A simple plan to achieve export sales using currently much underused resources.
Utilising government offices, Business Links, and just a few key commercial sales and marketing people.
The aim is to create a sustainable, balanced service & manufacturing sectors, with increasing exports in key areas where Britain can compete ... see The Export Sales Plan
Success means success for all our citizens. CST see the long term implications of continuing with a large group of dependent jobless people.
This is no easy problem and calls for radical steps. Again these plans are part and parcel of the overall plan for a successful Britain
... see Welfare to Work
This must dovetail with the plans for running 'UK plc'. Energy will define the winners and losers in the middle & later part of the 21st century. Energy and transport are inextricably linked.
Both require the application and implementation of new technologies. This is an opportunity for delivering high tech jobs for Britain along with developing expertise to sell abroad.
CST have come up with an ingenious proposal that is completely carbon neutral. eco-friendly and provides Britain with a simple, achievable plan to become a net exporter of clean energy
See Governance & Politics for new thinking on structural changes to achieve these longer term goals.
How do we run 'UK plc'?
Our Ideas Group (IG) thinks it should be just like any good business … the plan for success needs to include resources, people, infrastructure, competitive edge, marketing, sales, profitability, sustainability and funding.
Governments have been poor at deriving anything like a workable long-term plan for sustainable economic success.
So, CST has come up with an overall plan that they think will pull together the main elements of ongoing success for Britain
... see UK plc Plan For Success
Strengths & Weaknesses of 25 Year Planning
Education - for a successful life - in a successful Britain
How long will
Capitalism Reign?
The World View
A World View - Saving, Debt & Investment
We are urged to ‘save’. But what and how can we accomplish this over the longer term, over say forty years for our retirement?
The reality is that we cannot really ‘save’ anything. This might seem counter-intuitive as we are regularly urged to save and told that savings are important for general economic health. We have become hooked on the apparent symantics 'that savings are good' - but this is simply untrue.
The fact is that the only thing we can do for our future is to INVEST in the right areas that provide future increases in efficiency. So lets consider why. Take a number of possible things we could save and also at the reality of saving them:
Still not convinced? Lets take a commonsense view. Consider we are on a desert island with a group of people. What could we ‘save’ so that in forty years we would be able to live from it? We soon realise that this is impossible as all food and other useful products would perish over that period. If we created an island currency - then this would only be a promise to pay by others in he future.
The only way we could prepare for our future would be to invest in some way that creates useful things more productively in the future.
Naturally, we invest in our young people, we can invest in creating new more efficient processes such as a group of people creating a water-wheel to provide a power source. We could then expect them to keep us in food more easily when we get too old to provide for ourselves.
Our world is exactly the same as our desert-island – except that the politicians, bankers and economists want you to believe otherwise (our politicians probably don’t understand it themselves). The ONLY real thing we can achieve for our future is to INVEST in our future.
This provides us with a completely different view of politics, the economy and ‘savings/pensions’.
The current dilemma of debt means that what we thought we had ‘saved’ clearly has not been saved (as we have just shown that this can’t be done).
Neither has (much of) it been INVESTED. Where has it gone? We have spent /consumed it, (our Governments have shared it out on our behalf for use to spend).
This is just like being on our desert island and instead of using some our our free time and excess resources to create a better water-wheel, we just sat there on the beach and consumed all we had.
But we cannot turn the back the clock. We should have been investing ‘our savings’ in the right areas to make the future more efficient. Since we have not, then we must start doing this is in more earnest (this is what CBS is all about IG).
So now we see that saving is impossible and investment is the only way forward. We also understand that the debt is money owed to all of us but can only come from future generations. This provides a different perspective of how we move forward as a society. The need to build efficiency for the longer term can be seen as paramount.
The machinations that come from our politicians and from large global businesses and the banks can now be seen for what they are – complete trivia. These people have a different agenda, they personally believe that they survive ‘quite nicely thank you’, and are more than happy playing 'the game’ keeping us in the dark about the real issues, while heaping short term changes upon us to confuse the issues even further.
