We are not to blame (and someone else must pay...)

Don’t you just hear this all the time? We seem to live in a society where the individual is never at fault but everything keeps going wrong and it’s always someone else who is to blame (and who should therefore “pay”).

We Don’t Want No (self-funded) Education..

A few months ago tens of thousands of students marched through London, demanding free education and voicing their fury at the Government’s withdrawal of the education maintenance allowance. Opposition politicians induced in their heavily jowled complexions a hue redolent of deep indignation and lowered normally shrill tones to expound at length upon the terrible long term damage to society of the loss of such academic essentials  as Classical Greek studies etc. As ever, all proportion immediately absented itself from rational debate, although not quite as quickly as cold rationality. Woolly academics knotted their eyebrows and intoned with near mortal seriousness that this was the modern day equivalent of the barbarians sacking Rome. It would not do – the government must recant and reinstate what it had just withdrawn.

The problem with this of course, is that Governments don’t pay for anything. They don’t have any money – its “ours”, so to speak. They are not income generating, just a reasonably inefficient distribution network for the incomes of others.  It squeezes taxes out of those who can pay and then uses the proceeds to run the country. But that doesn’t stop a lot of people seeming to think its sitting on a great hoard of loot, like Smaug, Tolkien’s evil dragon from Middle Earth. There is no loot – Mother Hubbard’s cupboards are bare.

Pensions – we won’t pay!

It’s the same with pensions. We don’t want to pay for the pensions needed to sustain us for the ever extending lengths of life we are busy living. Or, more correctly, we “want someone else to pay”; anyone but us because, you see, it’s not our fault we are living too long and saving too little. Generally speaking, most people appear quite positive about the likely year of their demise gradually receding into the future (see last blog). Given the fury about Pensions though, you could be mistaken for believing quite a lot of folk are rather annoyed about this inconvenient longevity now being foisted so unfairly upon them. “We didn’t plan on living longer – it’s not our fault – somebody else must pay”. Who? Those planning to die sooner, or perhaps our kids and tax payers of the future?

Past generations of governments have also been adept at concealing behind a curtain of lies the ever growing pension liability elephant-in-the-room. It has been a gross dereliction of responsibility. Now that elephant has burst through its rice paper curtain, trumpeting its hunger in the form of a financial black hole of billions of pounds. Now we will all pay to fill that hole, one way of the other.

It’s the Bankers Fault – We Won’t Pay for Their Crisis

This is quite a popular refrain. They should put a tune to it and release as the iTunes free download of the week. It would do very well. Unfortunately it’s not quite as good as it sounds.

Who would deny bankers are a wretched lot and certainly, much of the 2008 banking crisis can be laid at their doors (those that are still open of course). Some of those banks are gone (Lehman’s), some are propped up with public money (RBS) and some are so numbingly deeply in debit that only Central Banks will lend to them (the unhappily named zombie banks of the Eurozone).

But bankers can’t be blamed for individual debt. For far too long too many people have lived unaffordable lifestyles as a personal choice. People are in hock up to the eyes and higher. For instance we have had years of mad house price that fuelled a debt based buying binge on the assumption our properties would just keep getting worth more and more. Our bits of land and lumps of mortar were being accorded values that, with a little semi-sober reflection, were simply crazy. Many are now in the trap of negative equity with debts that they cannot repay as wages stagnate and unemployment soars.

So, when exactly does personal responsibility kick in? Or perhaps that went out with the high street when internet shopping changed the status quo for ever. Virtual shopping, virtual goods, virtual money (and credit has always been just that) and virtual responsibility, or perhaps it was also outsourced to the Far East, and we just never noticed it had gone, like so much else.

So, this is not someone else’s crisis, where we are the angry but innocent victims of the faults and errors of others. We are the guilty too for we have, as individuals and as a society, been:

·         Voting for and believing lying governments with their lying chancellors who told us they had fashioned a form of socialist nirvana that others would fund (that being those self-same nasty Banks again paying the taxes to which our politicians became addicted); that we would be sustained forever by increasing government spending and the sweat on the brows of others in far off lands, whose cheap goods we devoured without thought;

·         As willing participant in this illusionary state, borrowing and living on credit often so far beyond our means to afford that now we risk losing all. We refused to believe these days could ever come, knowing of course that ultimately they would, as they now have.

