Tag Archives: Distribution of wealth

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE ALL KNOW WHY THE WORLD IS IN SUCH A MESS.

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Capitalism, European Union., Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality., Life., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Social Media., The common good., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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(Ten-minute read)

Looking at the world right in front of our eyes it would be fair to say that it is currently falling asunder while we all turn inwards in the fourth technological revolution that is not just undermining world institutions but creating social inequality that is linked to racial inequality, gender inequality, and wealth inequality, not to mention world conflicts.

This is a ringing indictment of our global economic system and there is no justifying it.

So the question is as it has been for the last couple of decades is there enough being done to bring about a more equitable distribution of income on a global scale.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of inequality and poverty"

The answer is a resounding No. To the extent that it is now hard to imagine any kind of economic miracle that could shrink the worldwide income gap.

Where is global inequality going?

By 2030 the richest 1% will own two-thirds of global wealth.

World lottos, created new billionaire every two days.

The world’s 10 richest billionaires, according to Forbes, own $745 billion in combined wealth, a sum greater than the total goods and services most nations produce on an annual basis.

Between 2009 and 2017, the number of billionaires it took to equal the wealth of the world’s poorest 50 per cent fell from 380 to 42.

But more than 65 per cent of the world’s millionaires continue to reside in Europe or North America. 

WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH – OR RATHER THE LACK OF IT.

It’s true that wealth inequality has always existed, no matter what the design of the society. Whether capitalist or communist, democratic, autocratic, or plutocratic, it will exist.

Yet many of the extremes we see today are avoidable.

Income disparities have become so pronounced poor health and poverty go hand-in-hand.

It is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology.

There is nothing inevitable about untrammelled inequality.

It is the result of an unlevel playing field, the direct consequence of certain government policies.

There is no longer any simple solution.

Nowhere has the distribution of the pie become more equitable.

Increasing the incomes of low-wage workers produces stronger beneficial economic ripple effects than boosting bonuses for the rich.

Excluding Quantitative easing, 97% of money has been created through lending. When somebody borrows money – even just by spending on a credit card – new money is created. No wonder our economy is so geared around finance.

Yet we penalise labour and subsidise both debt and the ownership of assets.

The question is, how fast can developing countries grow in the future? The answer, unfortunately, is not fast enough.

The richest 1 per cent of humanity reaped 27 per cent of the world’s income between 1980 and 2016. The bottom 50 per cent, by contrast, got only 12 per cent.

If you ever wanted to understand where climate change came from, why there are so many wars and the unrest we are witnessing the above figures say it all.

This will only get worse in the near future with the most powerful force driving the distribution of income on a worldwide scale will be raw economic growth:

Will poor countries make sufficient progress relative to their rich peers to bring more balance to the distribution of global income?

Or will rising inequality within countries dominate?

It depends on three forces: countries’ economic and population growth, as well as the evolution of inequality within them.

This is no longer true. The forth Industrial technological revolution is going to require more aggressive redistribution through taxes and transfers.

Why because social inequality is now very different from economic inequality, though the two are linked.

Areas of social inequality include access to voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care, quality housing, travelling, transportation, vacationing and other social goods and services. In the quality of family and neighbourhood life, occupation, job satisfaction, and access to credit.

All of these areas are now been data mined for profit by you know who with us supplying the data scot free.

We all know that more inequality means less wealth for everyone. .. but are we seeing countries deciding to push vigorously back against inequality. No

Ballooning wealth inequality is a threat to society.

globalization has also upended the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in many countries.

“In every country, just about, the disproportionate economic clout of those at the top has provided these individuals with wildly disproportionate influence on their countries’ political life and on its media; on what policies are pursued and whose interests end up being ignored,” Obama said.

He is right!

Wealthy must contribute or be forced to the larger benefits of society.

Inequality is not inevitable – it is a political choice.

It represents social and political issues that no party or government can afford to neglect.

Foot Note: To us Europeans.

Europe, unfortunately, has not been at the forefront of this battle, at least not EU institutions.

