The people's New World Order

 

The world economic forum has estimated that 50% of existing jobs will be automated in a decade. Within a couple of decades, I believe it could more likely be 80% or 90%. I will explain.

5G technology is allowing China to roll out driverless cars already. 5G removes the need for a safety driver, as a robotaxi can be remotely controlled by a human when it gets confused. Online human override bridges the gap, allowing robotics to do most of anything. Robotaxis are a critical example of this.

You only need to look at the robotics coming out of Boston Dynamics to see that robots can go wherever humans go, and do nearly whatever humans do due to their flexibility. [Example: here]

So, to model the situation, think of a flexible, general-purpose robot riding on a driverless platform to a work site, ready to take on any given job. And think of a human, online, cutting in to direct and help (like a supervisor) yet only when they're specifically required. When the human is not required, they're assisting a different robot, online. No dead time.

The result? The great majority of people will no longer need to leave their home to work or shop. Everything becomes online-based. This, in turn, allows for the rapid streamlining of all our operations. Countless jobs will quickly fall away with ongoing software upgrades.

I could go on, but you get the picture. The room for progressive automation becomes incredible in a heavily roboticised internet-based world, where most operations are governed online. Anything that conforms to a procedure can quickly be automated.

So what does this mean, from a political outlook?

Extreme automation would eventually lead to a tenfold reduction in the price of goods and services.  This newfound wealth could well result in deleterious overconsumption, and the lower cost of raising children could lead to a rampaging baby-boom. Would this be ecologically sustainable? For how long?

International organisations seem to be asking these questions already, and their answers look akin to wanting to restrict human consumption directly. You've heard it: "You will own nothing - and be happy". Also noteworthy, the Bank of England has expressed that it wants to install a programmable cryptocurrency, which gives governments the power to directly control what people can and can't buy, for each individual. Hence, they're proposing a sophisticated block to avoid over-consumption.

If we ever go there, I think we'll know what the official excuse will be: Saving the world from CO2.

Regardless, we're going to move into a new world order. No matter the politics, the technological revolutions coming down the pike are so extreme that big questions will have to be asked. I hope we can ask those question for ourselves, and build (or should I say 'evolve') a world in the people's own image.

We, the people, need to do the thinking as far as designing our future goes, because if we don't the UN and other elite organisations will do the thinking for us. I argue that if we are not engaged in future planning, we'll end up with outside organisations doing the planning for us. The latter is not my ideal and I guess no one else's.

Yet sadly, so far, we refuse to even have these conversations.

-Extended article, here.

Is the New Zealand government Evil?

 

Note: This article was originally published in The BFD, under the editors title "Does evil lurk behind the Mask".

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[Audio version here]

Under what circumstances can a government justify forcibly medicating people? It’s an extreme act. If a random man on the street force-injected you with something that he thought was for your own good, then obviously you would call the police. By default, it is a violation to force-medicate.

Therefore, if the government is to introduce forced vaccinations or coercive policy that leaves people with no other choice, then this can only be justified in the most desperate of circumstances. That is if we’re dealing with an event on the level of the Black Plague, and alternatives to forced medication cannot be found.

New Zealand today is light years from a black plague type event. The vast majority of people recover from Covid and hardly anyone dies. We know that the only people who have anything worth worrying about are the very old and highly vulnerable. What’s more, we now have alternatives to vaccinations. Early preventative treatments are proven, and cellphones allow us to communicate instantly to manage any outbreak of concern.

Yet what has the New Zealand government done? They have shamelessly bribed the media and openly suppressed all information that threatens to provoke vaccine hesitancy. Critics, no matter how qualified, are written off as misinformation agents instead of being duly debated. Doctors lose their licence if they do not push the pro-vaccination line. Preventative treatments are ignored and never discussed. Hard questions are not asked because ministers will never answer them.

By absolutely no reasonable measure can the government justify force-vaccinating people today – directly or indirectly. That should be clear. Vaccine coercion is evil. Indeed, if any of the coerced end up dying from their medication, then that is a case for manslaughter. When medication is forced on you then those who forced you are morally accountable for the consequences.

Our government should be doing everything it can to develop and respond to any option other than forced medication, especially when the treatment is controversial. Instead, the opposite is being played out. Alternatives are suppressed – vaccinations are coerced. This is not blind stupidity because no one is this stupid unless they want to be.

I have no idea what’s really going on behind closed political doors. No one does. But again, we know enough to see evil.

If we find that these Pfizer vaccines kill people, or seriously damage them (which might well still happen over the long term) then we must hold those responsible to account. There must be a Nuremberg 2.0 because wilful ignorance will not cut it as a defence.

-Andrew Atkin

Do we need a Democratic Elite?

 

A great weakness of the common voter is his refusal to take long term planning seriously. Yet sustainability, in the broadest meaning of the word, demands long-range planning. Population control is a massive (though far from only) part of this, and it shows us the weakness of our existing democracies. Hence, I will focus on this to make my case.

People presume that increases in wealth naturally lead to smaller families, so they think population is a non-issue. That idea is wrong. Observations in the relationship between wealth and fertility do not isolate for the impact of extended schooling, feminist movements (driving women to work), welfare systems and weakened religions, etc, all of which have dovetailed with the end of the western baby-boom. Industrialisation is only a part of what may be lowering fertility.

This is the thing: Over-population cannot sanely be allowed to happen. Over-population means replacing the remaining forests with farms, and finally it means desperation leading to wars. People get ruthless when they can't eat. Obviously, this is not something we should wait for.

Ok. What I've talked about is realistic but it's a political football that no one has time for, and what no democratic politician dares touch. It relates to necessary long-term planning yet we don't want to know about it.

However, our refusal to confront the eventual need for direct population control, is how you legitimise a non-democratic elite; that is, an elite who might well develop an attitude that can be described as..."Well, if these guys aren't going to manage themselves like they should, then we have to do it for them". And dare I say it, they could be right.

In my view, we do need some kind of an elite, and an elite that will not turn its back on uncomfortable problems. But that elite should not be formed incidentally out of wealth, nor by childish politicians driven by a hunger for status. We want a democratic elite.

Forming a democratic elite:

I suggest that everyone have the capacity to vote, but with conditions. To vote, we should have to do an online course on politics and economics, so we can demonstrate that we're prepared to be intelligently engaged.

When we vote, we vote for policy that affects everyone - not just ourselves. Voting is a serious business and should be respected as such. Many people will not be bothered doing the course and they will in turn not vote. That would most likely be a good thing.

We need to filter for people who are prepared to think long term, and people who are studious enough to not be so easily manipulated by the media.

So, if we must have an elite, it should be the people's elite. Not a self-appointed elite.

I worry that if we turn our backs on the need for serious leadership, then we may only create a vacuum for others to fill. Maybe this has already happened? The UN and associated organisations already talk about our future as though it's their place to design it. No thank you. We can do better. We can run our world primarily from the ground-up, but again we need to specify how democracy works so to remove blatantly short-sighted thinking.

