Tag Archives: Universal Income

Mental Kolonization: The New, ‘New World invasion’

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The Colonization of the Mind:


Never mind 1492: konsider 2018….
Mr. Z meets Kongress


In the fictional world that I have invented: and about which I am currently writing, circa 2037, an anomaly that did not exist before 2011 is remedied. As a result the concept of universal income in our reversion to a pre-industrial era neo-cottage services based economy, has become a reality.


However it is not something ‘given’ for ‘free’’ by the/ or even a/ State organisation… The era of centralized control we have known for the past few centuries rapidly disintegrates under the trend to quantum computing; linked to blockchains [aka distributed ledgers] & crypto currencies. Not to mention a host of corresponding trends and developments as yet as undiscovered: as was DATA at the teenage dawning of the era.


Universal Income becomes a concept based on trillions of micro payments, moving from businesses like Facebook [et al] to data owners, and back…. Creating a virtuous circle of satisfactions where the idea that Governments control all things: is as historical an idea as the one that says happiness is the destiny of humanity.


The future is a decentralized one.


Konfederacy rulz.


Pragmatically this has to happen: in order to sustain what is rapidly evolving into a globally, services based, AI dominated, robotically moved economy.


In that place to which we
Are
Evolving [in my fictional world,
Anyway] at
Breakneck speed, a majority of
Ordinary people does not
[Apparently] have the com
Petence to do any
Thing more complex than
Shop: and mutter
OMG.



The following piece of abstraction, disguised as poetic form, had a curiously viral progression in that past before 2037… through the annals of day to day existance: and slowly allowed the idea of liberation to filter into conciousness.


The Mind as the New world


We are witness now to what will
In decades to come, be seen as
A most momentous moment: in
The brief history of homo
Sapiens sapiens.
We are witness to
And participants in: the kolo
Nization of the mind.


When we [humans] colonized
[Allegedly empty] land
Back in the 15th cent
Ury; assuming everyone already
Living there
To be irrelevant to
Purpose
Mainly because they were
Undocumented, unlettered and
Innumerate
Primitives. We
[The invaders] simply
Appropriated the land and
Its bounty:
As we had done for
Thousands of years. This bounty
Became a cost
Free
Windfall
[Almost: unearned].


For instance, plundering
Entire mountains of silver in
South
America: bounty; from which
Inordinate profits could
Be generated: with little
Or no regard for
The source.


The most fascinating aspect of the recent interrogation of Mr. Z
Uckerburg by the Congress of the
Firmian elites… Senators and Representatives
Alike
Was the latter persons’ complete incomp
Rehension at the scale of what had
Happened: while they had been busy
Ruminating
On perennial peccadillo’s.


There was a disconcerting sense of
The time machine. Here was
Cortez meeting the
Aztec royalty, who were
Baffled
At this predicted even
Anticipated yet
Unexpected
Arrival.


Mysterious people, with
Serious intentions: and powerful,
Incomprehensible machinery. Then… whoops
Before they could say SH*T!! … They were in
History’s garbage bag.


In effect, the worthy Congresspersons became as one with the beguiled “Natives”, of many colonized lands: faced with the incomprehensible.


Therefore, they trotted
Out their
Memes and
Things; and each, thinking ‘stomach’
First, asked all the
Questions regarding the inhe
Rent trivia of Mr.
Z’s offence.


Not one
However of that
Kolektion of [apparently] f
Undamentally out of touch
Human’s e
Ven got to grips with the
Kore of the
Dilemma: facing their konstituents.


A Tji-Nyanees participant in a Davos debate
Earlier this year, spoke
Of a Grey Rhino effect, which
He explained represented
“Something so huge it completely
Obscured
The screen”.


The Grey Rhino here is
The word
DATA
And the
Kolonisation of the mind
That it represents.


Naturally the more cynical
Amongst us
May argue that ignoring
The grey rhino is essential to
The continuation
Of their pleasure: which
At heart concerns the Kolonisation of the mind.


Of course that would assume they understood what was happening.


What does this mean?


Simply this. Using the language of
Mr. Adam Smith…. He,
Famously, of The Wealth
Of Nations… Mr. Z
Uckerburg [and
His illustrious peers] are the most
Successful kolonizers of all
Time.


According to
The hype surrounding the man’s
Recent forage around the
Firmian Capitol’ he gains some 25
Billion dollars of
[Profit] annually from
Some 40 Billion $US
Revenue. In a competitive
World of
Razor thin margins that is beyond
HUGE.


The revenue comes from companies
That use the data given
So f
Reely by the b
Illions of
Users of his
‘Machine’.


They use the
Insights it presents to target
Prospects for product
Purchases, more efficiently
Than ever known.
Inherently, this means that, like
The Konquista
Dors, who found mountains
Of silver back in the 16th
Century; appropriated it from naïve
Possessors: like those
Who purchased Manhattan: for bags of
Beads; and
Achieved great
WEALTH.


Mr. Z [et al] have achieved a similar,
Inherently
‘Unearned income’. They are
The
El Supremo
Rentiers.


