Humanity is facing a hard road ahead and despite the optimism surrounding our future prospects, there are some trends that need to be analyzed and thought about if we are going to accurately predict our trajectory as a species, these factors are: Innovation, income disparity, Universal Basic Income and the concept of ownership. These four factors are the pinnacle of our likelihood for species survival, and highlight the past problems that we have never yet addressed in our society.

We live in a closed system of resources, meaning unless we leave the planet for more materials what is here is what we have. let’s discount space mining, even though it’s an up and coming industry — what’s the point of continuing the problem we haven’t yet solved at the surface. This problem is ownership. Calm down don’t yell at the screen, think about all of it. We like to control the things we create, why shouldn’t we? We give them value through our labour and deserve something in return for our efforts. But the issue comes when we no longer take the time to appreciate the strain that ownership has on the broader whole of society. Let’s go back to extracting, anything we extract on this planet has to be fixed to a geographic location or to a source. For example, oil reserves or mineral deposits: why do we sell the right to them solely to corporations? Sure, they have the means to refine it and push it to market but is that worth the trade-off in terms of control? Essential resources are sold to private interests in exchange for infrastructure, equipment and increasing innovations as they bring resource products to market. I would suggest the nationalization of resources as a remedy, but that tends to lead to war with the origin countries of the corporate control and the territorial resource host nation, so what is the problem with this situation? And how do we fix it?

The control of things we all need and use to function as a society, are in the hands of private parties with no obligation but to the profit margin. On a broader thought: In a system that encourages competition (capitalism), the only incentive is growth and control. This seems like a great model for ensuring the best products, but in reality, we have seen: the manipulation of democracies is common place, worker’s rights are the means in which most companies use to increase margins and society as a whole are suffering under this failing system of capitalism by stagnation in growth and decreased purchasing power weakening demand.

This problem is reoccurring, as things become more and more essential to our survival, we hand over our selves over to those who control these things — this demand. Be it oil or internet sites; we are at the mercy of opposing interests, that in one way or another need to extract profit from us specifically or something we should all be entitled to (natural resources).

this is where some of the factors met a juncture, that we need to address: ownership, income disparity, and innovation. As we innovate the cost of producing products goes down, generally. But what’s happening in the sharing economy and traditional industrial economy is extraction and distribution is becoming cheaper while supply is fixed to a finite amount overall. Be it human labour or oil, it’s easier to control the means of connecting you to a product that you depend on. Yet there’s a lot of things at play. Corporations handling essential products can collaborate or consolidate to keep the cost fixed and margins wide, crowd sourced services drive the cost lower but don’t pass on the surplus to the value chain. This latter point is the linchpin issue in both economies, the concentration of wealth = income inequality, which lowers the purchasing power of workers. This trend is only going to continue if that’s the market structure we operate under. As we accelerate technologically, we lose more and more jobs, which means less circulation of wealth and increased concentration by the owners. Ownership coupled with innovation can only create more income inequality. (http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/top-ceo-pay-1.3907662)

Here is where you’re like: that’s why we keep talking about universal income, you silly anti-capitalist. To quote the orange mess that’s about to control the free world “wrong.” remember this capitalist system we live in? what is that all about? Extracting wealth and capitalising on opportunities in the economy to extract more wealth along a perceived value chain. So what happens when you sell candy for 1$ and you know everyone have 10$ more than regular? You’re going to sell your candy for more because you know they can afford it. Corporations take advantage of rebates offered all the time, increasing the price to maximize take. Are we assuming everyone along the entire value chain isn’t going to notice the increased purchasing power? Cause if so, that’s not a thought-through capitalist thought, and I know it, you know it so let’s not pretend it’s not going to happen. This is basically the concept of a working middle class reconfigured, so we don’t notice the same broken system failing. Except instead of actual jobs to increase purchasing power, we’re handing out money which will. It like when nations print more money, it re-values the cost of products in that economy. This is what Germany did after ww1, many nations do this type of stunt to their currency value (…cough cough china), we’re just spreading currency out wider throughout society, unless we tax what we give out from corporations completely.(they barely pay taxes as is, and I’d be more hard pressed to make it back if that’s the source) But hey, at least it will improve the economy before it adjusts, causing a short term solution to our income disparity problems “wrong.” https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-12-04/four-reasons-a-guaranteed-income-won-t-work (for a more indepth look at universal basic income) the question as we move forward have become: are we going to stop innovating? Stop solving problems and offering them to each other? Stop decreasing the cost of dissemination and technical innovation? otherwise we are just extrapulating a system that has been played out and has failed to make much more then a few nice things, a swath of ok things and mountains of cheap shit.

Humanity is at a crisis point and incremental change is not acceptable if you want an child under the age of 5 years old, to die of old age. This idea doesn’t fix the cycle I’ve outlined (ownership-innovation-income disparity) it only makes more money to hoard and blind us from our lack of progress fixing at the real problem. I’m not getting into climate change but it is a reminder of the pressure to sort the preverbal shit out economically, so we can survive existentially.

So what do we do? We eliminate social ownership of resources and develop into a resource based economy, where we value human life, regard each other as equal and develop innovations while studying this amazing world we live in and the depth of our individual selves through artistic expression. This can be done in our lifetime if we think critically about our positioning, rely on each other and eliminate the greed that plagues our interactions with each other and our systems. This can be done, it has to be done and it’s the only way our kids die old.

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