The Internet is an incredibly spectacular thing, and only now — after so many years — we are understanding its power.
In spite (and many times because of) all the social media and internet news, we tend to have a skewed view of the world around us.
But there is one thing that is certain.
It has given rise to highly profitable digital platform monopolies, ‘superstar firms’ which are able to use aggregation and analysis of data to make supernormal profits which are disappearing into the cloud.
But what’s really happening in the global economy?
These multi-conglomerations dominate not just the current digital markets but future ones in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with workforces which are relatively small proportional to value-added, putting downward pressure on labour’s share of income.
It is becoming easier and cheaper to replace human work by increasingly
capable robots and artificial intelligence, this automation will accentuate existing trends in the capital and labour shares.
Whatever the future path of the global economy, with growing automation in
the economies of the world substituting capital for labour more and more
of the wealthiest fortunes are held almost exclusively in financial assets.
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We’re not just entering into a period of severe distress with climate change
we are also entering a period of a new uneven distribution of capital
ownership that is now the driver of inequality.
It’s a “new, harsh reality”, ( from weapons of mass destruction, water crises, large-scale involuntary migration and severe energy price shock, extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, interstate conflict with regional consequences and major natural catastrophes) that the spending power of governments is dimensioning.
Most of us haven’t quite realized there is something extraordinary happening.
Isn’t it absurd that we, 7 billion of us living on the same planet, have grown further apart from each other? Everything is going through change and that most of us are unaware of that.
What sense does it make to turn your back on the thousands, maybe millions, of people living around you in the same city on the same planet in poverty?
You might be lead to believe that the Internet is taking down mass control and the small are no longer speechless. This might well be true when it comes to the rising failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation or if you look at the Arab Spring, Brexit, and the people’s climate revolution/ pollution.
But its not true when one looks at how and by whom the economy of the world that is driven by growth at all costs.
Why?
Because the natural resources industry is owned by sovereignty wealth funds with financial instability around the world as the net result.
But don’t panic.
With Climate change and Ai, and with all of us exchanging half-truths civilisation is in for a rough ride.
However, technological crises have yet to impact economies or securities in a systemic way.
Which panic button to press?
The only category not to feature in the above harsh realities is algorithm profit from profit technological that is spreading inequalities between individuals and families, between countries, generations and genders, as well as between people from different ethnicities and class backgrounds.
Normally revenue, as you know, is generated by profit/taxes but most revenue sources are already accounted for in government budgeting except the supernormal profits made by in no particular order – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco Systems, Intel, to mention just a few.
It’s sometimes hard to fathom the sheer scope of profits made by the world’s most profitable companies.
1. Saudi Aramco: $304.04 M daily – Earns $1 M in 4.7 minutes
2. Apple: $163.1 M daily – Earns $1 M in 8.8 minutes
3. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China: $123.29 M daily – Earns $1M in 11.7 minutes
4. Samsung Electronics: $109.3 M daily – Earns $1 M in 13.2 minutes
5. China Construction Bank: $105.48 M daily – Earns $1 M in 13.7 minutes
6. JPMorgan Chase & Co.: $88.97 M daily – Earns $1 M in 16.2 minutes
7. Alphabet: $84.21 M daily – Earns $1 M in 17.1 minutes
8. Agricultural Bank of China: $83.99 M daily – Earns $1 M in 17.1 minutes
9. Bank of America Corp.: $77.12 M daily – Earns $1 M in 18.7 minutes
10. Bank of China: $74.59 M daily – Earns $1 M in 19.3 minutes
and these are not Sovereign Wealth Funds.
They exist somewhere between the murky grey of return-maximizing, mega-cap asset managers, and clandestine government agencies quietly used to further sovereign agendas.
It is estimated that SWFs combined to hold more than $7.4 trillion in AUM, (Assets under management) representing approximately 6% of global assets under institutional management.
And you wonder with government print trillions to stimulate sagging economies why the world is and still is in a state of meltdown not just climate-wise but capitalistic wise.
We now have both the EU and the UK floating the idea of establishing Citizens wealth funds.
The trouble is that existing wealth funds have already bought up most of the world. Latecomers like THE UK/EU will have nothing to invest in other than technologies that produce profits.
The character of a sovereign wealth fund depends on its purpose and is shaped by how it is capitalised and governed, how it invests its funds and how returns are spent.
A Sovereign Wealth Fund is a state-owned investment vehicle established to channel balance of payments surpluses, official foreign currency operations, proceeds of privatizations, government transfer payments, fiscal surpluses, and/or receipts from resource exports, into global investments on behalf of sovereigns and in the advance of goals that are not transparent.
Economic theory wise, it is important to understand that SWFs form part of their respective country’s total national capital base, where total national capitalis defined as the total combination of net financial assets, total physical capital stock (e.g., real estate, machines, infrastructure), unexploited environment, human capital, and unexploited natural resources.
Commodity SWFs are financed from the proceeds of non-renewable commodity exports (oil, gas, precious metals), which grow the AUM base in times of high prices but destabilize their source economies and budgets in times of low. Non-commodity funds, on the other hand, are typically financed from currency reserves or current account surpluses, driven by corporate or household saving rates.
They were once the mainstays of the global investment landscape.
Despite is name the era of neoliberalism was far from liberal.
We are now experiencing the political consequences of this great deception with the rise of popularism.
This blog has been suggesting for some time the setting up of a perpetual funded World Aid fund by applying a 0.05% commission on all profit for profit sake seeking financial activities. ( See previous posts)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse 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.
I AM SURE LIKE ME YOU CAN RATTLE OFF HUNDREDS OF REASONS.