On the contrary, it has for long remained complacent, as EU treaties require unanimity on tax matters and as the bloc includes countries such as Luxembourg that have benefitted massively from corporate and individual tax avoidance.

For decades, the EU was dominated by an unholy alliance among three types of governments: those that rejected the very principle of international tax coordination as an infringement on sovereignty; those that benefitted from tax competition; and those that used it as a way to overcome domestic reluctance to the reduction of redistribution.

For an institution that is supposed to be based on values and that hails the European social model, this is humbling, and the EU is now paying a political price for its long inertia.

Social inequality can also be established through discriminatory legislation.

Things have started to change.

Thanks to Yellow Jacks and Brexit we may witness only if we truly want it some improvements.

In the battle for fairer globalisation, with more and more Foodbanks and homeless people, it is far too early to claim victory.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of inequality and poverty"

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

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE NEED MORE DREAMS THAN MEMORIES .

18 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Education, Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Innovation., Life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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(Six-minute read)

Why?

As we journey toward the undiscovered country called the future we are witnessing a world of terror, violence, greed, exploitation, pollution, and algorithm annihilation wreaking havoc in our world.

It’s no wonder in the face of such horror. that most of us feel minuscule and completely powerless.

But the world is glittering with possibility which can’t afford to wait for a generational change.

We’re clearly at a moment of great global transition and transformation as we attempt to help solve massive emerging issues we need more dreams than memories.

Help the world and the world will help you back.

In addition to globalization, technology, social changes and government policies that have all been instrumental in determining who benefits and who loses out from global economic integration in past decades we now have giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era.

These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—look unstoppable.

We can dream of a world rich enough to pay everyone a living wage as a birthright, of thriving human creativity, and of thrilling new ways for humans to build on and collaborate with machine intelligence but are we fooling ourselves.

There are no quick answers.

It may take a revolution in education; we may even need to rethink capitalism itself.

Certainly, we’ll need ideas to address the growing inequality that is driving so much of the anger we see in the world.

It seems clear now that millions of people around the world are rejecting a global order that they feel was foisted on them and has given them nothing.

We need to give a platform to dreamers and reformers who are thinking outside the box as the current system is in danger of breaking.

One in every nine people goes to bed hungry each night.

Up to one-third of the food produced around the world is never consumed.

Every 10 seconds, a child dies from hunger.

We are witnessing a massive shift of humanity unlike any seen before.

Today more than 68 million people around the world are displaced from their homes.

If you compare your size to the size of the universe, you almost don’t exist.Image associée

As Martin Luther King, Jr said, “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.”

What happens to society when the focus of culture is on the self and its icon, the “selfie”?

And what happens to morality when the mantra is no longer “We’re all in this together”, but rather “I’m free to be myself”?

What happens when Google filters and Facebook friends divide us into non-communicating sects of the like-minded?

What could possibly be gained from ignoring the global view, that, the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is the sole reason that humankind’s ecological footprint is larger than Earth itself?

I would like people not to be satisfied with the current ecological footprint and try to come up with measures that really track the water, soil and all the ways we degrade ecosystems in a way that would become management metrics.

The dream of one world is not threatening, but beautiful.

Once one person does the “impossible”, thousands of people follow only because their mind starts believing it’s possible.

It means you must take the time to:

a) Define your values and guiding principles.

b) Understand your nature and individuality.

Define the experiences you want to have in life. Then, do everything you can to realize those experiences.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it.

We must start extending our sense of shared identity to all of humanity.

We’re battling here for the survival of an idea on which the world’s future depends, the idea of humanity as one connected family.

But how do we get there?

First and foremost we must start breaking the cycle of poverty.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "what does the world need more than anything"

So let’s seek out those with compelling ideas to offer here other than like clicks and abuse.

The key may be to stop framing this dream as a top-down system driven by faceless global elites who tell us all what to do, but instead as a flourishing of human possibility that’s happening right here on the ground.

Ideas can’t be contained by borders.

Most countries are in ecological deficit.

We have technologies that can inflict global harm, our very survival now depends on it.