-Andrew Atkin

We are at War, we have always been at war

Audio version: here

Islam and much of the communist world is expansionist. This means they'd force their civilisational code onto the rest us, if only they could. In their minds, they know what's best for the world. 

Ok, sure, blood and butchery inside one or two generations if required is hideous and will hurt, but in the expansionists mind it's a small price to pay for an eternity within a communist or Islamic world paradise.

So why haven't the expansionists done it? Why haven't they overrun us for our own good? Obviously because they can't. The modern free(ish) world has a military might that only the suicidal could dream of challenging (well, head on at least). So the expansionists stay low, waiting, and if possible growing stronger.

Their latency which brews in the underground is what we in the West are at war with. We're too classy to just genocide them, so we keep them on a leash instead. 

You're a soldier:

All of us work, in part, to maintain our standing army. Indeed, the only time any nation can say it's at peace is when their army is no longer required. Since the beginning of recorded history we have never been there - at least not for any appreciable period of time. 

So the fight is on. The propaganda departments tell us we must work hard and be all that we can be. They even tell us that commercial success is the measure of the man. But why? Taxes. Dominant war machines cost money. 

So when you go to work (often far beyond what the exertion is really worth) the government harvests your labour to maintain its war machine, directly or indirectly. You're an economic soldier. You are at war, living in a still-threatened reality. 

But, guns aren't being fired and bombs aren't going off? So what. A hiatus is no peace. The latency is there and so is your army.

Golden ages:

Golden ages happen but they are inevitably short. They could be defined as a time of plenty, where no one's child has to starve. Golden ages are wonderful but temporary, and specifically because no one's child is starving... 

Hence, population pressure quickly creeps in as successful fertility leads to scarcity. The tension builds, ruthless competition follows, and the periodic culling sprees (called wars) stabilise population to resources...

And then from there, neurosis from war trauma entrenches into the cultures. Goodbye golden age - hello Sparta. The warrior becomes the hero. Life, again, will be short and brutish. The poverty-line will be the norm. 

Religious wars:

You might think that so many wars are religious, but I would argue otherwise. 

A prosperous society always goes soft over time, which means less abuse and most critically less child abuse (child abuse is the mechanism by which humans turn their children into wilful warriors). The less neurotic and more placid the population, the less it can be controlled with religious dogma of the type that cannot survive a questioning mind. Religious dogmas are driven by fear, and non-neurotic people are less inclined to react to fear-triggers. Nonsensical ideologies do not survive - expansionist (war monger) religions then reform or die.

Hence, crude religion is only an outgrowth of waring and hardship, and later a rationalisation for it. Ultimately, prosperity (or lack of) is the principal driver of war.

Avoiding our waring future:

Current technological advancements will automate about 90% of jobs over the next decade or two. The world economic forum (WEF) have expressed this also. This means that we are about to move into another golden age, which will in turn lead to a massive baby-boom. Unless, that is, our governments--or more realistically the players behind our governments--continue to take some direct control of the human future (see here). 

The truth is, we can no longer afford an uncontrolled population explosion. The entire planet will end up being a farm (only) for a then mostly vegetarian 100-billion strong population, and within only a few generations. 

And then, with unhampered fertility we will eventually have global wars, though they will be wars that we cannot afford to have because nuclear, or worse, will be too easily accessible to just about anyone soon enough. Who wants to be driven part-mad with hell on earth anyway? We've been there too many times already.

We must have active population control, like China, and on a global scale. We must also defend against gross over-consumption. We can't allow a grand mansion for every man, etc, just because he can afford it. The planet can't take that and it's stupid regardless. Glutenous over-consumption doesn't make people happier on a substantive level. If we want to see true wellbeing then the most important focus, by far, is child abuse and avoidable infantile damage. That is the real global poverty that needs to be dealt with.

Controlling for these problems will necessitate a given level of world government (see here) as a defence. 

From here, and only here, we might pull it off: A sustainable warless golden age, albeit artificially regulated to avoid the demons that would otherwise come after it. 

From here, the only thing missing is the toughest social-political problem of all - dysgenics. If natural selective pressure collapses, so might the strength of our gene pool. That too will require executive management (see here). 

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Additional note: Thoughts on the Elite:

Who are the elite? Well, it used to be the territory of conspiracy theorists to suggest that there are incredibly powerful and concentrated financial entities who own the mass-media, and countless infrastructures, and directly and indirectly control leading politicians. It looks like it's not so much of a conspiracy anymore? (good documentary here)

Ok. Without going too far into this, I will say that we can know that people like Bill Gates and organisations like the Rockefeller foundation take population control very seriously. They have made open speeches on this topic, and for good reason... 

Are these players, and people akin to them, working their hand to manage the world so we don't become our own worst enemy? Maybe. I think I would if I were in their position. 

The hard truth is that global humanity must directly confront the problems of population stability, sustainable resource consumption, and as I've said earlier even eugenics to fight dysgenics. But are we too precious to go there? If so, we've just legitimised a controlling elite. They can morally justify managing a humanity (non-democratically) if it refuses to manage itself.

A democratic elite?

My personal ideal is not to have an elite whose thinking is run by in-house group-think, but instead to have a democratic system that is strictly controlled for merit. In short, this means every man and woman can vote but not without a licence.

The licence is obtained by doing a comprehensive (though interesting and accessible) online course on politics and economics, etc, that must be first mastered and passed within reasonable boundaries. If you're going to vote on policy that affects everyone then you have a responsibility to demonstrate that you are not entirely ignorant, and that you take the act of voting most seriously. 

This, I believe, would be the most ideal system that rightly harnesses democracy yet with a strong focus on merit to vote. The people who can't be bothered doing the course will not vote. That's probably for the best.

                                         -Andrew Atkin

Why I will Lose my Job - and Accept it

Forward:

I know almost certainly that I am about to lose my job, because I will refuse the current available Covid vaccination. The government is slowly and carefully moving towards progressive vaccination mandates. It will not stop at border workers, I know. I will be a close second.

I will not say who my employer is because it's irrelevant and I don't need to bring attention to them, and in no way do I want to leave them on a bad note.

When I lose my job it will be because of the government - not my employer. When the vaccination drama blows over I might well like to reapply for my current job. Hence I want to leave, when I do, on the best possible terms.

Why am I prepared to lose my job to avoid vaccination?

Firstly, because I can afford to. I have no debt, no mortgage, no kids, and no costly dependencies. I am lucky. Others will take the jab because they simply can't afford to lose their income. It's sad, but so be it.

I believe absolutely that no one should be receiving this vaccine if they do not believe it is safe, which is a sentiment shared by countless medical professionals. This is not what our government thinks and they've decided that they know best. I don't agree. 