What are the areas we should invest in within the UK? The key ones are fairly obvious:-
What do we really mean by ‘growth’? This term is banded about because over the last 150 years or so the world has continued to grow its economies due to both increasing efficiency and by pulling more and more people into the developed (ie more efficient) world.
Currently, we are seeing a massive increase in this development process from China, India, Asia, Brazil etc. (BRICS). These huge countries are pulling in billions of people into more efficient processes. And in doing so consuming ever increasing amounts of resources. Alongside this, there is a massive increase in scientific development – there are now many times more scientists in China and India than there are in the whole of the westernised nations put together. This means that it is very likely that technological change (leading to increasing efficiencies) will move even faster than before.
Growth per se, cannot continue forever. It is ultimately limited by World Resources. There are only a few world resources that we should be concerned about now:-
(Climate Change is not a 'now' issue - see climate change)
And why not oil? We already have the technology to create excess energy for the whole world’s future requirements (see Energy).
We can easily produce both oil (and clean water) using this excess energy. Foodstuffs will also fall into this category in the not too distant future.
So the world is currently trying to solve the wrong problems in the wrong way. Why is this? - Probably (again) just due to the 'powerbrokers' creating the agenda
to suit there own personal needs.... when has the world been any different - CST
The impact of this continuing growth from the BRICS will quickly change the West’s ability to continue as is. We seem to have no concept of this radical change yet, we are not thinking ahead.
Old concepts of wealth and growth will require radical re-positioning in the near future if we are to maintain our society’s ability to improve. Reliance on large global companies, and the global (& UK) banking culture creates false hopes as betting rather than investing gets us all nowhere fast.
A World View - The Future
The main World issues for the next 30 years:-
Energy
Water
Food
Environment
Debt
Resources
Can the world solve these issues? Certainly. There are the resources and man-power along with the practical ability and technology to do so quite easily.
The reason we have no plans to do so are our inability to organise due to political, social and religious structures.
Interestingly, as the world continues to move on its axis, away from the prevailing western power bases to the new mainly Asian (China , India et al), we may see opportunities developing that enable massive change.
The overriding issues is delivering excess Renewable Energy. This can be achieved on a world scale utilising Solar & Geothermal Energy. (see energy)
All of the other major issues (except 'Resources') can then be solved by applying this excess energy. (Does this seem so fancifully? See the detailed review of Solar & Geothermal Energy in Fact File).
Water - desalination plants & distribution
Food - irrigation, then bio production
Environment - sequestration of CO2
Debt - Improving efficiencies will provide our 'pay back' (as they have done for the last 200 years)
This leaves us with 'Resources'
These are, in the main, Land (for living and playing) and scarce elements. In future these are likely to become the two main political and social issues - how we divide up the Land to many many more people and share out the really scarce elements may change the world.
Efficiency – the End Game
Man’s rise and rise has been a technical achievement. Efficiencies can only come from improving new technology (and this includes 'ideas'). This is not new, the key changes in man’s ascent are all driven by technology and new ways of doing things:-
All of these changes have increased man’s ability to do more, make more in less time. There are many new technologies that will continue to help with this trend. However, there is one, which is so effective that it will remove man from the need to do any ‘work’ at all.
The ‘End Game ’ will have more impact on the human race than all the former revolutions put together.
It is of course the ‘thinking machine’. And it is unlikely to just occur out of the blue, it is more likely to be part of a change from stupid (but fast) computers to more useful and clever machine devices.
When will this occur? Difficult to predict, but considering the scientific progress in areas such as neural networks, massively parallel computing, linking biological processes to electronic processes, it would be surprising that within fifty years if we did not have a fairly intelligent, self replicating machine. So, probably, within today's young children's lifetimes, they shall become part of a hugely different world.
Once this occurs, there is no going back, politics & governance will be forced to change to accommodate the fact that few (if any) will have ‘work’ as we know it. How will this impact on who owns the ‘wealth’ and resource? This will be interesting! (see Capitalism vs Resourcism)
Alice through the looking glass?
Current economic and political comment is just like listening to a passage form Alice in wonderland, where everything is described accurately but nothing is real.
