MassJobsGone

Posted on August 16, 2019 by nicholas

“There will never be any more Jobs… The time of mass jobs is over.” This is the baseline manifesto of my podcast shero Korinth Starr: and it was written in 1994… as part of a back-story to the Jonker Memorandum. It was a world process in progress that created a debilitating edge to liberation in Zanzi… where I live.

The phrase threads through the story, which many of you now know to be a podcast Sci-Fi crime based cyber serial about how the world ends and what happened afterwards. It has now been running on my site nicholasjakari.com for nearly a decade.

When I woke up this morning the first headline I saw when I switched on the TV… was: “Cyril Ramaphosa* is running out of time.” For dealing with what he thinks of as an “economic crisis.”

Since some of my readers may not know whom I’m talking about: Cyril Ramaphosa is President of the southern Afrikan country… Zanzi… where I live. We are a place that has the developed/developing world’s highest rate of unemployment at 29%.

Unofficial sources suggest that the real rate is over 40%… and technically includes me. In fairness it is also one of the lowest rates of unemployment in Afrika… a continent not noted for accurate rekord keeping.

Every President since liberation has talked about “creating jobs” and willfully failed to do so… So the “crisis” is already 25 years old… Some crisis. A huge amount of money has disappeared however so it is presumed that the place is regarded by its new ruling class as expendable… More money has vanished than the late Mr. Rhodes could have dreamed of in his fondest love of riches… It was/is however more lavishly redistributed to friends and family of lucky winners in the lottery of life.

It has truly been a great age in the history of lootage [sic].

So the idea of “Running out of time” suggests an endless track with the future way down the route. In that regard there is no such place. It is not a real place… So the headline is simply stating an imaginary Idea.

Is it Timeout…? If so, for how long? Is that the wrong question or statement to link to time? Who knows?

What i do know is that Twenty-five years AGO I wrote a [FICTIONAL] Electioneering promo for my S/hero, Korinth Starr’s [fictional] election manifesto speech, in my fictional podcast story The Jonker Memorandum. *

I had her stating that: “There will never be any more jobs… the time of jobs for the masses is gone… Basic Pay is theirs by right.”** I didn’t make up the 4^th Industrial Revolution… Toffler’s ‘Third Wave’ that announced it, was long underway… I was writing about its arrival as far back as 1976.

There will never be any more large-scale jobs… Left wing politics rightly or wrongly wiped out the mass scale demand for human labor… And replaced it with Machines. We humans are in an evolutionary phase of our existence. We are entering a period that may be described as post-human… the only thing that can stop it is some form of proto nuclear holocaust that takes us back at least 12500 years… when enough of us survived that catastrophe to rebuild… and to even start that, took 6000 more.

There is no thing that this president or any other kan do, to “Kreate” large-scale jobs… And the present, recently re-elected, government’s almost exclusive obsession with stealing all the money [or turning a blind eye] means that even old fashioned long neglected konstruktion work will inevitably be replaced with 3d printers doing the work [as is projected for Dubai 2030], should anyone here ever get around to building anything again on a mass scale especially given the [ironic] absence of easy credit… again.

The patient [the country’s economy] is in a coma; and the life support system has been mislaid… And may have been stolen, and sold for scrap. What I am writing here could also be true for a global system: that is presently stagnating in a world of negative interest rates, a level of global debt that makes 2008 look like a small overdraft: and an over-supply of fiat currencies that have rendered all previous economic theories temporarily [perhaps] obsolete.

It is time to be truthful…

Tell them the truth, I say. Mr. President.

Mr. President, tell them all: “If they are not in our team then they can’t be called unemployed… Because: they don’t exist. Only our team and our cadres exist. The numbers are wrong. So there.”

OK. That is facetious. [Incidentally one of only two regular words in English in which the five vowels follow each other in their classic order].

In the interests, I believe, in fairness: What kan he do that has not already been done, over the past quarter century. Talk, talk and more, endless, talk. If talking was paid by the word we would be wealthy.

What is done is done. There is no remedy from the past.

In the meantime the New President has been shown to be, perhaps, just another inept wannabe Oligarch… intent on a Rentier purpose.

Perhaps [again] I have been one of those few who have been right for the past… Twenty-five years… Or more korektly: my Shero: Korinth Starr [the elder] for whom I wrote the lines: was right.

Mr. Yang’s pitch is that the time to think Universal Basic Income [UBI] has arrived. What I’ve suggested as a backstory, as a writer of fiction… He sees that it must be fact… I write from the future so I have known for 25 years that UBI is the future.

And why shouldn’t it be?

He has taken a long promised idea that has been around a lot longer than me, that I’ve been floating as fiction [maybe fact] for twenty-five years… Basic Pay. “Ours by Right”.

Mr. Yang calls it “The Freedom Dividend”. I too think of it as a freedom dividend… So should President. Ramaphosa. In other words like me Mr. Yang believes that The future is with Basic Pay:

Could he be right? I wrote it originally, so I say welcome to the team Mr. Yang… You are my candidate for President of the New World. I also believe that seemingly alone so far I UNDERSTAND HOW IT MUST BE FINANCED [of course I write fiction… Still… Even fiction contains truths].

Now we, the People, need to claim that right for all of us while we still kan. And in thinking about this we need to think forward not the past… for everything we know about economics and work is based on a mass employment past… That time is over. The future for humans is Atomization… PostNeoCottage if you like. As a long term TaiJi practitioner I prefer to think of it as Yin moving into harmony with Yang [Pun not intended].

How to manage that on masse kan only be solved through the “Freedom Dividend”.

Loves ya all.

!NiK

** The Jonker Memorandum a podcast cyber serial about how the world ended and what happened afterwards, to be found on nicholasjakari.com

Why Libra is a ‘No Brainer’

Posted on July 22, 2019 by nicholas

Blog 22July 2019 The Little things

Libra IsTheNewMo NeyForCyberSpaceThat IsAlreadyHereTheNewWorld Order

“It is always the “little things” that get you.” The s/hero said to the unveiled baddie in the movie I was watching. Libra, represents the ultimate “LittleThing” that gets so many of us. And there is no Movie.