On health grounds: It is factual that mRNA technology is highly novel in humans. It's invasive (not a topical cream) and still in an experimental stage of development. This means there's a substantial risk of nasty surprises being discovered over the next couple of years. No-one can logically deny this.

If the vaccine was new and essentially traditional, not novel, then I would be less concerned. But that is not what we're dealing with, with mRNA vaccines.

Already, independent researchers are sounding the alarm, and have asserted that their preliminary findings indicate that spike-proteins are damaging microcapillaries (the leaves on the body-tree, basically) which will (supposedly) raise blood pressure and could lead to serious long-term health problems, including death. There are also concerns with lipid-Nano particles undermining the negative charge of red blood cells, making them stick to each other in strange and dysfunctional ways. And more.

Substantiated or not, this is the point: We need to wait for long-term testing with any highly novel and invasive treatment. This is not 'hesitancy' - it's [now abandoned] standard practice. It's the reason why long-term testing was, and is, historically demanded. We simply have to wait to discover the surprises. 

The absence of long-term testing is why mRNA vaccines are classed as experimental. They're only supposed to be used for when the health risk of catching Covid is more serious than the speculated risk of the vaccine itself. You know...

"Well hey, if Covid is going to kill me when it comes, and it will, then I might as well take my chances with this radical vaccine". Fair enough, but this only makes sense for the most vulnerable.

I am not a vulnerable person. I'm 46 years old and in excellent health. The risk of myself getting hospitalised is practically zero, going by our best statistics. A vaccinated motorcyclist might be around 100x more likely to take up an ICU bed than an unvaccinated me.

The ethical argument for coerced vaccination:

Firstly, we know that everyone will see Covid eventually. Ask any virologist. The spread can be slowed - not stopped. This means that you can get the vaccine to protect yourself, but you are protecting no one else - only you.

Also, research has shown that the vaccinated are about as contagious as the non-vaccinated. In fact, they may be even more contagious in practice because vaccination can give a false sense of confidence, leading to foolish behaviours.

-My understanding is that vaccinated people still get infected through the lungs, nose and throat and pass on the bug, because it takes a couple of days for the T-cell immune response to become active. So, if it's really about delaying infection in others, then we should not be talking about vaccinations as such, but saliva testing. With rapid-antigen tests we can detect contagiousness (viral load) quickly, no matter the vaccination status.

What about ICU (Intensive Care Unit) capacity?

If we have poor ICU capacity because the government refused to expand it (and they curiously have not expanded it, to date) then we can argue that there could be a strong push to get the vulnerable vaccinated to keep hospitalisations under control. But it's absurd to use the ICU issue as an excuse for vaccine coercion. Otherwise, we should also be coercing people to lose weight and not participate in dangerous activities, etc.

How should the health system work? Self-abuser pays? Ok. Let's have that conversation then - and only that conversation. We shouldn't play games with weak rationalisations to win public support for coerced vaccination.

If we go down this road of restricted access to ICU for the unvaccinated, then the government should at least give people like myself the option of a tax rebate so I can then pay for my own private health insurance. It will be a small payment because my risk is so small. That's fine.

The creep factor:

For too many reasons it has become clear, to me, that everything is pointing away from the issue of dealing with Covid itself, and instead it's about the vaccine. No, I will not be a conspiracy theorist, though I do keep certain possibilities in the back of my mind (long story).

Alterative approaches have been relentlessly ignored, undermined and even blocked. Medical professionals that dare say anything that might induce vaccine-hesitancy have been openly threatened with the loss of their licence; and the Covid scare, going by our own statistics, has been blown out of proportion to an outrageous degree. The government has even bribed the media to push the one-sided pro-vaccination line.

Further, the government has done everything it can to maximise and strategise mass-vaccination. I believe that severe coercion is coming because that's where all the pointers go. Maybe it will go all the way to outright forced vaccination? I'm worried.

I believe that if 90% of the nation becomes vaccinated, then half of that 90% will be apathetic to the rights of those who resist the vaccine, and the other half will be cheering government coercion on - and largely based on ignorance. This, quite possibly, is what our government is patiently waiting for - before they become ruthless.

The government is now threatening to hold the country's borders to ransom, based on the number of people vaccinated. If Jacinda Ardern declares she will not open the borders until, say, 99% of us are vaccinated, then this will work very powerfully towards getting the nation against those who refuse the vaccine. This would be a most shocking use of manipulated social pressure. Sadly I can see it coming.

Please Jacinda, before turning the unvaccinated into the new "Jews", at least give us the opportunity, with reasonable assistance, to leave this country. I will respectfully leave at your request. I would rather leave New Zealand than receive the Pfizer vaccine. It's all gone far too irrational and creepy for me now.

Finally: There are so many red flag in this bizarre game that it's almost beyond the joke. I write more systematically on this here.

Note: I do not believe our government is evil. I believe that on some level they are being seriously misled, and are most likely suffering from chronic group-think and, for political and typical personal reasons, will be finding it almost impossible to admit to their errors and likewise change their minds. Alas, monopolies of truth are intrinsically dangerous.

Addition: 21-10-2121:

Very concerning, if the government sets the standard of 95% (and later, no doubt 100%) vaccination before restrictions on travel are removed, then the last 5% of people who refuse the vaccine will be in danger. People will hate the unvaccinated for "wrecking their lives" by not letting them travel, and this will almost certainly lead to street attacks. 

This technique that the government is using is akin to what schoolteachers used to do, to get kids to conform by getting the whole class against them, by making everyone suffer for their decision. Realistically, it's the same as inciting violence.

The media is to blame as well. Right now, media people have claimed that the last 5% of people who are unvaccinated will totally overwhelm our hospitals. That is an absolute lie, and has been corrected by opposition MP's, but most people will not see the correction.... 

The media are even reporting that the unvaccinated are already clogging-up our hospitals today, which is crazy talk because we have 39 Covid cases in hospital (We used to have about 6,000 in hospital for the flu, each year. You will notice that scaremongers never provide perspective). Outright lying on this level is unforgivable and dangerous to the unvaccinated.

Maybe I will soon be forced to appeal to the government for refugee camps for the unvaccinated, ideally to the north of Auckland (warm). We can work online and live frugally for a couple of years, in what's basically a long camping holiday. It's better than being lynched on the street and it should satisfy any dangerous mob as we've been 'kicked out'.

The place for Socialism?

 

Everyone says socialism doesn't work, and for good reason. On the national scale it has thus far proven to be a disaster (I talk about this here). 

However, I believe there's a model of functional socialism that does work that we can look at today: Cruise ships.

Operationally, a cruise ship works as a private, small economy that's totally centralised. Cruise ships work well to the end of it, and I think it could be a good idea, basically, to build a kind of cruise ship on the land. The following model gives the key differences:

1. Low density and economical to build. 

2. The people who live in it also own it. They own shares in the master structure, not just their personal house and land.

