There is only ONE thing that really, urgently needs "disruption"

and we already have all it takes to do it. Except our own minds.

Sep 04, 2024

and we already have all it takes to do it. Except our own minds.

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In this uncertain world, there may be just three things that I am more sure of, every year more. One is that we already have all the tech and science we need to solve our most urgent REAL problems (including sensible use of machine learning, of course).

The second thing is that we do not have enough raw stuff to keep doing Life As Usual, even assuming it would be worth it. Not at affordable costs, in acceptable time scales, that is. We just don't.

The last, and most important, is that we're not going to live in a society that really works for as many people as possible, until we avoid all the distractions caused by the two things above, which are just symptoms of another thingy on which we should focus first, which thanks to digital technologies is also much, much easier than it would have been 2 or 3 decades ago. Before looking at that thing, it's necessary to recap the real problems we have, because they are what make that thing THE most urgent thing.

The real problems we have

Clueless coders and number crunchers roam unchecked

We have left free rein to people who know (financial) math or coding but NOTHING else... precisely because hey, they can code and count so they must be good, right? Never mind that their pinnacle achievements include utter dumbness like HFT, calling "AI" what's just their own, half-baked clones, or setting up rogue states that they cannot really control, but still influence elections when they don't directly influence wars among other states.

Geeks must participate in world making, but letting them pilot or "disrupt" any mission-critical service, from nuclear power to healthcare or death is almost always a wretched idea. Especially when it causes the next problem:

High-Tech dumb dreams suck all the oxygen (and money) in the room

Letting immature techies unchecked has brought to power characters who dump oceans of money and precious physical resources down drains like:

fundraising manifestos that are just childish and sociopathic
relocating in a space that "wants to kill you" so much to make even the one and only Captain James Tiberius Kirk weep
filling the same space with so many satellites that they could crash on each other and bleach the night sky
Metaverses that are just spin-offs of Ready Player One, as in "..since real life sucks, make money by giving people something to forget it"
Immortality that would work only for real sociopaths, and NFTs, and other assorted "apocalyptic delusions"

Musk is just James Sullivan, Zuckerberg is just Nolan Sorrento.

Escapes that cannot work

Another evolutionary dead-end that wastes precious resources is any form of prepping, from setting up remote homesteads to defend in arms to building micro-nations populated with all and only nice people their founders would like. Both visions are quite .. short-sighted, if not reactionary, hopeless navel gazing . Above all, they are already too late.

You may happily retire in the mountains, and one guy (already) left free to launch sulphur balloons on the other side of the planet could still be all it takes to tweak the climate wherever you "escaped" enough to make you starve. Similarly, no digital fairy kingdom on the internet will run, if the few aging guys fixing submarine cables aren't replaced soon.

As things stand now, the truth is that (source) "the contemporary regulatory and administrative state... emerged for a very good reason", namely the "only way to take the danger out of social life" in a system so fragile and globalized as the current world.

Retreating on mountaintops or on digital pillars would be enough for a past that won't return. The world has become too interconnected to be shielded from it, even if network states weren't so inherently.... unbalanced to go quickly downhill by themselves. Today, however one imagines it, withdrawing into any custom-made utopia is an absurd notion.

Two REAL network states, from the only age where they could really work.

Everybody's getting sad, furious, or both

There are many people for whom at least the "no heaven nor hell, no countries, nothing to kill or die for" part of John Lennon's Imagine already is the world they live in, and yet they are often sad, and more than others too. And then, as thisand other elections in the last years clearly show, there are more and more people every year who are more or less furious, because they sincerely consider those same things to be deeply wrong. Personally, during Italy's lockdowns I was depressed because I HAD a job which PREVENTED me from doing useful work.

Who's right or wrong there is totally off topic here. Me, I have a feeling that each side dismissing the other as one monolithic bunch of losers "on the wrong side of history" won't make anybody happier, but never mind me. Here, I'm only pointing out that, regardless of their material quality of life, there is a huge, and growing number of people who aren't exactly happy these days. We must be all doing something wrong.

Two simple proofs that the system doesn't work

The country proud to be the birthplace of much of the waste outlined above is the same that has the lowest life expectancy among English-speaking countries (with rates of early death "well beyond those of other rich countries", and maternal death rates increasing at an alarming rate), eight of its elite colleges basically admitting collusion on price fixing, 78% of citizens living paycheck to paycheck in 2023, other embarrassing primates (and just dropped out of the 20 happiest countries list).

Meanwhile, the country painted as its most successful opponent, and possibly successor, has a population set to halve by 2100, with youngsters (in very Western manners, if I may say so) holding resignation parties, self-identifying as full-time children, and equating marriage and childbirth with stress, all after finding itself with enough EMPTY houses for 3 billion people.

Thanks for sharing this as much as you can, in and outside Substack!

What to do instead

First of all, accept that none of the problems I just outlined can be fixed by new technology. As to what to do instead...