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For those, who haven’t heard the news. Libra is Facebook’s proposed new money fort the Internet, for the moment, before the competition arrives, for the new world that is already ‘In Order’. And it certainly got the Firmian LB’s [left behinds remember] all frisky last week in the Firmian [US] Congress

The much predikted Fourth Industrial Revolution [FIR] is NOT something that ‘will happen in the future’. It is the extension of Toffler’s “Third wave”. In other words: it is already, something that happened in the past…. We are living with and adjusting to, the outcome of the Third wave.

The political shift to a ‘One World’ government that we will need eventually, to handle the coming “world burning” issues [depicted on my web page for the past decade] … is currently on a nationalistic backburner… and we may yet once again succumb to global scale konflikt

The political shift to a ‘One World’ government that we will need eventually, to handle the coming “world burning” issues

[depicted on my web page for the past decade]

… is currently on a nationalistic backburner… and we may yet once again succumb to global scale konflikt.

While politics may stagnate or hark backwards: economies don’t… And an economy that currently is vying for third place for sheer size in the planet’s growth statistics is the cyber economy: the digital world.

What Libra proposes, whether they know it or not* is to put me in a position where I can advertise my products or services online in Libres, be paid in libres and at year’s end do my balance sheets in libres; and if necessary convert some back into my local currency, to pay for the fewer and fewer things that I won’t be able to get online: should I so choose: and of course [in case you’re listening] cover any tax liabilities I may incur.

As someone who has played on the Internet [cyber world] since the mid-nineties the single most problematic issue was then, is now , has always been: how to pay for stuff that I wanted, or needed or simply liked… without necessarily using an intermediary. In the strangest of ways; what started its journey as a process to eliminate all the [so-called] middlemen/persons, in all supply chains through what is called DISINTERMEDIATION, ends up not doing that at all… when viewed from the Money perspective.

What is money? You may ask. Extremely briefly: Money is something that acts as a store of value: i.e. U can measure what you are worth; a measure of value scaling: i.e. are you getting richer or poorer, and principally, in its role as a unit of account acts as a means of exchange: i.e. paying for or being paid for goods or services… and Plastic is not really the same as cash… Cash is person to person. Plastic is Person to bank to bank to person.

Actually as regards the Internet economy; if one uses the word bank for PayPal or Payoneer [for instance] It is more usually PersonToBanktoBanktoBankToBankToPerson: The new chain gang in place of the old middleperson.

It is that unit of account- exchange value of money that has become the prime casualty of this enormous change in how the global economy functions… and it must be replaced. Not replacing it is the equivalent of playing the board game called Monopoly without money [which, I understand, the brand owners are currently attempting to market].

For most of the past 5000 years at least… money has been something tangible that was scarce and had durability… at times it was cowry shells, at best it was Gold… Today it is proposed to be Bitcoin… a digital money substitute for gold

AS most of you know for instance the world since 1971 has been off a “gold standard” and on a Fiat money standard, something I have discussed previously. Libra then is not being presented as a substitute for gold: but as a global unit of exchange measure, for transactions inside the New Economy.

In other words, Libra, it seems, is proposing to be a global exchange instrument so its value will be based on a basket of Global Fiat currencies and therefore like those currencies will inevitably be linked all the way back to a micron moment in a grain of gold. or something more potent.

Bitcoin [which has the same potential] is not really satisfactory, at this point, for this latter purpose. This is primarily because it is still in a speculative phase. This means that its exchange value is too volatile to facilitate stable routine “shopping’ type exchange. [And Facebook is evolving curiously into a digital departmental store… supplying almost all things to all people.]

Libra on the other hand, as I gathered from its defenders in the Congress hearings, is, unlike Bitcoin, not aiming to be the replacement for the role of Gold [historically] but as a convenient additional [private] fiat currency available to everyone on the global market called Facebook.

The current wave of opposition to Libra, reflekted in this past week’s interrogation of its proposers by the US Congress, was notable for its failure to deal with the ‘means of exchange’ problem, in the New Economy. The worthy reps and senators, chose instead, a, now routine, range of red herring issues: to deal with a new reality, cyberspace, about which most seemed to be disturbingly oblivious

And so the inevitable thirty years long development towards an ‘out of hand’ ‘hard cash ish’ global currency, being the ultimate No Brainer: that development should again inevitably be left to the market.

Libré Libra.

“What Libra proposes whether they know it or not.” The prattle over Libra is dominated by the misdirection represented by alleged Privacy concerns. At the core of the privacy problem is yet another ‘little thing’… The unrekonciled issue of Tangible liabilities in a space deemed Intangible… impacting on tangible issues in defence of intangible rights.

To Be Kontinued….

Loves ya all.

TheFatefulNextStep

Posted on July 1, 2019 by nicholas

TheFatefulNextStep

BeatingTheCall

Termism SucksLongTermDown ShortTermToASecond’s SplitDownToABillionthNow TimeOut

“Time out” could be what the Brits will face by the time their current, curious Monty Python reprise season, drags its way to trick or ‘treat Halloween night’ on October 31st.

I was wondering late this past weekend how many other people saw the English Conservative Party campaign to choose a new Prime Minister to be deeply weird: and for me, like reliving some of my 1950’s childhood.

As part of my slightly post-colonial pre-sixties teen period, a saintly godmother gave me annual subscriptions to such classic British/English comics, like Film Fun, “Roy of the Rover’s” Tiger comics, Beano, Dandy, Knockout and such like.

These were supplemented by a diet of ‘good, children’s books’; supplied by the same much beloved godmother. She was always anxious that I should grow up with some ‘memory’, she said, of a foreign [to me as a child] place, where I had been born; and from which I had been “brutally removed, by my [relatively] ignorant parents to some unpleasant place in Afrika… Far from civility:” she added, when I asked once, while staying briefly with her in Keresley: near Coventry.