But the world is that what humans have made out of it.
Five centuries of European colonialism and global culture-trashing, and the remaking of the world in the economic interests of competing empires, cannot be undone by a single institution and a cluster of lofty ideals.
The world, as it now exists, was largely shaped by the colonial powers, which divided the world among themselves, carving out states without any consideration for existing ethnic, religious or cultural realities.
And after the colonial era collapsed, these carved-out political entities, defining swatches of territory without any history of national identity, suddenly became the Third World and floundered in disarray.
It was inevitable that to keep these artificial countries alive, and avoid their disintegration, strongmen would be needed to cover the void left by the colonial powers. The rules of democracy were used only to reach power, with very few exceptions.
Values and ideas which were considered universal, such as cooperation, mutual aid, international social justice and peace as an encompassing paradigm are also becoming irrelevant.
Whatever noble attempts at eliminating war the powers that be made in the wake of World War II — Europe’s near self-annihilation — didn’t cut nearly deep enough.
These attempts didn’t set about undoing five centuries of colonial conquest and genocide. They didn’t cut deeper than national interest. If something grows too big, then it destroys itself from the inside.
The existing problem with the EU as shown by the recent English Referendum. Attempts to create regional or international alliances to bring stability have always been stymied by national interests.
But why is it like this? Why are humans using their capacity of higher intelligence so negatively?
Perhaps it is because the human race in its state of development and as a whole, is still nearer to the animal behavior than to advanced capabilities.
Just look at the choice of the next President of the USA governed by Money.
The problem with the United Nations is that it’s a unity of entities defined by their hatred of one another and committed to the perpetuation of “the scourge of war.
Is it because Capitalism has not taken care of our fellow human beings?
We have become consumer and have lost the instinct to take care of our fellow human beings?
There is one part of the population who have overweight and are sick because of too much food and an other part who are starving to death, often living one beside the other.
Just look at the current refugee crises.
Instead of setting up properly manned entry points we allow people smugglers to pray on the vulnerable, close borders, and watch people drowning. A sure recipe for terrorism.
How can we find a way out of the mess?
Obviously religious and spiritual rules made up by humans doesn’t protect humanity from being distinguished.
Our ” way of life” our behavior, our goals and values are making is blind, are confusing us and driving us more and more into disease and depression.
There are people calling for a solution.
They are expecting help from their authorities, they expect to be healed by doctors or they ask for help and solutions from their government. What an illusion!
As long as they are dependent and not capable to look through the game of this world, they will not be able to make decisions for themselves. They will stay in dependency, manipulated from the more clever…
There’s always money to wage war and build weapons.
The recent Vote by 300 odd English MP to renew Trident.
The contractors are adept at playing the game. Jobs link arms with fear and patriotism and the next war is always inevitable. And it’s always necessary, because we’ve created a world of perpetual — and well-armed — instability.
While on the other hand we have out of date world organisations that beg for funds.
We won’t begin creating global peace until we learn how to bypass nationalism and the single, unacknowledged agreement binding nation-states to each other: the inevitability of war.
We are left with the two greatest international enemies – the environment and the global economy – unfortunately we are so selfish – so naive – we do not want to face the reality of what we have done to the planet and each other in the name of progress. We are in denial. We are addicted to antisocial behavior – propelled by fear.
All our problems are as a result of our moral and ethical collapse and only finding and using a simple international moral and social code of love and cooperation will enable us to survive and save us from ourselves. We are not talking about religion here. Morality and ethics existed before religion and it is that version of them that we want and need.
We can accept that one can be proud of one’s country and support its activities and ideals without feeling the need to bomb or subvert the country next door. The only people who would seriously disagree are psychotics and psychopaths or their minions. For example, governments.
To allude to globalisation is idiotic without capping Greed and reversing Inequality.
We now live in a world of technologically based society. Information is power and money. This is why we are all being Googlefied, Twittered to feed the Internet of Everything.
We only can expect that help will show up, when we start to help ourselves!
As the human race keeps on making steps in technology & science, the Smart Phone is the Pandora box of the future. Re shaping the World.
Science has made huge steps, society has not.
Society is crucial to the well-being of all of us.We need to open the doors to new exciting boundaries.
To achieve any of the above needs funding by placing a world aid commission of 0.05% on all activities that are for profit sake only.
On all High frequency trading, on all Foreign Exchange transactions over 20,000 dollars, on all Sovereign wealth funds acquisitions. on all Lotto wins over a 1 million.
This would create a perpetual fund from Capitalism greed to address the world’s inequality.
It’s only right that I follow the last series of posts on what is Wrong with a post that asks the above question.
BECAUSE ITS MONEY THAT IS AT THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM.
I guess the answer to the question “What is wrong with capitalism today?” is dependent on who you ask.
Capitalism works for capitalists.
The Problem is 90 percent of us are not capitalists, we are employees.
Without us noticing, we are entering the post capitalist era.
We need to reexamine the models that have gotten us to this point.
Complete change will not happen overnight. Nor will it be built on the back of one investor or one innovative entrepreneur.
It will be something that business owners, investors, political leaders, consumers and entrepreneurs must all work together toward.
Currently, our planet is on track to fly past the 2 degrees Celsius warming that scientist have repeatedly warned marks the safe range for humans on this planet, but at the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy.
The old ways will take a long while to disappear but millions of people are beginning to realise they have been sold a dream at odds with what reality can deliver.
The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phoney and fragile as East Germany did 30 years ago.
Why should we not form a picture of the ideal life, built out of abundant information, non-hierarchical work and the dissociation of work from wages?