The whole of the “crisis” is about much more than the Banks.  It’s about a whole way of life that is foundering because it has not kept pace with the new rising East and because, perhaps, at its most basic, it is unwilling and unprepared to confront the future, which will be very different from the comfortable oh so recent past. And, in response, it has sought to build a great, mighty wall of laws, and rights and trade restrictions all cemented together with petty short-term politicking, all so this great fearful outside can be kept at bay. But, like all walls (save, ironically for China’s Great Wall thus far) it is now crumbling and fast.

It is this East, in the form of China, India and others, that has as its values; a work ethic that for the “west” (and the rest for that matter), is intimidatingly unconstrained; levels of education in key areas (science, engineering, technology) that generates hundreds of thousands of super-skilled,  determined and ambitious graduates every year and a competitive advantage that has streaked ruthlessly away from the “35 hour weekers of the west” comfortably shackled in their working time directives and dreams of early and long retirements that someone else must pay for.

Of course the west can respond to this challenge. It still has enormous wealth, knowledge and ability. To do this however, the West must realise that it’s not the rules of the game that have changed, it’s a whole new ball game, and the other kids are setting the pace.

Future Shock

In 1970 futurist Alvin Toffler wrote his famous book of the above title, which was all about what happens to people overwhelmed by technological change which takes place too quickly for them to cope.  For all that, the world of 1970 now seems as technologically remote from 2011 as 1900 must have seemed in 1970 and even Toffler would probably admit it has changed beyond what he could have imagined.

Increasingly so, it seems as if everything is changing at an ever accelerating rate. The “life-long familiars” of our worlds are vanishing fast and the facets and features of our lives are now morphing into ever more sophisticated versions of themselves, evolving and merging as they simultaneously spread their technological reach out ever further, ever faster. For the first time in human history, we are observers of a technological evolution taking place at hyper-speed. We see more change in a period of 24 months than our recent ancestors would have seen in their whole lifetimes.

Where is it all headed?

The faster it moves the more difficult it becomes to predict – what’s obvious of course is that there is no foreseeable destination; it’s the long “now” that races away from us into the haze of the strange decades ahead. Watching it take place, it’s moving too fast to be controlled. Who would deny we are already on the downhill sprint to near invisible yet all powerful computing; the hardware is busy vanishing into ever smaller versions of itself yet each generation is exponentially more power and versatile than its “parent”.  Soon it will disappear into the very material of our lives, under our skin, our clothes, and every device we own, out of sight yet immensely powerful and permanently awake. And when all these devices and smart programmes are interconnected and communicating 24-7, will that challenge our very concepts of sentience?

How long now before software is developed that can develop smarter versions of its self and thereby become responsible for its own destiny. Such a concept challenges our very preconceptions of our own position in the natural pecking order of “life”.  In 1970 such a statement would have been ridiculous; the stuff of hard science fiction – now we can speculate about whether it might not already be happening. The fiction in science fiction is under threat.

All around us this technological revolution is taking place. It’s not that is good or bad, such terms in themselves seem naively out of place and quaintly redundant – we are cumbersome, static, biological witnesses to another form of evolution, not on the comfortable, glacial speeds of the more natural kind with which we are so familiar, but one that, in the proverbial blinking of a couple of eyes, continuously contorts and twists itself into ever more fantastic technological “miracles” that our grandparents would never have believed possible.

When is a human more than a human?

We laugh at the endless succession of z-list celebs undergoing hilariously bad makeovers. Like the weirdly plump, plaster of Paris like face of Paul McCartney who in some expressionless, pinched way now looks younger than he did in 30 years ago. Or Madonna, like some phantasmagorical nicotine blond harpy who defies time and the aging process thanks to science (and kabala). How old is she now – 40 or 60 – it’s impossible to tell. Yet these attempts to hold back the process of ageing (for millennia the dream of the powerful) represent the first crude steps in what will in pretty short order develop into real life extension technology. Life spans are already increasing (much to the distress of pension fund managers who watch their liabilities soar in parallel) and medical science will only add more years to that tally. What will lifespans be in 200 years? Would you put money on the likelihood that people might not be living for 200, 300 or even more years? The fact is, the longer you live, the longer you’ll stay alive. As Lemmy once said, the secret to long life is not dying.