The potential and pitfalls for digital identity must be addressed. Holding the earth

All comments appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE WISHES YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR BY SPREADING SOME GOOD FALSE NEWS FOR 2019.

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in 2019., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Environment, Evolution., Facebook, Fake News., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The new year 2109, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Seven-minute read)

Despite the dire state of the world today here is some good false news.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "fake news images"

Let’s start with an issue that has not received enough attention in the media and popular understanding.

The Earth is finite and this fact will have real-world physical, economic, social, and political implications.

Thus, we are using an economic theory that is simply incapable and inapplicable for informing an unprecedented transformation of the economy by technology.

We need a discussion as to what political leaders, business leaders, and citizens think is an appropriate distribution of wealth across the entire population of the world. This focuses on the real question (how many people have what, independent of the size of the economy, though the two are linked) instead of discussing how to shape policies and taxes to achieve an unspecified growth target independent of wealth distribution.

Trump, Brexit, and Le Pen are representations that people understand growth only for the elite in the West are no longer tenable. Neoclassical economics ignores this obvious fact, yet it is used to guide most policy (eg, economic projections and scenarios), including that for climate change mitigation.

Perhaps a summary is that the human enterprise has outgrown the long-ability of the planet’s renewable resources to support us at our current numbers and our current rates of consumption and waste generation.

Climate change is just one piece of evidence of this fact.

By 2050, over 7 billion people will live in cities (80% of the world), and cities will be responsible for 75% of global carbon emissions. The battle for sustainable development will be won or lost in cities.

Urban planning needs to incorporate total populations, not simply the rich and middle classes; this is the only way that the economic potential of the majority can be harnessed for the national good.

The reality is that any activity that is not sustainable HAS TO STOP.

So far, non-renewable resources are what is primarily driving our economic engine. But by definition, non-renewables are being depleted and for the most part, will stop being economically available in this century. So we must plan rapidly for the day when humanity can live using just renewable resources while maintaining the biodiversity that makes the planet habitable.

In truth, sustainability is the ultimate environmental issue, the ultimate health issue, and the ultimate human rights issue.

The days when scientists could not care about the impact of their work on cultural, values and society are over. If they ever existed, which they didn’t, but that’s water over the dam.

Data-driven technologies are increasingly being integrated into many different parts of society, from judicial decision-making processes to automated vehicles to the dissemination of news.

Each of these implementations raises serious questions about what values are being implemented and to whom these implementations are accountable.

There is an increasing desire by regulators, civil society, and social theorists to see these technologies be “fair” and “ethical,” but these concepts are fuzzy at best.

As we are developing more and more ways to let computers take over reasoning through adaptive learning, we are faced with an existential question: What is it – long term – that makes us human?

AI, although very useful, will never approach human intelligence until it is embodied.

My #1 issue is not the future of democracy. The future is a complicated subject.  Now more than ever, it’s fast-moving, complicated, increasingly immediate. We can’t keep thinking about the future as a far-off intangible. Today, things move so quickly, that the future already is happening, and already affecting us. And in many ways, we’re struggling to adapt quickly enough.

That’s only the beginning of the genetics, robotics, information and nano revolutions – which are advancing on a curve.

Meanwhile, we humans are trying to process this exponential change with our good old v. 1.0 brains. With precious little help at all from those creating this upheaval.

Algorithms by their very nature reason probabilistically and as uncertainty increases in the world, uncertainty increases in an algorithm’s ability to successfully and safely come to a solution.

Presently we have no commonly-accepted approaches and without an industry standard for testing such stochastic systems, it is difficult for these technologies to be widely implemented.

As technological developments increasingly drive social change, how can democratic societies empower ordinary people to have a say in the decisions that shape the technological trajectories that will, in turn, determine what the future looks like?

How can the public have meaningful input into the character of the algorithms that will increasingly determine both the nature of their relationships with other people on social media and their access to various important social goods?

How can we prevent an underwater arms race involving autonomous submersibles over the coming decades?