So are we witnessing the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism?
Is technology creating a new route out or is it consolidating power into the hands of a few like Google, Microsoft and Apple?
Will its future be shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours?
Will Capitalism as we know it be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through because of what Information technology has brought about in the past 25 years.
It is blurring the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages?
Or is the current wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.
These are all questions to be answered before we see what I call post capitalism.
The Questions are numerous, and there have been hundreds of books, papers, and talks on the subject few however with any positive suggestions.
Before I put the only suggestion that is viable lets start with what is wrong with the present state of Capitalism.
Here is way I see what is wrong;
Today capitalism isn’t about real markets and commodities with the price mechanism being fixed by competing supply and demand, now today it is about casino economics. You throw the dice and when you loose … all that global connectivity means you lose globally. We are all in this together – that is why we call it a global economy – oh apart from the 0.1% – they are the ones throwing the dice. We are just the ones picking up the tab when the bets don’t come off.
Although economics likes to think of itself as a science in reality it ignores the fundamental laws that govern science – the first two laws of thermodynamics. This isn’t a smart thing to do. There actually are limits to growth.
They told us wealth creation was a trickle down theory but in reality it is a trickle up theory. The rich really do get richer and richer and it is not down to merit. The question is what is going to stop them: war or politics?
The big problem is humans are human, both doing bad things and good things. Capitalism only works if enough of us do the right thing.
The price mechanism is faulty unless it includes the environmental cost now and in the future of our consumption. This it doesn’t done at present and we are free-loading off nature.
Often we think it is the only way to do things. It is not the only way to even do capitalism! Alternatives exist, other brands are available. There are even other ways of thinking about economics that we don’t even call capitalism; they may be a bit racy for us right now so lets start with re-imagining what a good effective form of capitalism could be like if humanity fully realized its role and impact upon the planet that sustains it.
Modern capitalism is so big and complex that who can say that really understand it.
I don’t.
But I do understand by building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, Google and such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.
Never has humanity been better fed, lived longer, used more energy and had more stuff than today so what is wrong.
One of the fundamental faults of capitalism is the basic axiom that if everybody tries to accumulate as much property as possible the general interest of the people will be served.
All this seems to do is create exploitation.
The problem with capitalism is that it isn’t very good as what it says it is good at, spreading wealth, enabling good technological progress and helping us become more human, more free.
Adam Smith – you know him graces the back of the £20 note – founding father of modern capitalism back in the 18th century – hero of Margaret Thatcher. When he famously asserted:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
What Smith was talking about was the idea that self-interest – the rational underpinning of economic man – was not only good for you but for everybody else – society.
Unfortunately the line between self-interest and greed is always fine – and we are human man not economic man and we find it very easy to cross that line – or certainly some of us do – lets call them the 0.1% – the 700,000 of us who have a lot – somewhere north of $5 million each.
The consequence of this trend as it unwinds over time is that wealth progressively becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
The rich get richer – that’s that 0.1% again. Or to put it another way wealth stays with those that are born to it and the idea that merit – how good you are at something – determining your economical price in the market place, or wages as most of would say, becomes far less important than we thought.
In fact there are plenty of things wrong with capitalism.
Those that shout this apparent self-evident reality the loudest own the media, the means of communication, they own your stability through the derivative bets they hold and they are telling you don’t blink – this is the natural way of things , capitalism the way we see it, the way the 0.1% see it.
So the more we have of everything, food, power, stuff, the more energy we must use (even if we get more energy-efficient in doing things).
The nitty-gritty of it is we have fucked up the world with Capitalism idealism.
I don’t approve of Communism or Socialism either, the truth is that every system is flawed.
I think a system which is based on an assumption that man is basically piggish and therefore only fit to look after his own needs; such system impedes rather than promotes the good within each person.
Geographers have away of describing this situation it is called the IPAT equation.
Impact = population x affluence x technology. You note there is no Money in the equation.
The impact.
Physicists would call it entropy, biologists pollution and economists externalities – is of an order defined by how many of us are using how much however efficiently.
If you want impact in a nutshell it is climate change, it is salinization of soil, it is depleting geological resources , it is reducing biodiversity.
There really are limits to growth.
Capitalism is a perpetual motion machine, striving for more and more growth makes us in the long run weaker not stronger. Well, if only we were all-knowing, rational and optimal in our behavior maybe it would be so. But we are not.
In the past the trend towards greater and growing inequality has been neutered by war – nothing equalizes society more effectively than war – we do tend to be all in it together at such moments.
Today in our global economy is held together with a digital architecture that enables the reduction of wealth to so much digital code life has become one big transaction.
The most spectacular aspect of this transactional world is the derivatives markets.
(A derivative is a bet on a price changing within a market – say interest rates, or currency exchange values or a commodity price such as that for coffee. The value of all derivatives worldwide in 2013 is thought to be about $1.2 quadrillion although nobody knows exactly as, a like a lot ordinary betting the betters don’t want necessarily want to admit to it.)
So that is $1,200,000 billion laid out in bets about what may or may not happen.
Billions of transactions.
Let’s quickly remind ourselves. The global economy – the real economy – is worth about $85 trillion – that is about 7% of the notional sum bet on what that economy will do.
Now, take a deep breath and think about it.
If you don’t now believe that we could have another global economic crash in the style of 2008 – a massive bursting asset bubble – you need to think again and cast your eyes to Asia – you might be wondering where much of that quantitative easing – free money that the US and the UK created ended up. Try property speculation in Asia.
We are quickly reaching the tipping point where growth in GDP in any particular country comes at the expense of growth in GDP of another.