So these “good children’s books ran the gamut of Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton and the rest: from Big Ears & Noddy; to Famous Five, Secret Seven, Billy Bunter’ schooldays at Greyfriers school, Richmal Crompton’s Just William and other works that reflected either school or daily life in England…

These past weeks; as a confused world watched these wannabe’s clamoring around microphones howling siren like: ‘pick me’ pleas, at some ancient town criers event… in Bedlam.

Then it all wound down to the two finalists for ‘Head BOY’ selected from amongst the legion of shiny young “Lower sixth chaps”.

Technically, one woman started, realized she already had the required A Levels and was out. We the befuddled public were left with, what some claim, is the “AmiableRotter” character, from those old comic stories…The so-called BoJo … And a second fellow with an ungainly fifties style, short back n sides haircut, above curiously fanatical enraged eyes.

This wannabe, a person called Jeremy Hunt, is playing: ‘the confidently polished, “RoyOfTheRover’s”, clean- cut, Mr.‘NiceGuy’. And is a relatively unknown player, apparently…

As a bizarre sideshow, taking absurdity to the ridiculous, some TV commentators were heard, expressing embarrassment, about inappropriately, mistakenly, mispronouncing Jeremy’s surname. [He shares his personal name with the present leader of the main Opposition party: a fellow called Jeremy Corbyn.]. I love it when a meme comes together: Hee hee.

To cap the whole Monty Python replay script: There was even a sprightly, young, geeky type Kleva… “That Gove chappie from the lower fourth, who got dammed close to the finish line; and had to be disposed of, in some dastardly way: still unplumbed.” Wow… Who could have written such a marvel: that reprised the Goon Show and Monty Python in one deluxe Reality Show…. And still continues in our next…

And so we were left with:

Aggressive, self-promoting, hugely impatient and filled with mock urgency: Master: “CrispNKleen versus the Indolent games playing: “AmiableIdleUpperClassDammedIntelligentLout”: the aforementioned -BoJo.

It is a story that even, the now apparently despised Enid Blyton, could not have scripted more elegantly… Albeit: I am hanging on for some Agatha Christie.

I did find the entire exercise almost “brotesque” [sic] in its comic possibilities: was it not so epically serious. And I wondered if I was being silly.

Then at one of the later stages of what I saw as the whole comedy, I heard a young millennial level mommy being interviewed by SkyTV, on a park bench, where she was sitting with her toddler. She asserted that they [the cacophonous contenders as some called them] were like a clutch of public schoolboys all striving noisily for the head boy post: before the Easter break… Snap… And more than squared too, I suspect.

Puzzlingly in most other country’s Public schools are State schools while in England for odd reasons Private schools are called Public. No wonder George Orwell could disingenuously invent NewSpeak.

Nonetheless: I was affirmed; and I reveled in the absurdity of the whole drawn-out Brexit farce. It is obvious that sensible people want to see it vanquished and, to call upon another wonderful regular old comic strip meme: can see an end game to this. Visualize the successful PM contender tied like the ancient heroine to a railway line: and the bridge is down. The train puffs into view. October 31^st. Who can save the day?

No more delay…. Cancel that NO…Inevitable?

Or will they all go?

A break perhaps for a general election: and a ‘slowdown at dawn’ with the remainers and the leavers, allegedly Britain’s “new tribes” [London economist 23 June 2019] breaking ranks with the past: to build a new multiparty State. Who dreams of that? Or….

Better a stultified Oligopolistic system: two deeply divided parties dominant in a stagnant political pond… looking with great care: to the interests of their demanding mortgages.

Again, this is the stuff of high drama and of huge concern to many parts of the populace. And to date there has been little to cheer those hoping to find some form of plan; as to what shall be the game to be played on November 1^st, this year… Saying the word plan often is not the same as saying what the purpose, strategy and key objectives of the plan should be.

Most certainly a planning mindset is something absent: as one of the more ‘bottom of the alphabet’ young sprogs, pointed out. He who dared challenge the “It will be alright on the night” philosophy during an acrimonious, pandemonium laced mass debate.

He was soon culled.

If there is a plan it is a deadly secret. Evidence of planning other than hints that the civil service has contingency actions prepared is so far not noted from anyone at all… And Cinderella is close to Time Out without a pumpkin.

So far, everything has been about what happens in the next Tweet… Decisions taken one-way one minute: then another way a few minutes later… Pure, reactive behavior… Playing reactively: and by instinct.

The truth is that the pace of change is on accelerating curve dealing with unknown unknowns: and then pretending afterwards that they were known all along. Little evidence of the “Deep thought” called for by the BBC the weekend of the climax.

And as if to give scary emphasis to the pace at which the real world is evolving. While the Brits play around with their ‘long term we’re all dead’ fantasy destiny; Facebook’s Mr. Zuckerberg set a cat amongst the clustered pigeons. He announced that he intended to introduce a new, competitive digital global currency called Libre….

While it may turnout to be bluster it is potentially an intervention that could change everything: Altogether… And in slightly more time than the billionth of a second before the train arrives.

Have fun

Loves Ya awl

!NiK

Kreative Kritikal Thought

Posted on June 24, 2019 by nicholas

On page 262 of his interesting mélange of lessons Professor Harari, gives us for the 21^st Century, the otherwise author of the formidable Homo Deus and viral contributor to the world’s new post haste direction assessments, tells us that “expert Pedagogs”

recommend the four C’s [aka the Four K’s.]

These are what the world’s educators should be focusing on, in developing their charges to handle 2050: rather than the current emphasis on technical skills and knowledge that may be obsolete by 2050. Some of these are apparently already obsolete, even though they are still practiced.

Four C’s? aka The four K’s are
Kreativity,
KommuniKation,
Kollaboration and
KritiKal ThinKinking

And the fact that you had to think about the letter K in place of C, that had you anything from Konfused to Enraged to downright Konvinced that the writer was illiterate: is part of the message Harari and I are putting out.