How can we ensure that questions about meaning and values, and not just calculations of risks and benefits, are addressed in decisions about human genome editing?

If there are people who are willing to blatantly refuse to believe that something is a lie, no matter how hard you try, they won’t listen. I’m not sure what amount of evidence is needed in this new paradigm of journalism to get newsreaders out of their new bubbles.

Human psychology is the main obstacle, unwillingness to bend one’s mind around facts that don’t agree with one’s own viewpoint.

The fundamental challenge we now face is how to handle a setting where anybody can get their views disseminated without intermediaries to prevent the distribution.

Somehow there still has to be some process of collectively coming to some agreement of what we are going to believe and what we think are consensual facts.

Instead, we have the golden age of the algorithm surveillance, automation, virtual reality, gene editing, the widening gap between wealthy and impoverished people, the worldwide questions of immigration, social media inserting a new level of governance in society, rapid urban growth isolating us from nature, smartphones isolating us from each other.

The challenge now is to make sure everyone benefits from this technology. It’s important that machine learning is researched openly, and spread via open publications and open source code, so we can all share in the rewards.

Our major challenge is related to our new capability of digitizing human beings.

The scale of popular social networks has democratized publishing, which effectively lets anyone – regardless of their intentions or qualifications – produce content that can appear journalistic.

Rather than waiting for politicians to make decisions and then we all argue over whether what they say reflects reality, we could have tools that engage people much earlier in the process so they can be involved in formulating ideas and drafting legislation.

As we begin in 2019 we have only 48.8% worried by Climate change/destruction of nature, 29.2% of us worried by Poverty, 22.7% worried by Government accountability and transparency/corruption, with only 18.2% worried by Food and water security.

Water is a social issue, a political issue, an energy issue, even a gender issue

– and how clean water scarcity triggers a host of problems, from disease

outbreaks to government feuds.

So the challenge before us is to begin to construct a truth signalling layer into the fabric of facts, particularly online. Even if we have structures that impose constraints on people in power and we put pressure on powerful people to be honest with us, in a sense, all of that is being circumvented by social media.

We need to turn social media upside down by changing the algorithms in Facebook or on Google to nudge people into sharing or consuming news that is slightly outside their normal comfort zone. We have to have a setting where we trust other people.

Fix it. Get out of your silo. If you can’t figure out the societal and cultural

implications of what you’re doing, start seeking out people who might.

A major issue most people face, without knowing it, is the bubble they live in.

Our world is far too beautiful to allow Social Media and profit-seeking algorithms to rip it apart.  Happy New year.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: ” THE TIME WILL COME WHEN WE REALIZE THAT WE ARE NOT ABLE TO EAT MONEY.”

28 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by in Capitalism, Climate Change., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Politics

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WE SHOULD BE ALL FAMILIAR WITH THE ABOVE QUOTATION.

It is a “Native American saying”.

“Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”

When one stands back from one’s self the above sums up the present state of our world.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "THE TIME WILL COME WHEN WE REALIZE THAT WE CANNOT EAT MONEY"

Present needs and present gains was the rule of action—which seems to be a sort of transmitted quality which we in our now enlightened time have not wholly outgrown, for even now a few men can be found who seem willing to destroy the last tree, the last fish and the last game bird and animal, and leave nothing for posterity, if thereby some money can be made.

We are unable to change as we have turned everything into commodities to make material profit or power.

WHY?

Because most are suffocating in a sea of debt, unable to extricate themselves from the shackles of an abhorrent situation inherently created by the consumptionism and consumerism that grips much of the world’s population.

We are, in effect, products of our own society, now being exploited by AI for profit.

What is needed is a World Conference of every nation to enshrine in law the protection of Clean Air, Freshwater, the protection of the environment and ecosystems that we all rely on for life on the planet.

The richer we are and the more we consume, the more self-centered and careless of the lives of others we appear to become.

Our erroneous belief that we are more concerned about manmade climate change than the people of other nations informs the sentiment, often voiced by the press and politicians, that there’s no point in acting if the rest of the world won’t play its part.