We do not have global organizations capable of managing these tension points nor are societies willing to curb growth and consumerism.
Capitalism as currently practiced is simply not sustainable.
Modern market capitalism has shifted recently with the emerging supremacy of money markets and the financial system over the actual trade of goods. Under this, you’ll make more money trading in derivatives than actually physically trading in commodities.
Capitalism, or the recent move into financial market dominated capitalism.
The “new capitalism” is based on mathematics rather than trade; credit default swaps over goods and services; when odds are stacked in the favor of big banks because of hedging, derivatives and CDS’s; when there is little to no penalty for market manipulation by investment banks, power brokers, Ponzi schemers … these inefficiencies in the market cause redistribution of wealth to the people in power who design the system.
The mass media is becoming more and more an opiate, an aid for living the unexamined life. replace it (capitalism)?”
Through the millions spent in lobbing reasonable controls upon business have been removed. The desire for economic success and the influence of the powerful elite have ruined the mass media.
Our political problems have deepened with the demise of unions as an effective political force, the continued growth in the belief in the desirability of pyramid economics and class structure (which has been sold by a media controlled by those at the top of the pyramid), and the dependence of our two-party system upon those at the top of the pyramid for funds to cover their election expenses.
Around the world the gains of increased productivity are wasted by this pyramid structure.
For over 40 years I have watched the gradual drift in the minds of the average person from an understanding of our political economic reality and the need for corrective actions.
Those who dominate the means for the production of ideas have served their class well.
This endless cycle of production and consumption for profit is suicide and profit is pretty pointless when we run out of things to burn and things to eat.
I would suggest a world government dedicated to seeing that: (a) everybody was properly fed, clothed, and housed; (b) everyone worked and received a fair return for their work with none receiving too much; (c) intellectual development for all to be encouraged; (d) businesses are the servant to man; (e) the production of war materials end; (f) the ending of all exploitation, including one region by another or one class by another; (g) and the ending of a press which is controlled by those who make up the ruling class.
We is needed is a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet.
Capitalism is not and has never been designed to work in an environment dominated by market controls, regulations, artificial barriers to entry, monetary manipulation and a myriad of other government interventions.
It is Profit at any cost and having taxpayers bail it out when it goes wrong simply means the risk has shifted from corporation to state, or you and me.
Many would say that means a broken model.
Has a new model started. It all depends on what kind of capitalism we are talking about and what force will be applied either at the ballot box or on the barricades or by the Smart Phone or the Gun.
Another question raised about the proposed strategy is whether it actually adds up to the defeat of capitalism.
Do the numerous tactics described above, most of which focus on what not to do, really do the job? How will capitalism actually be defeated? It’s true that many of these recommendations are about what not to do.
this strategy calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization and putting them into building a new civilization. The image, then, is one of emptying out capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and meaning from them until there is nothing left but shells.
To think that we could create a whole new world of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution or the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy.
Our new social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations.
Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinable, because of the inexorable materialist laws of history.
It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and because we know what we’re doing and how we want to live, what obstacles have to be overcome before we can live that way, and how to distinguish between our social patterns and theirs.
To achieve change we need unlimited finance. Where can we find this? We don’t have to look far.
If a new socialist democratic system is to emerge:
We must place an World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $ 20,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. This will created a perpetual funded Fund to address the damage Greed and Profit for profit sake has done. ( See Previous Posts)
Who do we achieve this.
Our lives have been shaped by developments which most of us couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.
In effect, they are nine distinct psychological orientations toward the world that structure our perceptions, expectations, and demands whenever and wherever other human beings may be involved. These instincts represent our most basic assumptions about how the social world works, and that includes how the political world works.
With the power of our Smart phones the new political weapon of the future.
In the next decade upwards of 100 billion objects from smartphones to street lamps and our cars will be connected together via a vast ‘internet of everything’. This will impact every aspect of our lives.
The interfaces to all our devices from phones to computers, cars and home appliances will be highly intelligent and adaptive – learning from our behaviours and choices and anticipating our needs.
The most accurate simulation of the human brain ever has been carried out, but a single second’s worth of activity took one of the world’s largest supercomputers 40 minutes to calculate.
SO LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED SINCE WE CAME DOWN OUT OF THE TREES AND STOOD UPRIGHT.
( I am sure there will be many gaps in what I write here so you will have plenty of ammunition to comment. Those of you who are shadow people lead by the like button feel free to press it. )
Right: On your marks we off.
At first we were of no significance till we discovered that we could walk up right, discovered fire, tools, and language. We became foragers/ hunters with no hierarchy spreading all over the world providing there was a land bridge developing new weapons and new clothing due to climate change and perhaps unfriendly rivals.
All that changed when we began to devote our efforts to manipulating the lives of animals and plants. The Farmer had arrived. More babies to be fed, so we burnt down forests and planted wheat thus becoming wheat slaves living in settled artificial enclaves dedicated to growing wheat.
Because of this we discovered writing and numbers, money and religion.
This lead to placing a material value not just on possession but on ourselves resulting in a conscious effort to create laws, customs, procedures, to run societies.
By this time with the human brain going into hibernation due to all the information that needed to be stored we are well on the way to creating religious gods, empires, armies, taxes, etc Thus the arrival of bureaucracy, rulers, social division, ruling classes, slaver, gun power, the wheel and sea worthy ships.
Of course building, pollution, masculine dominance and exploration were now in full swing and it’s not long before the world is dividing into Empires of different cultures, different languages, different belief, most still using their legs and horses with the odd set of wheels to get around.
