The caravan and migration policy

20 years ago, fewer than half of the people in the world had ever made a phone call. Today, the vast majority of people have a smartphone with internet access, and are learning how people in other parts of the world live. A growing number are refusing to accept their poor luck of being born in poor, corrupt, or oppressive or war-torn countries. After all, nobody chooses their parents or where they are born, so why should people in any country have any more right to live there than anyone else?  Shouldn’t everyone start life with the right to live anywhere they choose? If they don’t like it where they were born, why shouldn’t someone migrate to another country to improve their conditions or to give their children a better chance? Why should that country be allowed to refuse them entry? I’d like to give a brief answer, but I don’t have time. So:

People don’t choose their parents, or where they are born, but nor did they exist to make that choice. The rights of the infinite number of non-existent people who could potentially be born to any possible combination of parents at any time, anywhere, under any possible set of circumstances is no basis for any policy. If lives were formed and then somehow assigned parents, the questions would be valid, but people don’t actually reproduce by choosing from some waiting list of would-be embryos. Even religious people don’t believe that their god has a large queue of souls waiting for a place and parents to be born to, assigning each in turn to happiness or misery. Actual people reproduce via actual acts in actual places in actual circumstances. They create a new life, and the child is theirs. They are solely responsible for bringing that life into existence, knowing the likely circumstances it would emerge into. The child didn’t choose its parents, but its parents made it. If they live in a particular country and choose to have a baby, that baby will be born with the rights and rules and all the other attributes of that country, the skin color, religion, wealth and status of its parents and so on. It will also be born in the prevailing international political and regulatory environment at that time. Other people in other countries have zero a priori political, social, economic or moral responsibility towards that child, though they and their country are free to show whatever compassion they wish, or to join international organisations that extend protection and human rights to all humans everywhere, and so a child anywhere may inherit certain internationally agreed rights, and countries will at some point have signed up to accept them. Those voluntary agreements or signings of international treaties may convey rights onto that child regarding its access to aid or  global health initiatives or migration but they are a matter for other sovereign bodies to choose to sign up to, or indeed to withdraw from. A poor child might grow up and decide to migrate, but it has no a priori right of entry to any country or support from it, legally or morally, beyond that which the people of that country or their ancestors choose to offer individually or via their government.

In short, people can’t really look any further than their parents to thank or blame for their existence, but other people and other countries are free to express and extend their love, compassion and support, if they choose to. Most of us would agree that we should.

Given that we want to help, but still don’t have the resources to help everyone on the planet to live in the standard they’d like, a better question might be: which people should we help first – those that bang loudly on our door, or those in the greatest need?

We love and value those close to us most, but most of us feel some love towards humans everywhere. Few people can watch the migrant caravan coverage without feeling sympathy for the parents trying to get to a better life. Many of those people will be innocent people running away from genuine oppression and danger, hoping to build a better future by working hard and integrating into a new culture. The proportion was estimated recently (Channel 4 News for those who demand sources for every stat they don’t like) at around 11% of the caravan. We know from UK migration from Calais that some will just say they are, advised by activists on exactly what phrases to use when interviewed by immigration officials to get the right boxes ticked. Additionally, those of us who aren’t completely naive (or suffering the amusingly named ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ whereby anything ‘Fake President’ Trump says or does must automatically be wrong even if Obama said or did the same), also accept that a few of those in the caravan are likely to be drug dealers or murderers or rapists or traffickers or other criminals running away from capture and towards new markets to exploit, or even terrorists trying to hide among a crowd. There is abundant evidence that European migrant crowds did conceal some such people, and we’ll never know the exact numbers, but we’re already living with the consequences. The USA would be foolish not to learn from these European mistakes. It really isn’t the simple ‘all saints’ or ‘all criminals’ some media would have us believe. Some may be criminals or terrorists – ‘some’ is a very different concept from ‘all’, and is not actually disproved by pointing the TV camera at a lovely family pushing a pram.

International law defines refugees and asylum seekers and makes it easy to distinguish them from other kinds of migrants, but activist groups and media often conflate these terms to push various political objectives. People fleeing from danger are refugees until they get to the first safe country, often the adjacent one. According to law, they should apply for asylum there, but if they choose to go further, they cease to be refugees and become migrants. The difference is very important. Refugees are fleeing from danger to safety, and are covered by protections afforded to that purpose. Migrants don’t qualify for those special protections and are meant to use legal channels to move to another country. If they choose to use non-legal means to cross borders, they become illegal immigrants, criminals. Sympathy and compassion should extend to all who are less fortunate, but those who are willing to respect the new nation and its laws by going through legal immigration channels should surely solicit more than those who demonstrably aren’t, regardless of how cute some other family’s children look on camera. Law-abiding applicants should always be given a better response, and law-breakers should be sent to the back of the queue.

These are well established attitudes to migration and refugees, but many seek to change them. In our competitive virtue signalling era, a narrative constructed by activists well practiced at misleading people to achieve their aims deliberately conflates genuine refugees and economic migrants to make their open borders policies look like simple humanitarianism. They harness the sympathy everyone feels for refugees fleeing from danger but and routinely mislabel migrants as refugees, hoping to slyly extend refugee rights to migrants, quickly moving on to imply that anyone who doesn’t want to admit everyone lacks basic human decency. Much of the media happily plays along with this deception, pointing cameras at the nice families instead of the much larger number of able young men, with their own presenters frequently referring to migrants as refugees. Such a narrative is deliberately dishonest, little more than self-aggrandizing disingenuous sanctimony. The best policy remains to maintain and protect borders and have well-managed legal immigration polices, offering prioritized help to refugees and extending whatever aid to other countries can be afforded. while recognizing that simple handouts and political interference can be sometimes counter-productive. Most people are nice, but some want to help those who need it most, in the best way. Moral posturing and virtue signalling are not only less effective but highly selfish, aimed at polishing the egos of the sanctimonious rather than the needy.

So, we want to help, but do it sensibly to maximize benefit. Selfishly, we also need some migration, and we already selfishlessly encourage those with the most valuable skills or wealth to migrate from other countries, at their loss (even after they have paid to educate them). Every skilled engineer or doctor we import from a poorer country represents a huge financial outlay being transferred from poor to rich. We need to fix that exploitation too. There is an excellent case for compensation to be paid.

Well-managed migration can and does work well. The UK sometimes feels a little overcrowded, when sitting in a traffic jam or a doctor waiting room, but actually only about 2% of the land is built on, the rest isn’t. It isn’t ‘full’ geographically, it just seems so because of the consequences of poor governance. Given sensible integration and economic policies, competently executed, immigration ought not to be a big problem. The absence of those givens is the main cause of existing problems. So we can use the UK as a benchmark for reasonably tolerable population density even under poor government. The UK still needs migrants with a wide range of skills and since some (mainly old) people emigrate, there is always room for a few more.

Integration is a growing issue, and should be a stronger consideration in future immigration policy. Recent (last 100 years) migrants and their descendants account for around 12% of the UK population, 1 in 8, still a smallish minority. Some struggle to integrate or to find acceptance, some don’t want to, many fit in very well. Older migrations such as the Normans and Vikings have integrated pretty well now. My name suggests some Viking input to my DNA, and ancestry research shows that my family goes back in England at least 500 years. Having migrated to Belfast as a child, and remigrated back 17 years later, I know how it feels to be considered an outsider for a decade or two.

What about the USA, with the migrant ‘caravan’ of a few thousand people on their way to claim asylum? The USA is large, relatively sparsely populated, and very wealthy. Most people in the world can only dream of living at US living standards and some of them are trying to go there. If they succeed, many more will follow. Trump is currently under fire from the left over his policy, but although Trump is certainly rather less eloquent, his policy actually closely echoes Obama’s. Here is a video of Obama talking about illegal immigration in 2005 while he was still a Senator:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4656370/sen-barack-obama-illegal-immigration

Left and right both agreed at least back then that borders should be protected and migrants should be made to use legal channels, presumably for all the same common sense reasons I outlined earlier. What if the borders were completely open, as many are now calling for? Here are a few basic figures:

Before it would get to UK population density, the USA has enough land to house every existing American plus every single one of the 422M South Americans, 42M Central Americans, 411M Middle Easterns, the 105M Philippinos and every African. Land area isn’t a big problem then. For the vast majority in these regions, the average USA standard of living would be a massive upgrade, so imagine if they all suddenly migrated there. The USA economy would suddenly be spread over 2.5Bn instead of 325M. Instead of $60k per capita, it would be $7.8k, putting the USA between Bolivia and Guatemala in the world wealth rankings, well below most of Central and South America (still 40% more than Honduras though). Additionally, almost all of the migrants, 87% of the total population would initially be homeless. All the new homes and other infrastructure would have to be paid for and built, jobs created, workforce trained etc. 

Even the most fervent open borders supporter couldn’t pretend they thought this was feasible, so they reject reasoning and focus on emotion, pointing cameras at young families with sweet kids, yearning for better lives. If the borders were open, what then would prevent vast numbers of would-be migrants from succumbing to temptation to better their lives before the inevitable economic dilution made it a worthless trip? Surely opening the borders would result in a huge mass of people wanting to get in while it is still a big upgrade? People in possession of reasoning capability accept that there need to be limits. Left and right, Obama and Trump agree that migration needs to be legal and well managed. Numbers must be restricted to a level that is manageable and sustainable.