Only when the crisis causes or exacerbates an acute disaster – such as the floods – is there a flicker of anxiety, but that quickly dies away.

Sustaining interest in this great but slow-burning crisis of climate change is a challenge no one seems to have mastered.

For years we’ve been told that people cannot afford to care about the natural world until they become rich; that only economic growth can save the biosphere, that civilisation marches towards enlightenment about our impacts on the living planet.

The results suggest the opposite.

The more we consume, the less we feel. And maybe that doesn’t just apply to guilt.

Perhaps that’s the point of our otherwise-pointless hyperconsumption: it smothers feeling. It might also be the effect of the constant bombardment of advertising and marketing. They seek to replace our attachments to people and place with attachments to objects: attachments which the next round of advertising then breaks in the hope of attaching us to a different set of objects.

Even if you somehow put aside the direct, physical impacts of rising consumption, it’s hard to understand how anyone could imagine that economic growth is a formula for protecting the planet.

So what we seem to see here is the turning of a vicious circle.

The more harm we do, the less concerned about it we become. And the more hyperconsumerism destroys relationships, communities and the physical fabric of the Earth, the more we try to fill the void in our lives by buying more stuff.

This is an almost inevitable result of a society that has become restructured around shopping, fashion, celebrity and an obsession with money.

How we break the circle and wake people out of this dream world is the question that all those who love the living planet should address.

There is only one easy answers.

We must make Greed in all its forms of profit for profit sake pay. ( See previous Posts – A world Aid commission )

Agreement’s like the Paris Climate Change promises are not worth the paper there are written on without the necessary finance to create a change of mind.

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

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: BEFORE WE ARE ALL HACKED – WHAT IF.

03 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Capitalism, Evolution, Fake News., Freedom, Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Politics., Populism., Reality., Social Media, Sustaniability, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Two-minute read)

I have posted many articles concerning Algorithms that are plundering our lives and the world for profit.

Although governments and world organisations are only just waking up to the power of these algorithms giving the changes we are witnessing to society there are little, or no conscientious efforts as to how to introduce regulations to limit the damage they are doing.

With every click, power is shifting to the Google’s, the Microsofts, the Apple, the Amazon, the eBay’s, the Netflix’s, to machine learning recommendations, to Social Media rhetoric, to right-wing politics disguised as populism nationalism.

ALL CREATING A PLANET IN CRISES.

So In this post, I am hoping to create an online pressure group to lobby the relevant powers to effect change.

Life is not only trade, consumption and markets.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "photo of question marks"

THE SUGGESTED NAME FOR THE GROUP IS # WHAT IF.COM

SO IF THERE IS ANYONE READING THIS THAT KNOWS HOW TO GO ABOUT SETTING UP SUCH A WEBSITE I AM ALL EARS.

WHY SET UP SUCH A GROUP.

BECAUSE:

Markets are not faceless forces.

All markets have some sort of morality.

Buyers and sellers need to consider the consequences which their actions and decisions may have on the environment and on society itself.

Today a simple one-dollar-one-vote principle dominates the world economy.

International organizations ought to impose sanctions upon countries which condone immoral practices, such as the use of child labour, environmental destruction, the selling of arms or the persecution of trade unionists.

The detrimental effects of international money markets and the crises caused by speculation can be alleviated by international legislation such as levying taxes on international currency exchange.

Free markets do not guarantee adequate conditions of life to all people. Therefore we need states and organisations that protect the weak and defends social justice.

The eradication of poverty presupposes equalization of income. This means, for example, that the strong and well to do must assume a proportionally greater burden of taxes than the weak and the poor.

We need services which citizens themselves initiate and generate, and the new potential, which they can contribute to the life of our congregations and local communities.

The ultimate responsibility for ensuring that local communities have the resources to guarantee basic security for all their members use to rests with the national governments.

Basic security must, in the future, also include healthcare and adequate, living standards, so that all people are reasonably covered regardless of their wealth and position in society.

All contributions and comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT’S NOW OR NEVER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS.

