Putting religious beliefs aside ask yourself or Google a question :
WHAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD?
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.
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.
If we ever wanted more evidence that we are now on the cusp of an event that is going to have a disastrous effect on society we only have to look at what is happening in the world at the moment.
Every advance in technology is moving us further and further from our attachment to nature.
Years of Capitalism for profit has produced – Pollution/Waste/ Excessive production/ Wars/ Climate change and technology in the form of AI. All asking the question is Capitalism obsolete?
It is not working for the vast majority of humanity.
Now faced with the arrival of Artificial intelligence, which if not regulated will control market forces, with the super-rich oligopoly of data billionaires reaping the wealth of automation and profit-seeking algorithms to the detriment of us all.
The more AI advances into a general purpose technology that permeates every aspect of life the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in the private hands rather than of the many.
Indeed there is already a case for nationalizing AI.
Its very pervasiveness is invading not just democracy but our private and social lives. Causing wars and exploitation of not just us but our economies – High-Frequency Trading, Sovereign Wealth funds, Currency trading, Trade Agreements, down to what toilet paper you wipe your arse with.
Its inability to spread the wealth, to tackle inequality and poverty not to mention its exploitation of privacy and democracy have recently seen -FaceBook.
No company should be allowed to possess an exclusive cutting edge technology or core AI platform. Indeed with Deep learning, we are now beginning to see programmers feeding computers with learning algorithms that expose them to terabytes of data resulting in software writing software.
THERE IS NO DISPUTING THAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO NEED THE POWER OF AI TO RESOLVE FORTHCOMING PROBLEMS.
But it must serve society as a whole instead of the private capitalist operating in their own self- centered interests.
It must be brought under social control by Regulation with the creation of a virtual world strongroom, where a copy of all original AI algorithms, software programs are required by law to be lodged to be held and vetted re there compliance with our core values.
As I said in a previous post;
We need to create a class of ‘algorithmic auditors’ — trusted representatives of the public who can peer into the code to see what kinds of implicit political and ethical judgments are buried there and report their findings back to us.
This is a good idea, though it poses practical problems about how companies
can retain the commercial edge provided by their computerized secret sauce if
they have to open up their algorithms to quasi-official scrutiny.
It is very unlikely that this will happen. We are however in danger of
App exploitation not only for profit but when there is no immediate cash peril –
culture, education, and crime.
We are well on the road to becoming slaves to the algorithms with computers
taking more than some tough choices out of our hands if we let them.
God forbid that some form of AI manages to become self-aware.
Such automated augury might be considered relatively harmless if its use is
confined to figuring out what products we might like to buy. But it is not going
to stop there.
Amazon Echo machine-learning services are both a powerful revenue generator that is going to remove us from any commitment to society or nature that sustains us all.
A low-cost, ubiquitous computer with all its brains in the cloud that you could interact with over voice—you speak to it, it speaks to you.
As companies build their vital machine-learning tools inside AWS, the likelihood that they will move to competing for cloud operations becomes ridiculously remote.
All technology programmers whether they are Algorithms for profit or otherwise should under Law be required to submit a verified copy of the program to be held in a virtual world strongroom, accessible to all ensuring transparency and accountability.
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In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
Right now one of the reasons our economies have to grow is because of debt.
The global economic system runs on money that is itself debt.
GDP (gross domestic product) has outlived its usefulness as a metric of economic size and is it stoking social and environmental crisis by encouraging growth at any cost.
The kind of statistics we’ve used in the past just isn’t working anymore.
With the planet warming and some resources already exploited to near-exhaustion, including many fisheries, with technology removing trade agreements, (as companies and customers increasingly transact their lives in the cloud not to mention blockchains) we need something that accounts for such factors.
GDP can no longer measure the distribution of wealth within a country.
Even where there is growth, disenchantment with how it is shared out can be seen vividly in Brexit-bound Britain. Notably, So, while its total value can go up, gains are all too often skewed to top earners. Those lower down the ladder can fall further behind in relative terms.
It does not encompass the black market, omitting a huge source of activity and income in many developing countries, including in Africa and Latin America.
We’ve got to find another mechanism to include much bigger parts of the population, and use different metrics to measure the success of a country.
So, what are the alternatives to GDP?
The WEF this week proposed a broader measure of growth called.
The Inclusive Development Index (IDI) is an annual assessment of 103 countries’ economic performance that measures how countries perform on eleven dimensions of economic progress in addition to GDP. It has 3 pillars; growth and development; inclusion and; intergenerational equity – sustainable stewardship of natural and financial resources.
However for this to truly work countries would need to be liberated from the pressures to exploit their citizens in the hunt for income to repay debts and we would need to remove the creation of debt- based money.