When Mssrs. Smith and
Ricardo talked of ‘Economic
Rent’, they were referring
To this windfall effect


Resulting from control over the product
Of a natural resource.


In this case, data
Emanating from a human
Source: the ultimate in a natural
Resource.


It also took about a hundred and
Fifty years then: for the penny
To drop too.


We hope the penny will drop
sooner, for humans
today or the rest
of the century could get seriously
rough: especially for those
absently
left behind.


Jerome Powell [new chairman of the Firmian Federal Reserve,] admitted
something in his opening salvo with
the same group of kongresspersons, earlier
this year;
that “The Slack”, to which he made constant
reference when justifying the
continuing,
no inflation trend
of the past decade:


In spite of allegedly: full employment
Conditions in Firmia.


“The Elliot curve is cracked,” they call…
“The mob in here, are all


In thrall to


The slack,” he said: “beyond the Wall”:


The
Fifty million people across the
World
Living daily off the Web… who
Are an almost infinite
Resource
at wage levels way below
Those of the Firmian
Norms.


No one
Has ever admitted that before:
Publically.


So in building Facebook Mr. Z’s true
genius lay in solving
one of humanities greatest
needs… to be in sharing kontakt
with one’s fellows
And
through the power of
digitalization he [and all
the rest of the merry
band of tech’ dudes] invented
The thing called
DATA… symbolically
Packaging James Surowieki’s: “Wisdom
of Crowds”. Hence


The DATA then… becomes the new
‘Goldfields’ now and the
Klondike rush is being relived: as they
ALL
Kapitalize on the window of
Oppor
Tunity by ‘mone
Tizing’ his “free” source
Of ‘data’.


And as with the Silver
Exchanges of past time glory
No mention in the exchange pays rent
to the source.


No wonder the planet is all messed up
And getting hotter by the day


As the greatest beneficiary of “unearned
Income” in history, the
Question the Kongresspersons should
Have been asking, related to that share of
Unearned income [i.e. Economic
Rent] that should be returning
To source, rewarding
Loyalty work
Presently
Given freely: in order
To sustain
And maintain their
Ability to keep feeding
The machine.


!NiK[‘18]


To all my fellow Jedi’s “May de Forth be wid ya”

Our Invisible friend

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Over the weekend I caught the tail end of a BBC interview with an Iraqi Jewish American artist, Michael Rakowitz, who has had an impressive piece of artwork assembled; and mounted on an historically vacant, fourth plinth, on London’s Trafalgar Square.


The artwork is a retrospective reproduction of a vandalized ‘Lamassu’: [“a Winged bull and protective deity”] that stood for 2800 years at the gates of Nineveh, awaiting the eventual arrivals, of the new barbarians, in the form of Daesh: now rebuilt from the detritus and discarded leftovers of modernity.


He calls it “The invisible enemy should not exist.”


The interviewer, Stephen Sackur, asked if his work had a political meaning, and was he therefore a ‘political’ artist since he couldn’t truly be a ‘commercial’ artist. According to Mr Sackur’s Q sheet, much of what he did was not saleable, reproducible, or scalable: or whatever the current re-interpretation of ‘commercial’ is.


In his answer, he indicated that he was an artist, who worked with his interpretation of his milieu, and therefore there would be an inevitable ‘political’ stream in the back-story. [Personally, I do suspect his Lamassu is infinitely scalable and reproducible, but that is not relevant to my point here]


His answer though caused me to pause and ask myself the same question. Am I a commercial writer of commercially satisfying stories that I aim to put in a place where their scalability will enable some form of remuneration… yes? OR. Am I an artist, in the vein of the late New York Jazz pianist Cecil Taylor………..described as a “visionary pianist” in the NY Daily News, and referred to in a different, earlier BBC newscast, as a person who followed his own path? As obviously does the Iraqi Jewish American artist Mr.Rikowitz …………


I was unable to arrive at a conclusion to that: considering myself a simple working class wordsmith. I am also not certain that most people would consider a poet to be an artist.


Nonetheless, I did have to concede that, on two levels, at least I am a completely ‘political’ writer. My evolving Azanian Quartet has two specific political purposes. I am going to share one of them with you now. I’m doing this because today is possibly the most auspicious opportunity that exists, for the human race to ascertain, that it discount’s the late Stephen Hawking’s gloomy prediction: that we would be lucky [the human race] to emerge intact from the 21st century.


I am referring to that glorious entrepreneur, Mr. Zuckerberg’s immanent Congressional Hearings … and the immensely elusive opportunity those hearings present for constructing a solution, to what is already, and going to be even more of, a problem of immense magnitude, by the time we reach the part of my quartet that is set in 2037.


I refer to the inevitable specter of mass scale, long-term structural unemployment, for which we have to create a remedy, that contributes to growth and developments, rather than subtracting from it. Currently everything being suggested is regressive.


My remedy, and #1 political issue of choice, was to identify and provide a viable [fictional] solution for this problem in the future. That remedy I called BASIC PAY: is now more popularly called: Universal Income.