Prosthetics are another area of amazing progress, no doubt accelerated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The artificial will soon easily catch up and accelerate effortlessly past the biological with its vastly superior evolutionary speeds; it will only be a short while before the paralympians are able to out-compete the purely meat Olympians – Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter is already leading the way in more ways than one. No wonder other athletes object to competing against him. They can see where this is going. Oscar can upgrade his legs.

But that is only half the story. Even today many people think of prosthetics as limbs, hands, hips and the like. Yet, they are becoming ever more sophisticated, replacing ever more human parts, and enhancing others. Silicon chips will soon start assisting the brain. Research is currently being conducted in the area of retinal microchip implantation. Elsewhere Intel researchers say that by the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer. Instead, users will open documents and surf the web using nothing more than brain waves. You could be forgiven for wondering why it would take until 2020.

What we are seeing is that our brains are merging with our technology. Not long no doubt till, a few chips can be strategically inserted to boost specific intellectual facilities and enhance the senses. The potential is almost too vast to understand - the implications tantamount to the rise of a new and increasingly superior life form on earth.  This may seem like some science fiction story – but it’s not and science is already moving in this direction as this is it this kind of enhancement to our intellectual capacities that will enable us to keep pace with the developments of what was once our own technology but which is now set to take on a new and much more equal relationship with us.

So what does that mean for the concept of a human being? Science has the potential to enable someone smarter than a biological human being. This philosophical Rubicon is almost here, now. Will we have begun to evolve into something else?

A Technological Event Horizon

It’s as if we are all headed to an invisible point beyond which we cannot imagine what will happen. In that sense we have already crossed a sort of technological “event horizon” in that such a momentum is building that it’s already too late to stop or slow down. Not that we should, although its technological and high speed, its evolution and you can as much stop and backtrack it as you can reverse engineer a sausage to get back your favourite pig.

The shock of the future is now and its voltage it starting to soar.

The Titanic Sets Sail

So the great Euro farce rolls on. The question the markets all want answered, not unreasonably, is “How will you repay your debts”?

And the answer is (part 1)…

Germany thinks the answer is by sort of… well… doing away with everybody else’s democracy, telling them they will be punished for over borrowing (when very soon no one will lend them money anyway) and introducing centralised fiscal management, by committee, from the loathed and unpopular Brussels.

Then you get 5 feet of French President to sell it to the quivering victims of 10 years of failed Eurozone experimentation to boost his election prospects. This is not a recipe for success.

The huge, great obvious problems remain, almost blissfully undisturbed by all this frantic squabbling. There is a huge lack of productivity (except for Germany and Scandinavia), too much welfare state (which compounds the productivity problem) and living standards that have accelerated with alarming speed, most notably in those countries least able to afford them.

And therein is the problem. Europe is not a single country and one-size-fits-all economic rules don’t work. The solution being applied is not far short of taking a family of 27 shoe shopping and Dad (Germany) saying “well, I’m size 9 so let’s have 27 pairs of size 9 shoes please” and then wondering why no one can walk straight.

And the answer is (part 2)…

It is now almost a foregone conclusion that the Eurozone will collapse unless it transforms itself from an angry and frightened conglomeration of unequal, indebted countries, into a single “legal” state. That means the countries of Europe will become the “provinces” of a Super state, thus enabling full fiscal and political union and control. That will enable the more stabilising distribution of wealth and the application of rules that all are able to follow. But that will mean Germany has to pay for the rest because it is by far the richest and most competitive area. It’s the model that works in the USA and China, and in the UK, where, broadly speaking, London and the south east share their wealth with the rest of the UK. Whether it can be made to work in Europe is a very different matter.