3. The residence are also the workers (usually).

4. It has its own currency. Like a casino, you buy and sell eChips via a phone app, which are then used for trade and payment within the development.

5. It's highly unregulated. Minimum wages, local taxes, and even building codes, etc, are set by the collective within the development. It's a private economy - the regulatory hand on the national level is light.

The socialist economy, like a cruise ship, would and should be strictly residential - not commercial. It cooks, cleans, educates and transports, etc, but for the most part it does not make and sell to the commercial economy, which I believe should be strictly free-market. The developments I propose have nothing directly to do with the wider free market. They're more like a collectivised extension of the home.

The effect?

Very cheap housing, life amongst your kind of people, practically no crime, relaxed living and a very low cost of living. 

It also provides a protective barrier for the residence in case of economic problems in the wider (free market) society, which is one of the reasons why it can be a good idea to operate a private currency within the development. 

If built from the ground up it can employ electric driverless technology (instead of traditional cars), which allows us to make unusually beautiful townships where everything is easily accessible, again like a cruise ship. Please expand the included image bellow to visualise this.

Competition: A cruise ship is still subject to the forces of competition. If they're not efficient and don't give the customer what they want, they fail. And this is how it would be for land-based 'cruise ships' as well. They must compete with alternatives and this will keep them in check.

So how about that? A socialist base that ensures prosperity and comfort where it matters the most, and without the plastic commercialism, yet at the right scale so people can always see clearly what's going on to keep their 'machine' in check. 

This I believe is where socialism can find its natural place. Small scale - and private. What about national socialism? Avoid it like the plague.

Extended video here.

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Libertarian note: If our society were made up of private "cells" (as I like to call them), of about 2,000 to 10,000 persons strong, it would create an extremely powerful force to resist government overreach, on the national level. 

On research, for example, the academic groups within the cells would do their homework on government policy, and communicate effectively within their group, naturally having the ear of the local people as they are more than strangers to them. This holds government policy to account. It is far, far harder to propagandise a strong private group over a fragmented mass. And also, it becomes extremely hard for national governments to create intrusive policy that really should be left to private groups. In my opinion, this is an important dynamic that we are sorely missing today in our industrialised socialites.

A different kind of political party?

The natural political situation:

I've come to the conclusion that the people who really run New Zealand are the media, schools, tertiary institutes, and Hollywood, etc - that is, the opinion makers and culture movers. Our politicians are really just political appointees that the media effectively installs for us. 

The media can, and does, make and break whatever politician they want via their power to give exposure, or not, and their power to frame politicians (via the all-power post-edit) in whichever way they want. Let's face it - they run the show. As long as most people receive their information passively, as they do, the media will basically own their assumptions.

As I like to say, if the world of politics is a supermarket then the people we recognize as politicians are just the checkout girls, taking the public's [media manufactured] orders.

An excellent example of how our politicians are, and must be, puppets of public opinion can be seen with the ACT party. It went from 1% to 10% in just a couple of years. But how? In part the rise was driven by disillusioned National party voters who had nowhere else to go, but also I believe it was because the leader of the ACT party, David Seymour, became a clear 'sell out'... 

Seymour never touches anything that might upset the media, and he never goes to controversial realities that his select voter-base does not want to hear. An example is in the way his party talks about treating mental sickness yet never, ever, talks about what causes it in the first place, which is overwhelmingly child abuse and infantile damage (which has been well understood for decades). He keeps his mouth shut because he knows no one wants to hear it. He sells out, basically... 

But this doesn't mean that Seymour is a bad guy. He simply accepts that his job is to represent public opinion - not drive it. That's honourable enough, though it does mean our politicians are an empty force for change in themselves.

Really, politicians are just representatives that we insist on humiliating, because unlike a union rep' who can openly say "well guys, I don't agree with this position myself but it's your call and my job is to do your bidding - as I will"...we instead insist that our politicians pretend to agree with us, even when they don't...

That's a painful job, and it explains why our representatives tend to be shallow people. They have to play a game with themselves to compete. They have to pretend to themselves to agree with what they don't, to pull off "authenticity". That's our fault, not theirs, as we make such ridiculous demands on them.

So what should a political force look like, if it wants to have a real impact on public opinion?

I say forget parliamentary politics and go straight for public opinion. Compete with the self-appointed media for their throne. Change the minds that change the politicians.

What I'm thinking of is a political "party" that focuses directly on influencing public awareness: An intermediate organisation that stands between a good think-tank and an advertising body for public education.  

To the end of achieving mass-public education, think-tanks are typically impotent. Their vanilla and over-academic communication style renders them meaningless except for a small few, which is heart-breaking when they so often do such good work. There needs to be a mid-ground. A political retailer for good policy.

The organisation I'm thinking of should recommend policy positions based on research and reason, and then crowdsource marketing campaigns to promote their arguments. People will be much happier to donate when they can see exactly what their money is going to. 

-Muriel Newman had excellent success with this approach a few years back with Maori privilege issues, and we should learn from her example.

The organisation should maturely yet bluntly criticise political parties, and make public recommendations on who to vote for and what to vote for, based on good policy. It should not be inauthentically polite. People and organisations should win the reputations they deserve.

It should work on developing soundbites to get people alerted to the basic messages, because no-one's listening until they are first provoked. It needs to be clever more than 'intellectual'.

Note, the cellphone is a powerful tool today. People are getting used to using QR-codes which can work as an excellent extension for any public flyer, or billboard. Video material should be prioritised when appropriate. The QR-code allows people to look further immediately at the point where interest has been provoked (and not yet lost).

Flyers, flags, posters, billboards, Facebook backgrounds, online media shows, etc, can all serve to continuously thrust public awareness of the organisation out there, which allows the organisation to become a 'somebody' and in spite of mainstream media discretion.

An old saying is, if you're not copping flack then you're not on the target. An organisation like what I'm describing would get massive flack and exactly because it would be on target. If you're a threat then be ready to be abused. Don't be afraid of the media attacking you. If you're doing your job right then they certainly will. 

So for those who want to see change for the better, and wish to do something real about gross public ignorance, and can see the impotence of parliamentary politics, then I suggest moving in this direction. 

You could become more powerful than any other third party, by targeting the public mind directly.

And yes, it would have to be a voluntary organisation - with crowdsourcing campaigns. If you want money and an official political career then that's fair enough, but it's best that you join an establishment party to that end. That's not what I'm talking about with this idea.

Any thoughts?

-Andrew Atkin

The Hand of God?

Newton's cradle, as shown in the included image, could give us the most simple yet critically accurate expression of the fibre of the universe. Imagine a 'field' composed of trillions upon trillions of physical units, and a force within them driving the manifestation of what appears to us as matter - all subatomic particles.

The force within newtons cradle gives birth to the moving "particle" at the end of the line of balls. 