I was always intrigued, as a life long ‘nonprofessional’ reader of science fiction: Asimov, Heinlein, Bester et al, by a particular feature of science based fiction writing. This was the use of the term “credits”, when the text called, somewhere, for how people lived in the future [now arriving at speed] They always spent ‘credits’… And since Credits suggested debt how did they pay for the debt?


What are these ‘credits’, I would ask me… where do they come from: and how are they financed? [Declaratory Note: I am not a scientist, I am part of an educator class of financial economist with a bent towards the history thereof and who writes poetry, because it ‘happens’.]


So: in many ways, my entertainment podcast, prose poetic cyber serial, The Jonker Memorandum, exists to provide that answer [as a by-product to telling you what I hope is a cool story]. I call it “Basic Pay”. After many years basic pay is now gaining traction as “Universal Income’: and as such has featured in the current political agenda’s of at least half a dozen countries, and is being punted by such glorious entrepreneurs as Mssrs: Gates and Musk. The problem however remains: how is it financed?


In the cyber serial, my solution of choice was the Transaction Levy [aka Tax]. However: that was then. And it is also on the subtraction side of our growth equation. That was though, before the tech revolution gave us DATA… and me: a writer of fiction, the new Tilling fields that yield the “New Gold”. Something Mr. Zuckerberg has so deftly demonstrated: and regrettably, so brutally abused. DaTA is/are the “New Goldfields”.


So the message that Mr. Z’ and the rest of the new tech ‘Wunderkinde’ should be getting from the Congress is simply this… Their discovery of the power inherent in DATA, contains and illustrates the legitimacy of ‘Universal Income’. Billions of people are contributing quadrillions of Data measures daily for remunerative algorithmic exploration which thus provides the basis for a complete reinvention of fundamental economics. Yes: i shall invoke such an extreme statement


Currently Mr. Z and his Silicon cohorts are implicitly [with no offence] the greatest slave-owners in human history. In the same way however that Spotify [for instance] pays a kontribution to each kontributor from each access, so too must those who ‘slave’ to provide content to the marvelous inventions of Mr. Z’s [and the rest] receive a similar contribution…. I.e. It is time that data starts to pay rent. #DATA must pay rent…


I call myself a poet so I conclude with the poem that will open the second stanza of Part 4 of my Azanian Quartet… My assumption is that by 2037 [the setting] … this moment [NOW] will have been the turning point in this, amazing new journey, on which we are kolektively embarked.


We gave our DATA freely to Mr. Z et al… they in return gave us free use of the toys they made. Then he/they found a way to collect rent… from our contribution… now we must be reimbursed our share for our belief in them. For the data freely given is still ours.


To rephrase Mr. Rakowitz: [with respect]


“The invisible friend that must
Be shown to exist”


Hear ye
Hear Ye


Some will strive
to
Achieve
Nietzschean validation – the
Povo*
Will become automatonotik
Fiddling witheir [sic]
Mobiles
Seeking to affirm their intrin
sic irrele
vance.


Nonetheless
Machines don’t buy things!!
They dispense.


On what basis should we
Perceive
Value.


Given the thrust of
a digital economy that
Konsrukt kalled
DATA
Is the land that must be
Mined for
GOLD.


Peepil become
Products
To be exploited for their
DATA value
Should they not
Receive their
Rightful
Fee?


In Gold?
Yeah gold
You say data is
The new gold.
No… I said it was the new land
Waiting to be mined: for what is in it.


Does it pay rent?
Not yet.


!NiK[‘18]


So there you have it. All Kongresspersons: the most truly
bipartisan goal it is possible to achieve,
on behalf of all humanity.


Thank you on their behalf.


Povo: Shona [Zimbabwe] meaning the ‘masses’ or ‘Mass’
pronounced PorVor.

The meaning of money.

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Blog Feb 6th 2018:

So euphoria was in the air a fortnight ago at Davos; and today there is a hint of panic as some form of reality, naughtily reasserts itself. Is it an “out of Nowhere flash crash, affecting the whole planet: or simply a reminder that the mountain may be about to fall over onto the road.


Whether the present general adjustment in stock market levels and values proves enduring, or a simple case of generalized “Flash Crash-itis” it is a valuable reminder to those who operate in credit structured businesses, that debt is real and failure to kolekt your share, when its due, is the single biggest reason there is for business failure.


And right now a noticeable feature of the range of komment [sic] on the present, planet wide market move into Bear territory, in equity markets, is the sudden concern over the extent to which [almost] everything in the global economy today, is financed with DEBT capital [if I may use such a daring, yet strangely common, oxymoron].


One of the ironic truths of today’s world is this strangest of anomalies, related to the [apparently] new ‘Economics of Abundance’ [circa 2007 -2018.]. Ironically, because in an era defined as “Post –Truth”, we have the combination of a decade long exercise in ‘radical economic transformation’ called Quantitative Easing [QE]; coupled to almost manic: “Casino economy” financialised economics” and somehow along the way ordinary people vanished.