The Great Escape

Cameron has vacated his cabin on the good ship Eurozone, just in time. Given its direction of travel this was always going to be a forgone conclusion. Despite the choking and gasping in the press (and the puerile tweeting of the leader of the opposition), the main players will have known this was all but inevitable. Being stuck on the pier when the Titanic leaves port is no bad place to be. Britain is going to find the going increasingly tough, but it has made a decision that leaves it responsible for its own fate, which right now, would be a better bet than that of the Eurozone, which is still not facing up to the terrifying scale of its problems, instead choosing to force its respective nations into an ugly, undemocratic and increasingly resentful half embrace.  

Europe’s leaders should remember Abraham Lincoln’s famous words in 1858: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free”.

His words, spoken over 150 years ago, in a way are eerily prescient of the situation in which the Eurozone now finds itself.

Could UFO's Exist: More Exciting News From Italy....

Recently it was reported from Italy that scientists had discovered that sub atomic particles called neutrinos can apparently move faster than the speed of light. UFO enthusiasts will no doubt be delighted. That surely proves that a more advanced civilisation in possession of this sort of technology must have been visiting earth, travelling in time and doing all sorts of other cosmically most upsetting things with Albert Einstein’s formerly well-ordered universe.  Well, it’s likely to mean no such thing. It’s probably what a science teacher of mine once referred to as “experimental error”, something with which my less than illustrious career in school science labs had an enduring acquaintance.

But what about UFOs - could they exist? Undoubtedly millions of people believe they do, in fact quite a few people are convinced they have been abducted by these visitors from outer space and been the subject of “experiments” (the sexual / reproductive nature of which probably speaks more to the states of mind of the “abductees” than the actual existence or otherwise of little green men). Given how many people are sure that they have suffered this indignity, it’s surprising there isn’t better evidence for these alien intruders.  At one point so many people thought they were being abducted there should have been a risk of UFO gridlock over the skies. If you suggest as much though, it’s all very easily explained - there is no proof because, of course, there is a government cover-up. Right.

Well, that’s quite a stretch isn’t it?  For starters, Governments are far too inefficient and clumsy to run long term successful cover ups.  But that’s not really the point. I don’t believe that aliens are visiting us. But, assuming I’m wrong, even if they were, I don’t believe we would know it. Here’s why.

The nearest star to our earth is Proxima Centauri and it is a red dwarf star about 4.2 light-years away. Given that it’s a red dwarf that makes it very unlikely any planets support life in its proximity. But let’s ignore that and pretend. If visitors from that system wanted to visit earth, then, flying straight across space as a crow would, so to speak, it would take 4.2 years to get here. That doesn’t sound too bad, however, that assumes they could fly at the speed of light.

Light speed is about 186 000 miles a second (or 700 million miles an hour), which means they are 25 754 400 000 000 miles away (25.75 trillion miles). To put that is some kind of perspective, if you were to fly to Proxima Centauri in a modern Dreamliner jet (max speed about 600 mph), the journey would take you just under 490 000 years. But let’s pretend they have a space ship travelling at 1 million miles an hour. Even at that speed its taking our little green men nearly 3000 years to get here and 6000 years to do a round trip. Not really worth setting out.

The problem is that, unless you can really travel at speeds approaching that of light, space travel is just about impossible. The distances are simply too great. 

To move space ships at such speeds is beyond the comprehension of our science, in fact according to Einstein, its impossible. But, science has been wrong before, and we have been pretending, so why stop now. Let’s assume they can travel at near light speed. If so, our visitors would have developed a level of technology so immeasurably more sophisticated than ours that it’s highly doubtful we would even know we were being watched or studied. They would justifiably consider us extremely primitive. It’s unlikely they would communicate with us, just as scientists don’t bother trying to communicate with things in a petri dish. 

Now consider the stories of slumbering mortals being abducted by these aliens so they can keep on conducting the same, crude experiments not unlike deranged Nazi doctors. No, not really very likely is it. Especially when you consider that such base scientific crudity is now less advanced than our own modern science, which can use a strand of hair to decode a human’s genome. Why would aliens repeatedly come from across space to try and do so?

Of course the above is even more highly unlikely because there are almost certainly no life- supporting star systems near to our own solar system. Our visitors would most likely have to come from much further afield, sustaining fragile lives across possibly hundreds of light years of empty, freezing space. The distances are beyond our simple comprehension and only the stuff of science fiction will see life travel across these near infinite blank inky voids.