Think with this analogy: Matter is forced into existence, as a wave action (observable matter is a wave action), driven by the force within the field. Like Newton's cradle, it resonates in and out of existence, as it moves from a kinetic action (making it transparent) then back into a pure force within the field, in a cyclic manner. Exactly like newtons cradle.

Indeed, if matter works this way (and it looks as though it does) it would explain the 'bizarre' phenomena of elections instantly disappearing and reappearing hap-hazardly, from point-location to point-location. Are electrons just excitations bouncing in and out of the field, with the field being the true substance of all matter? Probably.

Also, the static force within the field may conduct over distance exceedingly quickly. It could be incomparably faster than the speed of light - or even instantaneous. 

Electric Universe theorists call the force within the field the electric force, and claim it must be at least 20 billion times faster than the speed of light, as required for the universe as we know it to even 'work'. Maybe they are right. If manifest matter is ultimately just a wave action, then the field is the true universe in terms of substance. 

The field may also be the foundation of other 'emergent' universes, of which are derived from the same field that generates other wave-actions (particles), though at different frequency groups to the wave-actions that make up our own known universe, which may make them completely invisible (to us) because we simply don't react with them, in everyday life. 

-It's the same thing as your radio only playing back the frequency it's tuned to. Your body and all matter is a 'radio' within the field, which in turn ignores all other wave-actions that it's not tuned to.

Within the field could be organised intelligence. Why not? If a comparatively crude brain can think, using chunky atoms and molecules, then a field could well support a 'thinker' and to an unimaginably superior extreme in terms of information processing potential. 

If the intelligence of the field (if it exists) can strategically direct forces within the field, then that intelligence could create life, worlds and galaxies, and possibly in the instant. It could contain the developed template of all kinds of structures, including living structures. It could support one massive hard-drive, ready to download the next Cambrian explosion when a given planet is ready to receive it.

And what about consciousness? That could be based in the field, as well. In fact analysis of the non-locality of consciousness already suggests this. This would mean that when, and if, our manifest bodies decompose, then that would not mean our consciousness ends because of it, as our consciousness would have nothing specifically to do with our bodies, in the same way that the internet has nothing specifically to do with your PC. 

However, we can think no further than the question of consciousness, because consciousness is as good as magic because it's absolutely impossible to conceptually understand. Though the field, as a force linking everything together, including all matter and knowable existence, can be described as the hand of God: All powerful, all intelligent, everywhere in immediate time and everything.

--and hey guess what? I managed to say all of that without any refence to anything non-structural, or fancifully esoteric. It was a fair speculation that respects the status of both our knowledge and our ignorance.

I wrote further on this topic, here.

A rounded view of New Zealand's Covid Saga

6,500 people were hospitalised for the flu in New Zealand, in 2019.

Flu deaths in New Zealand are typically 500 per-year.

Why weren't we terrified? Why didn't we demand ruthless lockdowns? Why didn't we cry out for experimental mRNA technology? 

Alas, it's amazing what people might come to believe when the government becomes their one source of truth.

The following is a sequence of clear red flags:

1. After designating 100 billion dollars for an elimination strategy, the government failed to seal the borders to protect that investment. Logic dictates that the military, or equivalent, should have been hunting for potential border leaks from day one to protect the investment. None of this happened. The borders leaked.

2. After the lockdowns, the government later explained that elimination did not mean elimination, and that eradication meant elimination, and that eradication was not possible. They knew that the public did not know that elimination doesn't actually mean elimination. The government effectively lied to enhance public cooperation for their lockdown strategy. That's manipulation - not representation.

3. The conversation on total costs and optimum health responses was ignored. Mental health issues, a badly damaged economy (which funds our health system), and quality of life and length of life issues, were all ignored as though Covid is the only principal concern. This is irrational and not standard practice for any health investment.

4. The initial mass-lockdown response was motivated by Neil Fergusson's models which are proven to be wrong. Neil Ferguson had a history of creating bad models that predicted mass disasters that never eventuated. 

5. The most powerful defence against Covid or any other virus is the general health of the populace, and immune health specifically. There was no education programme or direct investment to encourage, and facilitate, people to have more time for sunshine and exercise, stress control, and other. This made no sense.

6. Educated critics of the governments health response have been ignored, threatened and suppressed. This includes people with every imaginable credential. Note also, effective alternative medications, such as Ivermectin, have been omitted from the public conversation or government consideration.

7. Collecting data on Covid has been more political than scientific. People who died with Covid were recorded as having died from Covid, even for where the co-morbidities were overwhelmingly causative. 

The PCR tests were long known to deliver false positives, even over 90%, yet were still used to inflate apparent Covid case numbers. Government authorities have only recently admitted this.

8. Vaccines that are currently available are based on highly novel mRNA technology, and have had no long-term testing in humans. This is why the vaccines are classed as experimental. The long-term effects of mRNA vaccines are not known, and of course can't be known for some years to come. Animal trials on mRNA vaccines have previously led to serious damage and death in the animals. 

9. Informed consent (a prior condition of any experimental treatment) has been ignored over aggressive and one-sided marketing, and fear mongering. People have been encouraged to get the jab as soon as possible irrespective of personal Covid risks. 

Note, whether or not the current vaccines even reduce the spread of Covid is questionable.

10. Governments world-over are beginning to use social pressure to drive mass-vaccination. People have been 'officially' demonised for questioning the vaccines. People who refuse the vaccines have often been degraded as ignorant, irresponsible and selfish, and typically described as anti-vaxxer or conspiracy theorist. 

11. Existing statistics indicate clearly that covid-19 is no more dangerous than the seasonal flu, the latter of which kills about 500 New Zealanders every year. Covid in New Zealand has so far killed 26 people (with co-morbidities).

12. There is no clear evidence that masks work to suppress the transmission of Covid. (The airborne virus is miniscule compared to the weave of the masks fabric).

-To be fair, medical experts have long admitted that the masks are basically useless in themselves. However, they do serve the function of actioning a constant reminder of the lockdown levels, which in turn stops people from letting their guard slip on other levels, such as basic hygiene and social distancing.

13. The governments insistence on periodically locking down the entire country, at massive financial, lifestyle, and health cost, as opposed to the normal pandemic response which is to only isolate the vulnerable, has never made sense.

14. The government has not promoted (or ideally made mandatory) Bluetooth apps that allow for effortless, comprehensive and reliable mass contact-tracing. 

They have not employed video-intercom apps that allow people to make an immediate call on their phones, for preliminary diagnosis of a possible infection. Early identification and early treatment essentially eliminates all notable risk (pandemic over). 

Nor has the government employed rapid saliva testing at the borders so they can be safely opened for business and tourism. 

In other words, the government has inexplicably failed to employ the obvious measures that are available to us, that can immediately remove the need for emergency status lockdowns and mass-vaccination. 

Vaccination is unreliable to the end of controlling a pandemic. Evolving variants mean we are always playing catch-up. Herd immunity is practically impossible with vaccination, alone.