For instance who is not perplexed at the adult schoolboy antiks of the past week. I refer to the competition amongst a clutch of Pomeranian wannabe, late developing schoolboy heroes, pursuing the title of Pomeranian PM, to handle the Brexit dilemma.

A thousand days they have been at it. And they are no closer to either remaining or leaving the Groland Union, than they were back then a 1000 days ago: when they voted in 2016.

By way of komparason, in less time, [than a thousand days] the Red Bears have built and put into use the Kerch Strait bridge, an eighteen kilometer road n rail, four lane edifice, that towers some 40 meters above the water: and obviously has to be buried in it.

The Chi-Nois have built komplete roads, rails and harbors in a dozen places over a thousand days. They also fixed an entire road in four days back in March. A road in North Mozambique that was flooded out of existence, leading to weeks of power outages in our home territory after a hurricane hit their coast. Hardly 100 hours never mind 1000 days.

However just one day last week saw a potential revolutionary change that could ambush all the protestations of the Wannabe PM’s. That change was heralded by A revolutionary disruption to the world’s money idea.

Those worthy ‘Sixth form’ lads, chasing the big PM prize, could quite easily claim the after-party, Post Meridian prize instead. Because they haven’t yet, between them, over 1000 days, come up with a feasible plan for post Brexit- growth, and wealth creation outside the old age home that is the Groland Union. [Not that the G.U. seems to have a plan themselves for that matter.} And here is someone, Mr.Tzu, who will make any concepts they are toying with seem quaint.

However, as my tale predicts: Disruption rulz.

So Disruption arrives

[again]

in the form of a fellow I have called Mr.Tzu… My worthy historical character [from that tale in my developing story set, placed in 2070 ish] whose vision is to take us all to the next dimension in development steps. Mr. Tzu asked himself the question that was most worthy of Kritikal Thought… What is Money? … Without knowing: he arrived at the insight that “Money is a way of thought.”

Simultaneously he recognized that in the same way that the world entered a post- Socialist frame [post 1989]

it also entered a Post-Capitalist world in the wake of 2008.

And thus from the turn of the decade, when the basic tool of the new post- industrial, information based era, the ubiquitous ‘smart phone’, arrived in that full force: carefully rebranded as FIR. [4^th Industrial Revolution] the planet’s further financial evolution set off in pace, under the as yet hardly recognized reality that: DATA IS THE NEW MONEY.

And in the same way that Mr. Tzu learned as a child, that the one with the most toys gets the most prizes, he understood: that the one with the most data, rulz. [Not that anything would really be that easy.]

And he has just done this. He has determined that his business, which holds by this time in excess of 25 Zettabytes of random data, from billions of ‘subjects’: has never been valued formally by the present widely, memicly 19^th century financial modeling mechanism. [Zettabyte equals one billion billion bytes]

He decided that the name of the new game in town was not “Who will next govern the Poms? … Nor who should have 5G or not? But rather, how should I treat my most valued asset?

GAAP rules dictate that Data is an intangible asset: and should be valued as a nil value asset. However he [Mr. Tzu] has had issues with the disposal and [mis] use of this non-valued asset. He has seemingly decided, as a result, that if the errors from misuse are to be costed and treated as tangible liabilities then, in accounting language, the raw material itself, all 25 plus Zettabytes of it… should be counted as a tangible asset.

In other words by using the lowest “Prudent Value” method recommended by many ‘prudent’ Financial Economists, of valuing 25 plus Zettabytes of data; 25 billion, billion; at a nominal 1 nine hundred thousandth, of a Firmian Cent… [Or perhaps 1 microgram of pure troye ounce gold] per byte, he would raise the capital value of his business by much more than two trillion dollars.

This means that he could finance a form of digital ‘universal income’ to his network of some billions of members… He could become in fact, a unitary business model: or even a micro economy… A new kind of Market Utility in fact, displacing almost every other business in a single disintermediating step. This model would be copied, and well within the time frame of 1000 days misused by the Poms.

In some ways Mr Tzu’s crafty move could be construed as a similar evolutionary manifestation of the ‘rewards’ cards, used by an almost infinite number of supermarket chains. Only the sheer scope represented by an injection of trillions of digital value instruments into a declining economic environment has the potential to completely revolutionize money: and what it means.

Good on Ya, Mr. Tzu. The experience made me realize something I had forgotten about in a rush of enthusiasm. It was this. Over the past year I have presented an argument with far too much seriousness, regarding Basic pay: and how to finance it… And suddenly Mr. Tzu arrives and the future came in with him.

Ask and ye shall receive.

!NiK[’19]

Konfession Time.

Posted on June 14, 2019 by nicholas

Last week I was ambushed by a glib well practiced Flat-Earther, who left me, frankly, gobsmacked: and almost impossibly, to me: without an answer.

The experience made me realize something I had forgotten about in a rush of enthusiasm. It was this. Over the past year I have presented an argument with far too much seriousness, regarding Basic pay: and how to finance it….

The sheer effrontery of my efforts have left all my readers so similarly gobsmacked, that to this moment, writing this, no one has yet raised any refutable argument against the idea. In a world almost committed to trolling the aisles of lunatic ideas I have been soundly almost curiously ignored. [Technically it is just part of the futility of being a Saharan/Namibian] grain of sand that thinks it can start a sandstorm. Not some conspiracy.]

So here is my apology for ranting on about something almost no one on the planet has ever given any thought to; and is, in its own way, as bizarre an idea as being earnestly informed, out off the blue, as it were, that the Earth is Flat, despite all protestations to the contrary.

That my ambusher last week could suggest, in all seriousness, that everything we have ever learned about the Earth, being a relatively solid ball of tangible rock n mud flying through an ever expanding Multiverse, was/ is, disinformation… Or, in the language of our times: “Fake News”.

