Category: economic revolution

Automation and the Dangers of Populism

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economic revolution, Economics, New articlesLeave a comment

Automation should allow us to extend and redefine productivity. Vending machines replace people in banks and for certain products. Banking is now more productive than ever but do we measure industry by how efficient it is or how many people it employs?

Redefinition of goals – instead of ‘job for life’ for some it has become ‘passive income’ or ‘my own business’ for many whilst unemployment and benefits may be necessary to fill in gaps, families coming together to support young families will become the new normal.

Politicians can not be expected to solve this or many problems for us, they are there to set the framework of laws, not rescue us from ourselves.

The economy belongs to us, they are there to take some of it and provide public services. Politicians are not going to rescue airlines or banks from economic evolution. That is the lesson populism and isolation will learn hard. That is what is wrong with this wave of out-of-date thinking from the likes of Trump and Brexit, it will kill people who matter to other people, but people who are merely statistics that embarrass the government.

We expect politicians to be able to do something about it, our reaction is understandable, but they can’t. We pay lawyers ridiculous amounts to defend our inadequacies regardless of the fact that half of them have to lose. The economics of failure are not well understood, but they are there. Governments set a direction, but it is up to the people to innovate. Conservatism has been lost in the dense haze of populism.

And Left-wing thinking has been branded ‘socialism’ and therefore ‘wrong’. The Left-Right dichotomy was out of date but has been perverted by populism and idiotic thinking, masked by lies and confidence in the domination of others.

Religion and Extinction

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economic revolution, Economy, Environment, Politics, religion, WarLeave a comment

We are different to any other species in that we have evolved what we call economics, science of extending survival. Or is it a massive inter-generational war that the current political generation are guilty of, increasingly responsible for causing environmental collapse.

Why do we measure progress by growth? When we solve that one, and measure progress with an economics that includes compounding interest for any future consequence of our indulgence.

Only then we can call ourselves good Christians or good Muslims or good Jews. We remain greedy and primitive in our mutual interests. Why think like this?

Part of the lesson of certain matters remaining secular and out of the control of the driving faith or the possessors of property or the military – but that the ultimate control must remain honestly in the hands of the people. So we have countries for that. But faith is a personal matter and your path to your saviour or prophet is a relationship between your self and something all powerful. Therefore when you are praying together it is as though a casting of individual threads to your personal heaven is a revelation to the self, not to the army, not to the workforce, not to the merchants, the bankers or even the holy ones we listen to preach their secret messages in sermons to the initiated. In all religions there seems to be a strata that pulls people up – spirituality is a wonderful thing, don’t get me wrong.

Having to take sides for your whole life is the commitment of belief. But the essence of individuality is the thing. It is the most important and elusive thing. Your thread can vibrate within a group but it can also find its own pattern. It does not matter. If we align beliefs into destructive paths then as a group we start to consume that which we have no right to, we take that we have to leave alone. The first lesson in The Book of Genesis was not to take the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge or die. Not to take the irreplaceable fruit means we must consider requirements of future life in our consumption.

The ways in which competing religions have interpreted this basic tenet of their own belief is astounding. The destruction of species is wanton, selfish and will result on our own death.

These words or wisdom are drowned by the clash of battle as we fight for our set of beliefs. But this fundamental exists. If we sow extinction, then we will become extinct. I am just not sure if today’s political science really gives a damn about the future.

Progress

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economic regression, economic revolution, EconomicsLeave a comment

Progress dictates that we determine our future based not on history but on future needs. We did not need an industrial sector before we had one.

The service sector is the largest employer and supplier of needs. Without technology and medicine, today’s world would be pretty awful. Those primary elements of productivity are not the source of all productivity. People are. Innovation and ideas are worth more than widgets or burnt coal.

I think we have yet to find an economic path that works for everyone, but so far what we have evolved with a thriving service sector is better than centralised wealth only consequential on primary production being the mainstay of all economic activity. More directly: the fewer people who can make money from the productive activity, the smaller the economy.

Banks do create money. Investment does create money. But for 100% employment to be possible, there has to be value for services and ethical organisations. Primary sectors are always smaller than what they grow. It is wrong to think we rely upon them for growth.

World class education is our most valuable export.

Primary Industry and the recovery

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economic revolution, EconomicsLeave a comment

An argument against the assertion: “In political-economic reality, we’re still reliant on fossil fuels”

If all economic activity were purely there to convert energy, maybe that would make sense. But economic activity is actually to manage resources necessary for life. We do not have to progress into some kind of mythic space age to be successful. We have to live, grow, breed and die without making too much mess in the process. Progress means more result from less energy. Our service sector includes intellectual and cultural industries we are rather excellent at and form valid exports.

