societies willing to curb growth and consumerism.
Capitalism as currently practiced is simply not sustainable.
Modern market capitalism has shifted recently with the emerging supremacy of money markets and the financial system over the actual trade of goods. Under this, you’ll make more money trading in derivatives than actually physically trading in commodities.
Capitalism, or the recent move into financial market dominated capitalism.
The “new capitalism” is based on mathematics rather than trade; credit default swaps over goods and services; when odds are stacked in the favor of big banks because of hedging, derivatives and CDS’s; when there is little to no penalty for market manipulation by investment banks, power brokers, Ponzi schemers … these inefficiencies in the market cause redistribution of wealth to the people in power who design the system.
The mass media is becoming more and more an opiate, an aid for living the unexamined life. replace it (capitalism)?”
Through the millions spent in lobbing reasonable controls upon business have been removed. The desire for economic success and the influence of the powerful elite have ruined the mass media.
Our political problems have deepened with the demise of unions as an effective political force, the continued growth in the belief in the desirability of pyramid economics and class structure (which has been sold by a media controlled by those at the top of the pyramid), and the dependence of our two-party system upon those at the top of the pyramid for funds to cover their election expenses.
Around the world the gains of increased productivity are wasted by this pyramid structure.
For over 40 years I have watched the gradual drift in the minds of the average person from an understanding of our political economic reality and the need for corrective actions.
Those who dominate the means for the production of ideas have served their class well.
This endless cycle of production and consumption for profit is suicide and profit is pretty pointless when we run out of things to burn and things to eat.
I would suggest a world government dedicated to seeing that: (a) everybody was properly fed, clothed, and housed; (b) everyone worked and received a fair return for their work with none receiving too much; (c) intellectual development for all to be encouraged; (d) businesses are the servant to man; (e) the production of war materials end; (f) the ending of all exploitation, including one region by another or one class by another; (g) and the ending of a press which is controlled by those who make up the ruling class.
We is needed is a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet.
Capitalism is not and has never been designed to work in an environment dominated by market controls, regulations, artificial barriers to entry, monetary manipulation and a myriad of other government interventions.
It is Profit at any cost and having taxpayers bail it out when it goes wrong simply means the risk has shifted from corporation to state, or you and me.
Many would say that means a broken model.
Has a new model started. It all depends on what kind of capitalism we are talking about and what force will be applied either at the ballot box or on the barricades or by the Smart Phone or the Gun.
Another question raised about the proposed strategy is whether it actually adds up to the defeat of capitalism.
Do the numerous tactics described above, most of which focus on what not to do, really do the job? How will capitalism actually be defeated? It’s true that many of these recommendations are about what not to do.
this strategy calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization and putting them into building a new civilization. The image, then, is one of emptying out capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and meaning from them until there is nothing left but shells.
To think that we could create a whole new world of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution or the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy.
Our new social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations.
Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinable, because of the inexorable materialist laws of history.
It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and because we know what we’re doing and how we want to live, what obstacles have to be overcome before we can live that way, and how to distinguish between our social patterns and theirs.
To achieve change we need unlimited finance. Where can we find this? We don’t have to look far.
If a new socialist democratic system is to emerge:
We must place an World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $ 20,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. This will created a perpetual funded Fund to address the damage Greed and Profit for profit sake has done. ( See Previous Posts)
Who do we achieve this.
Our lives have been shaped by developments which most of us couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.
In effect, they are nine distinct psychological orientations toward the world that structure our perceptions, expectations, and demands whenever and wherever other human beings may be involved. These instincts represent our most basic assumptions about how the social world works, and that includes how the political world works.
With the power of our Smart phones the new political weapon of the future.
In the next decade upwards of 100 billion objects from smartphones to street lamps and our cars will be connected together via a vast ‘internet of everything’. This will impact every aspect of our lives.
The interfaces to all our devices from phones to computers, cars and home appliances will be highly intelligent and adaptive – learning from our behaviours and choices and anticipating our needs.
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