So here too is a full konfession. I write fiction. The piece of fiction about basic pay is an idea based on a phrase that emerged from an ‘out of body’ experience that I believe I had, nearly 25 years ago. That was when I apparently flatlined, for an inordinate time: during surgery for multiple gunshot wounds. In the language of that arch-fictioneer Lobsang Rampa, I took an astral journey that may, or may not, have been anything other than a morphine, whatever, induced hallucination. That idea was what is today referred to as Universal Basic Income [UBI].

So what am I on about? Firstly: I write poetic based Sci-Fi crime stories. I am also not a literary novelist. My story, “The Jonker Memorandum” is set sometime between Now and Then. Now is whatever it is when you read it [unless] Then is about a hundred and nineteen years later. The “unless” note, means you may read this after many things that were predicted to have happened along the way, have in the meantime become Now.

One of the things that becomes ‘Now’, is basic pay, something that I wrote about in 1994 that has in the meantime begun the journey to become NOW…. only now, is referred to as Universal Basic Income [UBI]. In the marketing language of Product Life Cycle curves, UBI is in the Pre-Birth stage now after [from my perspective] gestating for a quarter century. The idea itself in its various forms has a much longer gestation time. And as we know, about 90 % of all disruptive Ideas, unlike babies, abort before birth occurs.

UBI is such an idea, that is currently experiencing some prospective miscarriage at te hands of its fondest semi-supporters.

So: What is UBI?

For me it is a fiction that solves an accounting and economics based problem that troubled the professional me, about a world running on credit [as our world does presently].

My present set of three stories: i.e. Part Four* of the Azanian Quartet is set over three eras: some parts of the first half of the 20^th century, and two set in different parts of the 21^st.

In one of those latter two, Basic Pay [UBI] has become real… and as I have routinely repeated I write poetic fiction. It follows the realization that just as Marxist economics reached its apotheosis in 1989, so too [so-called] Neo-Liberal economics reached its own ideological sell by date in 2008, with the invention of Quantitative Easing [QE].

QE has spurred the global economy into a global casino economy; favouring oligopolies of all varieties: infesting things that once worked well. And as we all know it doesn’t matter how screwed up the political economy becomes: if you are one of the working ‘prekariat’: you still have to pay your rent and buy your own lunch.

The problem to be solved in the story was: how is Basic Pay financed. And that is the conundrum. Some of my ‘up to date’, favorite writers have come out in favour, in principle, of Basic Pay: f.i. Luce, Harari, Acemoglou among others. All have however expressed major reservations, in some cases on moral grounds; and more broadly, pure financial affordability grounds. The widely followed socialist economist Prof: Richard D Wolff on the other hand is adamantly opposed to UBI… and anything associated with it… not to mention how it could never be financed….

Ironically Wolff completely validated, for me, an observation made by Professor Guy Standing, who is a fervent advocate for solving the pending widening and growing reality; of what he calls “the dangerous class” … “the New Prekariat”… a term he has coined: through the use of UBI.

Standing argues, that spokespersons for the left had an ideological blindspot, about the entire concept of UBI

And indisputably in the old world we all lived in, UBI could not be comfortably financed with the instruments thatr we have used to fund “welfare” through the 20th century.

However we no longer live in that 20th century world: and haven’t now for nearly a dozen years. We now live in a world financed by QE…. aka Quantitative Easing. So how did we manage to finance a world using QE. QE btw is, for the uninitiated, is a polite term for mass printing of fake money on a scale that defies reason… without fueling hyperinflation. In fact what should have fueled a Zimbabwe or Venezuelan surge of prices has, to everyone’s confused horror, seemed to produce Deflation or at best Disinflation. Depending of course on what one chooses to measure.

So the US dollar that should have made Venezuela look tame has simply pottered about…. Nonetheless the inflation is there albeit the effect has been a massive asset price bubble, world wide that is, in part, fueling the huge popular discontent noted globally.

Had I encountered all my above informants varied financially founded oppositions before last year, then their thinking and mine: would have been broadly congruent.

However it is now my opinion [for reasons I have shared with you] that their and my objections were /are pre-revolutionary. I mean, the FIR* transformation changes all things … Again. And since I hardly think I am smarter that any of those aforementioned excellent writers… I choose to keep my proposed solution method, as a private fiction that I have tested on all of you on behalf of the character that introduces the financing idea, in the second part of the story mentioned above.

Ok. So you can all relax. I haven’t gone mad and flat earthly-ish type weird: I am simply progressing with the background to my story with your tacit participation.

What predictions next then, when asking: What If?

So when it comes to predictions here’s one for the road: so I can say Yay later.

Based on the current line up; I believe Senator Elizabeth Warren is the only person the Democrats can field, who can beat the Trumper in 2020: assuming she could beat the ‘Tweeds’ and secure the nomination.

*[The podcast ‘Jonker’ you will remember, is Part Three]

Cheers

!NiK[’19]

A Prekarian’s Prediction

Posted on May 23, 2019 by nicholas

Those who are familiar with my fictional work know that I built a case for Universal Basic Income [UBI] [I called it Basic Pay] in my podcast fictional serial “The Jonker Memorandum” which I began writing in 1994.

As part of that, I have previously mentioned that I also built a case for financing Basic Pay. At that time [the ‘90s] the source for basic pay, was based on the regressive idea of using the Known Tax base, because that was how it panned out in the old system.

We [ordinary people] didn’t know then about DATA: and how much it could be worth. Plus I was also writing fiction; and as someone who taught applied economics at high school level, was constantly provoked by wonderfully questioning, clever children, about how this thing I called “Basic Pay” [implied from such glorious SciFi writers as Heinlein and Asimov who called it “credits”] could be paid for.

In 1973, the subsequently proved prophet of “Future Shock” change: Alvin Toffler, wrote, in an article penned for Encounter Magazine: “What I have to say about the relationship of laws to life in a period of social revolution is more in the nature of notes and ruminations than a set of fixed or finished ideas”

So, in the spirit of Toffler’s musings, below in 220 syllables using my Xrappzi© poetry model, I have set out my “musings” for a case for Universal Basic Income: and shown how payment is already implicit in our newly evolved reality. These consolidated musings develop on previous musings in three blogs last year.