How can the whole world be broke? Where has all the money gone? Who gets all the interest? Is the money ‘real’ anyway (is it not just bits of paper or figures on a computer – now you just create some more - quantative easing, just so easy with a keyboard).
When a guy in a bank ‘loses’ £1.5bn ‘playing the markets’ - has that money vanished? Or just ended up in one of the accounts from Barclays et al along with a very large ‘bonus’ for someone – so who are the real crooks here then?
And we are constantly reminded that our wonderful financial institutions are so important to our future, our continuing prosperity, and that to limit their marvellous roulette game, (that no one understands), would spell disaster or even the end of the world! But, where-oh-where do they gain their profits? Where is the wondrous machine that creates so much ‘wealth’, what actually gets made in this amazing roulette wheel in the sky? Money can be created and debt can be destroyed – is this question or the answer? Where’s Alice gone? Would we not be better off having tea with the queen and the mad hatter? Why can’t we all disappear into the looking glass and come out with billions, perhaps we should?
In reality – what does the debt change in the practical world, the world that creates food, energy, transport and technology? Who ever ‘owns’ the debt is not going to see it repaid in real terms as the amounts have become such that they are impossible to create (except by printing money which just means devaluing the debt anyway). Much of the debt represent ‘ the old gits’ pensions. So these pensions don’t exist at all, if they are to be paid out to the ‘old gits’ in the future they can only come from young people’s earnings.
When young people finally realise that instead of creating sensible long term investments the ’old gits’ have been having a ball spending and gambling their way into oblivion, and that pensions don’t actually exists, they will surely revolt. The young have an amazing new weapon – technology that allows instant world wide networking. We have already glimpsed its power in middle eastern political changes. In the common cause the young of the world will unite against the legacy provided for them by the great, the good and the powerful old gits. And they will have the ability to bring down corporations, governments, banks, et al, simply through the power of the blackberry & iphone by deciding amongst themselves who owns the resources of the world, sidestepping the ‘real’ economy and if necessary creating their own. The old gits will be powerless, they can’t even understand the technology let alone use it effectively and the ones who can will probably join in the revolution. How do you oppose people power when it’s not even on the streets and the world has shrunk to the size of an iphone screen and a twitter account?
Perhaps a new messiah will arise from the younger generation? A new thinker, with a different philosophy, breaking the mould of the current capitalistic and socialistic certainties. Perhaps our young hero or heroin will care nothing for the old political rhetoric, but consider the practical consequences of using the world’s resources for a sustainable & fair future for all the young people across the world. The young will unite, as a new tribe, behind a vision of fairness and sustainability across the world, a new type of consensus that does not have strict boundaries, either physical or philosophical.
The young will instinctively realise that the broken economic and political models of the past are redundant, they will understand that they will inhabit the world for much longer than any other generation before them, that there will be many more of them than ever before and that the last generation has squandered just about every resource with their power plays and get rich quick schemes. The young will realise the world belongs to them, both morally and practically.
They will realise that future power will be found from new technology and have a real endeavour to create food, energy, water, medicines in such ways that all individuals are empowered to create long term future prosperity and fairness across the world.
In this new future, the world will revolve around the possible. Using real resources and advancing technologies, young people will create together what they need to survive for an expected lifetime of well over a hundred years.
So what of the capitalist power brokers and ‘money makers’? Will they relinquish their power happily? Or will they hang on to the impossible like so many disgraced dictators? It may take a while for the penny to drop, but when they realise that without consumers (the young along with the old gits who have ‘lost’ their pensions), their raison d’etre has disappeared without trace.
Ultimately the young will decide what type of world their children will want to inherit. Can’t come too soon for us - IG
Jun Shihan was deep in thought as usual. At just 27 he had become a super hero of technology. His world-wide twitter following eclipsed almost everyone else. And simply because he liked to help solve tricky technical problems for people, he cared about the people too. Graduating with a first in computer science and technology from Jinan University, then on to a doctorate on quantum computing in Bangor University in the UK. Then he developed some very innovative security programs and gave them away as open sourced solutions. This did not prevent him from becoming a multimillionaire due to his many followers sending him donations. This just languished in several bank accounts, apart from his massively powerful research computers in his mountain home in China's Guangdong Province and his direct satellite link he had no need or interest in money. He was an involuntary entrepreneur, with a natural almost unconscious ability to solve problems and build a mind model around them. His quick mind turned out solutions for his many followers and the rest of his time was spent thinking up even more powerful computing structures just for fun.