Effectively ‘business’ has for the past decade been almost exclusively concentrated on Yield. This means that global debt is today, almost infinitely greater now, than it was in 2007, when the world of money crashed as a result of debt: un-ever–payable. It is most odd, but, as I always said, over the four decades during which I often dealt with matters Economic in classrooms. … The difference between ‘us’ [economists] and the other “Subjects”, I would say, glaring at everyone, is that every year we ask the same questions in the exams… [pause while that sinks in]. We simply keep changing the answers … Everyone would laugh, uncomfortably perhaps …Surely not!!?


And then. Wow! Have we done it this time. Even the redoubtable Mrs Yellen has whined for a decade about how come we have a quadzillion of fake money out there: and there is NO INFlATION!!! There is simply about fifty years worth of stuff out there, with not enough ordinary people to spend on it. The ‘people’ [consumers for the purists] never got the free money… so they all went to work for free on Facebook and reddit and, and, and….


In other words: In the ‘Auld days’ [certainly when I studied finance and monetary theory in the late ‘60’s] a financial institution was constrained to lend no more than ten times what it had in secured assets [i.e: 10:1] on penalty of bad things happening [which they did… remember]. This is known [infamously to many on the varied fringes] as the Fractional Reserve Multiplier, invented centuries ago.


When Lehman Bros capitulated in 2007 and triggered off the [so-called] ‘Great Recession’ their debt to asset ratio stood at roughly 33 to 1. Today a decade of central bank fudged finance has pumped some 21 [twenty one] Trillion, artificial, dollars [US] into the global system. That is more than the entire US economy pulls annually and more than 21 times what that country spends annually on Defence matters.


And that is only the official “Secured” ‘money’.The number of US dollar figures for unsecured debt obligations are being, apparently, calculated in Quadzillions. I have no equipment that will enable me to do calculation on such numbers… none is all that commercially available either.


This [mass] represents a hard wired, octane fuelled, debt financialised hysteria, that among other weird effects produced a recent, almost fantasy based journey, into something called BITCOIN two months ago, that had Fred and his dog borrowing heaps of money to spend on one of the dodgiest assets in the history of bubbles… Now, of course, cometh the margin calls, and the ‘thing’ KitzBoin? ‘whatever, is/was/ has crashed deluxe, in what could quite possibly be one of economic history’s most successful Ponzi’s, to the extent that it is perhaps no longer safe.

Apparently ‘They’, coiners, aka miners, claim to be are using an allegedly impregnable, so-called ‘Blockchain’ arrangement, of destributed ledgers; that cannot be hacked by Government agency. However they have been seemingly, continuously been robbed by hackers… Like Govenmnets can’t hack? And anyway so much for Blockchain security effectiveness. if ‘they’ are not all lying about the thefts.


The effect of all this, and other generalised debt build up over the decade, has been, what some money management commentators, on business channels such as Bloomberg, and elsewhere, suggest, is a seriously scary thought about day to day financial reality.


Apparently total [unsecured] debt obligations, in the form of Derivatives, Hedges, Options, Warrants and numerous other variations on the computer driven ‘betting” game are what is being measured amongst the mass of quadzillion numbers. The financial markets have seemingly, somehow, morphed into a game that is really not much more, than considered gambling on ‘which fly would take off from the table first’ odds.


This category of “investments” [another oxymoron perhaps?] has morphed the idea of “secured” loans into the land of fable… And the business of money management has taken on the characteristics of an informal backwoods casino.


The ultimate expression of how we have devalued money over the past decade is reflected in this following piece [written in 2016] that I mused on, about an unprecedented financial experience in the 5000-year history of capital, lending and rates of interest charged for the privilege of borrowing.


Switzerland’s: 50 year
Negative yielding Bond


The differential race:
Taking two indicators
Equities rise… and rise: so
Bond returns go on sale
Down, down: down
Below
The Pale.


They broke down
Below minus point nought
One hundred basis
points
and you said
that’s as low
as it can go it’s not going
to go
further and point by
point it has
and now
the negative
has broken minus
nought three hundred
for the Nth
time
and the trend is to minus
nought fourrrrrrrrhundred.


And MONEY… Plausibly fake but nonetheless
Real
Has
Been wonderfully nourished
And grown in profusion
Never have so many been
drenched
in the flood of
lettuce
pouring from
the leaves
above and down across the bowers
of reluctant gains, miserly
returns
and the ever present ebb
of marginal
values
as the overwhelming cosmic gaze of
unlimited abun
dance
ranneth over:
de
spite the best attempts
of those who bathed
therein to restrain
it.


!NiK[‘16]


So since many of you may be out of practice in kolekting debt, money having become such a fantastical konstrukt, it is perhaps time you should come back to earth with the pragmatic: “7Ways to get your money: without resorting to violence or the law” on sale at Amazon.com: an organization that deals in real things, at good prices you can still afford while you still have time before the fall… to Universal Income.


See: https://www.amazon.com/author/nicholasjakari

Regards
Nicholas Jakari

Begin the Begin

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Howzit Tjina: welcome to Jakari’s blog.

Howzit?


This is a common greeting where I live, and about which I mostly write; so should you be someone who lives what I call, offshore, then know that you may not know that… So in addition Howzit! is often accompanied by the word “China”, which has nothing in common with the place of that name and although it sounds like china it is spelt Tjina.