My purpose now with my 220 syllables below is to present some opportunistic political grouping out there, on the left, right or centre [preferably centre] amongst all the popular frenzy of political activity, with this understanding.

My suspicion is that some hungry Political Party, that actually grasps this reality, that all the comfortably employed Kleva’s seem to be missing, that the Data Revolution has the potential to capture the swelling centre ground of the political spectrum. That is the part of society Professor Standing calls the “New Precariat”.

This space up to now seems crowded out by radicals at either end of an increasingly, obsolete political spectrum.

The Yellow Vest movement in Paris for instance could suddenly find a cause to riot about instead of simply venting rage. They could now march to demand that “#Data must share Rent”.

Economic Rent btw, being an idea formulated by the “Greats” of Economic history, such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo: and is completely absent in contemporary Economic textbooks… that in its quaint way completely ignore the reality that the financialised economy in which the west now lives is, as Professor Steve Keen calls it a “Rentier” economy.

Happiness is not good for radicals of any end. Happiness however should be the goal of all humans surely. In other words unlike all current futurists; and including the usually perceptive Professor Harari, who in his “21 Lessons for the 21^st Century”, also sees UBI as some form of welfare payment.

Here it is then in 10 x 22 Xrappzi© syllables.

WelfareVersusUBI UBINotMoneyForNothing. DataMustShareRent

Welfare

IsToChari

TyWhatNeitherAreTo

DataWhichNowPresentsOurKnown

Future.

LeftOf

CentreRightOf

CentreFocusOnThe

MiddleWherePrekarianPow

ErStands.

WeWho

SavedTheWorldAnd

FailedToValueWhatWe

GaveAreNowCondemmedToPov

Erty?

InPlace

OfGlobalSta

BilityAsWeReach

ForTheStarsWeGoNowToRage

InBars.

Struggle

HardAgainstIr

RelevanceFollowing

DispossesionOfOurMind’s

QuaintPart.

It’sNot

AGrantNotA

Favour.ThereToReward

AllWhoSlaveUnpaidToSubmit

DATA.

Multi

PlyRawData’s

ValueDemandOurDes

TinyReachGrabTheMeanest

Centre.

DATA

MustShareRent

TodayPayForBytesAs

ForOurOilItshallNotSpoilTheChild

ForOnce.

DATA

ComesFromHuman

MindsMinedTodayForRent

HoorayColonisersOfMind

MustPay.

ForBytes

ByZettaTril

LionsAcquiredForFree

ThatIsMoneyForNothingNot

ForMe.

SinceWe

KnowItWorksSo

WellWeNowDemandOur

ShareOfRentYouGetFromWeWho

GiveIt

Cheers.

!NiK[‘17519]

Was it free and fair?

Posted on May 12, 2019 by nicholas

ELECTION OVER

SomeSpoke

Of Zanufi

KationThatUrbanWent

ProgressiveThe RestHeldFastTo

NoWhere. *

After the election was over I got a circularized request by email for a comment on whether I thought the election was free and fair. There were three choices yes, no, maybe, and then why. My reflexive response was to click: Yes… Then I wondered about maybe and why.

And then I thought I would share my response with a wider audience, since I have no real idea who those people were: and whether anyone will actually read it… Or go into an archive to be read when it no longer matters… And so the “maybe”, kind of overwhelmed my original blog theme.

So here goes.

Was it free in the sense that all citizens who were eligible to vote were able to do so if they chose to? Yes in that sense it was free. Broadly in the most elementary way the process was slick and effective and we were in and out in moments.

Fairness is a far more abstract idea. It is outrageous to me, for instance, that having carried out a centuries long “Struggle” to be liberated and now; given an eligible population of some 36,000,000 liberated persons, only some 44% of us were inspired enough express an opinion. It is suggestive of covert exclusion. And Fairness or its absence has undoubtedly a role to play

Firstly: Some 10,000,000 eligible persons were intrinsically disenfranchised because there is no automatic voter registration system in existence. This, notwithstanding the existence of a digital revolution enabled verification of my ID registration, in a moment: at the gate to the voting station.

That is manifestly unfair and a disgraceful comment on the selfless sacrifices of those who died for freedom. For instance when I had to apply for an ID book at sixteen, i was automatically registered for military service as well, back in the evil dispossession days. Why is such a simple process not possible in a more technologically advanced era? Did someone choose to make it voluntary and complicated and inconvenient?

Equally of course a legitimate response would be that the ten million persons are all consenting adults; and should they choose not to register that is their right… However a flawed registration programme does not help… And as we move further into our democracy legitimate comparisons could start to be made with the past, when only established elites ran the show, and the economy stagnated as a result… as it is doing currently.

Secondly: One could equally argue that 48 contenders for power is a wonderful signal regarding freedom: and is therefore fair. Simultaneously however we are ignoring the fact that none of the 36,000,000 possible members of Parliament represented by the ‘eligible’ has the right, apparently, to stand as an independent candidate. **

This means that only people who belong to Parties can stand for election… And in fact; it is the Party that stands: not the citizen. And this is not only unfair but also, outrageous.

It also results in the absurdity of someone like [for instance] Irvin Jim [one of the 48] creating an illusory party called SRWP, whatever that means, on the pole outside my house… when a real Independent could tell us what he wanted to do. There were in fact Independent MP’s in the old days… and many were invaluably useful.

Thirdly: of course if there are to be dozens of contenders, then, in fairness, some mechanism that enables more effective communication with the voting public should be part of the system. Alternately, in reality those who have looted the most in the past; and have currently presented no credible idea of the way forward, can create a de Facto Oligopoly structure. Thereby blocking new entrants: especially any who may have better, or more practical ideas.