15. The government tells us what they're going to do (at least just before it happens), but they do not tell us why they're going to do it. 

The thinking and modelling behind the pandemic strategy has not been transparent, so intelligent and qualified [outside] experts, and innovators, have not been able to constructively criticise and contribute to the ongoing development of government policy, in any direct manner. 

Secrecy makes sense when you're fighting a war - but not when you're fighting a pandemic. 

16. The government has previously outlawed antibody tests to see who has had Covid, and therefore who has natural immunity. Antibody tests are still not freely available in New Zealand. No one understands why.

The result, is that people are receiving experimental vaccinations who will gain nothing from them, because natural immunity is far superior to vaccination-induced immunity. This is nonsensical, like the government is more interested in pushing vaccines for their own sake, than neutralising Covid.

17. The government has promoted mRNA vaccinations as the 'great solution' that can allow New Zealand to open its borders, while mostly ignoring more effective methods of pandemic management. This is a mistake.

Unlike natural immunity, vaccines are poorly variant-tolerant. Viruses survive by mutating and continuously generating variants. Hence we are forever playing catch-up with vaccines, just like with the seasonal flu. 

It is well understood that everyone will eventually receive Covid, no matter the national vaccination levels. Vaccines, at best, will only slow the spread to the inevitable. Both Israel and Iceland have recently provided clear examples of this. These nations were heavily vaccinated yet still could not contain their Delta outbreaks.

In short, this means that if you receive a vaccine then you do it for your own protection - no one else's. Your vaccination status ultimately protects no one but yourself, at best.

In spite of this, again, the government is promoting mass-vaccination as the solution. They are even promoting vaccination as a social responsibility which, most concerning of all, is being used to promote forced-vaccination onto the public. 

This is appalling, because not only are mRNA vaccines experimental (we don't know of the medium to long term risks. Only time can inform us) but there is no ethical argument for this move. Respect that when the government can force-medicate people against their will, or back them into a corner where they have no other practical choice, we have a serious human rights issue.

...and much more.

------------------------------------------------------

And now the government expects me and you to accept their experimental vaccines. They can ask me again in five years time. It will take at least that long to get to the science that has been too obviously politicised by a government(s) whose credibility is now shot. 

I am not a conspiracy theorist - but my eyes are open.

Note: I will progressively add interesting and important links in the comments section.

-Andrew Atkin

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Dr Peter McCullough is a world leading expert on Covid prevention. I thought this NZ-based interview was extremely interesting. I urge you to have a look.

https://odysee.com/@voicesforfreedom:6/Dr-Peter-McCullough

New Zealand's Democratic Failure

We say democracy is power to the people, yet it is not. Technically, it's power to the majority. The other 49% does not have less power in a democracy - it has no power. 

Add to this, the fact that the vote in a mass-democracy is largely blind or a personality contest, with severely limited electoral options, and we can see that democracy is as much power-to-the-propagandist as it is power to even the majority. 

Democracy at its worst is a tragedy. This isn't news to those who have studied it. Indeed, this is why America, originally engineered as a restricted democracy, introduced a foundational constitution and the separation of powers (into legislative, executive and judicial), and constructed numerous independent states to facilitate the power of foot-voting.

-Personally, I believe foot-voting is the most important power of all to the end of creating a free and prosperous society. [2 minute video here]

Yet even America is failing as a once well-engineered restricted democracy, because the separation of powers is no longer so separate. Parallel infiltration of all departments by Leftists, including the media, schooling and Hollywood, is slowly driving America towards socialism and childish extremist ideologies. Alas, the separation of powers is cosmetic when the pay-masters have their hands in all the puppets. 

New Zealand:

For democracy to survive, especially if it's a pure democracy (like New Zealand), it needs to have a strong "moral constitution" within the culture of its people. To put it most crudely, the dominant 51% needs to be decent enough to vote above self interest, and in turn not vote to turn the other 49% into their personal slaves.

From here we can point to New Zealand's democratic failure. The clear majority - that is, those who own a home or have a mortgage - have functionally outlawed the construction of affordable housing, via oppressive government regulation [video explanation here]. 

Note: A new home normally costs about $200,000 to build on an urban fringe. However, New Zealand has artificially restricted land supply, so that a plot of raw land on the fringe has become inflated by the bidding-war from $20,000 to more like $500,000. Regulations on building materials, and other, have dramatically increased the cost of constructing a new house, as well. The cost of high-quality kit-set houses imported from China and elsewhere, would otherwise make a new 3-bedroom construction cost less than $100,000 - if only it were allowed to be that simple.

The majority will not vote for any political party that dares allow their personal house price to fall - and, of course, all major political parties have taken that order to protect their careers. 

In New Zealand, the majority's lust for wealth has induced them to believe that the resale value of their homes should radically appreciate, as though others don't have to 'lose for something' while they 'win for nothing'.

To be clear: If a private cartel paid off our politicians to run a protectionist regime on food, designed to make the sale price of food three times higher than it otherwise would be, then the public would want that cartel hung, drawn and quartered for such corruption. Yet that is exactly what's going on in New Zealand's property market today, and with comparably devastating results. 

The New Zealand property market gives a perfect example of a democratic breakdown. The majority has voted like pigs - not citizens. The far-reaching impact is now seen in both reduced and heavily delayed fertility, due to extreme mortgage and rent burdens. The New Zealand fertility rate is now below even replacement levels due to the perverse housing burden on youth. 

Yet, it's never been easier for the retired to live the good life and go on overseas holidays, etc. 

You will see that most retired people feel no need to think about the politically-engineered wealth transfer. The retired typically see their bonanza as a tax-rebate for a lifetime of hard work, and they embrace that rationalisation without testing their assumptions and putting things in perspective. In other words they just believe what they want to believe, as people so often do.

So we have a failure of democracy to do what's right, even on the most important levels. That is a failing state. A state that cannot even breed properly.

The hope for young New Zealanders will be in their ability to migrate to better places, where the political majority is more dedicated to doing the right thing. There are now great opportunities with the modern live-anywhere economy, so it will be interesting to see what kind of out-migration New Zealand suffers once the Covid-19 hype is over.

It will also be interesting to see how a "great replacement" affects New Zealand, over time. The nation might well fall into socialism, even dictatorial socialism, if New Zealand natives are replaced with, assumedly, more anxious migrants who care little for serious politics. The demographic changes could allow the power of propaganda to completely dominate the direction of the nation. We will see.

The look of New Zealand's electric transport future

Ok, so the government wants to invest in electric vehicles because it makes them look like responsible climate warriors. Ignoring the right or wrong of it, we can still ask the practical question - how would an electric transport New Zealand look, in practice?

Well, electric cars are still rather costly in terms of capital demands, so the system we develop would need to be as economical as possible to induce uptake - without a severe public backlash.