So you may be meeting someone you don’t know and it is appropriate to be less than formal as with a blog… So Howzit China [aka: Tjina].


In introducing myself to Amazon readers[and those new to Jakari ], I am aware that quite reasonably, most will never have heard of me, and wonder immediately why they should join my band of curious readers/listeners. You would also not therefore know that I have been busy quietly introducing the future to readers all over the cyberverse [sic] for about 20 years now since that world arrived where I live.


Begin the Begin


So. I shall observe, simply, that I am by the standards of fashionable modernity someone who has been around a while [as have a few billion other unknown wannabe noticed persons …one of whom may be you.]


Therefore although I have been a ‘bloggist’ for 20 years now and have even been read occasionally; and nonetheless given this is my first Amazon based blog, since setting myself up as an author of creative work on Amazon, I wondered whether I should perhaps offer thoughts to a new source of reader and wander rather, randomly, over what I am, why I am what I am, and generally why I am increasingly concerned that something I created as fiction is becoming most disturbing.


On the other hand perhaps that will be simply boring. Decisions… decisions!


So recently on Christmas day, I sat on the Internet and played with Google… something I have had little time to do this past 7 years… in that my usage was overwhelmingly professionally oriented. I am now released from that demanding purpose and can more closely koncentrate on ME and my vision plus mission …. And YOU… my reader, listener and, inevitably, once I learn the delicate art of Vlogging: a … viewer; and not to be outdone or outmaneuvered, a participant in some interactions. As Fred’ Nietzsche put it “Now all things are possible.”


What I did on Google was find Wikipedia’s lists of earthquakes that have occurred since forever ago or more specifically about 2,400 years ago, in ancient China and the Middle East and elsewhere.


[And btw as a recently retired septuagenarian old style ‘schoolteacher’ I am aware that Wikipedia has its detraktors. I am also aware that I may infuriate the sensible reader by using the letter K where usual practice calls for the letter C. Those of you who are based in the USA and fear the disruptive effects of that rather curious President ‘Tsunami’ as I call him, who having been voted in is more than usually despised by his populace, as a rude disruptor and it must have been the year, for we were born then too.]


Therefore I invite my readers to check out the information I shall herewith share; and tell me that I am wrong and that my role as a writer of fiction has not suddenly morphed into some curious form of prophetic reality check, and that when I did my research I was too filled with good cheer and miscounted. It was the festive season after all.


My purpose was to establish the total number of particular ‘BIG’ seismic events: [earthquakes broadly] that have occurred more or less ever; and about which we can infer a scale equitable with Richter [Richter Scale: RS]. I was also only looking at earthquakes @ 6 or greater than 6 [RS], a scale roughly equitable with Hiroshima in 1945.


So I was categorizing the earthquakes in two sets: those before 1998 and those afterwards. Now please remember that I am a writer of fiction so, 1998 was the year when I chose a particular sequence of events that took place then, in South Asia. Given that I was searching for a disruption effect great enough to fuel the move to Universal Income and a means to pay for it, I played “what if”: and made that a central background part of my story, the Jonker Memorandum, and in the chaos that follows the event my heroine can act….


Again, because you didn’t know: The Jonker Memorandum [pronounced Yonka] is Part 3 of the Azanian Quartet; and has existed since 2010 on my website nicholasjakari.com that has been visited many times and puzzled many. It took four years of weekend recording sessions in my garden to konstrukt, what I refer to, as the greatest one-man show ever [in my particular genre]. The final episode went up in 2014.


In my self imposed role as a down-market, essentially working class, contrarian mediator in the learning of things Economical amongst frequently less than avid learners, I had in mind the idea, that in the part of the story that is in “The Future”, the masses [Orwell’s Proles] live on what I call “Basic Pay” [An idea that is now increasingly touted as “Universal Income” an idea with which I strongly approve especially since I became older: and generally remained poor].


In point of fact as the themes evolved I realised that everyone lives on it [in the future] … never mind the Proles… Developments in AI, Quantum computing… which promises to be to digital, what digital was to steam… plus, plus, plus… et al … indicate a future in which work, as it was known is HISTORY. Basic Pay is inevitable… self-employment is inevitable on a dramatic scale… how can it work?


In addition to the idea of Basic pay and because the children in my care demanded it, I [plus the ‘demanders’ ] also had to consider how it could be financed or even afforded; something that seems to have been overlooked by most science fiction writers and those others actually actively promoting the idea.


A key evolving methodology seems to be involving… perhaps… a transaction levy… requiring dealing with hugely, insurmountable blocks of vested interests, at the heart of the “system” [however you choose to define it]. Discussions on that topic could keep people employed for ever… and what if we don’t have forever [fiction remember] … Or perhaps there is some other idea, such as one that is now at the heart of Part 4’s evolution, as the closing part of the Azanian Quartet and will be on Amazon later this year.


So back in 1998 I was wrestling with this [relatively unoriginal] idea that I had, which is really only a back-story part of the background to the main sci fi adventure crime story, in the knowledge, that neither idea was feasible in almost any term, short of a disruption effect on a monumental scale … so huge that the entire planet’s destiny was almost terminally; or certainly irrevocably changed.


