Cost Out A Better Future

Democratic candidate for U.S. President, Andrew Yang, proposes sending every person over 18 years of age a government check for $1000 each month. Why? Human beings need food, shelter, and clothing every month. Yet, automation is expected to eliminate more and more of the ways people now earn the funds needed to provide these necessities, while corporations accumulate greater wealth by replacing employees with machines.

     Already, Yang notes, big tech companies, such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google, grow rich by packaging and selling the private information millions and billions of individuals supply free of charge.

     Technological changes require changes in other sectors of human life. When work requires manipulating information on a computer, the physical strength of men is unnecessary. Childcare is still necessary, but how it is provided and by whom need not be confined to unpaid natural mothers.

     Not only childcare, but $1000-a-month paychecks also would provide compensation for those whose time creates an enjoyable community life: the shoppers and clerks who get to know each other, community leaders who organize groups and boycotts to solve problems, gardeners who share crops with neighbors and plant flowers to beautify walking paths, visitors who watch sports with the homebound, families who attend religious services together, friends and relatives who celebrate birthdays with homemade cakes, cards, and presents, and those who write "Thank you" notes.

     Those dissatisfied with $1000 a month will innovate. Designs can be sleeker. Drugs can cure more. Experts can develop more effective teaching methods. Constitutions, standards, and collective agreements can harness, not only the temporary impulses of a mob, but also the independent actions of robots and AI. Dives can go deeper. Spacecraft can go farther. Games can be more fun.

     $1000 a month is a small price to pay for a better world.

   

Globalization Requires Skepticism

Along with telling children to be kind to others, part of raising kids involves cautioning them to avoid being lured into a van to see or search for a puppy and to avoid being touched in areas covered by their swimsuits. James Bond's dictum to trust no one is a bit too much, but healthy skepticism about ulterior motives is a useful life lesson. If playmates tap them on their left shoulders, while others on the right steal their bags of chips, they get the message.

     Even adults can be duped. Wisconsin's Republican Governor, Scott Walker, and President Trump received splashy news coverage, when they announced the Chinese Foxconn company would bring new jobs to Wisconsin. The State soon learned its taxpayers were expected to contribute $3 billion to the project. The amount grew to a little over $4 billion which required borrowing from the State's transportation budget to build new roads to the plant. Foxconn's environmental plans and ideas about water usage from Lake Michigan required negotiation. The promised 1300 jobs were reduced to an initial 300, and, since the plant site is on the border with Illinois, there was no guarantee that all these jobs would go to employees from Wisconsin.

     The Foxconn deal began looking like an albatross Democrats could hang around Governor Walker's neck. So, the Chinese offered to bring more jobs to Wisconsin to help bail the Governor out from the unfulfilled promise he made to bring 250,000 jobs to Wisconsin during his first campaign in 2010. Foxconn announced additional innovation centers were in the works for Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Eau Claire. According to Foxconn, these job-creating centers are designed to inspire local companies and entrepreneurs to create new solutions.

     Here's where skepticism comes in. Why would China seem eager to help a Republican Governor in a fly-over State not uppermost in many minds? The innovation centers and investments China already has in Silicon Valley provide some clues. With the U.S. preoccupied with Russian interference, Chinese tech companies associated with Beijing's government have been taking advantage of opportunities to pour venture capital billions into U.S. startups in fields, such as virtual reality, AI, financial software, cyber security, quantum computing, robotics, 3D printing, and biotechnology. Since the U.S. military does not purchase technologies from startups with foreign investors, Chinese investments can not only buy up technological advances from Wisconsin's startups, but they also prevent these innovations from improving U.S. defenses.

     Delayed skepticism about the technological advantages the Chinese government can gain from U.S. startup innovations and increased concern about the national security implications involved caused Congress to pass the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIREMA) to enhance the oversight provided by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Already, China is thinking about how to get around the crack down by making a move to Canada a condition for a venture capital investment or by hiring a team of employees from an innovative startup, the way the Chinese online giant, Alibaba, does this in China.
     

Get Real About Forecasting 2018's Happenings

At the start of 2018, there has been no shortage of predictions about what will happen this year. TIME magazine devoted its entire January 15 issue, guest edited by Bill Gates, to a future of positive developments.

I have seen claims that the best places to find a job are in Arizona: Chandler and Scottsdale. Brain power will be enhanced by supplements or meditation. Advertisers will be more interested in how much time we view their commercials, rather than in how many commercials we see. Companies will mine data to personalize the messages they send us. Besides those designing technological developments, more people will be involved in considering the consequences of these developments, such as automated warfare and gene editing.

All of these forecasts remind me of the professor who said the only way to make accurate predictions is to forecast often. His prediction is more accurate than ever in our fast changing world, where today's jobs can be gone tomorrow and where so-called stable governments can disappear in the next election or coup.

No doubt, a variety of resources provide frequent updates. I'm just giving an example of one: TrendWatching.com offers its Premium Service subscribers a 100-page plus "2018 Trend Report,"  but it also provides a free daily look at innovations from around the world, innovations that often are worth imitating immediately. Businesses are reminded, for example, that they have become Glass Boxes. Consumers and potential employees have multiple ways to find out about their culture, people, processes, and product ingredients, not just their stock's performances. Evolution is not finished.