11 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Democracy, Evolution, Facebook, Google, Humanity., Modern day life., Privatization, Sustaniability, Technology, The cloud., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World

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(Fifteen-minute read)

This is not a spectator sport:

It can be nearly impossible to credibly predict all the positive possibilities and negative implications for how we live, work, govern, and organize arising from the deployment of AI.

The fact that we are deeply uncertain about how technologies will evolve in the years and decades ahead makes human rights due diligence of AI very challenging. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of human rights abuse"

The fact that the rapid development of AI raises challenges for securing access to remedy, which can be especially challenging when humans often can’t cognitively understand how a decision is made by AI systems:

The fact that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is increasingly being used by businesses, governments, and other institutions to augment many fields of human endeavor.

The fact that Methodologies for implementing respect for human rights may need to integrate strategic tools such as strategic foresight, futures thinking, and scenario planning.

The fact that the global “platformization” of content (i.e., the rise of Video on Demand and online streaming platforms) shows us that guarantees of people’s access to the culture of their selection may now become beholden to digital intermediaries.

Proponents believe that the further development of AI creates new opportunities in health, education, and transportation, will generate wealth and strengthen economies and can be used to solve pressing social issues. However, the rapid growth of AI raises important questions about whether our current policies, legal systems, business due diligence practices, and methods to protect rights are fit for purpose.

The significant expansion of data collected and analyzed may also result in increasing the power of companies with ownership over this data and threaten our right to privacy.

HERE ARE A FEW OF PROBLEMS THAT ARE NOT DISCUSSED.

As the digital paradigm evolves, the pathway for human rights is likely to become more complicated, making appropriate regulation more important than ever. The realization of ESCR and the right to development centers on data democracies that are accountable.

Global policy discourses and frameworks around data have skewed the digital innovation tide in favor of developed countries… the global “platformization” of content… shows us that guarantees of people’s access to the culture of their selection may now become beholden to digital intermediaries.

Data and technological arrangements in the global South and North worryingly point to a wholesale private capture and consolidation of critical data regimes in the developing world: trade, agriculture, health, and education.

Not only does this leave citizens in developing countries vulnerable to acute privacy violations, but it also bears decisively on their economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). For example, in India, the acquisition of homegrown successes, such as Wal-Mart’s purchase of the domestic e-commerce unicorn, Flipkart, poses very serious outcomes for the livelihoods of small producers and traders.

Algorithm-based decision-making by companies could also perpetuate human bias and result in discriminatory outcomes, as they already have in some cases.

An algorithm is meant to complement and not necessarily displace human discernment, it is not hard to imagine a future where humanitarian assistance to refugees becomes predicated on their (technology proven) ability to viably assimilate and contribute to their host economies.

Could the trade-off for a smoother resettlement process be the exclusion of those that the algorithm will one day write off as “inadmissible” and “unsolvable”?

Technology-based decision-making also raises important questions on how the right to development will be realized.

Artificial intelligence is undermining society by promising unimaginable benefits without any intervention from governments or other world organizations.

As always we humans react to crises when it’s too late.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of human rights abuse"

Governments must create policies for effective data sharing between governments and the private sector for sectors that are of critical social importance.

More importantly, governments must create a data commons with independent oversight.

For example:

The municipality of Curitiba in Brazil, for instance, has taken the lead in passing local legislation that mandates anonymized data sharing between the local government and the ride aggregator Uber. The intention is to tap into Uber’s large and rich data sets towards better city planning and traffic management outcomes.

Governments must invest in the idea of “data as a public good” so it can work to enhance human rights.

Although nascent, experiments with models for managing big data repositories are increasing.  Such repositories can encourage domestically led innovation, with local start-ups and public agencies taking the lead in developing appropriate AI-based solutions for social problems.

These are pressing policy challenges, and such prediction models need to be closely and continuously tracked for possible social distortions and subject to institutional audit. The biases in AI is often the bias of humans. People will not rely on technology they do not trust.

Society needs to come together to consider these questions, explore solutions, and deploy AI that puts people first, protects human rights, and deserves the public’s trust.