The Roman empire broke up, the Mongol empire went to pieces, the Chines empire built a wall, America and Europe did not know each other existed. Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world.
90% of humans lived in a single mega world ; the world of Afro- Asia the rest lived in America, central America, the Andean world, the Australian world, islands of the Pacific.
They were all swallowed up by the Afro-Asian world.
Resources were plentiful. Till along came How Much is it. Money the foundation of Greed and cooperation between strangers drastically reducing diversity. The first step to we becoming US against the Rest.
The European Industrial Imperial steamroller gradually obliterated our uniqueness.
The Spanish quashed the Inca, Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigate the globe, Marco Polo gave the Vatican a Chines map of America, they sending Columbus off to discover it, while Queen Vic with the help of Darwin, Livingstone, Nelson, expanded the British Empire with ball and chain, cannon.
At this stage there is no evidence that history is working for the benefit of humans. Science, engineering, flight, medical advances, power, religious rightness, profit, wealth, corruption, greed and reckless plundering of the earths resources, ignorance, and credit now come into play.
Empirical observations are being put together with the help of mathematical tools.
All of this cost money and it did much more than just charting the universe, mapping the planet and cataloging the animals than did Galileo, Columbus and Darwin. If there had being no funds or these geniuses and they had not being born we would be still waiting on some others to do so.
Of course none of the above is in strict chronological order and I have left out, Michelangelo Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, William Shakespeare, Bach, Confucius, Aristotle, Newton, to mention a few but I hope you get the gist.
I grow sick and tired of all the same old lies
I might be a little young, so what’s wrong?
You don’t have to be old to be wise
— Judas Priest
Anyway it is suffice to say that European imperialism was entirely unlike all other imperial projects.
So here we are. WE CREATED THE WORLD THAT YOU SEE AROUND YOU.
After numerous wars and two million years of being marginal creatures, thirteen odd billion years after the big bang we have arrived at the Capitalist creed OF THE FREE MARKET and a belief that Science which is about 500 years old can solve all our problems.
The question is how many people want to live in a world that you see around you.
We need to ignite a second cognitive revolution. It is unclear whether bio engineering could really resurrect Neanderthals. Tinkering with our genes won’t necessarily kill us. But we might fiddle to such an extent that we would no longer be Homo sapiens.
In a previous post I asked what do we want to become. A human who stood on the moon and saw a dying world that could be so beautiful if we learned to share.
Paradise Lost or Found.
Unlike other animals, we humans need to create the means for our physical survival as well as our spiritual well-being. We need to figure out how to acquire food, build shelters, cure illnesses, build cities, travel to the Moon, and create everything that deserves the label “civilization.”
Take a moment to look around you. Reflect on your own achievements and take pride in them. Reflect on the virtues that have allowed you to achieve the things you value.
The potential for human achievement is endless, but only if we truly value achievement and appreciate that the achievements we create in our modern world are manifestations of the moral virtues we each create in our character. Not Twitter, not Face book, not the internet, or the web of everything, not Google, not Apple.
If there’s one thing that many science and reality-minded people tend to do quite a bit, it’s over analyze every little detail.
The answer is right in front of your eyes . Open them.
We must tap Greed by creating a World Aid Fund by placing 0.05% commission on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transactions, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20.000. on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all new Drilling wells. ( See previous Posts)
A common thief does not typically act with greater force or stealth.
I would guess like me you have tried to get your head around the taxes you pay without much success.
With the rising inequality concerns maybe it time you did as taxation has a future that will affect you and your love ones.
But where, and in what guise? Let’s have a look.
Slow population growth is depressing income growth, which leads to higher taxes.
Virtually every government could pay off its debts by taxing wealth.
Luckily for the rich such taxes are often politically unacceptable.
In other words, fiscal problems are best regarded as problems of dysfunctional governance by governments that are selling off state assets into Privatization until there will not be enough national wealth to pay off any debts.
Anyway for the purpose of this post it is essential that we try to appreciate the difference between real taxes and current (or nominal) taxes.
The real tax over any significant period is the level of government spending in relation to national output. The higher public spending as a percentage of GDP, the higher the real tax. That amount must in time be transferred from private to public hands—be it now or later.
The current tax, for its part, is the amount actually paid to a government in any given period, and is almost never equal to the real tax.
Got it. No. Shame on you. Try again.
A current tax lower than the real tax (that is, a public deficit) implies higher current taxes in the future, while a current tax higher than the real
tax (a public surplus—a phenomenon observable in only three of the past 50 years) implies lower current taxes in the future.
Now. You have.
So the stated political orientation of the administration presiding over a gap between current and real taxation—be it social democratic or of the supply side right—does not matter.
Because deferred taxes are simply claims against the public.
There are two ways to meet these claims:
1) higher current taxes in some future period or 2) inflating the claims away.
Inflation, which generally induces a shift of wealth from private to public hands, is the functional equivalent of a tax increase. These relations do not follow from any policy or ideology, but are purely matters of arithmetic.
Any clearer.? It’s of no matter.
Because what appears on the surface to be public debate over the appropriate level of taxation—and this goes on all the time—is in fact political maneuver by interested constituencies to get out of the line of fire of inevitable tax increases while deflecting the higher taxes onto someone else.
Now you have.
Different taxes do have different allocative effects.
Future taxes will perpetuate or even compound the misallocative effects of the present tax system.
Taxes in the next ten years, even though considerably higher than today’s, will nonetheless be insufficient, in all likelihood, to fill the revenue gap that opened wide during the last ten.
Inflation is all that remains to look forward to.
For a governments it will be like letting go to the pull of gravity.
