Why We Need to Act Now
The coming technological changes are going to make our heads spin. There is danger ahead for us, with new forms of weapons and warfare, and with surveillance on steroids. There are also big decisions to make as well, with jobs going to automation and AI, scientists alarmed about the climate, and society on the verge of technological transformation. And then there are troubling issues like polarized rhetoric heating up and a $30+ trillion national debt.
With the world changing quickly, isn’t now the time to ensure the citizenry has a voice? Let’s look at the situation.
Here’s what’s below…
The pace of change in our world is quickening. In our historical moment, we have great grandparents who used horses for transportation, and now our cars are about to drive themselves. Innovations in science and technology exponentially increase with each new discovery. Robots, augmented trans–humans, clones, new laboratory species, space travel, nano–technology, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence are just the beginning. Hold on to your hat… because it’s all really coming! Does it matter who is in control of our world? Isn’t it better if all of us have a voice in the matter?
AI will change so many facets of our lives. From one perspective it will help us advance at a much faster pace and alleviate large quantities of our workload. Yet there are issues like job replacement, the ability to misuse AI’s abilities, and the acquiescence of decision-making to a machine.
We need a method to align AI’s programmed limitations to the thinking of all humanity and not just a relatively few controllers. We need to both regulate AI and, on a far-reaching level, remove the incentives to abuse its power. The Decision Website is a tool for just that purpose.
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Weaponry as we know it is changing. Soon, a human will no longer be needed for a military. You won’t raise an army… you build drones and robots. Picture hundreds, thousands, or millions of armed drones. It only takes money. And that’s the problem. They can come from a country, a group, or even a wealthy individual.
With nano-technology, drones could be tiny and virtually unstoppable. They will recognize faces and locations, plus they can use AI to make decisions to attack. Drones can be armed with poisons or viruses or explosives. Will there even be a viable defense against these weapons?
Our own scientific discoveries make us more vulnerable. We have enhanced our ability to create new biological and chemical weapons. Nerve agents and biological weapons, like anthrax, have been around for a while. Next someone could genetically create new insects to deploy them. This is not science fiction.
I think we now know that the man-make creation of a new virus is possible. Apart from whether Covid-19 was created or not, it seems to be possible. Most certainly a virus could be used as a weapon by giving some people a pre-designed vaccine and other not. Currently on a global level there is no way to control this threat. We need to shift the power dynamic on this planet to the citizens.
Our electronics are vulnerable to a simple Electro Magnetic Pulse in the atmosphere, such that even a small rogue nation, a terrorist group, or a wealthy person might be able to initiate some level of attack. Will we be manipulated amidst these crises? When the world gets chaotic, the likelihood of a dangerous power shift increases. Let’s neutralize the power hungry in this world.
For more on how we could get manipulated…
Scenario of a Corrupt US Government
We are being watched, tracked, and analyzed to an astounding degree. I know – who cares. I’m not doing anything wrong. It helps catch lawbreakers. But keep in mind that if a different scenario arises in society, we could become incredibly controlled by our government. If you want an uneasy feeling, read this side article called, “You are being tracked!”
For more on surveillance…
Just imagine a scenario where our government becomes corrupt. It’s far more feasible that we might think. It would be amidst confusion over who is good and who is bad. The economy would likely plummet. There could be wars and global conflict. Our civil rights could temporarily be suspended. Elections could be postponed. The Internet would be censored. What’s going on? Who’s in charge?
It’s a movie plot, right? It must be fiction. It couldn’t really happen. Except all of the implausible parts of a movie, that make it obviously fictitious, are not there this time. And now because of the ubiquitous surveillance, the people are vulnerable. We cannot even move without the government knowing it. The people and freedom in general are in jeopardy.
More on a what could happen…
Scenario of a corrupt US government
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The world is getting warmer. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that it’s a natural cycle or caused primarily by humans. It doesn’t matter whether someone is whipping up hysteria or resisting change for profit motives. The projections indicate some critical consequences coming our way. The steady stream of severe weather disasters is likely to continue. Agriculture is being altered by changing weather patterns. Coastline displacement is a real possibility. And maybe much more. Don’t we want to be in charge so as to manage this situation now and proactively?
Everyone should be aware that our primary sources of media are owned by five or six corporations. TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and Internet news feeds. Our sources of information are not neutral and objective. There is an obvious profit motive in viewership, and we are susceptible to their other motives as well. Consider how easily we can be manipulated by whatever information we are fed and through sophisticated psychological tricks. This is currently and potentially a major problem for us. For more on this issue, please read Media is a problem.
If you haven’t heard about it, the Metaverse is an enhanced way to virtually interact with one another via your phone, computer, special glasses, or virtual reality goggles. In the Metaverse you will step into a computer world with your whole body, albeit a fabrication of who you are or what you want to be. You will mingle with others, visit museums together, or talk in a coffee shop with real friends while floating in a blimp. There will be adventures and an unlimited number of experiences.