Listening to the news and the next banking crisis, he was mildly amazed that the problems never seems to get solved, perhaps the basis of the structures were wrong. He knew many of his followers had no work now, most did not seem to be in control of their lives. He wondered about the legacy left to his generation to sort out. After all he knew that 52% of the world population were under 30 years old and their life expectancy could easily be 150 years.
And he had a thought – we should just say ‘no’. He wasn’t sure why he had this thought, it just seemed right. After all the young were the largest group in the world and they would be around when all the old idiots had gone.
So he just tweeted:
“We should just say NO”
That was it. His many followers looked at this latest tweet across the world on their blackberries, iphones, laptops, pushed through to email systems, texts and some even voice actuated. Soon ten million people were wondering what the hell “Just say NO” meant.
Jun never tweeted anything but good sense. His core followers knew that he must be on to something, it was the only sensible possiblity, so they started tweeting, NO to what, what does NO mean, is this a clue, how do we say NO?
So Jun simply tweeted:
“We all say NO to everything, then we take control and solve the worlds problems they are leaving for us to inherit”
Their was an eruption across the world’s networks. His message hit a social nerve. Jun's tweeters sent this message to all their friends by email, facebook, messaging and texting. Due to social networking and the fact that everyone is connected through only six or less people, soon many of the young people across the planet sensed a new force. They were all connected, they were a power, but how to say NO. The tweets mounted, systems across the world went off line due to the massive response. The messages were all of one kind – how do we say NO.
Jun Shihan was taken aback, he had not seriously considered that one message could have such a profound effect, he had hit a nerve at a time of crisis where the young especially felt disenfranchised from the world they lived in.
But he was a problem solver, Jun Tweeted:
Say no to the banks, all of them.
Say no to all taxes
Say no to all large businesses and corporations
Say no to buying anything except from local sources
Say no to using your vehicles
Say no to going on the street and demonstrating
"But not quite yet – await the sign, it won’t be long and then we, the young and free minded shall inherit the earth."
The earth turned, it swayed a little on its axis, as the majority of the young people held their breath. They tweeted – “how long master?”
Not long, keep calm, do nothing for now, be patient my young friends. He knew he only had about a week, or the impetus would be lost. Each day he tweeted, “keep faith the time is soon”
In the meantime the problem solver went about his business with a new desire, a vision of the future that was as clear as a new day dawning.
Putting his fortune finally to good use. He created a private network of computer systems across the world, purchasing computing power in isolated but highly connected areas, and installing his own high security systems, using unbreakable quantum based encryption technology that was the basis of his thesis. He discussed issues with a handful of large companies such as Skype, Apple, Major Phone companies and sought their support as special providers to the young revolution. They of course agreed hedging their bets.
Next he drew up a new world order and placed it on his web servers across the world:-
Jun Shihan tweeted the proclamation’s URL (run across the multiple servers in place).
Then soon after, he tweeted:
“NOW”
And the world shuddered, swayed, then toppled as banks & markets across the world went off line due to the shear panic selling and mayhem. The young across the world just sat still and waited, biding their time. No guns, no shouting, governments sat and discussed their options with security forces. Their were none. Jun’s servers were safe and unbreakable, the key communications companies kept to their word and watched.
Jun tweeted:
“Governments and corporations are invited to sign our declaration”
”You are invited to put forward a few senior capable people to sit on the first world convention”
...and for the most part they did, followed by the rest as they had no one to fight and no economies. The world turned again, people across the world logged on to their new bank account and went out to work, spend, play, or to newly allocated jobs in learning centres, research, infrastructure, care centers. There was no economic news, no one playing the markets, people made sensible money, people had lots to do helping many parts of the world that had been neglected. There was plenty of food, energy, water to go around, the old world’s armed forces and unemployed were fully employed distributing food, creating new infrastructure, helping the unfortunate. The world smiled again, but this time as a whole.