So since I write fiction and since, like many of my fellow-now-aging-those-of-us still-surviving, wild kolonial boys, I had learned long ago about a military, firearms usage procedure, called the “Double Tap”: and serendipitously in that same year [1998] while in search of raw material for plots and themes, I had occasion to encounter the “double tap” method at the hands of a practicing expert.


It was done under the specialized supervision of a man, who was, some years later, arrested on an Interpol International arrest warrant, for [allegedly] 49 professional murders: and may therefore be seriously considered as an expert on the use of that double tap method. Albeit I did not then, know, that previously unshared information… albeit his general after action beer conversation was loaded with the usual conspiracy stuff.


But nonetheless I was then, contemplating the truthfulness of his affirmation; that the second shot amplifies the power of the first shot, by 500%, and by extension, I wondered: the second by the third et al to 6..


The news of the tit for tat bang, bang: by the two contenders for influence in that south Asian region, was routine fare in a place always desperately shifting attention elsewhere, in a variation of the standard national scapegoating exercises practiced in most localities.


Nonetheless. They [the two South Asian nations] were, to me, nestling on a great big piece of tectonic geology called the Himalayas: and ‘what if “ was a given.


In other words you will recollect that two competing regions in South Asia began a six-bomb test consecutive blast interregnum of underground nuclear explosions later in that same year, 1998.


Each was allegedly about 2.5RS.


I speculated … What if this is a Nuclear Triple double tap … 2500 x500% x500%x500% x500%x … = huge times… Maybe massive on Richter.


I write fiction remember. I checked out my idea over the years with ‘klevas’… people ranging from ordinary scientific types focused on classroom physics and chemistry, to Nuclear scientists and climate change people who all confirmed that I was writing fiction… and I went on… feeling ok.


The effect of what I have thus called: “The Ringing’, was global disruption. This was characterized by a sequence of flooding and tsunamis that I ‘created’ together with the mass scale disruption that followed the changes to the climate that I hypothesized over the next period of time. All this was part of the back-story to my tale of robbery and murder. In fact the explanatory chapters are simply headed as Footnotes. [For instance the footnote chapter in which the region I call Keiretsu [aka Japan/Nippon] was engulfed by a tsunami went up one week before the recent tsunami that devastated parts of the country and ruined a nuclear power station…. Elsewhere [Chapter 10.] the trouble starts after an airliner disappears in flight … published two years before an airliner disappeared]


And that ‘disruption’ of course; that idea changed the real story. And while I dealt with that need, which took a few years, I put together “7Ways to get your money” from notes I had made during the time after I became a ‘returnee refugee’ in this country where I now live. I had inadvertently, seriously annoyed the man who became the post liberation Dictator, of Zimbabwe; ultimately being forced out in a recent coup after 37 bloodstained years. So I had to exit post-liberation Zimbabwe, in something of a hurry: with my wife, two babies, four dogs and four cats in an old Volkswagen panel van; that blew up at the entrance to what I now call the Dome surrounding the Mega Unicity most of us call Jozi.


It was a time when a ‘sixties drop out’ had to come in from the cold; and make big money fast, in a place, that was itself, on a steeply slippery slope… to its own ultimate oblivion.


The Dome btw is an idea represented by the multilane high speed ring road that surrounds the inner city of Jozi, in Mzansi, where I have lived on and off ever since the 60’s, having relocated to Zimbabwe, in the ‘70’s as part of my ‘drop out’ period some years earlier, when it was still a naughty, disruptive, now failed, Kolonial experiment, with other people’s places.


The ‘other people’ wanted to go back to how things were before any koloniste arrived; and have successfully returned to the 17th century they sought. They are now displeased with the result… but that is another tale altogether and is otherwise irrelevant.


So 7Ways is a Prelude to the Azanian Quartet: a tale of many revolutions. 7Ways represents the world of relative order that makes everything possible. The Azanian Quartet is implicitly a metaphorical story about how the world ended, and what happened afterwards. It is also a story about the ambiguity of memory regarding how it all happened. It is also a story that gains more relevance in what has now after ten years of Quantitative Easing [QE] become a planet running on about one point three quadzillion US$ worth of global debt: meaning that getting the money is now more urgent than ever before.


Which brings us back to my Wikipedia search.


Allowing for some marginal calculation error… Wikipedia lists many earthquakes below 6 on the Richter scale… so I may have miscalculated here and there or over calculated elsewhere. And for all I know I may have been on the wrong page. I am still at heart a techno moronic, aging, baby boomer.


Pre 1998; going back 2400 ish odd years.
Slightly more than 400.
Specifically 413 … [four hundred and thirteen]. Subject as mentioned to korektion.


Post 1998. The next 19 [nineteen] years
Slightly more than 400.
Specifically 414. [Four hundred and fourteen.]


Perhaps you can understand why I am worried about my fiction writing skills. Tell me its imagination… or that I’m reviewing usage through a naughty Wikipedia page, which is…. Not appropriately Peer reviewed, is it?