So, what should be done about it. What policy principles and behaviors should be adopted. The first must be to stop  misuse of language, particularly conflating economic migrants and refugees. Activists and some media do that regularly, but deliberate misrepresentation is ‘fake news’, what we used to call lies.

Second, an honest debate needs to be had on how best to help refugees, whether by offering them residency or by building and resourcing adequate refugee camps, and also regarding how much we can widen legal immigration channels for migrants while sustaining our existing economy and culture. If a refugee wants to immigrate, that really ought to be a separate consideration and handled via immigration channels and rules. Dealing with them separately would immediately solve the problem of people falsely claiming refugee status, because all they would achieve is access to a refugee camp, and would still have to go through immigration channels to proceed further. Such false claims clog the courts and mean it takes far longer for true refugees to have their cases dealt with effectively.

Thirdly, that debate needs to consider that while countries naturally welcome the most economically and culturally valuable immigrants, there is also a good humanitarian case to help some more. Immigration policy should be generous, and paralleled with properly managed international aid.

That debate should always recognize that the rule of law must be maintained, and Obama made that argument very well. It still holds, and Trump agreeing with it does not actually make it invalid. Letting some people break it while expecting others to follow it invites chaos. Borders should be maintained and properly policed and while refugees who can demonstrate refugee status should be directed into refugee channels (which may take some time), others should be firmly turned away if they don’t have permission to cross, and given the information they need to apply via the legal immigration channels. That can be done nicely of course, and a generous country should offer medical attention, food, and transport home, maybe even financial help. Illegal immigration and lying about refugee status should be strongly resisted by detainment, repatriation and sending to the back of the queue, or permanently denying entry to anyone attempting illegal entry. No country wants to increase its population of criminals. Such a policy distinguishes well between legal and illegal, between refugees and migrants, and ensures that the flow into the country matches that which its government thinks is manageable.

The rest is basically ongoing Foreign Policy, and that does differ between different flavors of government. Sadly, how best to deal with problems in other countries is not something the USA is known to be skilled at. It doesn’t have a fantastic track record, even if it usually intends to make things better. Ditto the UK and Europe. Interference often makes things worse in unexpected ways. Handouts often feed corruption and dependence and support oppressive regimes, or liberate money for arms, so they don’t always work well either. Emergencies such as wars or natural catastrophes already have polices and appropriate agencies in place to deal with consequences, as well as many NGOs.

This caravan doesn’t fit neatly. A few can reasonably be directed into other channels, but most must be turned away. That is not heartless. The Mediterranean migration have led to far more deaths than they should because earlier migrants were accepted, encouraging others, and at one point it seemed to be the EU providing a safe pickup almost as soon as a trafficker boat left shore. The Australian approach seemed harsh, but probably saved thousands of lives by deterring others from risking their lives. My own solution to the Mediterranean crisis was:

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/the-mediterranean-crisis/ and basically suggested making a small island into a large refugee camp where anyone rescued )or captured if they managed to make the full trip) would be taken, with a free trip home once they realized they wouldn’t be transferred to mainland Europe. I still think it is the best approach, and could be replicated by the USA using a large refugee/migrant camp from which the only exit is back to start or a very lengthy wait from the back of the legal migration queue.

However:

My opening questions on the inequity of birth invite another direction of analysis. When people die, they usually leave the bulk of their estates to their descendants, but by then they will also have passed on a great deal of other things, such as their values, some skills, miscellaneous support, and attitudes to life, the universe and everything. Importantly, they will have conveyed citizenship of their country, and that conveys a shared inheritance of the accumulated efforts of the whole of that countries previous inhabitants. That accumulation may be a prosperous, democratic country with reasonable law and order and safety, and relatively low levels of corruption, like the USA or the UK, or it may be a dysfunctional impoverished dictatorship or anything between. While long-term residents are effectively inheriting the accumulated value (and problems) passed down through their ancestors, new immigrants receive all of that for free when they are accepted. It is hard to put an accurate value on this shared social, cultural and financial wealth, but most that try end up with values in the $100,000s. Well-chosen immigrants may bring in value (including their descendants’ contributions) greatly in excess of what they receive. Some may not. Some may even reduce it. Whether a potential immigrant is accepted or not, we should be clear that citizenship is very valuable.

Then analysis starts to get messier. It isn’t just simple inheritance. What about the means by which that happy inherited state was achieved? Is one country attractive purely because of its own efforts or because it exploited others, or some combination? Is another country a hell hole in part because of our external interference, as some would argue for Iraq or Syria? If so, then perhaps there is a case for reparation or compensation, or perhaps favored immigration status for its citizens. We ought not to shirk responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Or is it a hell hole in spite of our interference, as can be argued for some African countries. Is it a hell hole because its people are lazy or corrupt and live in the country they deserve, as is possible I guess, though I can’t think of any examples. Anyway, heredity is a complex issue, as is privilege, its twin sister. I did write a lengthy blog on privilege (and cultural appropriation). I probably believe much the same as you but in the hostile competitive offence-taking social media environment of today, it remains a draft.

Sorry it took so many words, but there is so much nonsense being spoken, it takes a lot of words to remind of what mostly used to be common sense. The right policy now is basically the same as it was decades ago. Noisy activism doesn’t change that.

 

2018 outlook: fragile

Futurists often consider wild cards – events that could happen, and would undoubtedly have high impacts if they do, but have either low certainty or low predictability of timing.  2018 comes with a larger basket of wildcards than we have seen for a long time. As well as wildcards, we are also seeing the intersection of several ongoing trends that are simultaneous reaching peaks, resulting in socio-political 100-year-waves. If I had to summarise 2018 in a single word, I’d pick ‘fragile’, ‘volatile’ and ‘combustible’ as my shortlist.

Some of these are very much in all our minds, such as possible nuclear war with North Korea, imminent collapse of bitcoin, another banking collapse, a building threat of cyberwar, cyberterrorism or bioterrorism, rogue AI or emergence issues, high instability in the Middle East, rising inter-generational conflict, resurgence of communism and decline of capitalism among the young, increasing conflicts within LGBTQ and feminist communities, collapse of the EU under combined pressures from many angles: economic stresses, unpredictable Brexit outcomes, increasing racial tensions resulting from immigration, severe polarization of left and right with the rise of extreme parties at both ends. All of these trends have strong tribal characteristics, and social media is the perfect platform for tribalism to grow and flourish.

Adding fuel to the building but still unlit bonfire are increasing tensions between the West and Russia, China and the Middle East. Background natural wildcards of major epidemics, asteroid strikes, solar storms, megavolcanoes, megatsumanis and ‘the big one’ earthquakes are still there waiting in the wings.

If all this wasn’t enough, society has never been less able to deal with problems. Our ‘snowflake’ generation can barely cope with a pea under the mattress without falling apart or throwing tantrums, so how we will cope as a society if anything serious happens such as a war or natural catastrophe is anyone’s guess. 1984-style social interaction doesn’t help.

If that still isn’t enough, we’re apparently running a little short on Ghandis, Mandelas, Lincolns and Churchills right now too. Juncker, Trump, Merkel and May are at the far end of the same scale on ability to inspire and bring everyone together.

Depressing stuff, but there are plenty of good things coming too. Augmented reality, more and better AI, voice interaction, space development, cryptocurrency development, better IoT, fantastic new materials, self-driving cars and ultra-high speed transport, robotics progress, physical and mental health breakthroughs, environmental stewardship improvements, and climate change moving to the back burner thanks to coming solar minimum.

If we are very lucky, none of the bad things will happen this year and will wait a while longer, but many of the good things will come along on time or early. If.

Yep, fragile it is.

 

Interesting times

The US Presidential election was a tough choice between an awful candidate and a terrible one, but that is hardly new, is it? There was no good outcome on offer, no Gandhi or Mandela to choose, but you know what, life will go on, it’s not the end of the world.

The nation that elected Reagan and W will survive and prosper, WW3 has been postponed, as has 1984, the environment will benefit, some rogue states are very pissed off, US cultural decay has been slowed and the UK has just jumped past the EU in trade negotiations. A great many downtrodden people suddenly feel they have some hope and a great many sanctimonious egos have been pricked. The MSM and social media hysteria will carry on for months, but actually, it could have been a bit worse. Hillary could have won.

I don’t like Trump, he seems to me to be another egotistical buffoon with a double digit IQ. It’s not great that he will be in charge, but it wouldn’t have been great if Clinton had won either – she was no angel or genius and the best she had to offer was continued stagnation, division, sanctimony and decline. Trump can’t be a dictator though, and there will be plenty of smart people around him who understand the world far better than him and will advise him, while both houses will act as a secure defense against the worst ideas getting through. On the other hand, with a Republican majority in both houses, he will be able to push through those policies that do hold water. So there will be changes, but only changes that appeal to enough elected representatives, so panic isn’t justified, even if shock and terror are understandable in the circumstances.

Let’s take a glass half full view of the new situation, while acknowledging that there are a few bits of cork in the wine too.