It makes sense then for most electric cars to be very small, like my favourite example, the Twizy. You would use your small commuter car for most trips, and you would use a traditional car only for when you specifically need it. 

That would make an electric future affordable. Just cut the basic cost of the most commonly used cars by two-thirds, by investing in mainly single-person vehicles to match real demand.

Range extenders:

But there's the range problem. The best way to solve this is with petrol-electric generators (range extenders) that can hook onto the back of your car when needed for those long trips. 95% of the time you won't need the range extender, so it makes sense not to buy it - just hire it from a service station. 

The French have already mastered practical range-extenders to this end. A range extender mounted within a small trailer that actively steers itself while reversing, so anyone can back it without the headache. Goodbye range anxiety? 

Range-extenders also get around the problem of needing tens of thousands of charging ports to support cars that 'fill up' in 2 hours, not 2 minutes.  

Yes, range-extenders mean you're still burning carbon - but only a little. The fuel-burn can be offset via a modest amount of tree planting for decades to come. They make perfect sense as a bridging solution, until someone finally invents the miracle battery.

Charging:

Almost all from-the-grid charging will be done overnight, when electrical demand is (otherwise) low. That would be as essential as the range-extenders. A simple timing device would of course make this easy.

Large vehicles:

Larger vehicles, if they must be electric, will usually be hired. A well expanded Mevo-type network could do the job well (I write more on this, here).

What about trucks and special vehicles? They can go electric with add-on range-extenders too, but no doubt over a longer period of time. 

Driverless electric:

There's also the possibility of going driverless with electric cars. I argue that robotaxi's are most likely being held back by powerful players, and for understandable reasons. (I talk on this, here). For now, we should assume that politicians and their backers will continue to force us to buy new cars and pay a fortune for parking (sadly).

The advantage of going electric:

A massive reduction in noise pollution, both inside and outside of vehicles. That would be wonderful. Great for the lungs too, of course.

Don't ask me about the environmental gain, because climate alarmism has long been a political creation driving a scientific conclusion...

We know that more CO2 in the atmosphere has led to a much greener earth, because higher CO2 concentrations make plants more drought resistant. Btw, sea levels have gone almost nowhere and the scary climate models are still all empirically wrong. Doomsday was supposed to be here twenty years ago. I'm still waiting.

The emissions trading scheme:

New Zealand's emissions trading scheme covers land transport, and it wisely employs an emissions cap. In short, this means that the amount of carbon that can be burnt in land transport is rigidly set, no matter what else we might do...

So, in practice, as the demand for fuel-burn goes up, so does the cost of the credits that permits us to burn it, because there are only a limited number of available carbon credits that permit us to burn fuel - and the market has to compete for them. Hence, as the price goes up, people then mitigate their [then costly] carbon consumption by using their vehicles less, or more efficiently, or running a smaller car, car-pooling, buying an electric car...or whatever. 

So, what does the governments special investment in electric vehicles do for emissions reduction, considering we already have an emission trading scheme that caps our consumption to a rigidly set point, regardless? Absolutely nothing, is the answer. 

-Again to be clear: If you reduce the fuel-burn of cars by making them largely electric, the price of carbon-credits will then go down, so the permitted fuel-burn will then be taken up by trucks, buses, or whatever.

So why is the government picking favourites for emissions mitigation, with electric cars? Because most people don't (and won't) understand the emissions trading scheme, so subsiding electric vehicles makes the government look good. It's a 'virtue' investment. Perception is politics. 

What's more, if reducing CO2 emissions is as simple as employing a capped emissions trading scheme, like we already do, then the Climate Change Commission will be out of a job. The CCC are currently paid very well to break what never should have been broken.

The hard truth is, the New Zealand government is abusing public concern about carbon emissions to the end of controlling the development of the nation. Emissions reduction is the excuse - not the reason. That's another story altogether and I write on that, here.

Oh, and here is the right way to reduce emission (if you must):

Extended: note on the politics:

Personally, I would love it if most cars were electric. I do a lot of walking and I value the peace. But noise pollution is none of the Climate Change Commissions business. It has nothing to do with reducing CO2 in itself. Reducing noise is a decision for New Zealand - not the CCC.

If New Zealand wanted electric cars and buses for the sake of the quiet, then they could choose to apply a tax on vehicles based on how much noise they make, how toxic the noise is, and where and when the vehicle is driven, etc. A simple GPS-tracking device could sort this out, efficiently. For example, making it costly to run a diesel bus up a residential street at 5.30 in the morning would quickly drive demand for electric buses, or buses with extensive noise suppressors. Again - these kinds of controls belong to another department, not the CCC.

This should be obvious. So what's going on? Why have we created the CCC when all we ever needed was an emission trading scheme, with a progressively tightening cap over time?

It looks to me that the government has created a department that can recommended policy most likely inherited from the United Nations, though in a way that makes their policy not look like it's designed to reach non-CO2 reduction ends. 

The CCC works as a protective barrier between our politicians and public scrutiny. All the government has to say now is..."Oh, but that's what the CCC recommended and they're the experts"...even as we find ourselves being driven into some kind of modern socialism, or other.

Again, reducing emissions seems to be the excuse, not the purpose. 

Going all-electric in transport may only be the beginning of what the CCC will recommend. Don't be surprised if you find yourself living in a super costly high-density city, whether you want it or not. And it could all be done via dodgy logic and, of course, in the name of fighting climate change.

Is the New Zealand economy Doomed?

 

First understand how economic development works. Capital investment leads to handsaws being replaced with chainsaws, which increases productivity per-hour worked. But capital investment only happens when investors decide your country is a better place to invest in, over some other country. That's the concern.

When governments raise taxes, over-empower union movements, spend too much on welfare, advance protectionism, take bribes (cronyism), waste recourses on political projects, etc, then investors will [rightly] see your country as a bad place to invest in. In turn your nation will be left behind, as the rest of the more capital-friendly world takes off. 

Socialist governments do this. They scare away investors and the result, inevitably, is declining productivity which leads to poverty. Venezuela is the perfect example. A once rich nation that then voted like fools, with a now desperate and growing poverty class. So what have the Venezuelan people done? Learnt nothing (sadly) and voted for more socialism. 

This isn't where New Zealand is today, but there's a growing threat that we should be thinking seriously about - and the threat is literally staring us in the face.

The current Labour government is making bizarre economic mistakes, largely driven by misguided ideologies and its powerful special-interest base - the trade unions. But this is not the greater problem. The greater problem is in the fact that Labour are still extremely popular, even though their performance record is tragic - they've failed with almost everything. The voters blindness, more than anything, will be scaring investors. 

The critical point, is that the sensibility of the voter is much more important than the sensibility of the government of the day. The state of the voter tells investors what the government will look like tomorrow. 

Sure, if a National-Act government gets back in power, and eventually they will, they still won't give confidence to the all-important investors - and no matter what constructive reforms they might pass. Investors can see clearly enough that there's a dominant voter base in New Zealand easily won-over by the socialist side of politics. So regardless of what a National-Act government might do, investors can know that it will presumably be undone by the next leftist government, a few years down the track. 