If it was possible, the world could provide what is needed for the ‘gap’ between now and a future time when we have created fully automated production and administration. How long this ‘gap’ will be we don’t know, but we currently have the resources to stabilise the key issues of food, water and distribution for the foreseeable future. The theme here is again excess energy production. Investing in this now provides the ability to do nearly everything we need for this stabilisation. Why is energy so important? Because is provides the means to create fresh water, basic food stuffs, energy for distribution along with the possibility for local manufacturing in all areas of the globe.
Using Nuclear (safe Thorium reactors), Solar and possibly Geothermal where they best provide the most cost effective energy. Building a such nuclear facilities is ‘expensive’. But lets take a closer look at the ‘real’ costs.
Economists often use the analogy of running a family home as a simple model for the general economy - If we spend more than we earn, then this inevitably leads to trouble. But if we apply this to the whole world – what equates to spending and earnings? As a world, we cannot spend more than we earn, as there is no ‘outside’ to owe it to. If we spend more in one part of the world then it must pop up in another part of the world, you don’t need to be an economist to understand this, it is commonsense. So, our economics are based on competing states and miss this point entirely along with the opportunities.
Take a world view, if we had a magic wand, we could put all the relevant people to work using our already existing large array of tools and equipment to create anything we want. This clearly happens when we gear up for war, we manage to produce a massive amount of armaments and ancillary equipment very quickly. So let’s say we produced a ‘world army’ from all those that have relevant skills who were out of work from across the world and put them to work in a war creating ‘energy’ across the world. If the world provided raw materials, this workforce could, in theory, produce the factories to create the equipment to construct and run the power stations, solar and geothermal installations. Since these people are currently unemployed, but still being fed and housed at least to a minimum requirement by each of their respective states, the true cost to the world is just the raw materials and a bit extra for an incentive to work. Costing in this world view is clearly very much less than the quoted cost of say a new nuclear facility being built by any one economy. So what are the downsides?
If we really did this, we could produce in say 10 to 20 years massive excess energy capability across the world. The cost of the energy produced would be very low – just the cost of maintaining the facilities and nuclear fuel (Thorium) which is plentiful and therefore cheap.
Now comes the good bit, if we had managed to do this by via a ‘neutral world energy body’, each country could have as much energy as it required. With this energy we can create fresh water from sea water, create foodstuffs from waste and basic ingredients (eg concentrated growing facilities using UV light to provide energy for growth or hydroponic tanks), run local manufacturing factories, heat homes and workplaces and fuel vehicles of all types either using electrical energy (eg trains), or hydrogen or its derivatives for road vehicles. In other words, we would have ensured the world has the basics to survive and prosper without resorting to water wars and major famine.
Bear in mind that this energy will ALL be completely clean energy, minimal residual pollution, no CO2, little nuclear waste.
When the Gap is over, future generations shall look back from their radically different politics, with life styles that require little or no work as we know it, and these future generations will probably be shaking their heads at our stupidity for not taking control of own world and its peoples needs when we self evidently could. Perhaps they will talk about the ‘gap years’ and our mismanagement
The Way Forward Continued.....
What we don’t know:-
At present we are tied up in attempting, (and failing), to control our money technology, (along with the political systems that it has legitimised). We are forgetting to apply the historical principles of our continuing progress. The way forward should be clear to us. Simply apply these historical principles of progress and we shall see there is nothing preventing us from doing so, (other than political dogma).
This means:
We are extremely lucky in Britain as we still, (currently), have control of our ‘money’. And, because of this, we can choose to invest in these core developments. We have shown that we control our money by printing £325bn in the last three years. What we have failed to do is use this new money to create any of these developmental improvements by sensible investment.
Europe flounders because their money (Euro) is not controlled by any of their own political institutions. Thus they are driven by the money technology instead of controlling it. It looks like it may be a while before they realise their current (lack of) control is fundamentally flawed.