Many people that didn’t live on the coast have felt disenfranchised by government in the last terms. In some of the states in between, nearly two thirds of people voted for someone they feel finally gives them hope. hope is a powerful emotion, it can energize and reinvigorate people who have felt left out. Don’t underestimate the potential that brings for economic growth if harnessed well.

Sure, there are also those who have been terrified by media who have endlessly portrayed Trump as some sort of nouveau Hitler who will try to evict or oppress every black, Latino, Hispanic or Middle Eastern. He is very likely to try to limit future economic migration and to put more checks on who enters from jihadic regions, but it is plain silly to expect he would be able to go further than that even if he wanted to, and actually no evidence that he even wants to. Minorities will become far less scared as they discover that their lives will carry on much as before, and nobody tries to make them leave or lock them up. I doubt that any policies will actually target minorities negatively except to restrict immigration to those who bring more benefits than threats.

Russia is happy that he has won. That is a good thing. The cold war just became less cold, the Satan missiles will be stood down, the chance of a nuclear war just dropped significantly and all our life expectancies just increased. Russians will feel a lot less scared and Putin will be less of a problem. Don’t forget how the situation between Russia and the USA improved during Reagan’s term, one of the thickest people ever to be POTUS, but with the right kind of personality. Obama’s Nobel peace prize will be remembered as one of the biggest misjudgments in history. Hillary’s and Obama’s foreign policies have made the world a great deal more dangerous over the last eight years and Hillary would have made Russia even more edgy, the chance of extinction significant, Iran even more empowered, the refugee crisis even greater, and social stress due to migration amplified. In a choice of two evils, Trump’s version is by far the safer.

1984 has come a great deal closer to reality over the last eight years too. Politically correct sanctimony has taken the place of religion and a Spanish Inquisition has oppressed anyone who doesn’t acknowledge and worship the New Truth. I’ve written plenty on 1984 before and won’t repeat it all here, but consider how the mainstream media has handled this election, amplifying every Trump fault while whitewashing Clinton’s. Unbiased is not a word I could use of today’s MSM. one-sidedness and severe distortion of the truth would be much more appropriate descriptions. Trump made some very sexist remarks, but the media made far more of those than Bill’s actual use of the Oval Office. Hillary didn’t leave Bill over that, so how can she be quite so upset at a sexist remark by someone else? The stench of sanctimony has penetrated every area of the electoral campaign, and indeed every area of values debate in recent years. Is being sexist really as bad as being corrupt or putting personal gain ahead of national interests? Accusations of Clinton corruption and mishandling of highly classified information were invariably approached as if exposing them was a greater crime than the acts themselves. I never saw any proper exploration of these in the MSM away from right-wing outlets such as Breitbart. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and even Google have also been highly polluted by this sanctimony that distorts greatly the data and views people are exposed to, filtering articles and views that don’t comply with their value sets, creating bubbles of groupthink, amplifying tribal forces and increasing division, forcing thick wedges between left and right. The anger between the left and right tribes has become dangerous over the last terms. Hillary might have said she wants unity and that we’re stronger together, that it is Hillary love versus Trump hate, but the evidence points elsewhere, with those who didn’t agree with her apparently being odious intolerable racists, uneducated moronic bigots. A PC 1984 is already close and would have become rapidly closer in a Hillary term.

The social media backlash is already fierce, the anti-Trump protests will be many and often. Sanctimony is a very powerful emotion and it will not go away any time soon. Every policy decision will be met by self-righteous indignation. The split between the holy, progressive, evolved, civilized left and the deplorable, contemptible, ignorant, uneducated, bigoted, omniphobic, Neanderthal right will grow, but it would have grown too under Hillary. California is sanctimony HQ and has oft mentioned that it would like to consider independence again. That day just came closer. I’ve been of the half-baked view that a dual democracy would actually be a better idea,with people sharing the same geography under different governance, and that would be more likely to disperse inter-tribe conflict, but an independent California might get better support in the real world.

The environment will benefit now too. Hillary would have backed more of the same CO2 panic measures such as carbon offset schemes that damage the environment by draining peat bogs and felling forests to plant palm oil plantations, displacing powerless tribes to make space, converting food crops into biofuel and inflating food prices beyond the ability of the world’s poor to pay, planting wind turbines that kill birds and bats and cause bogs to dry out, actually increasing CO2 output. Very many ‘green’ ideas actually harm the environment and the poor. Very few actually work as intended. Without a doubt, the environment will be better off without the greens in control. Environmental science has been polluted so badly that it has severely damaged the reputation of science as a whole over the last few years. New York is not under water, the polar ice caps have not vanished yet, a billion people have not actually been forced from their homes by the sea. Much of the latest science suggests we may well be seeing a prolonged period of cooling from 2020 due to strong reduction in solar activity combined with long period ocean cycles. Severely damaging the economy, increasing prices and taxes and harming poor people disproportionately to solve a problem that actually isn’t anywhere near as bad as the alarmist have suggested, that has been postponed a few decades and will be made irrelevant after that by new technology emerging over those decades is really not a good idea, especially if those natural cycles make the opposite trend more of an issue during that period. Again, we’d be far better off without any of that anti-CO2 policy.

Iran is upset by the Trump victory. That’s good. Iran was becoming rather too enthusiastic about its newfound power in the region. It would be a far greater threat with the nukes it would make in coming years thanks to Obama and Clinton. Another route to WW3 may well just have started to close. Hamas will feel less enthusiastic too. Different policy in that whole unstable region is needed, ongoing stupidity is not. Preventing an influx of jihadists hiding in migrant flows seems a better strategy than inviting more in by reckless virtue signalling. Those in need can still be helped, refugee camps can still offer protection. American kids have more chance now to sleep safely in their beds rather than become victims of jihad. Cultural conflicts between Islamic migrants that refuse to integrate and Americans with Western values will obviously be lower if there are fewer migrants too.

Finally, the UK will benefit too. Instead of a President determined to make sure the UK ‘goes to the back of the queue’ in trade negotiations, we will have one who is more likely to treat the UK well than the EU. Trump recognizes the bond between the UK and the USA far better than Clinton.

So, it ain’t all bad. Sure, you’ve got a buffoon for President, but you’ve had that before and you survived just fine. We nearly got Boris as our PM, so we almost know how you feel. It could have been worse and really, with all your checks and balances, I don’t think it will be all that bad..

The glass is half full, with a few bits of cork.

New book: Society Tomorrow

It’s been a while since my last blog. That’s because I’ve been writing another book, my 8th so far. Not the one I was doing on future fashion, which went on the back burner for a while, I’ve only written a third of that one, unless I put it out as a very short book.

This one follows on from You Tomorrow and is called Society Tomorrow, 20% shorter at 90,000 words. It is ready to publish now, so I’m just waiting for feedback from a few people before hitting the button.

Here’s the introduction:

The one thing that we all share is that we will get older over the next few decades. Rapid change affects everyone, but older people don’t always feel the same effects as younger people, and even if we keep up easily today, some of us may find it harder tomorrow. Society will change, in its demographic and ethnic makeup, its values, its structure. We will live very differently. New stresses will come from both changing society and changing technology, but there is no real cause for pessimism. Many things will get better for older people too. We are certainly not heading towards utopia, but the overall quality of life for our ageing population will be significantly better in the future than it is today. In fact, most of the problems ahead are related to quality of life issues in society as a whole, and simply reflect the fact that if you don’t have to worry as much about poor health or poverty, something else will still occupy your mind.

This book follows on from 2013’s You Tomorrow, which is a guide to future life as an individual. It also slightly overlaps my 2013 book Total Sustainability which looks in part at future economic and social issues as part of achieving sustainability too. Rather than replicating topics, this book updates or omits them if they have already been addressed in those two companion books. As a general theme, it looks at wider society and the bigger picture, drawing out implications for both individuals and for society as a whole to deal with. There are plenty to pick from.

If there is one theme that plays through the whole book, it is a strong warning of the problem of increasing polarisation between people of left and right political persuasion. The political centre is being eroded quickly at the moment throughout the West, but alarmingly this does not seem so much to be a passing phase as a longer term trend. With all the potential benefits from future technology, we risk undermining the very fabric of our society. I remain optimistic because it can only be a matter of time before sense prevails and the trend reverses. One day the relative harmony of living peacefully side by side with those with whom we disagree will be restored, by future leaders of higher quality than those we have today.

Otherwise, whereas people used to tolerate each other’s differences, I fear that this increasing intolerance of those who don’t share the same values could lead to conflict if we don’t address it adequately. That intolerance currently manifests itself in increasing authoritarianism, surveillance, and an insidious creep towards George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The worst offenders seem to be our young people, with students seemingly proud of trying to ostracise anyone who dares agree with what they think is correct. Being students, their views hold many self-contradictions and clear lack of thought, but they appear to be building walls to keep any attempt at different thought away.

Altogether, this increasing divide, built largely from sanctimony, is a very dangerous trend, and will take time to reverse even when it is addressed. At the moment, it is still worsening rapidly.