The Italian science-fiction comic Nathan Never, started in 1991, happens in a world that was totally devastated in the year... 2024 by a dumb geoengineering attempt to exploit the energetic potential of Earth's magma. Devastation is so bad that all the governments of the planet accept the proposal (italian) of the Pope elected in the same days of the catastrophe: a worldwide reset of the calendar back from January 1st, 2024 to January 1st, 1946, as tangible, continuous incitement to participate in rebuilding the world, both psychologically and technologically, just as everybody did after the end of World War II.

We need something like that: a practically sudden, very visible, very concrete, worldwide restart of the right thing, that is the very nature of money, through global, almost simultaneous:

Debt Jubilee, that is cancellation, of both public and private debt (2025 already is a particularly good excuse for that)
abandonment of GDP, because it's at least 56 years we know it's terribly stupid. Make Bob Kennedy happy, already
fiscal/financial/whatever monetary reforms that make Universal Basic Income viable (why? See here and here)
abolition of corporate personhood, and of shareholder value as the ONE main goal of corporations, both stupid ideas for lots of reasons that are much more capitalist than "communist", like this, this, this or this

That was 1968. Now, we have 56 more years of evidence he was right.

Don't dismiss this as madness right away. Keep reading

Instead of "no heaven nor hell, no countries, etc.."

Imagine all nations on Earth doing, on January 1st 202.., a reset of all debt, both public and private, freeing huge energies throughout the developing world that would sensibly reduce migrations.

Imagine the evening news of New Year’s Eve, showing New Year parties in New Zealand and China, then Australia, then India, the Middle east, Europe, and finally Wall Street and the Silicon Valley... where people party not because a new number appeared on their smartphones, but because they have economic peace of mind, at last.

Why would the 1% want or allow this?

First, because at this point in time they can't ignore it would be pretty bad for their businesses and investments... but much, much better than the chaos that will soon happen otherwise. Second, because they would still be the 1%, status being relative to what everybody else has.

The real obstacles

The real, biggest obstacle to realizing the four points above is not the 1%. It's everybody else. It's us, who are self-conditioned to instinctively fear or hate such measures.

The real obstacle is every common person who wants to live badly, because they don't get they are already slaves today. It's the ordinary people who, for example:

demand innovation because innovation, the faker the better, or believe 15-minutes cities would make them slaves more, not less than they are right now
insist that we should not fight for social innovation because... ... it could be taken away at a later point (yes, I've actually heard this!)
actually call any "dependence on government money" an "immoral, worse-than-death slavery, while calling freedom the freedom to endure depression, debt, urban violence and lack of access to decent food and healthcare... while never being actually free from the same governments".

Truth is, a world based on such measures would be much more advanced and free than a world in which a few guys dream flying cars ... that would just get them stuck in mid-air traffic jams and everybody else lives paycheck to paycheck in unaffordable or uninsurable homes.

It would be a world in every real entrepreneur would still have the possibility innovate and disrupt all she wants (except UBI, of course), and be free to fire underperforming employees without accusations of ruining their lives.

It would be a world in which everybody else would have both no fear of homelessness and the time to monitor and held accountable whoever runs the show and may curb their actual freedom. Open Data, anyone?

It would be a world in which the fast-growing sandwich generation would have time to look after their kids and their aging parents and their own health, that is to spare lots of money and hugely reduce the public costs of healthcare, in ways that make sense (like, you know, having the time to prepare healthier meals and exercise, instead of getting in debt (or pregnant) over Ozempic). It would also be a world in which the young wouldn't be forced to get in debts for degrees that may never repay themselves.

Sure, in the first years of such a world there would be lots of therapy to pay for the too many people who still identify their dignity with their jobs. Then again, they would hardly be more than the people who would need therapy, right now, from the US to Europe and Asia, in no negligible part exactly because of economic precariousness.

OK, Debt Jubilee and all the rest. How?

First, don't accept that it can't be done without serious, thoroughly vetted proof that it can't. The actual, simultaneous reset and reconfiguration of all accounts and ledgers worldwide, should be by far the easiest, since all current major currencies are either fiat money all the way down, or heavily controlled, and all highly digitized. The real obstacles are the already mentioned resistance of the masses, and figuring out how to implement certain measures without causing worse-than-Weimar inflation or other catastrophes related to the availability of money, or lack thereof.

About this surely very complex problem, I only know one thing: today…

most of the "money" is, or is controlled by, obscure chains of shell companies and even more obscure financial time bombs that already "Blew Up Our Economy - And Just Might Again" (nah, scratch the "may" part)
World Bank economists describe current macroeconomics as pseudoscience, and...
even the US Federal Bank seems to hint that "Nobody Really Knows How the Economy Works"

that is, the money system we currently endure is so much complex, unstable, dangerous... that I sincerely fail to believe that certain proposals would be harder or riskier (1). What about you?