By Shaun Hollick, our foreign correspondent on UK and European news with his quirky, yet accurate, insights.
Are we heading for a post industrial revolution …. whatever that may be. Or are we going to continue as we are – pouring new wine into old bottles – and burying ourselves in the past instead of building on it?
This question must surely be on the lips of all informed participants and observers to the world economy … or at least buried in a shallow grave in their subconscious mind.
Most of us accept that technology will change the existing world order starting from a grassroots in all nations. So there is all the reason to get the technology and economic spin off as feasible as possible before momentum sets in. Failure to do so may mean momentum may not gather.
As science has advanced it has progressively imitated nature to good effect. Economics, however has failed to do so, at least as successfully as technology. This could be viewed as a strangle hold around the planet.
There is no pollution and unemployment in nature. Economists and scientists take note. Einstein was on the verge. He spawned destruction. But in nature, energy release in nebuli creates. Probably our galaxy was created thus. Why should social scientific economics be any different!
Economists talk of impending leisure revolution ignoring all other essential sectors. And we need abundant cheap non pollutant energy.
Economics needs a new approach to the interaction between man, computer and nature. Computers could remove the yoke from the shoulders of mankind creating unprecedented wealth.
But if firms put all their money in robots, the people wouldn’t have the resources to buy what the robot’s produced. In other words, in the future, either everybody wins the economic struggle, or nobody wins it.
Thus, it appears that the fundamental ethics of ages are on their deathbed. Hanging on for grim life. Even though paradise lurks around the corner. If in another intellectual dimension.
Money, work and government must change with economics globally!!
There’s more than growth, inflation, balance of payments, and employment. They are a means to an end. Not the end!