So we face significant dangers, mostly self-inflicted, but we also have hope. The future offers wonderful potential for health, happiness, peace, prosperity. As I address the significant problems lying ahead, I never lose my optimism that they are soluble, but if we are to solve problems, we must first recognize them for what they are and muster the willingness to deal with them. On the current balance of forces, even if we avoid outright civil war, the future looks very much like a gilded cage. We must not ignore the threats. We must acknowledge them, and deal with them.

Then we can all reap the rich rewards the future has to offer.

It will be out soon.

Brexit, Futurizon’s analysis

The EU has a population of around 500M. These people differ enormously but agree to cooperate for mutual benefit. Being able to trade more easily with other countries is obviously a good idea, and for that reason the UK joined the Common Market. A common market may work better if there are commonly agreed standards so that buyers can be sure of the quality of what they are buying. Some regulations and associated administration align well with seamless running of a common market.

However, since the UK joined the Common market, it has evolved into a very different entity. Rather than just regulating easy trade, it has gone in baby steps so that noone would notice far beyond any interpretation of a free trade zone, firstly into a ‘European Economic Community’ and now the European Union. The EU now is intended by many of its leaders and executors to become a single country, a United States of Europe. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to that, but not all of us want to go that way. Now we will have a vote on it. Do we want to stay in the EU, with all of its current issues, knowing what it is intended to become, or to leave, re-asserting our own sovereignty, making our own laws and renegotiating trade agreements, controlling our own future?

The EU is made up of very different countries. We have the Northern set, with high wealth, a strong work ethic, relatively low corruption, strong regard for law and order, and a high welfare net. We have the Eastern European countries, with lower wealth but in some cases more vibrant populations, aspiring, and determined to self-improve. And we have Southern European, Mediterranean set, aligned with a lower work ethic, a gentler pace of life, but more affected by corruption and in some cases higher enthusiasm to avoid taxes. Incompatibility between the interests of these three zones has often featured in the Euro collapse.

Trade

A Brexit UK  would have to renegotiate terms of trade with the EU. We sell the EU far less than we buy from them, so it is in the EU’s interest to give us favorable terms.

Inside the EU, we cannot negotiate terms of trade with non-EU countries, but those are the fastest growing markets. The EU is the least well performing major trading block in the world. It is in the UK’s interest to be free to pursue larger and faster-growing non-EU markets without EU-imposed restraints.

Will Britain be better off in the EU as Cameron says? Very probably not. We would keep favorable trade with a shrinking EU, and gain trade with a faster expanding rest-of-the-world.

Trade would continue. I would still work for EU companies, and they would still gain just as much by choosing me over another. You’d still be able to buy French cheese or wine, or a German car,  or Swedish furniture, they won’t suddenly refuse to sell it to you. They will fight with fierce competition for your business from other regions, and offer you fair reciprocation, so there is no reason to fear unbalanced trade sanctions. As far as trade balance goes, the UK has most of the aces in this game.

Free movement of people

Free movement of people coupled to differences in standard of living encourages people to leave countries with low pay and welfare and migrate to others with better pay and welfare. Countries are not permitted to choose who enters, so it may be the top engineers or brain surgeons that all countries want, or people who won’t contribute much, make big demands on expensive services such as education and health and to send generous welfare payments home.

The 7 year period where we can restrict in-work benefits that Cameron has negotiated would mean that if he can show that the UK is under undue stress, then we can disallow benefits to future immigrants in their first year of entry, increasing them to maximum over the next 3 years. The savings estimated for this is around £30M, or less than 45p for each UK citizen. Cameron might therefore have saved you 45p, if he can argue that it would otherwise cause too much stress. Bigger savings would only occur if potential EU migrants decide that a year’s restriction on in-work benefits is too big a problem and prevents their migration, thereby saving their impacts on health, education and other  welfare. I don’t believe that will be the norm. I would expect virtually no impact from this headline win in his negotiations.

Free movement of people is not a requirement for free trade. They are quite separate issues. It is perfectly possible to agree amicable terms of trade with another nation without allowing citizens to relocate freely between them. A Brexit UK that negotiates trade agreements with the EU and other trading blocks would still be able to use an Australian-style points system to decide who to admit and who to reject, whether from the EU or anywhere else. The UK still has borders where passports are required for entry, since it was not part of Schengen, but it is nevertheless true that once a person is given any EU passport, they are able to travel and live here at will. Some of the migrants currently entering the EU are the sort of migrants everyone would welcome, but some are terrorists, some are criminals, some are religious extremists and a huge problem is that nobody knows which are which, so many undesirables will be given EU residence and passports.

Brexit UK would be far less vulnerable to entry by unsavory migrants and terrorists who have somehow managed to be accepted in any other EU country. It would be able to attract the best people and fill the needs of our industries, but to refuse entry to those who would be an overall strain on our systems.

Security

Cameron says we will be safer in the EU. That is an insult to our intelligence.

The world is a dangerous place right now. North Korea, Russia, the Middle East and North Africa are already major threats to peace, and China may become a security threat. The UK is a leading member of NATO, which has been the backbone of our defense for decades. Brexit UK would remain in NATO. The creation and success of NATO is the main reason that European countries live in peace.

The EU provides little additional security benefit, other than streamlining working of police forces to make catching criminals easier. Extreme ongoing delays in dealing with the migrant problem instead demonstrate total EU incompetence in the face of a security threat.

The EU creates some severe security risks. It has been argued by some that the EU’s attempt to capture the Ukraine as a part of the EU was a significant factor in causing the problems we see there now. Given the overall threat from that and its encouragement to Putin to expand elsewhere, it is very hard to see how one could believe the EU has made us more secure.

By its failure to stem the migrant crisis, and with Angela Merkel almost single-handedly causing it by encouraging them to take the risks to come, the EU has led to thousands of migrants dying at sea, and millions of unknown migrants to enter, some having deliberately discarded their identification, others using fake identification, during a period in which ISIS have stated their aim to smuggle as many terrorists into Europe as possible among the migrants. Many EU countries are now experiencing severe internal problems caused by migrants, such as massive increases in rape, sexual assaults, violence, intimidation, antisemitic attacks and other crime. By contrast, the UK’s policy is to help refugees close to their origin and to carefully select those most in need of resettlement to be allowed to come to the UK. By that policy, resources are focused on those most in need, migration is discouraged, many lives are saved and the UK is protected at least in the short term from the more unsavory migrants until they obtain EU identities.

A Brexit UK would still be able to help refugees in exactly the same ways but by being properly in control of our borders, reduce the risk of terrorists and criminals entering with EU identities. If we remain, undesirables will be able to come here at will once they obtain an EU identity.

Cameron knows all of this, as do his ministers. To claim that the UK is safer in Europe while knowing the opposite is true is simply lying. Brexit UK would be safer and more secure.

UK Relevance

If any proof were needed that the UK has very little influence in the EU, then Cameron just provided it. He went to beg for a few very minor changes to the UK’s position and got very little of even that. He is certainly no Thatcher. Two world wars failed to make Germany controller of Europe. By many tiny incremental changes that were never enough to make people worry, today’s EU is de-facto a German dictatorship. As perfectly illustrated by the migrant crisis, the Germans often seem to run the EU as their own show, sometimes allowing their French allies to have some input, with other countries generally doing as they are told. While Cameron has to beg for changes to migrant regulations, Germany unilaterally changes their polices without consultation. Germany shouts and expects everyone else to do as they command.

The EU as a whole is the last well performing of any trading block, and unilaterally handicaps its industries by environmental regulations and taxes. It has reducing military influence as China, Russia and the USA still dominate worldwide events.

Voter say varies enormously between countries too. Numbers of seat in Brussels are allocated disproportionately to smaller countries. Being outside of the Eurozone also reduces the UK’s say. The best the UK can ever hope for if we remain is to have an ever-decreasing say in a rapidly diminishing Europe.

Brexit UK will be a small player in a large world, but we have always shown strength and influence  well above our numbers in every domain, economic, cultural, technological and political, and we would do so outside the EU. The UK could grow as the EU declines. Remaining will ensure decreasing worldwide relevance.

Sovereignty

Ever closer union is a headline aim of the EU. It wants to become a Unites States of Europe. It almost certainly will in due course. The process will take several more decades, slowed further by all its self-inflicted problems. A weak EU superstate will gradually emerge onto a much stronger world stage. An EU UK would be just one small region of that. We would be irrelevant, doing as we are told by un-elected bureaucrats from other countries, having a say only on unimportant local issues. Taxed heavily to subsidise other regions, without much representation at all.

Brexit UK would regain its sovereignty. It would make its own decisions, its own alliances, its own place in the world. There can be no pretense that we would ever again have the status once enjoyed by the British Empire, but we have enough national character to play our part well.

Independence and freedom are goals worth fighting for. Our leaders surrendered much over the last few decades, and our country has suffered the consequences. We once led the world, now our EU partners consider us mostly a nuisance. We still command some respect in the world, but it is diminishing year on year as our ability to self-govern is siphoned away. It is time to reclaim our freedom and to become a leader once more.

The Scots might argue for another referendum to leave. They are fortunate indeed that the last one failed, given what has happened to oil prices since. They would now be arguing over Greek style budgets. No canny Scot would vote to leave the UK next time knowing it would mean certain decline in standard of living.

