The following essay explores the meaning of money inspired by Modern Monetary Theory [1] and its relevance regarding ecological crises, especially the climate crisis. 1. Assumptions Money consists of statements about human behaviour in the future. The value of money depends on the shared belief of a group of humans. The shared belief is created…
“We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. ” [1, also 2] Stephen Hawking In my opinion “stupidity” is largely caused by “flock behaviour” which defines as smart what the majority of the peer group…
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Neoliberalism and its promotion of “freedom” is based on a logical fallacy of “false equivalence” of freedom and civil liberty. If “freedom” means the absence of laws (ie “deregulation”), this will only lead to the dominance of the ruthless and rich and oppression (ie loss of liberty) for the rest. However, “civil liberty” means that…
Big data and artificial intelligence may be useful in fighting racism, if we replace race as a (weak) predictor of future behaviour (eg past of future crime) [Reference missing] with other (sufficiently) informative predictors (eg social score?). However, this would require citizens to share personal information with public authorities, which creates new risks. However, by…
1. Introduction It is a common assumption that the global neoliberal capitalist economic system requires economic growth in terms of the gross domestic product (GDP) to avoid recession an collapse. Scientists argue that constant (exponential) growth is not possible on a finite planet and the continuing conversion of natural resources (abiotic and biotic) will deplete…
1.Background Current societies have increasing powers of surveillance and control over individual citizens based on digital technology. At the same time, there is a world-wide trend toward fascist systems, ie political trends which promote the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Individuals who are interested to maintain their liberal rights,…
Here, I would like to present some short reflections on negative impact of universities on the climate emergency, as pointed out by Prof Kevin Anderson [1]: international scientific collaboration most often by air travel international personal/romantic relationships locking people in high-carbon futures providing high-level education, leading to high salaries, and high consumption Ad 1) Personally,…
1. Introduction Depending on job skills and experience, employees may have a strong leverage on policies of employers. During an existing job contract, committment (eg dependence on salary, housing, job of partner, school for children) of an employee maybe rather high, giving him or her little influence. However, during an application process while committment is…
After the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in December 2019, attention has been shifted to previous research and publications on risks of pandemics to global health. Although critics argue that the pandemic was unpredictable and anyone saying so suffers from hindsight bias, I would like to argue that the risks of this “low risk-high impact”…
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