Most wealth has already been subjected to income and other taxes, perhaps multiple times. It doesn’t seem fair to the holders of that wealth to suddenly pay additional taxes on assets that they thought were in the clear, and such taxes would signal that previous policy has failed.
It seems to me that on both ends of the political spectrum there is remarkably little concern with the allocative effects of taxation in its various forms.
However it matters how you tax if we are to halt the growing inequality in our life styles as over the next 10 to 15 years current taxes will increase mightily. Why? Because our own consumption, fueled by debt, outstripped our incomes in recent years, while foreign savers, predominantly from Asia/China/and the Far East financed the bulk of new investment in our economies.
Why aren’t foreign savers put off by double tax on capital income?
The answer is that they would be, if they paid it. But they don’t.
Another reason it that the massive fiscal stimulus that have been pumped into our economies by Quantitative easing and the selling off of state Assets (To Sovereign Wealth Funds, see previous posts) will in their wake pull up current taxes or spread inflation, another form of higher taxation —whether consumers or savers, suppliers of capital or suppliers of labor, or both in a maelstrom of inflation.
When income from labor is saved rather than consumed, the income from that saving (now capital income, in economic terms) is taxed again.
This “second” tax on saving makes the tax cost of capital income greater than that of labor income spent on immediate consumption. The two separate layers of income tax imposed on corporate earnings and then again on dividends distributed to shareholders actually imply a third tax on corporate profits. This goes far toward explaining why we don’t save.
What can be done:
What is needed is a shift in the burden of taxation away from capital income and onto consumption. In short, some form of consumption tax should be the predominant national tax.
The problem with a value-added tax is that people can to a considerable extent earn their incomes in one tax environment and spend them (either at retail on vacation or wholesale in retirement) in a different (and VAT-free) environment, so that ultimately both their incomes and their consumption are untaxed.
Value-added taxes and payroll taxes are analogous to an income tax that is imposed territorialy, whereas a tax on consumed income is imposed on worldwide income, minus the component of saving, and is therefore a tax on the worldwide consumption of a taxpayer.
(Turnover-type taxes such as sales taxes and value-added taxes are widely and correctly understood as consumption taxes. So is any tax that does not reach capital income.)
A tax on consumed income is an income tax in which personal saving is deducible from taxable income, thus excluding capital income and leaving only the amount of income that is consumed subject to current taxation.
In stead of contemplating such a tax in many EU Member States we got political, academic and public debate on wealth taxation which always gains traction in times of strained public finances.
The question is who ultimately bears the burden of wealth taxation (tax incidence)
The existence of a blurry frontier between capital and labor, income for the high-income earners, the role of transparency and automatic exchange of information in facilitating tax compliance and the serious political economy constraints makes any form of wealth tax unworkable.
Just imagine the difficulty to evaluate one’s wealth and the administrative costs along with the risks of tax evasion and capital flight.
Many people have become distressed about their taxes because they have been led to believe that the property they acquired would not he taxed to the extent that it has been. Accordingly, they have paid prices for the property that have reflected those expectations. They may be the reasons they are “mad as hell” simply because they feel that they have been misled by their government and that they not only have had to give up taxes but also have had to give up wealth in terms of reduced market prices for their property.
Economics have performed the heroic task of measuring wealth for eight leading economies: the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Australia.
Their estimates reveal some striking trends. For instance, wealth accumulation in these eight countries has risen relative to yearly production.
Wealth-to-income ratios in these nations climbed from a range of 200 to 300 percent in 1970 to a range of 400 to 600 percent in 2010. Behind the changing ratios is some bad news, namely that slow productivity growth and but also some good news — that relative peace and capital gains have preserved wealth up to now.
Virtual economies pose a real-world tax compliance risk, even if citizens aren’t purposefully shielding their money.
No one has a clue on how to manage the Planet. The only way forward is a consumption tax regime.
The expression, not a hope in hell comes to mind when you consider the likelihood of human beings working together. Human beings are deeply divided by nationality, and sectarian belief and the environmental crises.
Most Societies that have perished have done so through neglect and self delusion; they have failed to rise to the challenges they faced.
It is much more difficult to understand human history than to understand problems in the field of science. But do we see the historical of human societies shaping the modern world?
No.
Instead the great majority of us are passive robots helplessly programmed by the Media, must have advertising, short-term memory, and the capitalist mantra I am all right Jack.
Why?
If we were serious about caring for the world, about people living in the misery of poverty, now and about future generations we should be mobilizing resources to develop sustainable technologies with the single mind determination seen when countries prepare for war.
So riddle me this; While it is with you, it is with me. It flies without wings.
While it flies, our out of date World Organisations struggling to function in a quagmire of power struggles all disguised by the cloaked language of Foreign Policies.
While our Capitalistic Societies is encouraged to consume 24/7 in order to drive our economies of the sake of vast profit made by computer algorithms.
While our real values are being privatized by Sovereignty Wealth Funds.
While mass immigration will be the result of ignoring Climate change.
While population growth is unstoppable.
While inequality is leading to conflicts.
While the effects of antibiotics are becoming diluted.
While Social media is distorting the truth.
While extinction of animal life accelerates.
While we spend trillions on space exploration.
While we watch our finite resources diminish.
While we all see are the pictures of the world below,
.
Is it not time to do something before Inequity and Greed the two elements that contribute the most to the Worlds problems, destroy us all long before Climate Change. We can talk till the cows come home, but all our Political ideologies will fail till the distribution of wealth gains traction, which can only be achieved by Capping Greed.
Conventional wisdom’s seldom collapse on their own. They collapse only when challenged, only when advocates for change trust forward initiatives that expose the bankruptcy of the conventionally wise.