I have tried to understand the mindset that says that a United States of Europe is a good idea. I don’t doubt that many people believe in it, and some of them for well-argued reasons. I have no doubt that we will see some of them articulate its merits during coming months, and I will listen to them, and in the unlikely event that they’ve got a convincing argument, I’ll change my mind. Until then, I can’t see what we can achieve all forced into a single country that we cant achieve by separate countries cooperating.

Islamification

Islamification needs a mention in its won right since it is a major challenge for Europe now and for several decades to come, specially since Europe otherwise was becoming far more secular. The EU intends to absorb Turkey in due course, an Islamic country. The Islamic minority in other countries in Europe will grow greatly, as millions of Muslims already in the EU before the migrant crisis are joined by the millions of migrants already arrived, on the way or coming later, and then later joined by their families. Much higher birth rates feature in the Islamic community than ‘native Europeans’. Even leaving aside terrorist threats from extremist subgroups, many attitude surveys have shown that most Muslims do not consider their culture compatible with western values. Even peaceful Islamification already creates significant tensions right across the EU, and that will increase as numbers increase. Far worse of course, Islamic extremism and activism will also increase in line with numbers, especially as growing communities become more emboldened. Resurgence of far right parties claiming to fight back against Islamification is already evident and will undoubtedly worsen. The two will eventually very likely be in conflict. I have written many times comparing Islamic extremism and its response with the IRA problem in Belfast where I grew up. Islamification will be a very significant problem in the EU in coming years. Having better control of our borders won’t stop it also affecting the UK, where I calculate it could potentially become 13 times worse than the IRA troubles give the right stimulus, but it will help prevent it from getting far worse.

Brexit UK will still have a significant problem from Islamic terrorism, but an EU UK will have a far worse one.

If Brexit, then what?

The Common Market no longer exists. It was a good idea and it could exist again. In fact, watching current fragmentation of the EU, with fences being erected, borders closed, arguments over migrants becoming fiercer, and watching the slow car crash collapse of the Euro, there is every chance that European union as it is today could collapse. If Britain leaves, some other countries will look at having such freedom again. It is very likely that Brexit could stimulate partial evaporation of the EU, and an end to the dream of a united States of Europe. Britain could form alliances with other countries leaving to establish a proper common market, determined to be no more than a common market.

The EU is already creaking, pushed by several forces. Brexit could be the end of a nightmare, and the resurgence of the dream of a Common Market of sovereign states.

If we stay, that collapse might happen anyway. The seeds of doubt have been planted, watered and much fertilizer will be poured on them in next months and years. The EU is weak and will get weaker. It may survive and the nightmare United States of Europe might happen. Britain staying might even encourage further progress towards that goal. But even if Brexit fails, there is still every reason to expect that the nightmare might end all on its own, that others will realize that what we all actually want is a Common Market, not all the other stuff.

The greatest threat to human well-being? Sanctimony

Nuclear war became a tiny bit more feasible with yesterday’s rocket launch by North Korea, and it remains the biggest existential risk we face today. We could also be hit by a massive asteroid unexpectedly deflected out of its expected orbit, or a massive solar flare could take out our electronics, or hostile aliens might invade. Life as we know it could be very severely disrupted or even ended. Shit happens, but the probability of any one of these happening in a given year is low, so life carries on.

Far bigger risks exist that won’t kill everyone but will reduce quality of life in coming years, even as technology development theoretically enables an almost utopian existence. In spite of a wide range of complex interactions, the vast majority of these quality of life risks can ultimately be traced back to the same thing, the biggest single threat to human well-being. That thing is sanctimony.

Sanctimony is pretended holiness, and very often accompanied by hypocrisy:

‘Pretended, affected, or hypocritical religious devotion, righteousness, etc.’

‘Righteousness accompanied by an unwarranted attitude of moral or social superiority; smug or hypocritical righteousness.’

I first listed ’21st Century Piety’ as a big future problem in my World Futures Society conference presentation in 2000. The talk was called ‘the future of sex, politics and religion’ and I recognized that although Christianity was declining in the West, the religious bit of human nature certainly wasn’t going away and I identified the following as some of the more obvious 21st century religion substitutes:

Many others have also inferred pseudo-religious motivations in these. It is certainly possible to subscribe to any of these without being sanctimonious, but when they become religion substitutes, they do very often go together.

The need to feel a sense of inner worth is a fundamental part of human nature. Translating to Maslow’s insights, self-actualizing it leads to a desire to occupy the moral high ground, while coupling it to security, social belonging and status leads to very strong reinforcement loops that become sanctimony. The traits in my diagram often lead people to believe they are genuinely better than those who do not share them. That reinforced belief in their moral superiority gives them a further belief in their right to impose compliance on others.

No big surprise here. We see this every day now. Holier-than-thou people lecture us from every angle, they use social networks to gang up on non-compliers, they lobby to have laws passed to lock in their beliefs, reward their compliant status and punish any infidels.

We even have familiar phrases to describe everyday consequences of this 21st century piety, this sanctimony such as ‘political correctness gone mad’ and ‘virtue signalling’.

My blogs often pick up on the dangers of sanctimony. It is sanctimony that is pushing us hard towards 1984. It is sanctimony that threatens to result in a Great Western War. Sanctimony is the primary force driving acceptance of millions of migrants without first making sure of each one’s identity, security threat potential or social compatibility with western values while condemning anyone who questions this recklessness. The achievements of this sanctimony are responsible for the rise of the far right opposition, potential conflict across Europe, closing down of Schengen and the raising of borders and tensions. Sanctimony may well prove the force that kills the EU. Sanctimony is the force increasing the divide between left and right in the USA and Europe. Sanctimony is the driving force behind the EU’s attempt to absorb the Ukraine, resulting in conflict with Russia. Sanctimony is reducing the pleasures of eating by legislating, taxing, removing or otherwise reducing things not deemed holy enough by the bishops of food, and their Pope Jamie Oliver. Sanctimony drives the major flaws and corruptions in climate science. Sanctimony forces the poorest people from their homes and drives up the cost of their food so that western environmentalists can have their carbon reductions. Sanctimony chops down the rainforests and drains peat bogs to make biofuels. Sanctimony plants solar panels on prime agricultural land while people starve. Sanctimony forces you via speed cameras to drive far slower than your ability allows, to get less pleasure from driving and still to feel guilty about it. Sanctimony causes increased loneliness and isolation for those not holy enough. Sanctimony censors and destroys knowledge, both historical and future. Sanctimony impedes cultural and social development. Sanctimony destroys personal liberty. Sanctimony makes the future into a gilded cage.

Nuclear war might kill you but probably won’t. Sanctimony is already killing many people and destroying many lives. It is making your life more difficult, more stressful, more problematic, less enjoyable, and it is just warming up. 21st Century piety may be a religion substitute, but sanctimony makes its converts show every bit as much zeal as the Spanish Inquisition. And no-one is safe because values don’t stay the same for long, but change on a random walk:

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/an-almost-random-walk-for-civilisation/

However holy you may think you are today, you will likely be an outcast before you get old, as I argued in

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/morality-inversion-you-will-be-an-outcast-before-youre-old/

Sanctimony is far and away the greatest threat to human well-being. It has no permanent friends. It rewards someone on the moral high ground today, and burns them on a stake tomorrow.

 

 

Inspired by the Doomsday Clock, the 1984 clock is at July 1st 1983

The Doomsday clock was recently re-assessed and stays at 23.57. See http://thebulletin.org/timeline

I have occasionally written or ranted about 1984. The last weeks have taken us a little closer to Orwell’s dystopian future. So, even though we are long past 1984, the basket of concepts it introduces is well established in common culture.

The doomsday committee set far too pessimistic a time. Nuclear war and a few other risks are significant threats, and extinction level events are possible, but they are far from likely. My own estimate puts the combined risk from all threats growing to around 2% by about 2050. That is quite pessimistic enough I think, but surely that would give us reason to act, but doesn’t justify the level of urgency that extinction is happening any minute now. 11pm would have been quite enough to be a wake-up call but not enough to look like doom-mongering.

So I won’t make the same mistake with my 1984 clock. Before we start working out the time, we need to identify those ideas from 1984 that will be used. My choice would be:

Hijacking or perversion of language to limit debate and constrain it to those views considered acceptable

Use of language while reporting news of events or facts that omits, conceals, hides, distorts or otherwise impedes clear vision of inconvenient aspects of the truth while emphasizing those events, views or aspects that align with acceptable views

Hijacking or control of the media to emphasize acceptable views and block unacceptable ones

Making laws or selecting judiciary according to their individual views to achieve a bias

Blocking of views considered unacceptable or inconvenient by legal or procedural means

Imposing maximum surveillance, via state, social or private enterprises

Encouraging people to police their contacts to expose those holding or expressing inconvenient or unacceptable views

Shaming of those who express unacceptable views as widely as possible

Imposing extreme sanctions such as loss of job or liberty on those expressing unacceptable views

That’s enough to be going on with. Already, you should recognize many instances of each of these flags being raised in recent times. If you don’t follow the news, then I can assist you by highlighting a few instances, some as recent as this week. Please note that in this blog, I am not siding for or against any issue in the following text, I am just considering whether there is evidence of 1984. I make my views on the various issue very clear when I write blogs about those issues.