Another word we would have to cancel the debt of sovereign nations and move the creation of money away from the state.
Of course in a capitalist world, this is unrealistic.
China alone owns– $1.168 trillion as of January 2018 of U.S. debt.
However, the European Union which is in need of reform could do a lot to liberate its members from the tyranny of growth.
Some creative long-term thinking is needed.
It could actively downgrade consumption, by banning advertising on mobile phones, I pads and Public place, all of which use manipulation of emotions.
It could write off a reasonable chunk of the Greek debt by spread it among its members in return for solar power.
It could turn the euro into real money by insisting that all banks in the European Union hold at least 50% reserves against money lent. 90% of the money circulating in our economies is created out of thin air. Banks lend it into existence.
It could create a basic minimum income by taxing all profit-seeking Algorithms.
It could tax plastic and sugar.
It could stop the farcical traveling circus which sees the European Parliament move between Brussels and Strasbourg every month.
It could set an example for the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, we are all to busy with I am alright Jack isolation syndrome – its grow or collapse.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Surely its time for all of us to stop acting as though we are all independent of Life.
To see the future first you have to be able to imagine it.
People might be beginning to understand but the clock is running out faster and faster which is being signaled by nature year after year while banks are commercializing its very existence.
Including us, none of the worlds in the universe are immune to natural limits.
If we and our politicians are still dragging our feet in another ten, twenty, thirty years we will have degrees of climate change that we will simply not be able to manage. The whole world will be in trouble.
As all the bad things re climate change are coming true assisted by the inertia of AI which is getting build into the system this time we will not be able to rely on coal to generate energy,
The chances of Technology (In the form of Algorithms) tackling inequality or driving sustainability are dismal in the extreme. (See previous postings)
The coming global problems that are going to be created by technology are obvious to see, lack of meaningful employment with the resulting immigration causing civil unrest and a return to Nationalism.
Just look at the results of Paris Climate Agreements being adhered too.
A complete allusion due to the rise of Nationalism.
Why?
Because of nationalism, we are now beginning to address the world problems on all the wrong levels.
We need to be looking forward not backward. Make America great, or Brexit Britain the two current prime examples.
We are now all living with technology and no government can control it.
Now more than ever the global capitalistic economy with national politics does not work.
Basic human needs are changing and even if we manage to establish a Basic Wage for all it will not solve who lives or dies.
Human stupidity or violence should never be underestimated. There is no post-truth fake news it has been with us for thousands of years.
No one has the time to analyze all the information that AI is producing other than another machine to make a judgment.
( I often feel that we should all be changing Facebook, Twitter, Google and the like for the information we are supplying them with.)
We have out of date Organisations that are incapable of making anything stick.
So I hear you saying what can be done.
First and for most, we must apply a World Aid Commission on all Profit-seeking Algorithms, on all high-frequency trading, on all sovereign wealth funds acquisitions, on all foreign exchange transaction over $50,00, on all world Lotto prize money etc. (See previous postings)
Then we must create a technology storm room where all programmes relating to technology in all its forms are held with access to all in sundry.
Of course, this is pie in the sky as it will never happen.
Since the dawn of history, the human has not been able to share for the common good of all, but there is one thing that might focus our minds sooner than extinction and that is the price of oil as it runs out.
New media such as Social Media seems to be driving a return to a more pluralistic communication System and Social movement activists may be seen as consumers of these new media, and for this very reason find attention for their demands.
But this, in fact, is open to différent types of interprétation.
So where are we?
As F.M. Powicke said: ” Political and social history are in my view aspects of the same process. Social Life loses half its interest, and political movements lose most of their meaning if they are considered separately”
Social media with its networks and its rules petitions and false news that go beyond democratic representation and is achieving exactly what Powicke rightly identified.
Social left politics is in disarray, Right-wing politics on the rise, Liberal politics in the pockets of Economic growth and the technologic revolution.
It is, therefore, time for in-depth research on the interactions between movement organizations and the society of social media that goes beyond the analysis of media bias.
In course of constructing the political landscape of these movements, if there is going to be any chance. We must not allow the world to be governed by the altar of profit, whether its Apple, Microsoft or some other monopoly platform.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Perhaps the biggest issue in the June 23 referendum was the question of whether 43 years in the EU have helped or hurt the UK economy. Of course, the referendum completely ignored that when Britain joined the EEC as it was known then as the sick man of Europe.
One can not know exactly how much the EU directly benefited Britain, but a 10 percent rise in prosperity is a reasonable estimate.