(See previous posts. What 0.05% Aid Commission could achieve)
Feel free to add to the while lists, perhaps someone in a while might read it before time runs out.
The Historiography of the first World War bear witness to destruction and death made possible by the Industrial revolution.
The present day turmoil that we see in the world has its roots created by man during this period.
So has the Industrial Revolution improved life or not? Is the world a better place? A safer place? Do most people have more material wealth than they did two centuries ago? Are we healthier? Are we happier? Is the world more socially and economically just? Is the world headed in the right direction?
It’s not possible to answer all these questions without an in-depth examination of the Industrial Revolution and its effects. There is no definitive answer, other than in short, we cannot hope to understand the modern world without understanding the Industrial Revolution as it resulted in the most profound, far-reaching changes in the history of humanity.
Perhaps it is adequate to say that its influence continues to sweep through our lives today. Just look at the last 250 years of industrialization.
It has altered our lives more than any event or development in the past 12,000 years: in where we live, how we work, what we wear, what we eat, what we do for fun, how we are educated, how long we live and how many children we have.
It greatest failure is that it has not spread wealth evenly across the globe, and the consequences have often been unjust.
For example, to-day in developing countries, where 85% of people in the world live, 16,000 children die each day from hunger-related causes—that’s one child every five seconds.
It did provided the countries that first adopted it with the technological and economic advantages necessary to eventually rule most of the world. In short, the Industrial Revolution is the “game changer” of modern world history. More than anything else, it’s what makes the modern world, well, “modern.”
But how has it come about that 10% of the world’s wealthiest people controlled 85% of the world’s wealth? Mostly because they were born into wealth that was made during the Industrial revolution.
So what exactly is the Industrial Revolution?
An Industrial Revolution at its core occurs when a society shifts from using tools to make products to using new sources of energy, such as coal, to power machines in factories, oil, electricity. nuclear power.
It began at the end of the 18th century, but it has yet to end.
It has transformed into much more complex global phenomena recently. Multi-national corporations design, build, and assemble products using resources and labor from around the world.
Proponents of the benefits of industrialization point to amazing inventions, technological advances, and increased global wealth. Global GDP per capita—the most common measurement of national wealth—has increased 800% over the past 200 years.
I would say to them that it also developed into a global economic system that seems exploitative and unsustainable, fueling unbridled capitalism that has led to exploitation of the weakest and most vulnerable on a global scale.
Giving Birth tomultinational corporations that owe their loyalty not to any nation but to the profit motive.
So what happens in a country when free-market capitalism has no constraints.
The record of the last five thousand years of history clearly suggests that every single preceding civilization has perished, no matter where or how long it has been able to flourish, as a result of its sustained assault on the environment, usually ending in soil loss, flooding, and starvation, and a successive distension of all social strata, usually ending in rebellion, warfare, and dissolution.
They all seem unable to appreciate scale or limits, and in their growth and turgidity were unable maintain balance within or without.
Our Industrial civilization is no different only in that it is now much larger and more powerful than any known before, by geometric differences in all dimensions, and its collapse will be far more extensive and thorough going, far more calamitous.
We are now in the technology age and you might say that The Industrial age is water under the bridge.
No matter how you look at it we are staring down the barrel of a gun with many different bullets. Climate change, Killer virus, World conflicts due to unadulterated Greed/ Rampant Inequality, Technology deserts and disfunctional non resourced World Organisations.
While demand for depleting resources are skyrocketing ,water, clear air and energy. By any biological gauge we moving beyond sustainability.
So is it time to abandon the concept of sustainability? altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure it. If so, how can we achieve it? And if not, how can we best prepare for the coming ecological decline?
The most important resources that drive current industrialization are finite. If billions of people replicate the same level of consumption, they will hasten? ecological and economical disaster.
So who or what will keep us from creating pollution or exploiting weak, desperate countries?
Who will stop global resource depletion?
Is there any point to the Technology Revolution, other than brain work instead of muscle work, if history is only going to repeating itself.
Now you don’t have to be a raw prawn to know that most of our all-powerful politicians and world organisations live in what I call a reactivate state.
By the time they have called a conference and blabbered on for days it’s too late. Now many times have you witnessed the pathetic sight of the UN and its world Organisations pleading for funds, equipment. Just look at the current Ebola outbreak. Growing the economy at all costs and keeping Wall Street happy seems to be their solution to all or woes.
Here are a few things that could be done.
Restore meaning to sustainability as more than just a marketing tool.
Share knowledge, share capital, and investments around the world.
Remove the Veto in the United nations and give all nations an equal standing.
Remove Carbon Credits. Set trading admission penalties for pollution.
And Make Greed contribute by,
Place a world Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over £20,000, and Foreign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. This would create a perpetual fund removing the need to beg for funds every time there is a disaster. The funds could replace the World bank, the IMF, Save the Children, fund Conservation, and make enormous inroads into Inequality the scourge of our Technology Age.
For me there has be a greater willingness by our politicians to question conventional measures of economic growth in favor of more sustainable models with a greater emphasis on well-being.
Before you bombard me with all the good things the have come out of the Industrial Revolution I refer you to the title of this post.
Yes we would not have the Internet, Landed on the moon, developed drugs, and invented this and that, but there is no point in relying on all the answers coming from Google than experiencing it in reality.
IF WE DON’T WANT THE LEGACY of the Industrial Revolution to be a divided world due to Inequality we must conquer Greed by harnessing it to contribute to all or there will be nothing left to be greedy about.
You hear these day cry’s from lots of different quarter for the need of an ideological change if we are to tackle the numerous problems the world currently faces.