The Guardian has just decided to bar comments on any articles about race, Muslims, migrants or immigration. It is easy to see why they have done so even if I disagree with such a policy, but nonetheless it is a foundation stone in their 1984 wall.

Again on the migrant theme, which is a very rich seam for 1984 evidence, Denmark, Germany and Sweden have all attempted to censor  news of the involvement of migrants or Muslims in many recent attacks. Further back in time, the UK has had problems with police allowing child abuse to continue rather than address it because of the racial/religious origins of the culprits.

Choice of language by the media has deliberately conflated ‘migrants’ with ‘refugees’, conflated desperation  to escape violent oppression with searching for a wealthier life, and excessively biased coverage towards those events that solicit sympathy with migrants.

Moving to racism, Oriel College has just had an extremely embarrassing climb-down from considering removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, because he is considered racist by today’s standards by some students. Attempting to censor history is 1984-ish but so is the fact that involvement of the campaign instigators in their own anti-white racism such as links to the Black Supremacy movement has been largely concealed.

Attempted hijacking of language by the black community is evident in the recent enforcement of the phrase ‘people of color’, and illogical and highly manufactured simultaneous offence at use of the term ‘colored’. The rules only apply to white commentators, so it could be considered a black supremacy power struggle rather than an attempt to deal with any actual anti-black racism. Meanwhile, here in the UK, ‘black’ and ‘people of color’ seem both to be in equally common use so far.

David Cameron and some ministers have this week accused Oxford University of racism because it accepts too few black students. A range of potential causes were officially suggested but none include any criticism of the black community such as cultural issues that devalue educational achievement. In the same sentence, Cameron implied that it necessarily racist that a higher proportion of blacks are in prison. There was no mention that this could be caused by different crime incidence, as is quickly learned by inspection of official government statistics. This 1984-style distortion of the truth by marketing spin is one of Cameron’s most dominant characteristics.

Those statistics are inconvenient and ignoring them is 1984-ish already, but further 1984 evidence is that some statistics that show certain communities in a bad light are no longer collected.

Europe is another are where 1984-style operations are in vogue. Wild exaggeration of the benefits of staying in and extreme warnings of the dangers of leaving dominate most government output and media coverage. Even the initial decision to word the referendum question with a yes and no answer to capitalise on the well-known preference for voting yes is an abuse of language, but that at least was spotted early and the referendum question has been reworded with less bias, though ‘remain’ can still be considered a more positive word than ‘leave’ and remain still takes the first place on the voting slip, so it is still biased in favor of staying in the EU.

Gender is another area where language hijacking is becoming a key weapon. Attempts to force use of the terms ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ accompany attempts to pretend that the transgender community is far larger than reality. Creation of the term ‘transphobic’ clearly attempts to build on the huge success of the gay equality movement’s use of the term homophobic. This provides an easy weapon to use against anyone who doesn’t fully back all of the transgender community’s demands. Very 1984. As recently pointed out by Melanie Phillips, UK government response to such demands has been very politically correct, and will needlessly magnify the numbers experiencing gender dysphoria, but being accompanied by a thorough lack of understanding of the trans community, will very likely make things worse for many genuine transgender people.

As for surveillance, shaming, career destruction etc., we all see how well Twitter fills that role all by itself. Other media and the law add to that, but social media backlash is already a massive force even without official additions.

Climate change has even become a brick in the 1984 wall. Many media outlets censor views from scientists that don’t agree that doom caused by human emissions of CO2 is imminent. The language used, with words such as ‘denier’ are similarly evidence of 1984 influence.

Enough examples. If you look for them, you’ll soon spot them every day.

What time to set out clock then? I think we already see a large momentum towards 1984, with the rate of incidents of new policies pushing that direction increasing rapidly. A lot of pieces are already in place, though some need shaped or cemented. We are not there yet though, and we still have some freedom of expression, still escape being locked up for saying the wrong thing unless it is extreme. We don’t quite have the thought police, or even ID cards yet. I think we are close, but not so close we can’t recover. Let’s start with a comfortable enough margin so that movement in either direction can be taken account of in future assessments. We are getting close though, so I don’t want too big a margin. 6 month might be a nice compromise, then we can watch as it gets every closer without the next piece of evidence taking us all the way.

The 1984 clock is at July 1st 1983.

 

State of the world in 2050

Some things are getting better, some worse. 2050 will be neither dystopian nor utopian. A balance of good and bad not unlike today, but with different goods and bads, and slightly better overall. More detail? Okay, for most of my followers, this will mostly collate things you may know already, but there’s no harm in a refresher Futures 101.

Health

We will have cost-effective and widespread cures or control for most cancers, heart disease, diabetes, dementia and most other killers. Quality-of-life diseases such as arthritis will also be controllable or curable. People will live longer and remain healthier for longer, with an accelerated decline at the end.

On the bad side, new diseases will exist, including mutated antibiotic-resistant versions of existing ones. There will still be occasional natural flu mutations and other viruses, and there will still be others arising from contacts between people and other animals that are more easily spread due to increased population, urbanization and better mobility. Some previously rare diseases will become big problems due to urbanization and mobility. Urbanization will be a challenge.

However, diagnostics will be faster and better, we will no longer be so reliant on antibiotics to fight back, and sterilisation techniques for hospitals will be much improved. So even with greater challenges, we will be able to cope fine most of the time with occasional headlines from epidemics.

A darker side is the increasing prospect for bio-terrorism, with man-made viruses deliberately designed to be highly lethal, very contagious and to withstand most conventional defenses, optimized for maximum and rapid spread by harnessing mobility and urbanization. With pretty good control or defense against most natural threats, this may well be the biggest cause of mass deaths in 2050. Bio-warfare is far less likely.

Utilizing other techs, these bio-terrorist viruses could be deployed by swarms of tiny drones that would be hard to spot until too late, and of course these could also be used with chemical weapons such as use of nerve gas. Another tech-based health threat is nanotechnology devices designed to invade the body, damage of destroy systems or even control the brain. It is easy to detect and shoot down macro-scale deployment weapons such as missiles or large drones but far harder to defend against tiny devices such as midge-sized drones or nanotech devices.

The overall conclusion on health is that people will mostly experience much improved lives with good health, long life and a rapid end. A relatively few (but very conspicuous) people will fall victim to terrorist attacks, made far more feasible and effective by changing technology and demographics.

Loneliness

An often-overlooked benefit of increasing longevity is the extending multi-generational family. It will be commonplace to have great grandparents and great-great grandparents. With improved health until near their end, these older people will be seen more as welcome and less as a burden. This advantage will be partly offset by increasing global mobility, so families are more likely to be geographically dispersed.

Not everyone will have close family to enjoy and to support them. Loneliness is increasing even as we get busier, fuller lives. Social inclusion depends on a number of factors, and some of those at least will improve. Public transport that depends on an elderly person walking 15 minutes to a bus stop where they have to wait ages in the rain and wind for a bus on which they are very likely to catch a disease from another passenger is really not fit for purpose. Such primitive and unsuitable systems will be replaced in the next decades by far more socially inclusive self-driving cars. Fleets of these will replace buses and taxis. They will pick people up from their homes and take them all the way to where they need to go, then take them home when needed. As well as being very low cost and very environmentally friendly, they will also have almost zero accident rates and provide fast journey times thanks to very low congestion. Best of all, they will bring easier social inclusion to everyone by removing the barriers of difficult, slow, expensive and tedious journeys. It will be far easier for a lonely person to get out and enjoy cultural activity with other people.

More intuitive social networking, coupled to augmented and virtual reality environments in which to socialize will also mean easier contact even without going anywhere. AI will be better at finding suitable companions and lovers for those who need assistance.

Even so, some people will not benefit and will remain lonely due to other factors such as poor mental health, lack of social skills, or geographic isolation. They still do not need to be alone. 2050 will also feature large numbers of robots and AIs, and although these might not be quite so valuable to some as other human contact, they will be a pretty good substitute. Although many will be functional, cheap and simply fit for purpose, those designed for companionship or home support functions will very probably look human and behave human. They will have good intellectual and emotional skills and will be able to act as a very smart executive assistant as well as domestic servant and as a personal doctor and nurse, even as a sex partner if needed.

It would be too optimistic to say we will eradicate loneliness by 2050 but we can certainly make a big dent in it.

Poverty

Technology progress will greatly increase the size of the global economy. Even with the odd recession our children will be far richer than our parents. It is reasonable to expect the total economy to be 2.5 times bigger than today’s by 2050. That just assumes an average growth of about 2.5% which I think is a reasonable estimate given that technology benefits are accelerating rather than slowing even in spite of recent recession.

While we define poverty level as a percentage of average income, we can guarantee poverty will remain even if everyone lived like royalty. If average income were a million dollars per year, 60% of that would make you rich by any sensible definition but would still qualify as poverty by the ludicrous definition based on relative income used in the UK and some other countries. At some point we need to stop calling people poor if they can afford healthy food, pay everyday bills, buy decent clothes, have a decent roof over their heads and have an occasional holiday. With the global economy improving so much and so fast, and with people having far better access to markets via networks, it will be far easier for people everywhere to earn enough to live comfortably.