Finally and this is what fairness could potentially mean. The total votes “lost” to the system through spoilt ballots [a quarter of a million] and some 34 non-successful parties [about another quarter million] means some half a million people’s votes became meaningless in 2019 … Somehow that doesn’t seem “fair” other than from a most extreme, Libertarian viewpoint. And given that 47 of the 48 contenders were intrinsically socialist in viewpoint a Libertarian position seems anomalous.

In my fictional worlds that I create, I would have those seats ‘lost’ allocated as ‘seats’ to be filled won by randomly selected Independent citizens. These would be chosen by ballot to represent broadly a greater diversity of viewpoints.

If it was possible to select persons for military service with a ballot system when we were a primitive country technologically, there is no reason why such a system could not happen in our new hyperlinked world. They would, and should, by their very independence present different points of view to what often become meme driven actions by Parties… And do we need some 21^st century thinking in a hurry.

So in conclusion I would say that the elections were modestly free and, within a range of constraints, also modestly fair.

*Xrappzi©.

A Xrappzi© is a motif verse form I’ve decided to adopt. It is a 22-syllable stanza in five lines that would otherwise be sometimes called a Cinquain. This 22 syllable format developed by Adelaide Crapsey in the nineteenth century uses the following syllable pattern for each line: 2,4,6,8,2. The name for the format: ‘Xrappzi’, is mine: in tribute to the lady. The X is pronounced as a guttural G

The idea of the Xrappzi is that it summarizes my idea about the blog subject, in 22 syllables, so you can rapidly choose to read further: or move on. From now on all my blogs will open with a Xrappzi.

** I understand there is a motion under way to have this possibly remedied by ConCourt.

Loves ya all

The Capital cost of Casper

Posted on May 4, 2019 by nicholas

A national sporting star in our country, Caster Semenya has been treated unfairly in my opinion. Ironically she joins another young woman, Zola Budd as being quite possibly the two most discriminatory victims in the history of women’s athletics and in my view their treatment belongs along with the momentum that motivated the #ME TOO movement.

In both cases the ladies concerned have sadly earned the right to repeat the legendary cry from Mohammed Ali… reiterated this week by Ms. Semenya: “I don’t have to be what you want me to be”.

In this decision the international athletics federation demonstrates the straight jacket of memic conformist behaviour… and the absurdities of the outcome. As a parent of two daughters who were each, in their respective times and disciplines, National sporting champions; the issue of what was consumed by either was a mandatory consideration dictating the grocery bill.

We have the entire Russian team cancelled from performance because they have failed mandatory drug testing, a world class tennis player cancelled at the height of her career for a ‘drug’ offence… Their crimes: they were enhancing nature’s gift to them.

We now have the absurdity of a performer ordered to TAKE performance blighting drugs… The side effects of which could be as inherently damaging to long-term health as the medical argument against enhancement suggests.

As for deciding what is a correct level of testosterone in a woman’s body surely we now need to have a rule that stipulates a ‘correct’ level of estrogen in a male body… Seriously?

The entire thing reeks of some form of fascist style controlling mindset evolving along with this populism mania that is sweeping a planet full of people who aren’t comfortable with the exponential pace of a changing global economic system disrupting accepted patterns of thought… After all perhaps the Klevas running sport should be introducing a third category into their events: a transgender category.

In yet another Trumpian indication that people generally are becoming, what we call, in our turf, “Gatvol” [for the offshore reader “one’s bowels are filled beyond overflowing”.] the two allegedly main parties in the UK suffered a massive drubbing this week in their local government elections when an almost record breakaway from both left and right parties occurred with close to fifteen hundred plodding councilors losing their jobs, not withstanding any contribution they may or may not have made to their respective boroughs. Tough.

Here at home we have elections this coming week for the national government and the provincial administrations [there are nine provinces]. Each citizen has two votes one for National and one for Provincial. Unlike the English who only had a choice of four or five parties plus random Independents… we have some forty-eight parties and a possible court ruling in favour of Independents who presently are not permitted… to everyone’s ‘sudden’ surprise. A curious example of what the Chinese call a “Grey Rhino”. One understands that there is a constituional court hearing pending.

A cursory evaluation of all of all 48 of them this past week, in the Daily Maverick, revealed that a massive percentage of the parties were founded by persons who were “gatvol” [again, sorry] with the ruling party. And, presumably, since the party is currently under the hammer for rampant acts of country destructive looting, they were either cut off from lootage or opposed to lootage … obviously none are openly setting out that position.

Interestingly Forty Seven of the parties are inherently socialist in orientation and only one, a tiny almost non-existent party rather like the name it espouses “Capitalist” … , actually wants to grow the country by “free trade” whatever that means to them.

They are so tiny they are only attempting to gain a Parliamentary seat not a Provincial… So if one was to support them one would have to split one’s pair of votes.

Ivo Vegter of the Daily Maverick has put forward a powerful argument for supporting this venture. I was curious about them when I read the bios of all 48. They were the one in a niche that made sense. They carried a vision based on production rather than consumption. Regrettably when stripping out the hype, consumption, is the fundamental premise of the other 47: if I may put it simply. Therefore they The Capitalist Party were the one that stood out as a possibility, especially once I had established that they were not exclusionist: something parties with such names often communicate.

“So I went a Googling sir”. She said.

There have been other random ‘loose cannons’ in the past that never made it; or did: and then bombed or simply frazzled. That was then: Now is Now. I usually enjoy Ivo Vegter’s writing and respect and agree with the arguments that he presents. Sensible arguments that I am going to support.

I’m doing so for two reasons. Partly it is part of the feckless obtuseness demonstrated elsewhere by others. I also refuse to vote against things; I want to vote for things… Especially things that have proved successful sufficiently often to prove consistency.

Mostly though my main reason, oddly enough, is thus. Some of us possibly retain a memory of a phenomenally courageous woman: the late Helen Suzman, lone Member of Parliament for the [now deceased] Progressive Party in the South Afrika of the Dispossession era.

She sat alone for decades in our former fascist Parliament, hated by ALL others in that wounded place. She dealt with horrific abuse, poured daily at her from her opponents… many of whose descendents sit today cluttering the main opposition party.

