Demographic dividend, or demographic disaster? As India is about to overtake China as the world's most populous country, it's worth considering if holding that title is still the win it once was. Not so long ago, more people meant more growth, more productivity, more progress. Hence the term: demographic dividend. If your working age population … Continue reading Assets to Liabilities
At the moment, a crop of ideas that have been lying around for some time are sprouting. Make no mistake, these ideas time has come and they will be used to shape the next generation of economic and social policy. They will affect every life and every nation. Specifically, 2020 has seen the following ideas … Continue reading Ideas Lying Around (and Sprouting)
I think we need a new vocabulary to distinguish between Universal Basic Income - as form of compulsory (for the tax payer) state-mandated welfare system and - and self-sustaining incentive-driven free-market, voluntary, private sector supported income network systems. I propose OBI: Open Basic Income for these bottom up systems, Open as in Open to all … Continue reading From UBI to OBI – Open Basic Income
Good money chases bad out of circulation. That's Gresham's Law. But what happens when the good money and the bad money are controlled by different groups? One private and backed by sweat; the other public and backed by blood (or the threat thereof). This is not a stable equilibrium. Taxation (or wealth redistribution) is the … Continue reading BTC in the sheets, MMT in the streets?
From my perspective, all the many trends that I track are linked in one way or a another to four overarching, civilisation-level, end-game "meta trends". Of course, all four of these meta trends are themselves interlinked and interactive, and can be envisaged as four oscillating cyclical waves that pull together, pull apart and underwrite the … Continue reading Meta Trends and Far Future Visions
We are currently at a cross roads when it comes to the balance of power across the world. Advances in technology are combining with shifting socio-economic trends to form new ideologies, each pushing for a different versions of utopia. Here follows a set of broad-strokes possible macro socio-economic scenarios that could play out in the … Continue reading Society 2030: A Set of Socio-Economic Scenario Sketches
What's the difference? UBI - Universal Basic Income UGI - Universal Guaranteed Income In short, with UBI, to paraphrase Oprah, "You get an income, she gets an income, he gets an income - EVERYONE gets an income!" https://media.giphy.com/media/11jENMgBweUYzS/giphy.gif Every person in the country gets the same get government sponsored income - regardless of whether they are employed, … Continue reading The difference between UBI and UGI – and why it matters
If it feels like somebody is watching you, well, it's because they are. Who is this somebody? Pretty much anybody who wants to, that's who: Skynet Your insurance company and medical aid have already sold you respectively on the "benefits" of letting them track your driving habits, through your cellphone insurance app, and your lifestyle … Continue reading Somebody’s watching you…
It appears academia is split. The brightest minds of our time cannot agree whether Artificial Intelligence is the best thing to happen to humanity yet - or our worst nightmare. Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook is on the pro AI team. He is exacted about all the cool technology we will soon be playing with. Yey! … Continue reading Is Elon Musk a Luddite?