Breakthroughs in technology—including artificial intelligence—can help fulfill the right to development, but digital technologies are not magic bullets; there is a strong role for governance.

The security of digital bits cannot be left to the cloud nor the internet of things, promoted by Amazon, Facebook, and Google with home hubs that can be hacked.

Civil society groups, governments, and others are rightly asking questions regarding the risks to human rights. In this age of global corporate presence and influence, we need to ensure that ordinary people and communities are able to stand up for their rights.

But the danger with artificial intelligence is greater than just our rights.

Everything that makes who we are comes from our brains. Without brain power, we would not have gone from flint arrowheads to the space station.

DESTROY THE BRAIN WITH AI AND WE DESTROY CREATIVITY.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: How do we make sure that the decisions made by an artificial intelligence are correct?

27 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Google it., Humanity., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The cloud., The common good., The Future, The Internet., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Four-minute read)

WHEN IT COMES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IT AMAZES ME HOW PASSIVE WE ALL ARE AT THE MOMENT, EXCEPTING IT’S ENTRANCE INTO OUR LIVES THROUGH THE BACK DOOR.

IF WE CONTINUE TO LEAVE ALGORITHMS AND HOW THEY WORK UNEXPLAINED THEY WILL UNCOUPLE US FROM REALITY. IF WE DON’T US HUMANS WILL BE LEFT WITH LITTLE OR NO AUTONOMY – AN UNREGULATED INTRUSION INTO PEOPLES LIVES.

It’s time we realize the pressure AI is putting on humanity. AI is by nature not conscious or moral: There can be no doubt that the development of artificial bits of intelligence raises ethical questions.

It is the engineers and other masters of algorithms who develop the principles and their boundaries, that need to be held to account.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of ethical ai"

It’s up to us to ensure that in the very conception of AI that is integrate upstream has inbuilt values of transparency, honesty, not just profit for profit sake.

We need to start asking ourselves seriously for what purpose will our data be used?

On which and whose power and what bases it will be used?

Are we heading for a digital dictatorship with all life choices decided by AI?

In order for the algorithms and smart solutions that are developed to be unbiased and discriminatory, the plurality of design teams is a key principle to keep in mind. Diversity must be at the heart of the issues of construction and the development of trust in AI. Integrating women, people from minorities or experts in the subject in question, helps ensure a technological world for all.

We must put the human in the heart of the machine, and democratize AI by making it accessible to all, and finally control the AI by ensuring the truth, security, and confidentiality of data and by regulating algorithms to ensure that they incorporate diversity and exceed its initial biases.

Our attempts so far are dismal:

The European Union’s new law giving people a “right to be forgotten,” is having exactly some of the effect its critics predicted:

The question to be answered by the EU Law is it censoring the internet, giving new tools that help the rich and powerful (and ordinary folk) hide negative information about them, and letting criminals make their histories disappear.

In fact, the ethical issues of AI question are it uses: For what purpose is the AI ​​and must it be used?  How to ensure that these technologies are not manipulated for purposes contrary to the values ​​they defend?

 What is needed is an AI shaped by everyone, NOT PROFIT HIDDEN IN THE

CLOUD.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of ethics in business"

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: HAVE WE ALL GONE BONKERS. ALLOWING THE CONCERTRATION OF WEALTH TO UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY.

25 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by in 2018: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Democracy, Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Populism., Social Media., Technology, The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations., World Politics

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( A five-minute read)Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of madness"

We all know that the world we live in is constantly in a state of transformation.

The wealth created from business for its most part in the history of humanity has always been blamed for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, for poisoning the earth with effluent from its factories.

YET BUSINESS, PRODUCES FOOD, CURE DISEASE, CONTROL POPULATION, EMPLOY PEOPLE AND UP TO NOW GENERALLY ENRICHED OUR LIVES.

While we live our lives with what is left of our free-thinking brains SOCIAL MEDIA is undermining what we call Democracy and its Institutions.

We are now all subject to what I call perpetual mental MEDIA TORTURE, driven by algorithms which are owned by platforms that are all about making money without any regulation driving instability and unsustainable.