And in the end SHE WON. She had the idea that eventually arrived: whatever its random merits.

I also do this in the full knowledge that in a world running on veritable Quadrillions of Fiat [aka fake] money as credit, the idea of Capitalism in its primary “fFree Market” [sic] format is almost an endangered konstrukt.

Kapital is a foundational building block for a stable society and a world running on credit is like a world running on quicksand. So I should like to see at least one person in parliament ‘doing a Suzman’, pronouncing their love for the substantive nature of Kapital at the very least: in a place that to all intents and purposes is exclusively concerned with “Feed Me!!!”: ripping the last flesh from the carcass: before it is all gone.

They could also be the only party capable of quantifying the Capital cost to Casper Semenya of the horrific and grossly unfair rights violation she has experienced. Someone has to do it and Yay to them. You guys have my vote

Brexit’s Final Nail: Pass the Parcel.

Posted on April 3, 2019 by nicholas

Remember the old parlour game: Pass the Parcel”? It has morphed back into fashion: now rebranded as a Parliamentary Parlour Game called: “Reframe Brexit”.

The “LEAVE” majority parcel has been passed about in frenzy because many know that “the Prize” could be a “booby”! Not what you wanted… As if you had any idea before… And then, how would you be remembered: with Pride or Shame.

So let it be: with Brexit… a word that, itself, is transformed into a ‘booby prize’.

A local newspaper columnist, Ben Travato, asserted recently that “Referendum” is Latin for: “Let the morons decide.” Similar statements have recently been made about Democracy itself; albeit in Democracies it would seem the “moron” element are those already chosen: as the random socmed stuff that’s trending routinely in one’s In- basket spaces suggests.

So it seems, when one looks at the curious antics of British legislators, over a past series of debates and votes, about whether it is better to submit to generational servitude as a vassal state, appended to the European venture… Or crash off a cliff into a void, for which the country is about as well equipped as say…. “Pass the parcel”….

OK. One can’t really say. There are no real precedents for a modern developed nation state, deciding on some seemingly mercurial whim, to cut intimate ties with its biggest market; in fact the world’s biggest market: in order to….. “Pass the Parcel!”

So again: one can’t really say… All we’ve heard, by way of preparation, are odd random slogans that have a weird sameness to the desperate slogans of the late Soviet era or the late Saddam’s late voice meister.

The latest slogan indicating that desperation measures are up, to avoid being the last schmuck standing. This sees opposing [English not British} teams joining in the latest `MANTRA”: National Unity… paraded with desperate conviction that the country could survive being abruptly plunged into a ravening sharkpool.

Who wants to be blamed?

On one hand there is the great historical heritage: on the old slippery slope. On the other hand there is a humongous burden of care.

So… “Pass the Parcel”… quickly: before the bell rings to clock time out.

What they are proposing is at heart a Revolution… A “tide of times taken at the flood” that might just possibly lead on to Fortune… But while they played Parcels the tide went out…

So. What will it be? … Quick: “Pass the Parcel!”

Again… No One knows. The world is faced with the enigma of the whole insane business… And that is somehow scarily close to what moronic was originally defined to mean.

As the old cliché goes… When you fail to plan then you plan to fail … Has Mrs. May opted for a form of masochistic, vengeful- self-immolation… disguised as free choice. “My choice” or the Highway….

Or could there be a more simple truth: separation anxiety rules.

Quick… “Pass the Parcel.”

To be continued.

Meanwhile diarise: #Data must share rent.

Hello Prekariat

Posted on February 18, 2019 by nicholas

?Blog 18 Feb 2018: Introducing the Prekariat.

I heard a new word a few days back; and heard it in such a way that the poet in me merged with the political economist: and I had immediately to find out what it meant. And it was in none of my dictionaries… that are admittedly now all somewhat elderly, like their owner.

In context I had been following one of the many talks on business strategy that feed through on YouTube; and the relevant file ended while I was consolidating my notes. As you probably know, unless you hit a cancel button within a few seconds the auto shift takes over and an algorithm that has decided what your interests are, opens another, relatively random file, and that happened while I was distracted…

So there was a load of chatter in the background of my awareness and suddenly an authoritative voice, that was so confidently assertive it caught my attention, announced to the world that it was imminently: “Off to Brussels to represent “The Prekariat”.

WTF I thought … am I suddenly in a Sci-Fi channel movie… Or, back with something as weird as the Annunaki? What is “The Prekariat” that it required such an authoritative delivery, of something previously unknown… and found it not in my dictionaries?

What I discovered when I eventually Googled the word, was at once: diskoncerting, satisfying and fascinating.

Most satisfying was the discovery that I was not alone.

Diskoncerting was the realization that this company, I was now apparently keeping, is on an escalating growth curve. So I will inevitably have more and more friends, and how will we all live?

And how will we all live is the single most important question to be answered over the next half century… and either we are already working on this with all seriousness… or is the reason why the person who coined the term Prekariat describes our kolektive emergence as being potentially extremely dangerous.

This word appeared on my journey to indicate why I felt that those people who think of themselves as “Liberals” are staring heavily at what the Chinese call a “Grey Rhino”. And broadly that Grey Rhino was the discovery that again piqued my fascination.

Assuming you haven’t hit the Google ‘word check’ button…. and are still intrigued, curious or maybe even indifferent to what this “new” word Prekariat means… it refers to a condition that is precarious… i.e.: lacks positive prediktability or security… a condition that on an economic level, to which its ‘coiner’ [sic] applies it, dramatically affects material and psychological welfare of the Prekariatee [sic] [Me in this instance… You maybe… One who exists prekariously in a financial sense.].

So what does all this mean, what does it have to do with Liberalism’s alleged shortcomings and how does this knowledge affect your thinking going forward… since forward is the only way our time machine allows us to go?

To be continued…. in our next: blog of blogs.

Loves ya all.

Nicholas.