The reality is, that there are almost certainly no visitors from outer space, certainly not that we would know about.

That’s not to say there isn’t life out there somewhere, but life forms are likely to be so far from each other in these infinite gulfs of distance, that contact between “civilizations” is going to be all but impossible. And perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, given how we treat each other here on earth. If I believed in any universal, all creating god, perhaps I might think that he, or she, had done that deliberately.

Let’s face it, neutrinos or not, we are utterly alone on our planet and in our “space”, and very likely to stay that way for a very, very long time ……………..

Why Do People Believe This Stuff?

Why do people like to believe weird stuff? What is it that seems to predispose people to want to believe things that, if we were to just pause for a little clear headed thought, most of us would accept make no sense at all.

Take the case of David Icke. He used to be a BBC Sports Reporter. Then in 1990, a “Psychic” in Brighton revealed to Dave that he had a far more significant, cosmic role – he had been sent to heal the earth. Well, I imagine that must have been a bit surprising. Presumably most of us would nod politely, mutter something like “Gee whizz, thanks very much” and try not to snigger. Not Mr Icke.

Since his Brighton revelation he has applied himself to his new role with great enthusiasm and vigour. Apparently a great number of quite sensible people believe him too. He believes the Queen is an alien reptile, or at least descended from one. Well, perhaps he’s just a frustrated republican but I’m not so sure. He would have us believe we are all ruled by these secret reptilian humanoids that form a global brotherhood. I’m not sure if Mr Ahmadinejad is one of them but George W Bush is, along with a selection of other world leaders and a predictable cast of the likes of the Rockefellers, the Rothschild’s, the United Nations, the IMF - you can probably fill in the blanks. Its recycled conspiracy theory, writ large and aimed at the normal suspects and easy targets. The problem is it’s simply ridiculous if you think about it, but why do people believe it?

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Take Mormonism. The US Republican primaries are currently being run and the leading candidate to oppose President Obama (not sure if Mr Icke believes him to be an alien reptile but I expect it’s quite possible) is one Mitt Romney. He is a Mormon; in fact he was a Mormon Bishop. Mormonism was founded by a man called Joseph Smith (known more correctly now as Prophet Smith) in 1830, who believed God sent him visions (ok, not the first to suffer from that quaint delusion). Mormons are rather strange. They have to wear special underwear; worship an angel called Moroni and believe Jesus visited North America after his resurrection. They also believe a whole host of other weird things, most of which are contained in the “Book of Mormon”. This book is based upon some “gold plates” Prophet Smith found under a rock on a small hill in Ontario County, New York State in the late 1820s, so the tale goes (conveniently the plates are now “lost”).

It’s all a rather tangled story, however, for what it’s worth it’s a great example of people believing the completely implausible; These gold plates were supposedly written in an ancient Egyptian like language and Joseph Smith was only able to decipher them by burying his head in his hat, at the bottom of which he had placed a “magic” stone. Hmmm.

But it becomes even more incredulous. This was the second draft of the Gold Plates. Smith’s neighbour lost the first draft (he wanted to show it to his wife), which Smith had interpreted that time with the help of some holy spectacles given to him by Angel Moroni. If Moroni had access to spectacles, presumably he could have produced a copy of the gold plates in an easy to read format instead of putting Joseph through all this. However, titter ye not, for Mormons all this is a fundamental article of their faith. Several million people believe this totally and without question. They “know” it’s the Lord’s truth.

If Romney wins the election in 2012, then he will, amongst other things, have his finger on the proverbial nuclear button. Now, it may be that he’d be no more likely to push it than any of the other (admittedly rather worrying) candidates currently eying the presidency. However, unlike the others, he believes all this stuff along with millions of other Mormons. What if he decides to start getting revelations from God? We’ve just had one president who thought God told him to invade Iraq.