I would like some political ( descendants of the two world wars) to tell me or explain to me why now in a world that is in turmoil Britain wants to turn itself into a hermit kingdom squandering its wealth and ingenuity for an idealised notion that you are still a mighty power that the nations of the world want to trade with on your terms.
Governments and Countries can’t be run like businesses.
Societies are built on a commitment to social and economic justice, not by the free market, but by equality of opportunity.
From the outside, the whole Brexit process has highlighted your indifference to seeing that there are going to to be enormous repercussions due to a fog of denial and self-delusion.
Today one in 20 UK residents was born in another EU country.
Some Eurosceptics say Britain stands a better chance of growth if it looks beyond the sluggish economies of the EU. But this is a claim about the future, predicated on trading relationships that do not yet exist, rather than an analysis of the past.
UK trade with EU partners grew faster after 1973 than it did with the remaining countries in the European Free Trade Association, the grouping to which Britain previously belonged.
For almost half a century, Britain has benefited from greater openness to world markets, which has fostered economic dynamism. Economists have demonstrated that the main cause of that change was membership of the EU, which brought with it gains from trade, foreign direct investment, competition, and innovation.
This is what Britain is turning it back on.
The UK is one of the largest recipients of research funding in the EU. Over the period 2007 – 2013 the UK received €8.8 billion
Many Eurosceptics raged against the UK’s annual £18bn transfer to the EU.
Nigel Farage has claimed that being in the bloc costs Britain £55m a day — more than £20bn a year.
But the UK’s net transfer to the EU falls far short of such claims.
A rebate secured by Margaret Thatcher in 1984 reduced the bill and London sent £13bn to Brussels in 2015. Against that, the UK received £4.5bn from the EU in regional aid and agricultural subsidies, and the private sector received a further £1.4bn direct from the EU budget.
That takes the net cost of membership to about £7bn, less than half a percent of national income — about £260 a year for each British household.
Another often-quoted figure — the reported £33bn cost of regulation — comes from an impact assessment by Open Europe, a think-tank, of 100 EU rules.
But it is based on only one side of the balance sheet.
The benefits of the regulations are “much higher” than the costs and “clearly not all of [the costs] would disappear after Brexit”.
Most economists have little doubt that Britain’s membership of the EU has translated into more trade.
For crying out loud it’s not Isolation that Britain needs but a large dose of common sense and cooperation.
Get a grip.
It is time for young of the nation to unbottling their responsibilities to England by demanding a re-run of the Referendum without the pursuit of personal pleasure.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
How much stuff do we really need to lead a normal life?
Not as much as you might think.
Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work.
You could say that: The world of work is in a state of flux.
There is growing polarization of labor-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, unemployment and underemployment especially among young people, stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality.
However the field of robotics promises to be the most profoundly disruptive technological shift since the industrial revolution.
The development of automation enabled by technologies including robotics and artificial intelligence brings the promise of higher productivity (and with productivity, economic growth), increased efficiencies, safety, and convenience. But these technologies also raise difficult questions about the broader impact of automation on jobs, skills, wages, and the nature of work itself.
Somehow, we believe our livelihoods will be safe. They’re not:
Every commercial sector will be affected by robotic automation in the next several years. We have yet to reach the full potential of digitization across the global economy.
More than half the world’s population is still offline.
Greater interaction will raise productivity but require different and often higher skills, new technology interfaces, different wage models in some cases, and different types of investments by businesses and workers to acquire skills.
In a recent report, the World Economic Forum predicted that robotic automation will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by 2020, a conservative estimate. 40–50% of all jobs will be taken by robots in the next twenty years.
By 2025, average salaries in the robotics sector will increase by at least 60% – yet more than one-third of the available jobs in robotics will remain vacant due to shortages of skilled workers.
Developments in motion control, sensor technologies, and artificial intelligence will inevitably give rise to an entirely new class of robots aimed primarily at consumer markets. For example “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being.
The thing is: we’ve heard this all before. Time and time again, we underestimate capitalism’s extraordinary ability to come up with new meaningless jobs. (It’s 37% in the UK right now, but it could be 50%, 60% or even 100% in the future.)
Unless we update our ideas about what ‘work’ even is. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson’s Law, and much the same whether the volume of work, were to increase, diminish or even disappear.
Labor which was once the capital of working men will be longer true.
Again: it’s not about the technology, it’s about the choices we make as a society.
When it comes to universal basic income: we don’t have to wait for the robots. We are more than rich enough to do it right now – in fact, we should have done it forty years ago!
Technology is not destiny, education is.
Everything depends on the choices that we make as a society.
If history is any precedent, we already know the answer.