In most countries, welfare will be able to provide for those who can’t easily look after themselves at a decent level. Ongoing progress of globalization of compassion that we see today will likely make a global welfare net by 2050. Everyone won’t be rich, and some won’t even be very comfortable, but I believe absolute poverty will be eliminated in most countries, and we can ensure that it will be possible for most people to live in dignity. I think the means, motive and opportunity will make that happen, but it won’t reach everyone. Some people will live under dysfunctional governments that prevent their people having access to support that would otherwise be available to them. Hopefully not many. Absolute poverty by 2050 won’t be history but it will be rare.

In most developed countries, the more generous welfare net might extend to providing a ‘citizen wage’ for everyone, and the level of that could be the same as average wage is today. No-one need be poor in 2050.

Environment

The environment will be in good shape in 2050. I have no sympathy with doom mongers who predict otherwise. As our wealth increases, we tend to look after the environment better. As technology improves, we will achieve a far higher standards of living while looking after the environment. Better mining techniques will allow more reserves to become economic, we will need less resource to do the same job better, reuse and recycling will make more use of the same material.

Short term nightmares such as China’s urban pollution levels will be history by 2050. Energy supply is one of the big contributors to pollution today, but by 2050, combinations of shale gas, nuclear energy (uranium and thorium), fusion and solar energy will make up the vast bulk of energy supply. Oil and unprocessed coal will mostly be left in the ground, though bacterial conversion of coal into gas may well be used. Oil that isn’t extracted by 2030 will be left there, too expensive compared to making the equivalent energy by other means. Conventional nuclear energy will also be on its way to being phased out due to cost. Energy from fusion will only be starting to come on stream everywhere but solar energy will be cheap to harvest and high-tech cabling will enable its easier distribution from sunny areas to where it is needed.

It isn’t too much to expect of future governments that they should be able to negotiate that energy should be grown in deserts, and food crops grown on fertile land. We should not use fertile land to place solar panels, nor should we grow crops to convert to bio-fuel when there is plenty of sunny desert of little value otherwise on which to place solar panels.

With proper stewardship of agricultural land, together with various other food production technologies such as hydroponics, vertical farms and a lot of meat production via tissue culturing, there will be more food per capita than today even with a larger global population. In fact, with a surplus of agricultural land, some might well be returned to nature.

In forests and other ecosystems, technology will also help enormously in monitoring eco-health, and technologies such as genetic modification might be used to improve viability of some specie otherwise threatened.

Anyone who reads my blog regularly will know that I don’t believe climate change is a significant problem in the 2050 time frame, or even this century. I won’t waste any more words on it here. In fact, if I have to say anything, it is that global cooling is more likely to be a problem than warming.

Food and Water

As I just mentioned in the environment section, we will likely use deserts for energy supply and fertile land for crops. Improving efficiency and density will ensure there is far more capability to produce food than we need. Many people will still eat meat, but some at least will be produced in factories using processes such as tissue culturing. Meat pastes with assorted textures can then be used to create a variety of forms of processed meats. That might even happen in home kitchens using 3D printer technology.

Water supply has often been predicted by futurists as a cause of future wars, but I disagree. I think that progress in desalination is likely to be very rapid now, especially with new materials such as graphene likely to come on stream in bulk.  With easy and cheap desalination, water supply should be adequate everywhere and although there may be arguments over rivers I don’t think the pressures are sufficient by themselves to cause wars.

Privacy and Freedom

In 2016, we’re seeing privacy fighting a losing battle for survival. Government increases surveillance ubiquitously and demands more and more access to data on every aspect of our lives, followed by greater control. It invariably cites the desire to control crime and terrorism as the excuse and as they both increase, that excuse will be used until we have very little privacy left. Advancing technology means that by 2050, it will be fully possible to implement thought police to check what we are thinking, planning, desiring and make sure it conforms to what the authorities have decided is appropriate. Even the supposed servant robots that live with us and the AIs in our machines will keep official watch on us and be obliged to report any misdemeanors. Back doors for the authorities will be in everything. Total surveillance obliterates freedom of thought and expression. If you are not free to think or do something wrong, you are not free.

Freedom is strongly linked to privacy. With laws in place and the means to police them in depth, freedom will be limited to what is permitted. Criminals will still find ways to bypass, evade, masquerade, block and destroy and it hard not to believe that criminals will be free to continue doing what they do, while law-abiding citizens will be kept under strict supervision. Criminals will be free while the rest of us live in a digital open prison.

Some say if you don’t want to do wrong, you have nothing to fear. They are deluded fools. With full access to historic electronic records going back to now or earlier, it is not only today’s laws and guidelines that you need to be compliant with but all the future paths of the random walk of political correctness. Social networks can be fiercer police than the police and we are already discovering that having done something in the distant past under different laws and in different cultures is no defense from the social networking mobs. You may be free technically to do or say something today, but if it will be remembered for ever, and it will be, you also need to check that it will probably always be praiseworthy.

I can’t counterbalance this section with any positives. I’ve side before that with all the benefits we can expect, we will end up with no privacy, no freedom and the future will be a gilded cage.

Science and the arts

Yes they do go together. Science shows us how the universe works and how to do what we want. The arts are what we want to do. Both will flourish. AI will help accelerate science across the board, with a singularity actually spread over decades. There will be human knowledge but a great deal more machine knowledge which is beyond un-enhanced human comprehension. However, we will also have the means to connect our minds to the machine world to enhance our senses and intellect, so enhanced human minds will be the norm for many people, and our top scientists and engineers will understand it. In fact, it isn’t safe to develop in any other way.

Science and technology advances will improve sports too, with exoskeletons, safe drugs, active skin training acceleration and virtual reality immersion.

The arts will also flourish. Self-actualization through the arts will make full use of AI assistance. a feeble idea enhanced by and AI assistant can become a work of art, a masterpiece. Whether it be writing or painting, music or philosophy, people will be able to do more, enjoy more, appreciate more, be more. What’s not to like?

Space

by 2050, space will be a massive business in several industries. Space tourism will include short sub-orbital trips right up to lengthy stays in space hotels, and maybe on the moon for the super-rich at least.

Meanwhile asteroid mining will be under way. Some have predicted that this will end resource problems here on Earth, but firstly, there won’t be any resource problems here on Earth, and secondly and most importantly, it will be far too expensive to bring materials back to Earth, and almost all the resources mined will be used in space, to make space stations, vehicles, energy harvesting platforms, factories and so on. Humans will be expanding into space rapidly.

Some of these factories and vehicles and platforms and stations will be used for science, some for tourism, some for military purposes. Many will be used to offer services such as monitoring, positioning, communications just as today but with greater sophistication and detail.

Space will be more militarized too. We can hope that it will not be used in actual war, but I can’t honestly predict that one way or the other.

 

Migration

If the world around you is increasingly unstable, if people are fighting, if times are very hard and government is oppressive, and if there is a land of milk and honey not far away that you can get to, where you can hope for a much better, more prosperous life, free of tyranny, where instead of being part of the third world, you can be in the rich world, then you may well choose to take the risks and traumas associated with migrating. Increasing population way ahead of increasing wealth in Africa, and a drop in the global need for oil will both increase problems in the Middle East and North Africa. Add to that vicious religious sectarian conflict and a great many people will want to migrate indeed. The pressures on Europe and America to accept several millions more migrants will be intense.

By 2050, these regions will hopefully have ended their squabbles, and some migrants will return to rebuild, but most will remain in their new homes.

Most of these migrants will not assimilate well into their new countries but will mainly form their own communities where they can have a quite separate culture, and they will apply pressure to be allowed to self-govern. A self-impose apartheid will result. It might if we are lucky gradually diffuse as religion gradually becomes less important and the western lifestyle becomes more attractive. However, there is also a reinforcing pressure, with this self-exclusion and geographic isolation resulting in fewer opportunities, less mixing with others and therefore a growing feeling of disadvantage, exclusion and victimization. Tribalism becomes reinforced and opportunities for tension increase. We already see that manifested well in  the UK and other European countries.

Meanwhile, much of the world will be prosperous, and there will be many more opportunities for young capable people to migrate and prosper elsewhere. An ageing Europe with too much power held by older people and high taxes to pay for their pensions and care might prove a discouragement to stay, whereas the new world may offer increasing prospects and lowering taxes, and Europe and the USA may therefore suffer a large brain drain.