The model of human productivity and economy that depends on primary industry seems destined to fail. We can not expand primary production to solve our problems. Economic activity must be shared by all and what we make matters.

It makes little difference to the consumer if the public transport burns oil or electricity generated by nuclear power. They spend a fare or walk based on price. But this does not mean that to reduce transport costs we had better drill for more oil and gas. It is an example of how a service industry drove academic progress in science due to the war effort; the software revolution and being at the forefront of academic achievement in the sciences and arts is going to have larger economic effects in the long term than primary or secondary industry will.

Primary produce also includes agriculture and that in itself has an extraordinary economy involving much waste and unsafe practices.

Social Economics

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economic revolution, EconomicsLeave a comment

The blood supply can suffer from pressure or the lack of it. A well beating heart is the key to health and the functions of all parts of the body. The ancients bleed the system when pressure got too much risking ruptures or arrhythmia   A single point of failure is risky.  By putting pumps all over the body, and charging us for the privilege, the banks have effectively added multiple points of failure. So the system can go crazy hot or it can leak.  Offshore tax havens starve the tax payer from the benefits of prosperity.  Sometimes that selfish money finds its way back in along with bailouts to try and restart the engine.  All this extra capital sloshing around is hyper inflationary, but nobody is able to take advantage and grow as the capital leaks out.

We are giving the banks our pensions and lowering our cost of living as our numbers increase too far. The disturbing trend is that Governments stopped trying to prevent poverty.

 

Originally a comment in the Guardian in reply to article The Cyprus crisis is a symptom of what is rotten in the EU by Slavoj Žižek

 

Economic solutions

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn Economic disaster, economic revolution, Economics, EconomyLeave a comment

Greece and Portugal can sell their gold reserves, the price is very high and that fuels speculation. By putting their gold onto the market gradually, they can keep up with loan repayments. Government spending is necessary during a recession or businesses could change their behaviour. Like paying taxes. Like buying gold reserves and opening offices in countries like Greece.

The rise of the global corporate has enabled cross border legal theft of taxes from the economies of many countries. Is this a pressure from the one-world-government Bilderberg conference confirming years of conjecture by “conspiracy theorists”? Or is the intent to create corporations that exist outside the rule of law? What will stop them becoming feral when even under the auspices of the US government, we had rife corporate misdealings such as Enron and MCI who falsified accounting information to keep share prices suspended higher than they should have been, attracting investment they basically ended up wasting. Or Lehman Brothers who made very irrational decisions with bound to fail one day securitization deals. Corporate theft by Bernie Maddoff happening right under the collective noses of law enforcement, the Inland Revenue Service, the banks and Wall Street.

What if a multi trillion global corporation falls into the hands of corruption? How will that damage every nation states’ progress and growth? Or is that already happening – for example who is motivated to write thousands of computer viruses? Corporate criminals would have the skills. The Mafia probably do not. The West (and Google) point fingers at the Chinese Government. Corporations are more likely to gain from harming their competitors. Is there a war between China and the West? Not really, no. No evidence of that, but are there corporations who have proven they are not to be trusted? Lots.

So instead of regulating the high flyers to merely protect the public from expedential uninsurable risk they pose, why not regulate corporations at the international level to make them more responsible to trade balances and the well being of all?

Why not give the very largest corporations humanitarian projects and social responsibility?

America can get out of debt tomorrow. How? By selling its corporations.

Loan Traps

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economic revolutionLeave a comment

Organisations that feed off poverty by lending with ridiculous rates are coming under a bit of a spotlight of protest in the UK. As they should. Anyone who loans money to another person is entering a business transaction. If the APR is over 15% per annum, and the borrower has to pay more than 15% of their income in loan repayments, it is bound to fail. With APRs as high as hundreds of percent per annum, and incomes being uncertain, it does not take much fancy maths to see that it is a trap that the poor will never see the end of.

However, the same could be said of credit cards, sub-prime mortgages in general and much business debt. It simply has a future of not being repaid.

What does that mean? It means suffering, stress and the undoing of the potential of real lives for the sake of enriching a person or organisation that is essentially criminal in their intent. To profit from the suffering of others.

A new economic model is required. The current one may have suited a smaller world but the majority of humanity is being used by a small rich minority in an intergenerational scam that enslaves the lives of the many.

One solution is revolution. Economic revolution.