MOST OF US ARE NOW SURROUNDED WITH A PORTION- DISTORTED EMBARRASSMENT OF NOT JUST FOOD BUT GOVERNMENT SIZE.
It’s time for taxpayers to remind themselves just how much the cost of government to run us is..
Let’s take the cost of running the UK as an example.
The House of Commons with 650 Mbps at £76,000 pa costing the tax payer £156 million a year.
Add in the £6.4m pa given to opposition parties (Short Money), and support items like IT, and the overall total for each MP goes up to £242,000 pa.
But that’s only part of the bill: we also need to add in the costs of running the Commons itself. According to the HoC Administration Resource Accounts 2006-07, those costs total £210m, which is a further £325,000 per MP.
Oops I nearly forgot the gold-plated final salary pension guaranteed by taxpayers.
The official cost of MPs’ pensions is under 12 per cent of their salary, after 11 per cent contributions from MPs themselves. This adds up to total pay and pension for an MP of £85,000 (their £76,000 salary and £9,000 pension).
So with 650 MPs, that means each one costs us £85,000 pa in salary, pension contributions and employment taxes. Those troublesome “staffing allowances” cost us an additional £57.9m pa- £90,000 for each MP. Then there’s incidental expenses, additional cost allowances, and travel expenses, totaling a further £30.7m (£48,000 each).
Then you have 814 unelected Peers in the House of Lords at £83,000 pa. Costing the tax payer £67,932,000 a year plus £462,510 in tax-free expenses. Members can claim £300 or £150 for every day they attend the House and undertake parliamentary work. The dining rooms and bars are all subsidised by the taxpayer.
Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill, who has claimed £220,000 of expenses over her 27 year career on the red benches, has never spoken in a debate.
The total cost of members’ allowances and travel is around £20 million per annum.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
Then you have the Civil Service 418,343, (316,792 full-time and 101,551 part-time.) Gross annual earnings (excluding overtime or one-off bonuses) for Civil Service employees is around £25,350, pa.
You dont have to ask why people are lying on the floors of hospital corridors.
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‘What do you do when there is nothing left to do?’
What should a government faced with an unmanageable level of unemployment do when conventional policy has failed to resolve the issue?’
Perhaps then a seemingly radical solution, such as universal basic income (UBI), becomes plausible. Universal Basic Income (UBI), a form of social security paid to individuals, not households. It is paid to everyone.
It would give individuals the freedom to say ‘yes’ to jobs. Individuals will not have to do that which they do not wish to do. Fewer people will engage in menial and unsatisfying work. Employers may be forced to increase the wages for underpaid or unpaid jobs.
UBI creates a floor (minimum level) on the income distribution curve, alleviates poverty, and gives bargaining power to the ones who have it least.
Forgetting about work for a moment (if you can), think about what you should do when your physiological needs are no longer a concern. If you’ve had a passion at the back of your mind then you might finally pursue it. If, on the other hand, you’ve passed life going from one kind of busy to another, then you might have missed opportunities to reflect and figure out what you would like to be doing. The cost of failure may have been too high if it meant putting you or your family’s livelihood at risk.
Assuming UBI ensures a basic livelihood for everyone in a community, do these citizens have a duty to give back by working? Do individuals have a duty to accept paid, available employment?
I would say Yes: Individuals should have a duty to do something, providing it is socially beneficial. There was something about people helping each other for its own sake that makes for a good society. A society is not well-functioning if it’s members are not interested in actively improving each other’s well-being.
Caring for the those who cannot care for themselves (such as the elderly, children and disabled). One could volunteer for various causes they care about, whether they be social, environmental, tech-related or so on.
Your recognition that you have alleviated the suffering of others might make you feel like you have done something meaningful.
UBI provides the opportunity for you to try contributing to your community in different ways. This freedom lets you find a way to contribute that is most satisfying for yourself.
It would remove fear replacing it with dignity.
UBI would also reduce the cost of citizens relying on the state for assistance.
There are many pending environmental crises hanging over us, but human wastefulness can be avoided. Can you imagine a world of 7.6 billion people no longer struggling for food or shelter and now focused on bettering the world for their children? That’s universal basic income. That’s a legacy we can all leave.
So why is it not being done?
Because it would downsize our consumerism lifestyle and remove inequality.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
I can hear you saying where will the money come from?
Vat, Negative Interest rates, Earnings from investments, Decreasing militry spending, Sovereign wealth funds, etc.
It would ensure that the distribution of the fruits of technology advancement are distributed fairly.
As Jeremy Howard said: ” In a post-scarcity world , why hold back wealth from people just because they can’t provide labor inputs just to create wealth.”
All human comments and suggestions appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin>
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
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So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
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What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much 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.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