Politics

If health care is better and cheaper thanks to new tech and becomes less of a political issue; if resources are abundantly available, and the economy is healthy and people feel wealthy enough and resource allocation and wealth distribution become less of a political issue; if the environment is healthy; if global standards of human rights, social welfare and so on are acceptable in most regions and if people are freer to migrate where they want to go; then there may be a little less for countries to fight over. There will be a little less ‘politics’ overall. Most 2050 political arguments and debates will be over social cohesion, culture, generational issues, rights and so on, not health, defence, environment, energy or industry

We know from history that that is no guarantee of peace. People disagree profoundly on a broad range of issues other than life’s basic essentials. I’ve written a few times on the increasing divide and tensions between tribes, especially between left and right. I do think there is a strong chance of civil war in Europe or the USA or both. Social media create reinforcement of views as people expose themselves only to other show think the same, and this creates and reinforces and amplifies an us and them feeling. That is the main ingredient for conflict and rather than seeing that and trying to diffuse it, instead we see left and right becoming ever more entrenched in their views. The current problems we see surrounding Islamic migration show the split extremely well. Each side demonizes the other, extreme camps are growing on both sides and the middle ground is eroding fast. Our leaders only make things worse by refusing to acknowledge and address the issues. I suggested in previous blogs that the second half of the century is when tensions between left and right might result in the Great Western War, but that might well be brought forward a decade or two by a long migration from an unstable Middle East and North Africa, which looks to worsen over the next decade. Internal tensions might build for another decade after that accompanied by a brain drain of the most valuable people, and increasing inter-generational tensions amplifying the left-right divide, with a boil-over in the 2040s. That isn’t to say we won’t see some lesser conflicts before then.

I believe the current tensions between the West, Russia and China will go through occasional ups and downs but the overall trend will be towards far greater stability. I think the chances of a global war will decrease rather than increase. That is just as well since future weapons will be far more capable of course.

So overall, the world peace background will improve markedly, but internal tensions in the West will increase markedly too. The result is that wars between countries or regions will be less likely but the likelihood of civil war in the West will be high.

Robots and AIs

I mentioned robots and AIs in passing in the loneliness section, but they will have strong roles in all areas of life. Many that are thought of simply as machines will act as servants or workers, but many will have advanced levels of AI (not necessarily on board, it could be in the cloud) and people will form emotional bonds with them. Just as important, many such AI/robots will be so advanced that they will have relationships with each other, they will have their own culture. A 21st century version of the debates on slavery is already happening today for sentient AIs even though we don’t have them yet. It is good to be prepared, but we don’t know for sure what such smart and emotional machines will want. They may not want the same as our human prejudices suggest they will, so they will need to be involved in debate and negotiation. It is almost certain that the upper levels of AIs and robots (or androids more likely) will be given some rights, to freedom from pain and abuse, ownership of their own property, a degree of freedom to roam and act of their own accord, the right to pursuit of happiness. They will also get the right to government representation. Which other rights they might get is anyone’s guess, but they will change over time mainly because AIs will evolve and change over time.

OK, I’ve rambled on long enough and I’ve addressed some of the big areas I think. I have ignored a lot more, but it’s dinner time.

A lot of things will be better, some things worse, probably a bit better overall but with the possibility of it all going badly wrong if we don’t get our act together soon. I still think people in 2050 will live in a gilded cage.

Your quick and easy 2016 guide to the moral high ground

One of the things I predicted a long time ago was the rise of secular substitutes for religion, and we are now near what I hope will be the peak of that meta-religious resurgence before common senses resumes its grasp. Meanwhile, the Spanish Inquisition by those at the front line of political correctness has reached fever pitch, but it is proving more and more difficult for novice inquisitors to keep track of the latest doctrine, what with all the different groups competing for the moral high ground these days.

To save people time, and as a quick guide for the authorities and especially for police forces faced with difficult choices of prioritization in European cities, I have contrived a simple list of groups with those most obviously deserving of the current moral high ground at the top and those who ought to be consigned to the depths of moral hell at the bottom. I hope you find it useful.

2016 – The Bright Side

Having just blogged about some of the bad scenarios for next year (scenarios are just  explorations of things that might or could happen, not things that actually will, those are called predictions), Len Rosen’s comment stimulated me to balance it with a nicer look at next year. Some great things will happen, even ignoring the various product release announcements for new gadgets. Happiness lies deeper than the display size on a tablet. Here are some positive scenarios. They might not happen, but they might.

1 Middle East sorts itself out.

The new alliance formed by Saudi Arabia turns out to be a turning point. Rising Islamophobia caused by Islamist around the world has sharpened the view of ISIS and the trouble in Syria with its global consequences for Islam and even potentially for world peace. The understanding that it could get even worse, but that Western powers can’t fix trouble in Muslim lands due to fears of backlash, the whole of the Middle East starts to understand that they need to sort out their tribal and religious differences to achieve regional peace and for the benefit of Muslims everywhere. Proper discussions are arranged, and with the knowledge that a positive outcome must be achieved, success means a strong alliance of almost all regional powers, with ISIS and other extremist groups ostracized, then a common army organised to tackle and defeat them.

2 Quantum computation and AI starts to prove useful in new drug design

Google’s wealth and effort with its quantum computers and AI, coupled to IBM’s Watson, Facebook, Apple and Samsung’s AI efforts, and Elon Musk’s new investment in open-AI drive a positive feedback loop in computing. With massive returns on the horizon by making people’s lives easier, and with ever-present fears of Terminator in the background, the primary focus is to demonstrate what it could mean for mankind. Consequently, huge effort and investment is focused on creating new drugs to cure cancer, aids and find generic replacements for antibiotics. Any one of these would be a major success for humanity.

3 Major breakthrough in graphene production

Graphene is still the new wonder-material. We can’t make it in large quantities cheaply yet, but already the range of potential uses already proven for it is vast. If a breakthrough brings production cost down by an order of magnitude or two then many of those uses will be achievable. We will be able to deliver clean and safe water to everyone, we’ll have super-strong materials, ultra-fast electronics, active skin, better drug delivery systems, floating pods, super-capacitors that charge instantly as electric cars drive over a charging unit on the road surface, making batteries unnecessary. Even linear induction motor mats to replace self-driving cars with ultra-cheap driver-less pods. If the breakthrough is big enough, it could even start efforts towards a space elevator.

4 Drones

Tiny and cheap drones could help security forces to reduce crime dramatically. Ignoring for now possible abuse of surveillance, being able to track terrorists and criminals in 3D far better than today will make the risk of being caught far greater. Tiny pico-drones dropped over Syria and Iraq could pinpoint locations of fighters so that they can be targeted while protecting innocents. Environmental monitoring would also benefit if billions of drones can monitor ecosystems in great detail everywhere at the same time.

5 Active contact lens

Google has already prototyped a very primitive version of the active contact lens, but they have been barking up the wrong tree. If they dump the 1-LED-per-Pixel approach, which isn’t scalable, and opt for the far better approach of using three lasers and a micro-mirror, then they could build a working active contact lens with unlimited resolution. One in each eye, with an LCD layer overlaid, and you have a full 3D variably-transparent interface for augmented reality or virtual reality. Other displays such as smart watches become unnecessary since of course they can all be achieved virtually in an ultra-high res image. All the expense and environmental impact of other displays suddenly is replaced by a cheap high res display that has an environmental footprint approaching zero. Augmented reality takes off and the economy springs back to life.

6 Star Wars stimulates renewed innovation

Engineers can’t watch a film without making at least 3 new inventions. A lot of things on Star Wars are entirely feasible – I have invented and documented mechanisms to make both a light saber and the land speeder. Millions of engineers have invented some way of doing holographic characters. In a world that seems full of trouble, we are fortunate that some of the super-rich that we criticise for not paying as much taxes as we’d like are also extremely good engineers and have the cash to back up their visions with real progress. Natural competitiveness to make the biggest contribution to humanity will do the rest.

7 Europe fixes itself

The UK is picking the lock on the exit door, others are queuing behind. The ruling bureaucrats finally start to realize that they won’t get their dream of a United States of Europe in quite the way they hoped, that their existing dream is in danger of collapse due to a mismanaged migrant crisis, and consequently the UK renegotiation stimulates a major new treaty discussion, where all the countries agree what their people really want out of the European project, rather than just a select few. The result is a reset. A new more democratic European dream emerges that the vest majority of people actually wants. Agreement on progress to sort out the migrant crisis is a good test and after that, a stronger, better, more vibrant Europe starts to emerge from the ashes with a renewed vigor and rapidly recovering economy.

8 Africa rearranges boundaries to get tribal peace

Breakthrough in the Middle East ripples through North Africa resulting in the beginnings of stability in some countries. Realization that tribal conflicts won’t easily go away, and that peace brings prosperity, boundaries are renegotiated so that different people can live in and govern their own territories. Treaties agree fair access to resources independent of location.

9 The Sahara become Europe’s energy supply

With stable politics finally on the horizon, energy companies re-address the idea of using the Sahara as a solar farm. Local people earn money by looking after panels, keeping them clean and in working order, and receive welcome remuneration, bringing prosperity that was previously beyond them. Much of this money in turn is used to purify water, irrigating deserts and greening them, making a better food supply while improving the regional climate and fixing large quantities of CO2. Poverty starts to reduce as the environment improves. Much of this is replicated in Central and South America.

10 World Peace emerges

By fighting alongside in the Middle East and managing to avoid World War 3, a very positive relationship between Russia and the West emerges. China meanwhile, makes some of the energy breakthroughs needed to get solar efficiency and cost down below oil cost. This forces the Middle East to also look Westward for new markets and to add greater drive to their regional peace efforts to avoid otherwise inevitable collapse. Suddenly a world that was full of wars becomes one where all countries seem to be getting along just fine, all realizing that we only have this one world and one life and we’d better not ruin it.