His election would also make a Mormon the most powerful man in the world – but would that be Mr Romney or the President of the Mormon Church, the most powerful figure in Mormonism.  For some, Romney’s election will be heralded as the much anticipated arrival of “The One mighty and strong” which is hardly a comforting thought. So, if you ever needed a reason to vote for Obama…

All well and good, you might think, clearly it’s ridiculous. But is it any more ridiculous than any other beliefs out there. And why are our modern day religious beliefs any more likely to be true than ancient ones. No one believes in the religions of the ancient world anymore. For instance, if you said in all seriousness that you worshiped the gods of ancient Egypt, people would be incredulous and quite rightly think you mad. The ancient Egyptians had a god (Osiris, aka the Risen Osiris) who was murdered but subsequently brought back to life for a brief time (heard that one before). Of course, no one has believed that particular religion for over 2000 years. Another took its place….

Why do people believe all this stuff?

FALL OF THE NEW ROMAN EMPIRE

 

“Arrivederci, Silvio”. Not since the barbarians invaded Rome has Italy looked in such a sorry state. Ditto the rest of Western Europe. Why are Europe’s states weighed down by such terrifying levels of debt?

How did it all come to this?

Lots of reasons, but ultimately it’s down to the politicians and governments (left and right), who have for too long pursued a form of fuzzy social democracy or “socialism-lite”.  Generous welfare states and unproductive state employers have developed and expanded over the past decades. Steadily declining productivity has been countered by pumping ever more easy money into these great increasingly sluggish and unreformed bureaucracies. Access to easy money (and debt) has been made possible thanks to the shared Euro and lenders inexplicably ignoring the reality that lending to lazy corrupt Greece is a bigger risk than lending to hard working Germans. There has been a calculated strategy behind this too – these state monoliths are cultivated as vast voter reservoirs whose enduring loyalty has been purchased with levels of earnings and benefits unaffordable in the long term.

In some euro countries, state employment (let make that dependency) is at the 50% mark. That is economically unsustainable unless you are an oil rich Saudi Arabia. In countries like Greece, it’s only the life support systems of foreign loans that gave the illusion of life to these vast state cadavers. Often private firms are scarcely better. Rotten to the core with corruption and graft, their only purpose now is to sustain their own existence.  It’s been a case of too many people, doing too little of value or point and costing far too much to do it, all for far too long.

Less and less for more and more – gets my vote!

As people generally do less and less (like the French 35 working hour week) and expect the State to provide more and more freebies (education, health, early retirement (45 years old if you are a Greek policeman), allowances for just about everything etc.), so the election winning promise of an enduring Utopia has to be sustained by ever more Government borrowing. The real economies have now faltered under this weight forcing yet higher and more expensive borrowing.  Set against this, the only way to win elections, is to promise even more than your opponents and forever deny economic reality (“We will all have to start living within our means” being a great example of a sure fire way to lose an Italian / Greek/European election). It has all been short term, political expediency bought on the never-never; debt recycled and passed from Government to Government like a giant political pyramid scheme. And now its collapsing.

Can Italy escape?

In theory “Yes”.  But it would take strong, smart leadership, sustained over several years by a powerful government to lead Italy out of the predicament it has “borrowed, spent and lazed” itself into. The solutions are smaller Governments and prosperity built on productivity (not false growth funded by debt like an addict funds a habit). That eventually means smaller states and less state spending. It will be a long, slow and very painful correction. That means some brave pills being taken by new, brave political leaders in Italy and across Europe. It means properly elected leaders, happy to be unpopular and who are prepared to grit their teeth and stay the course, like George Osborne, despite the shrieks of protest when the going gets tough.

The last time Italy had such a leader was Julius Caesar, so, in reality “No it probably won’t escape”. As for the rest of Europe, they are probably not as politically chaotic as Greece or Italy, but the challenge to sustain the Union looks increasingly formidable. The invaders are at the Gates, not with swords and horses, but in the form of eastern and Chinese competition - Is this going to be the fall of the Euro Empire?

Crisis, what crisis?

As they teeter on the brink of Euro zone oblivion, one could be forgiven for wondering whether the leaders of states of Europe actually realise how serious their predicament really is. Looking at them pose for the inevitable G20 summit pictures in Cane, there is a chilling un-reality to it all. Not unlike passengers posing on the titanic, only they will take us all to the bottom, unless they can get their collective acts together. Don't hold your breath, or rather, get ready to hold it for a long time if we all end up going overboard.