For clarity purposes.


*You have access to the Prelude: 7Ways. Available now on Amazon. @ https://www.amazon.com/author/nicholasjakari
**Part 1 of the Azanian Quartet : The Buffalo Hunters is currently with an editor undergoing some surgery and should be available, end February 2018.
*** Part 2 The Ashanti Raider will be online by end April 2018.
**** Part 3 The Jonker Memorandum an 84 episode podcast cyber serial is available for your listening pleasure online at nicholasjakari.com


They are not sequential other than in order of writing so you can listen in pleasure. Many of my listeners are bed bound invalids and other resting persons. And like Mr. Nietzsche [whom I played for the world international Konference celebrating the centenary of that Philosopher at Pretoria University in 2000 AD] many of the ideas presented in that story have become common usage now since some 10million hits have occurred on my website many of them from people, say about 10%]


***** Part 4 is still under konstruktion and has passed the three quarters mark targeted to be ready by August 2018.


Hope to have you back again soon
Regards
Nicholas Jakari.
And don’t forget to buy the ebook.

Ruminations on Basic Pay

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1

Also known as the inevitability of Universal Income.

“ In the 21st Century we might witness the creation of a new massive class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society.”
Homo Deus p325.
Yuval Noah Harari


This statement by the author: Harari comes at the climax of what could be the most brilliant sustained piece of writing that this bloggist has encountered in years. The writing is more brilliant for being extended over two masterpieces of modern writing: Sapiens and Homo Deus: for which I would recommend the author for a Nobel Prize in literature. For the “times, that were changing” reported by a recent, past winner, Bob Dylan have sneaked up and abruptly arrived: on steroids.


The veracity of Harari’s premise is thus well timed. It arrived at precisely that moment in history that the exponential pace of technological development, has so outpaced the capacity of humans to keep up with the changes, taking place in the macro world, that the possibility of an accident kicking off something that is fast running, means we could once again be on the edge of a cataclysm, the likes of which we have not experienced since the last one a century ago… when progress went into steep decline: and put us all through a century of violent disruption: Stalling time.


A while back I came across some thing published, that I had written, as the closing paragraph, to an editorial piece at a different time in the past: The op/ed piece was broadly a comment on Mr. Alvin Toffler’s book: ‘Future Shock’…. I finished with the following comment on Toffler’s vision: “The alternatives are clear: either we train people to adapt to the future, or, in Toffler’s words, ‘we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown.’”


And what could be a greater “adaptational breakdown” than that represented by the “New Lefties” i.e. those now referred to as the “Left Behind” … what Hannah Arendt referred to as “The Mob”…. And for whom George Orwell, less politely, coined “Proles”. Such a phenomenon apparently elected to BREXIT, in the trending from formerly Great Britain to global britain; and put America’s first ever [perhaps] ‘Working Class’ President into power in that ‘Firmian’ Republic. Tsunami, is a “brash Blu Hawk real estate developer”; as said by a Republican Grandee on Bloomberg a moment ago as I wrote this … he spoke as if describing a Martian alien, who had just walked uninvited into the men’s room.


And then of course Le Bleu’s did the same thing; voting for the least disliked option rather than someone who could do them any good… They all promise to do that, don’t they?


And the ‘Left Behind’ are obviously in the majority… and in case you are confusing them with “New Left”: many are, in effect, new ‘Right’ [whatever that is]. They are an inter and intra class phenomenon, notwithstanding that the Brash Blu Hawker… a man who hustled buildings for a living, will not be permitted [they think] to implement his agenda, even though his agenda does not really lack any more purpose, than the agenda’s of all those others, who promised things: and then [often sensibly] compromised on the delivery: and then struggled to deliver, in the face of ferociously frantic; furiously factional vested interest groupings.


Further on into the article, that I happened upon serendipitously last year, in the midst of Mzansi’s # FeesMustFall: University ‘disrupting season’, I wrote:
“The future shock problem is viewed in many Western circles with such seriousness that a number of influential bodies, among them the ‘Club of Rome’ have gone so far as to recommend a moratorium on technological developments while the human race catches up, and gets it breath back”.


Well it never happened did it…: In fact during this past month listening to the radio local news and opinion discussions on day to day events I have lost count of the frequency with which the ‘approved’ spokespersons, on a range of topics, cite, improving education: as a solution to the problem of ‘ADAPTATIONAL BREAKDOWN”S.



Yet Mzansi, for instance, spends a huge percentage of GDP, relative to most of its chosen peers, for, apparently, as little gain as those Brexiting, President Tsunami/Le Bleu’s stricken peers have apparently gained, in the time since I wrote the piece from which I have quoted. It was published in August of 1978… [i.e:39 years ago this past month] In a magazine that no longer exists: in a country that, likewise, no longer exists.*


So we didn’t put the tech’ development process aside; and by the well known Moore’s Law dictum whereby processing power doubles every 18 months that means that the tech world has taken 26 steps, during the time that we more Linear thinking human beings have moved 39 steps… and that is only referring to those that have been moving forward.