In Naomi Klein new book titled – This Changes Everything; Capitalism vs. the Climate. She advocates exactly this. http://youtu.be/WPQI1Lui42c
While I admire her efforts with every thing these days we are bombarded with so much information that the hard facts disappear in a haze of communication resulting in a quagmire of confusion as to what is true or what is not true.
The bare fact is that if Humanity was faced with a Meteorite that was going to hit the earth and extinguish all known life we would not be able even if it wanted to change our ideology to save ourselves because of GREED.
There can be no Ideology change without equality of opportunity.
To create a world of equal opportunity for all requires unfortunately more than just aspirations.
It requires Money lots of money.
With the unbridled Privatization/ Consumerism of the world natural resources forging ahead unopposed for the sake of profit for profit sake by Sovereign Wealth Funds it’s no wonder that it is impossible to have any Ideology change that will make a difference.
The disillusion that we have some privileged position on earth are challenged every day.
ISIS is already in Europe, Alibaba is on the New York Stock Exchange, Climate change is already effecting world poverty, world economics, migration, and YOU.
” We can’t see the wood from the trees,” as the saying goes.
What we have done in the past gives has given rise to what is happening now.
There is only one solution: The people of the world must find a way of getting Greed to contribute to the planets survival without greed’s awareness. ( See previous posts)
The planet will have 11bn people by 2100 according to a new study.
Traditional methods for fighting for change have proved fruitless. We must put people before Capitalism and Politics.
In short, there are so many cars in the world today that the fuel burnt on the world’s roads by those many cars emits 1.73 billion metric tons (equivalent to 3.81 trillion pounds) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. As of 2012, there are 1.1 billion automobiles on the earth. The 1.1 billion automobiles in 2012 already average a set of new tires about every 2 years, or 2.2 billion tires annually, and those 2.2 billion tires consume over half of the earth’s rubber production, which of course burns even more fuel.
The fight of our time has begun. The Scramble for Sustainability is still possible. Our immune systems need re-education. We need to heed the Language of Money.
If we want it we must pay for it.
There is no point in saving a Tiger, a forest, a river, or anything for that matter,even a child if they or it have no where to a full and sustainable live.
We must make the things we value more valuable than the things we don’t value by paying for them with money.
I agree with Naomi that Capitalism is on the way out but life exists in individual moments and it is up to us to make sure those moments are vital. Sharing wealth is the Mechanism. Cap Greed.
(See previous posts; 01/9/2014,23/08/2014.16/08/2014,14/08/2014, 22/07/2014, 03/07/2014)
Not because there are numerous nuttier’s or religions organizations that say so.
But because of power, which is a zero-sum game that takes no account of past or future history.
While the world is choking in the dust of Iraq International agreements are being robbed of their meaning by Russia takeover of Crimea while sitting on the Security Council of the United Nations vetoing all resolutions.
Throughout the twentieth century, the list of the world’s great powers was predictably short: the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and northwestern Europe.
Decades of unchallenged supremacy for the United States is now coming to an end. America now has no stomach to get involved in world policing.
China holds over a trillion dollars in hard currency reserves, India’s high-tech sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and both countries, already recognized nuclear powers, are developing blue-water navies.
While the European Union discusses new sanctions on Russia France is selling it Navy War ships, England is welcoming Russian oligarchs money which is permeating the upper reaches of society buying up London Property and football clubs, all before Russia turns off the gas to the European Economy.
You don’t have to look far to see other signs of change.
The Oceans of the world are in a critical state of health.
The death of the Aral Sea has become a never-ending nightmare.
The Arctic — a once pristine wilderness is under siege.
Google had 2,161,530,000 searches.
More than 3 trillion has being wiped off global share prices since the start of January.
Climate change is the biggest single threat.
More than two decades after the Cold War ended, the world’s combined inventory of nuclear warheads remains at a very high level: more than 16,000.
More than a billion people don’t have access to safe drinking water. 2.6 billion people, almost half the world’s population doesn’t have access to adequate sanitation services.
More than 130 million children who are under the age of five will still remain malnourished by 2020.
More than 130 million children who are under the age of five will still remain malnourished by 2020.
If current trends continue, by 2050 something on the order of a third or 40% of all species will either have become extinct or will be on the threshold of going extinct.
The Earth has been sending us distress signals and the distress signals have to do with the pressures of human population and the pressures of the human economy on the ecosystems.
Incredibly, the world’s population grew more in the past fifty years than in the preceding 4 million years .Today our numbers have surged to nearly six and half billion and our population is increasing by nearly 80 million people each year – 220,000 each day.
In the face of poverty people will tend to utilize whatever they can to survive.
The State of the World Finances is in disarray.
In the mean time Sovereignty Wealth Funds blunder the earth for profit.
Disregarding the current conflicts there are I am sure hundreds of additional indicators that a New World Order is needed.
We can only hope that Social media is not turning us all into morons blindly asking Google for answers.
We need a new world order that has at its heart the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given;
That understands the requirement for there to be a re orientation of technology the key link between humans and nature.
That understands in broadest sense, the strategy for sustainable development.
That aims to promote harmony among human beings and between humanity and nature.
a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making. Democracy as it stands is now a rhetorical device.
an economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis.
a social system that provides for solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development.
a production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development.
a technological system that can search continuously for new solutions.
an international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance.
an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction.
a new United Nations with all participants on equal terms.
a Cap on Capitalist Greed.
a watertight ban on trading of arms.
a transitioning to clean energy.
a move away from the Production and consumer society which cannot be sustained by the planet.
