File: c:/ddc/Angel/BestIntentions/Introduction.html
Date: Thu Aug 16 22:06:51 2012/ 2019
(C) OntoOO/ Dennis de Champeaux

Introduction

Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be.
(Daniel Kahneman)
We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters optimistic overconfidence.
(Daniel Kahneman)
In terms of its consequences for decisions, the optimistic bias may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases.
(Daniel Kahneman)
Because optimistic bias can be both a blessing and a risk, you should be both happy and wary if you are temperamentally optimistic.
(Daniel Kahneman)

One generation's solution is the next generation's problem.
(Anonymous professor, as quoted by Bob Segall)

The 21st century had a tough start with the first decade. Nine-eleven was a major disruption for which no one wants to pin-down a succinct label: religious conflict? culture clash? democracy versus theocracy? Whatever label applies, its impact is still festering with no end in sight. Finally, the decade yielded economic turmoil through an amazing sequence of bad judgments by a still growing number of parties.

We claim that these developments, which have been very visible, mask 'deeper' problematic processes that have been in the works since the beginning of the 20th century. The cold war masked these deeper processes to the point that we may accept them now as normal, semi-natural forces.

The 20th century will keep many experts busy to slice and dice the many different angles possible. While every century must live with the inheritance of the preceding one, the 21st century has gotten more than its fair share ... of precious assets, of horror, of fabulous art movements, of horrendous depravity, of major Science developments, of genocides beyond comprehension, of Mother Theresa's compassion, of Hitler's derangement, of affluence for the masses, of poverty for other masses, of muddle through democracies, of crash and burn dictatorships, of well meaning, compassionate sacrifices, of evil, self-centered, ruthless murdering, of responsible mega corporations, of plunder the Planet companies, of live within your means countries, of bankrupting countries, ...

This we will all leave for the experts to chew on.

But then there were the people, born, raised, living and dying who are just there in a great flux of happenings. Their lives were different dependent on the circumstances of their locations or their lives were all similarly impacted by the waves going through the decades.

We are getting closer to what we are after in this exploration.

Well, we will not deal with unique individuals, but with the decisions made by typical individuals as facilitated by slowly expanding choices.

The roots of these developments are in the 19th century. The US and the French revolution had expanded rights to larger segments of the population. Darwin threw cold water on these rights by the notion of individuals having different abilities to survive.

The 20th century went out of its way to compensate for this unfairness. Communism proposed that individuals consume according to their needs and contribute according to their abilities. Other societies did not go as far but in response they established entitlements that helped those less able to get compensation for their plight.

These compassionate, well meaning entitlement have done wonders. However, over time their unintended side effects have become, let's say, questionable. These side effects are what we will look into.

Major entitlements in welfare states that make up sizable segments in their economies are: education and healthcare. These segments are atypical in that they are consumptive, financed by taxes on all the other segments. Their fuzzy economic status gives rise to anomalies that we will dig into.

Current economies are still increasing in complexities, internally with governments playing an ever-larger role in financial transfers and externally through globalization. Both of these developments create new sources of volatility, leading to worldwide disturbances. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a major tool used to guide economies. We will contrast GDP with proposed alternatives as a lead-in to critique the general use of GDP to measure a society's well being.

Democracies established during the preceding two centuries were designed with calibrated and balancing forces to compensate for the out of control governments in preceding centuries. The press (now the media) was assigned a role to alert when the calibrated forces got out of balance and/or when entropy inside or outside the government endangered 'normality'. We ponder the eroding ability of the press/media to perform its role.

These democracies are traditionally seen as slowly moving and mostly reactive to unfolding developments. We will argue that they need an upgrade to fix loopholes emerging in the preceding centuries and to address instances of the Tragedy of the Commons that have become major global destructors.

Why?

We will also consider causal linkages between the different topics that are usually out of scope for domain experts.

Obstacles

This list can be extended endlessly. Accusations of being left/ right/ elitist/ etc. and being labeled in general as 'something', all indicates that we are touching raw nerves.

The question whether we have viable solutions for what we address is tricky. We describe developments over a period of a century with deeper historical roots and with entrenched stakeholders. Expecting short-term fixes beyond the general concepts we formulate at the end is not realistic, but we are happy to be corrected by better minds.

Why again

Ancient civilizations disappearing can be easily shrugged off and a computer simulation has the appeal of a headache. Perhaps these authors are too polite and too academic to be taken serious.

This text is more like the dentist drill getting close to the root. We also are blunt enough to articulate fixes that others (must) shy away from.

Who are we?

Mini Guide

20th centuy

The Economy chapter claims that the widely used GDP metric gives misleading readings of a nation's well functioning. We report worrisome financial statistics about the population of the US and the Netherlands and similarly astonishing data about the US states.

Murray's sociological study Coming Apart, [Murray], regarding top and bottom segments in the US society is summarized in the Fishtown chapter. His text is a vivid elaboration of the Appendix Income Divergence in the chapter Income Distribution Deterioration.

The chapter on the Press argues that they are loosing significance and especially fail to perform their democracy watch dog function.

Democracies are critiqued as being out of date and requiring upgrades. Economic sustainability and ecologic zero footprint are key missing concepts. The Tragedy of the Commons plays a crucial role due to the lack of a global world authority.

21st century

Dennis Meadows et al [Meadows] developed around 1970 the World3 simulator. We discuss their series of publications. A subsequent chapter gives the output of newer scenarios. Only outlandish policy interventions prevent a collapse according to the World3 simulator - of course ignoring the divine magic of human ingenuity that could yield an unexpectated breakthrough, but which has not emerged yet during the previous decades.

Jorgen Randers's '2052' model [Randers] is described next. It is a modification and extension of a specific World3 scenario. More attention is given to different ways to provide energy and on the impact of climate change.

Candidate triggers causing things to go out of control are sketched in the chapter What If?.

A way out?

Many deplore globalization; our future is, however, a common destiny, for good and for worse.

References

[Meadows] Meadows, D., J. Randers, & D. Meadows, Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update, Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 2004.

[Murray] Murray, C., Coming Apart, Crown Forum, NY, 2012.

[Randers] Randers, J., 2052, A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, Chelsea Green, 2012.

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