Unfortunately the message attributable to the New Lefties, is, that they seemingly moved, more or less one step: 39 times. Meanwhile 26 steps in exponential language, [What was called Geometric Progression in high school mathematics] in the expanding macro environment is [assume each step to be a meter] more than Thirty Three Million meters. No wonder the poor NL’s feel left behind. Almost everyone is left behind.


And so it is likely that many are working on the edge of the new economy. The characteristic of the old economy, that replaced the frugal subsistence of the previous 70,000 plus years, was “Nasty brutish and short”. It was and often still is, a condition in which workers were treated like machines; and conditions were inhumane. The early behaviourist: B. F. Skinner observed then, apparently in all seriousness, that: “The real problem is not whether machines think; but whether humans do.”


Eventually the cost and legalities of fixing the horror of mass employment raised the cost of production, above what the corresponding, mass consumer market sought out: absolute rock bottom price points. So there was a clash thus, between the people who wanted to be wonderfully well rewarded, for doing something mundane: [me for instance] while simultaneously wanting as much blood as could conceivably be extracted from every stone.


And so tech has solved the inhumane aspect of mass production, to desired scales, through replacing humans with real machines that are rapidly, apparently, taking on tasks that require far more than simple manual dexterity.


True ‘thinking machines’ are evolving; and part of the world … even many of the [so-called] Globalists themselves, stare at prospektive superfluity. This as the emerging trend to kwantum komputing takes tech’s exponential journey Kwantum simultaneously, to more than a billion meters in only 5 more steps. Truly; to be left behind in such a maelstrom of evolutionary expansion is almost… normal.


In the meantime in our own part of the world I was shocked recently, to read, as part of an opinion piece published in the Jozi Star on the eve of the “Youth Day” weekend this year, a piece of information that took the idea of “Left Behind” to an unprecedented level… for me.


The piece carried the byline of a Mr. Jeff Radebe, the 5000:1 outsider for the job of President of the ruling party; and later the country, should the present ruling party win the next election again: Something within reasonable probability. As a rule politicians tend to be pretty close to the 39 step by step linear process, which is still a way ahead of NL’s trend, you’ll gather..


Radebe’s piece was broadly one of the most powerful evaluations of the idea of ‘Future to shock’ that one has come across from a sitting politician in many years. He laid out a blueprint for what had to happen, for Mzansi’s and more broadly Afrika’s emerging transformation; in order to marginally keep pace with the techno/economically evolving 21st century. The piece certainly revealed the thoughtful appreciation of someone who perhaps had covered a few hundred meters over the 39 steps…


In fact when one evaluates the alleged negative behaviour of the all the allegedly naughty President’s persons, routinely reported in a broadly unsympathetik media environment, in the kontext of what Minister Radebe presents as the stark reality of Afrika’s dilemma, then one kan understand the instinctive desire to grab the money and run, when the opportunity presents, for opportunity comes only meagerly.


So what was the shock that triggered this response?


In that part of the op/ed piece where he deals with the relevance of FIR * to Mzansi in particular, Mr. Radebe makes an astounding assertion. [* FIR = the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution a name given to this historical period which is to be characterized by the evolution of [AI] Artificial Intelligence].


Mr. Radebe asserts, that in a continent of some 880 million people more than 600 million, live presently, in a pre-electric world… a world essentially before “steps” were even considered.


To put that into perspective… Electricity represents the second industrial revolution…. [The one everyone learns about at school was based on steam, you’ll remember.] I don’t know how valid Minister Radebe’s statement is, in a world typified by ‘fake’ news lately. No references are identified in support of the assertion: I am simply assuming, rightly or wrongly, that the Minister is using staff resources to establish accurate information.


In other words nearly 70% of the people on the entire Kontinent have not yet encountered the 2nd Industrial Revolution in any meaningful way… Now that is what you kan validly call “Left Behind”. How does one contemplate developing a place that has to cover more than a billion steps just to catch up: with no idea how to do so? [unless somebody else has a betta plan]


A recent piece in the Economist raised questions regarding how an Afrika emerging from a pre-industrial era … [Mr. Radebe’s point regarding those most truly ‘Left Behind’] can progress in a world where machines that work for capital redemption, are superseding well paid cost centres, called manual workers [and those in routine clerical, for that matter]. They suggest that Afrika will have to find a new way… They were unable to suggest one however.


There is one solution, as a palliative to what is impending. I would not suggest thjat it is the only one it is however the one most likely to prevail eventually. It is the combination of VBasic Pay aka A Universal Income… linked to a levy on transactions in specific new areas of activity. I have as many of you know, promoted the idea of Basic Pay for years now. What else will there be other than Basic Pay for an increasing mass of overwhelming humanity… aka Universal Income [U.I.]. There are experiments in U I taking place in parts of Groland, currently, and of course in Mzansi, where i eke out my own pittance, there are presently 17,000,000 people living on a meager dose of basic pay… with close to zero chance of ever finding anything else.


So what does this mean
For the future
Of everything…?
Logically:
The Monetisation of
Humanity
Through data derived
Micropayments.


!NiK[17]