The Covid pandemic sprung the door wide open for the Metaverse to become center stage. We’ve already gotten use to FaceTime and Zoom like interactions. These were extremely helpful when we were working at home and staying in isolation. We can expect to continue spending more time at our houses in the future, saving gas and time by not commuting, doing our shopping online, having food delivered, and staying safe. And yet we lose that connectivity when we are alone.
Enter the Metaverse to make work meetings more engaging, socializing with friends and family more energized as we share visual stimulation, and mingling with folks around the world to be an everyday thing. The Metaverse is going to be as pervasive as social media.
Now here’s the thing. Our sense of reality is going to change with the emergence of the metaverse. For good or bad, it will make us more vulnerable amidst the change. Companies are going to be creating the virtual worlds, which gives them even more ability to mentally manipulate us just as they do now with media and advertising. Why not use a democratic mechanism like the Decision Website to build and govern our own virtual worlds? Let’s make the future ours.
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Our Political System is already Compromised
There are probably some things that we can agree upon.
We could likely add more to that list of problems, but let’s stay simple to keep us all on the same page.
The point is that we as a people lack control of our governmental processes. We can vote back and forth from Democrat to Republican, but the truth is that the lack of trust persists because we sense that much of politics are out of our control.
It has been like this for some time. But here’s the thing… the world is not staying the same. We all know that there are radical changes coming in society that might be dangerous if we (the people) are not in charge of our world.
We need control now, not later, when it may be too late.
More info on politics…
Problems with Representative Democracy
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The Job Market Might Get Chaotic
There are so many available trainable workers on this planet. Most will work for very little compared to us Americans. Increasingly they are getting educated and more useful to companies. Companies know this and will pursue those labor markets. And nothing can stop this trend because our standard of living and our salary requirements are higher. Even our attempts to bribe companies to stay, such as lower tax rates or subsidies, only have short term effects.
Robotics has been here for a while in factories. Many are found in new factories or production lines, so we haven’t noticed the jobs they displaced. Soon, robots will be mobile and have dexterity. Plus, they will think and learn with Artificial Intelligence. Robots will make decisions, be accurate, and never get tired or complain. We won’t even have to pay them.
Your value at work is based on your experience. Robots will be programmed with experience. You use your logic skills on the job. Robots will out-think you in these straight forward tasks. They will process information quicker and with an impeccable memory. But you have good personable customer service skills. Business no longer seems to value that fact.
A robot cannot walk in and replace you. No, it will take a bit of time and programming. But to save your $75,000 per year… it will be done.
Computers have already taken away many jobs. Now with Artificial Intelligence it is going to be computerization on steroids. The computer will analyze the company, create reports, detect trends, talk to clients, provide customer service, make sales calls, keep schedules, monitor the equipment, program new software, and on and on. AI will make so many jobs easier and more efficient, which means the worker needs less hours on the job. It’s effectively a job loss.
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Driverless cars will eventually replace the taxi (200k jobs), trucks (3.5 million jobs), and Uberish drivers. Drones and driverless vehicles will replace delivery personnel. When science designs nanotechnology to clean everything, employers won’t have to hire another janitor. Good for us in one way, but sorry about the loss of jobs.
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A radical change is coming to jobs. And we need to scrutinize the viability of the “re-training” solution being given. As it is, plenty of people sit around with not much to do. Some are unemployed, underemployed, or don’t have many tasks at work. What if that number rises significantly? Think about AI doing more of our work for us. How will those people live? How will that affect society?
Business has the goal of continuing to produce goods, but they need customers. As jobs decline, so do customers. So business has a crisis coming too. Maybe they solve it with overseas customers. But where does that leave you here in America? Won’t the unemployed get restless and angry?
So what’s the mainstream’s answer? An infrastructure bill looks like a start. It will provide jobs for a decade or so. But we will also watch the national debt rise to astonishing new levels with no clear understanding of how high the debt can safely go.
Eventually the answer could be a UBI – Universal Basic Income. It’s like a welfare check, but guaranteed and perpetual. Enough to live on and just enough to quell the discontent. The economic security feels good. But project your thoughts down the road and look at society.
First, it will make all UBIers dependent on the government. What demands might government make on us to receive our UBI? Follow the rules, submit a DNA sample, register your guns, or access to our private health/ financial/ personality/ tracking data. Whether right or left, who want more authority given to government?
Second, it will likely be a deeply divided class society. The very rich, the dwindling middle or working class, and the UBIers. The UBIers will be occupied with entertainment and the Metaverse at home.
Hopefully you have heard about the 1% of people that possess so much of the nation’s wealth. For instance, 1% own more than the bottom 90% of the US population. There is a systemic mechanism in our economic system that will continue to funnel money to the top. Once you accumulate some wealth (often by hard work) and then make investments like the stock market, you will start accumulating more and more money (not by work). Wealth starts looking like a snowball rolling downhill.