Sadly, New Zealand has become a bad place to invest. Capitalists and entrepreneurs will be looking to other countries that are demonstrably less risky. The destructive effect of deflected investment will snowball...

A secondary effect of a failing New Zealand will be the rapid out-migration of intelligent New Zealanders to Australia, gutting New Zealand of its most economically important people. Insofar as this happens, and insofar as remaining New Zealanders keep voting left, it might well doom the nation economically.

Time will tell. But again, already New Zealand is recognised as a high-risk nation for investors. The cost can only be paid for one way: Low wages, a talent exodus to Australia, and the replacement of the native population with people from [mainly] India and China.

The individuals solution? Migrate to Australia before New Zealand can't afford to take care of you, in old age. That would be the less risky option.

The national solution? Educate the nation on how economic development works. Make them better voters. Or maybe even demand that they get a basic civics education before being allowed to vote at all.

The video below is my own best attempt at a critical education (about 35 minutes).

The included video is a more direct expression of how economic development works.

-Andrew Atkin

Do RoboTaxis need to be a Government Initiative?

Here's the commercial bottomline. Driverless technology is a dream come true for car manufacturers. They can at last offer fresh appeal to the consumer that goes beyond the cosmetic and trivial. Having a car that can drive itself 90% of the time, so you can sip your coffee and even play on your phone, is an advantage that will make plenty of people hungry for a brand new car.

However, level-5 automation (which is where the car does everything and requires no human supervision at all) is a car manufacturers nightmare, because Level-5 automation means robotaxis. And robotaxis will provide a service that will decimate new car sales.

Think about this. You dial up a car with one touch of an icon, it gets to you in 60 seconds, it drives you (or you drive it, if you like) to the front door of your destination, and once you get out you simply press the "log off" button and the car moves on to the next customer. And because most cars would be super efficient single-seaters, to match real demand, it will cost about a third of what you pay for your traditional car - not including parking savings.

It's obvious. Once a commuter robotaxi system comes out, people will see that most cars will be close to going the way of the CRT screen - that is, not even worth the real estate they occupy. Who's going to buy a new car for $50,000 feeling sure enough that they won't be able to sell it for $2,000, just a couple of years down the track? Nearly no one. 

Have the automotive manufacturers worked this out? They're not stupid. Of course they have.

I've already described the Step-1 for implementing a practical robotaxi system, which could have been initiated five or more years ago (see here). Clearly you should employ small commuter cars first, and those commuter cars should operate in driverless mode only when empty-sending themselves to customers. 

Safety risks are trivial with a tiny car that's nearly impossible for pedestrians to miss, and weighing a mere third of a conventional sedan. To stress, when people use their commuter car, it will not be operating as a driverless car. To start, people should have to drive the cars themselves so to eliminate all concerns (real or perceived) associated with riding in a driverless car. Full driverless operation can come later.

With this simple model, alone, your robotaxi network will support at least 70% of urban transport demand and collapse new car sales to the end of it, bankrupting all the major automotive manufacturers overnight. At this point, nearly everyone will choose to hold onto their existing car or buy secondhand, over buying new.

Automotive manufacturers (and software developers) want robotaxi like you and I want a hole in the head. If they say they're trying to build a robotaxi system, you can bet your left arm that whatever it is they're creating it will be designed to fail - or be prohibitively expensive. They'll co-opt robotaxi only to kill it - and kill its publicly perceived potential.

But what if automotive manufacturers are in love with helping the world, and wilfully fall on their sword? If car manufacturers don't try to kill robotaxis they are abandoning their responsibility to shareholders, which is literally criminal. The corporate machine is designed to make money - only. Robotaxis must die if they can be rid of them. Nothing personal. People are lovely but the corporate machine will dictate.

This is why, I believe, every example and discussion on driverless cars that I've thus far seen never brings my simple model to attention. All proposed robotaxi systems are hugely expensive, do not match real demand, and are loaded with safety risk-factors that do not need to exist. The CEO's are doing their job? Probably. 

And this leads to my conclusion. What we're seeing is a market failure. When monopolistic dynamics seriously interfere with [otherwise] capitalism at its best, then this is where we can argue for the government to step in.

It might be time for governments to investigate the conflict of interest between robotaxi development and the drive for new car sales. From there, the government can choose to develop a basic robotaxi system for themselves - and be the first competitive force to hold the automotive industry to account. 

Car manufacturers are not going to fall on their swords, so maybe we need government to give them a little hand?

-Andrew Atkin

Are we all still working class Grinders?

It's interesting that so many of the great thinkers and explorers of classical times were rich - often very rich. No doubt a major reason why people such as Charles Darwin were able to achieve what they did, in their time, was because they were free from that all-consuming preoccupation with making a living.

Another thing that's interesting, was the relationship the regal elite had towards the other class of wealthy people, that they called 'new-money [people]'. The pompous elite were old-money people - their wealth was mostly inherited. As it has been said, old-money people were not typically fond of the new-money people, in an interpersonal sense...

So why did old-money people tend to snub the entrepreneurial new-money people? Apparently, it was because new-money people were still preoccupied with money. That made them boring to the old-money people. The new-money people were probably unrefined to them, as well. New-money people were commercially savvy, but they were still working class as people. They were still all Donald Trumps - not Prince Charles's.

The true elite don't think about money. They just have it. They're past money as a preoccupation and in turn they operate on a "higher" level. It's the working classes who can't get the preoccupation with success out of their minds. And that is the key point.

I look at my society, today, with its obvious capacity to let everyone live the good life, and without the tedious (non-independently directed) education, and without the long working hours, yet we still talk about becoming commercially successful as though it's expected to be part of our religion - or, more specifically, as though commercial success is something we have to so specifically strive for and worry about.

We're still mentally zoned like the old working classes - yet we shouldn't be. There's no need if we organise things properly. Our technology and production infrastructure have come too far. Success should be easy for practically everyone in the industrialised world, today.

Frankly, I think it's a trick. We're tax slaves. And we're driven to work so hard because we're afraid of feeling inadequate if we don't. Look closer and you'll see that we don't aspire so much for success - but the avoidance of shame. That's not freedom. That's your ego-hungry parents stuck in your head.

And alas, the exaggerated concern with success puts our minds on a trivial plane, that ultimately makes us intellectually sterile. Profitable? Sure. But sterile.

I hope one day we can see through the trick and get things in perspective. And collectively focus to improve our systems so to avoid meaningless consumption and stupid inefficiencies. That is, structure our townships in a way that takes full advantage of modern technologies. It's not hard.

Then, we can get over money and success - at last. And free ourselves from that grinding working class mindset to join the pompous old-money elite. Much more relaxing - much more interesting. Success for life - not life for success.