For Britain, now is the time to fully apply these fundamental developments, (and it is only a short window of opportunity as we shall see). One of the key things we do know is that there are more emerging technologies in both power production and emerging applications than ever before. Britain is well placed to leverage these and also the key improvements within education that will ensure generational-scale progress. After all, Britain led the world in recent history by doing just this for well over a hundred years.
Understanding this with respect to debt & savings is paramount. We are moribund because we do not understand the true meaning of these. Lets try to shed some light on them.
Savings should be applied as investment in our future development. The current debt is the exact opposite of savings and it cancels out our savings. Now we see that debt, savings and investment are exactly the same issue, they are just another way of saying the same thing. We are confused simply because of what we call them.
So our savings don’t exist per se. They are simply the difference between the overall debt and the overall investment within our economy.
So looking at it another way, debt is simply a lack of investment. We have ‘spent’ the funds we had thought we had saved (pensions et al) rather than investing them in our future development. So currently there is little to no real investment in our future developmental improvement.
It is a more difficult concept to understand that savings do not exist and that they can only be represented by investment. To elucidate this consider the following thought experiment. On a desert island, how could you possibly save? For the short term, food or fuel could be stored and used later. But in the longer term (say over a lifetime eg for a ‘pension’) nothing can be saved that will endure over that period. The only way any society can truly ‘save’ is by using the short term savings to create potential longer term improvements. For our desert island this could mean using short term food and fuel resources to invest in the time and development for creating new ways of creating energy – such as a water-wheel harnessing the energy of a fast flowing stream, enabling one person to do maybe five peoples work, so in future our islander’s will be more productive and shall be more able to provide for their elderly.
Our society is no different. We must set aside some of our current production and invest it for the future. Only in this way can we innovate and harness the potential developments. We have the ability to do this now, but our confusion with debt versus savings makes us believe that this is not possible. However the opposite is true. Only by accepting that our savings do not really exist can we see that we must invest in the future and do it now.
What this means in reality, (monetary terms), is that we ‘print’ lots more money, (quantative easing), and use it directly for large investments that are likely to provide our society with improvements in the medium and long term future. There is no quick fix, (never has been), these investments must be chosen so that they lead to increased efficiency for the society as a whole and improvements leading to less being spent in future on social issues such as the elderly, health and policing.
The money in reality comes directly from us – printing money reduces the value of the pound and everything that relies on its value - such as pensions, land & housing valuations and it increases the cost of imports. So we become poorer in the short and medium term, we have less to spend and imports, holidays etc become more expensive. There is also another knock-on effect. By reducing the value of the pound we tilt the balance away from imports to exports. By innovating and applying those innovations we also drive our ability to export. This is a win win.
If we do not do this now our resources will run down and we shall lack the ability to invest at all. This is hugely important because we shall need to use much more of our future earnings just to continue as a working society, paying for the promised pensions, elderly-care and heath-care that are destined to substantially increase. (Remember, this is because the savings/pensions we believe exist have already been spent). So we shall then be surviving hand to mouth, not having any ability to invest and develop for the future as there will be no ability to raise any money to invest. If we attempt to print money at this future date, then because there is no slack to take up within our economy it will just increase inflation, perhaps leading to hyperinflation or stagflation. This would be the beginning of a very slippery slope ending with Britain as a second or even third world nation.
The logic of the argument to invest now is compelling. It is not dependent on the colour of current politics. The success of such investment depends on two issues:-
The first is probably easiest, and there are a number of core investment opportunities (energy production, transport, education to name but few), but the overall plan must be fully co-ordinated. This means the range of chosen investments are all part of a wider plan.
The second is much more difficult and we know well that ‘public sector led’ investment projects often fail to deliver. We cannot afford to fail this time as we are in the ‘last chance saloon’. Once the investment projects have been defined, the trialing and subsequent delivery must be within a competitive environment ensuring the best future developmental success.
So why not just let the private sector get on with investing where they think fit? There are two strong arguments against this:-
The message is simple, we have no choice but to create the money to invest now, if we do not, the current debt will catch up with us and force our economy into spiraling descent and breakdown.