The economic class divide keeps widening. Now consider that we have a government influenced by the wealthy, and dependent on their money. And our politicians are themselves wealthy. Plus the 1% has a monopoly on media that manipulates our thinking. We the people are somebody’s puppet.
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Moving on… let’s look at the coming innovations in health sciences. Soon, we will edit the genes of your unborn child to prevent problems or enhance capabilities. Why conceive a baby, just clone yourself. Why clone, let’s just create super human beings with selected genes.
If you have a health problem…
Could we even implement some sort of immortality by backing up your brain? Who knows?
But here’s the thing. Who is making all of this progress in health science? Whether it is universities, government funded projects, or the military, the applicable and practical patents seem to make their way into corporate hands. And corporations will sell it to us... for a substantial price.
Will only the rich be able to have this high level of health care? As it is now, you need substantial money to afford the advances in pharmaceutical innovations. Will the wealthy Americans be the smarter beautiful bionic people? Will we be the obvious slower lower class? Shouldn’t we be willing to take steps to offer this innovation for the good of all?
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We can not only genetically modify plants, we have the potential to create new species. And not just plants, but insects and animals. What about dangerous micro-organisms like viruses? Do we have a real voice in this matter?
When we merge technology with biology, we get a trans-human. So what is that? Is it like the cyborgs in sci-fi movies? It could be robots with artificial intelligence, engineered with real human tissue. Maybe your personality and memories can be added to create a trans-human version of you.
It might start with a human that is augmented with technology to provide encyclopedic memory, super vision, and strength. It sounds like sci-fi, but it will be real before too long.
And who will have access to it? Will everyone? Or is it reserved for a special class of people?
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The USA sent a man to the moon! But it may not be the USA going out to colonize planets. It’s someone, or some company, or some group of people. NASA could just be a side note, because… America doesn’t own other planets.
The USA could restrict who launches space vehicles. But a company can move to another country and launch. “We” don’t control space. It’s a strange unpredictable free-for-all.
A nation makes its rules, and nations agree to international laws. So I suppose nations could agree to planetary laws. But no nation is forced to agree to these new planetary laws. Where is the legitimacy for a group of nations to have this authority over other nations and over space endeavors?
Will space be competitive or combative or exploitive? A cooperative model makes the most sense. And understanding the nature of ego and the dynamic of power-seeking in human leaders, true democracy seems like our best option.
Fresh water supplies are dwindling across the globe, and it will get worse if global warming continues. Desalination is a possibility.
But our system of water rights is a market commodity. This allows private enterprise to enter into the equation, and quite possibly could give a basic life-support product to be controlled by corporations. Corporations already control most of the food supply, and now they seek control of water. How will this play out in the future? Should we just wait and see?
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We have a national debt of over $34 trillion dollars. What does that mean? For the most part, it basically means that we already spent that $34 trillion from past years that had a budget deficit. Don’t forget that our annual budget deficit (how much the government spends minus tax revenue) now adds close to a trillion dollars to the national debt every year.
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So far, our country’s robust national economy can keep up with paying the interest on this debt. But looking to the future as a country, when we think of things that we want to purchase, we need to remember how much debt we already have. Might there be a debt limit so as to prevent rampant inflation or maintain the global currency structure?
But then again, maybe we’ve been led astray by our understanding of how money works. Maybe we could have been paying for big items all along. There is some practical aspects to Modern Monetary Theory which looks at the national debt in a very different manner. Let’s debate the objective facts with a wide range of knowledgeable people and see what our options are.
It’s an important issue. Is it possible that in the future we won’t be able to borrow anymore? What if natural disasters occur on the level that climate scientists predict? How do we help those effected people?
And then there are other unexpected situations that can cost a great deal and push the debt even higher. Remember how much the Covid-19 pandemic cost us. Think trillions. Consider economic recessions when tax revenues drop, and money is given to salvage businesses and given to citizens to stimulate the economy. Wars and conflicts cost a phenomenal amount of money. The 2003 Iraq war cost about $1-2 trillion dollars, with the total war on terror costing about $6 trillion. Wow!
More on how much we spent…
It’s an honest discussion worth having. Maybe we can’t go to Mars, or have universal health care, or continue paying Social Security. Or maybe we can, plus unburden young people from student debt, make college free, clean up the ocean, repair our roads, cure cancer and diseases on a faster pace, equalize k-12 spending, and ensure that we are not causing global warming.
Finally, we have to wonder as jobs disappear to automation, AI, and overseas labor, will we be able to help our unemployment situation with a Universal Basic Income (UBI)? Might our hands be tied to solve civil unrest without violence?
The point is not to panic, but to realize that we have important things to discuss. Truthfully and among ourselves, not just with rhetoric by people we don’t trust.
Suggested Next: The Decision Website Design
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