Social media is fueling anger, fear, and false news, resulting in the rise of right-wing political parties, led by political leaders of less and less talent.

We are rapidly coming to a threshold where we all have to reach a level of civilization in which we think about our selves and our existence on earth.

Once wealth is concentrated in the hand of few it undermines democracy by obvious means making democracy much less functional.

It is true to say attitudes to a lot of things have changed, HOWEVER, WE ARE STILL A LONG WAY OFF reaching a level of culture in which we can ask ourselves some really simple questions?

Like:  Are we killing democracy?  The answer is yes.

Like: How do we start a grass root movement to really tackle Climate change.

Like:  How to Tax Carbon Emissions?

Like: How do we stop artificial intelligence widening the inequality gap.

Like: How do we reset the global pay gap.

Like: How do we reset human rights on an equal footing with the rights of shareholders.

Like: How do we transform the EU project from grey bureaucracy into a bright arena.

One of the most obvious results of the Artificial Intelligence revolution is the ongoing concentration of wealth into the hands of the few and as a result, we are now seeing profit without a soul.

THESE MEGA MONOPOLIES LIKE GOOGLE ALONG WITH FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS (that do nothing for the economy of a country other than probably harm it have created the very that are overthrowing Capitalism.

ALL POWER ENDS UP AS FINANCE.

THIS POWER SHOULD BE TAXED TO THE HILT TO TACKLE CO2 EMISSION, along with any other form of business commodities that generate profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)

INSTEAD:

WHILE WE WATCH OUR WORLD FRY OUR POLITICIANS ARE BECOMING LESS AND LESS TALENTED, INCAPABLE OF INSPIRING ANY LONG TERM ASPIRATIONS.

WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING IS I AM ALRIGHT JACK POPULOUS POLICIES.

TRADE WARS, BREXIT, SABER RATTLING.

It is however within our power to change things.

ELECTIONS MIGHT NOT CHANGE ECONOMICS BUT THEY CAN CHANGE THE ATTITUDE OF THOSE ELECTED.

RATHER THAN major de-funding of free education, we need to go back to mass public free education like Finland, Germany.

IF WE DON’T HAVE EDUCATION BEYOND THE NEEDS OF THE MARKETPLACE WE CAN KISS OUR SWEET ASSES TILL WE ARE BLUE IN THE FACE.

Surely we are not all so dumb that we think its OK to carry on regardless.

Maybe we are so dumb that it will require an AI robot to tell us so.

Hail to the algorithm.

WHAT HAPPENS BEYOND THIS POINT WE HAVE NO IDEA. BY THEN IT WILL BE TOO LATE.

ITS TIME TO STOP THE DISHARMONY ON EARTH.

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of united nations general assembly"

DEMOCRACY COMES IN DIFFERENT COLORS AND SOCIAL MEDIA APPEALS TO BASIC EMOTIONS OF ANXIETY AND TRIBAL SOLIDARITY THAT MAKES IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO CREATE A TRUE PUBLIC SPACE A SENSE OF COMMON INTEREST.

ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS CHUCKED IN THE BIN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE TAKES A LOOKS AT THE WORLD:

11 Monday Jun 2018

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

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( A ten-minute read)

Putting religious beliefs aside ask yourself or Google a question :

WHAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD?

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

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

The list is endless.

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

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

The real question is what is wrong with our civilization?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happened to the world as one nation under God?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EVER POLITICAL IDEOLOGY HAS BEING BASED ON GROWTH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I leave you with these questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

30 Wednesday May 2018

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

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( A Fifteen-minute read)

THEY ARE ALL OWNED BY SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THIS IS SOME OF WHAT IT OWNS.

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

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

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

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

Balmoral Castle, 20,000-hectare Scottish estate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I quote.

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

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

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

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

Amazon dominates retail in the UK.

Google dominates the browser market

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

The NHS is increasingly being infiltrated by American health providers.

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

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

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

Neither understands the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Each side truly believes the other is deluded.

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

Another vote is inevitable.