The Current State Of Humanity
We humans (please bear with me as I remain unspecific about groups in the below) realised that our world has limits. It seems to me that we have come to the conclusion that getting rid of a large part of the global population will relatively speaking boost our resources, like hitting a replenishing bonus in a game would do. Considering that "the other" also embodies a potential geopolitical risk, some of us seem to have decided that getting rid of that "other" is the best idea. But this cannot be done without disagreeable damage to the self.
Indeed, this misses the following:
Our fractal nature in our fundamentally exploitative economic system: when we render some part of the other inoperable by extenuating them or getting rid of them, as well as when competition on our own turf becomes painful, some of us and part of ourselves individually become 'the other', because, for exploitation, something's got to give;
In order to get rid of the other (or apply another form of "sundering", as per the RRE vocabulary: see white paper https://zenodo.org/records/10633773) we must first establish the norms and regulations that do this, norms which will, as is or in a mirrored, possibly worse form, apply to the self, too, immediately as they are created. This manifests itself in the form of risk and damage for the self;
The boundaries between categories are quite slippery in that regard, meaning that one wakes up one day in another category than the one that one had identified with up to that moment, not knowing how that switch happened;
Progress in sundering activities changes the structures and dynamics in the human system and falsifies assumptions with which strategies were built, in ways that to substantial extent may not be salvaged through agility;
The above are merely some examples of mechanisms involved in risk recursion, whereby risk and damage that we transfer onto others don't stay there: they keep propagating and thereby changing in character. It is difficult to explain this without making it sound like a threat (which it is not) and I am aware of the risk of misunderstanding here. Risk recursion is merely what happens with ambient dynamics, without any added specific volition to any specific affirmation. Risk recursion is why those getting rid of "the other" cannot expect to remain unharmed. The caveat being that this can only be remediated in a coordinated manner, which in some cases raises the game theory issue of 'but if we don't then they will', which would be solved if all understood risk recursion. Remediating for this makes sense 'because if we don't we lose'.
Not only do our risks accrue and does our potential fall due to the above items, but also due to the overall evolution of processes, augmented by the incompleteness of our knowledge, which leads us to misidentify our problems and make the wrong decisions, thus causing ourselves more risk and damage than strictly necessary. This accrual is the "risk arrow".
Therefore, to maximize (positive) human potential, what humanity has always needed and still needs is a permanent process that is independent from specific technologies, to support decisions, strategically planning and coordinating each step so as to maintain human functions at all levels. A necessarily "systemic" or "holistic" approach. This is what the Resilience-to-Robustness Equilibrium (see RRE white paper https://zenodo.org/records/10633773) process does. The Oval model of the economy therein depicts these functions.
WE ARE UNKNOWINGLY AMPLIFYING OUR OWN RISK AND DAMAGE
The above being unbeknownst to folks, one part of humanity is meticulously and patiently excluding another from all exchange; works toward replacing its dependency on a third by transferring that dependency minimally onto a fourth, presumed more clement, part, hinting at a better future for them; transfer following which the first is likely to also exclude the third from all exchange; leading the second and the third into the status of the fourth; and an automation fantasy would allow to the exclusion of the fourth, too, exclusion which in the decided extent would become terminal. These may sound sarcastic but they are just a description of considerations that someone somewhere is bound to be juggling with, in a humanity at the crossroads. I'm afraid humanity has already set the blinkers, signalling its intended turn.
The exclusion is done through siege: the world is denied to the target. This is done not only within a region, but sieved throughout all regions, and concerns internal targets, within one's own social support circle, in addition to external targets.
Internally, inequalities and issues of access to qualitatively and quantitatively satisfactory food, shelter/"home"/space/privacy/security/protection from noise, utilities, devices, medical treatment, administration, organisational load adequacy, services and justice arise. For instance, funding for energy efficiency projects that explicitly excludes the consideration of (non-end-consumer) rebound boils down to the empoverishment of the general population as a means to reduce consumption (and not necessarily of corporations, which tend to amply make up for any frugality of the empoverished). This, for some, makes less of a difference than for others, thus boosts disparities in opportunity and in outcome.
Last month for the first time I've heard someone in a panel saying that we'd need to make sure that we have "the right bias", rather than no bias, in our automated actions. That person had at least the decency to be honest. This would regard (market-)internal as well as outward siege.
I'm sure international law scholars will disagree with the following affirmations:
Siege is war and economic and social siege is being waged by all the population;
Today, siege is not only applied to folks in a certain geography, rather in a detailed manner everywhere. It matches the idea of global "cleansing" (by the way throwing apparent calls for genetic diversity out the window);
As businesses and consumers, as well as other entities such as investors, international organisations and NGOs get involved in such siege in various ways, war and atrocities become an all-of-society activity and the distinction between military and civilian loses its validity. Technically, this should impact the definition of conscientious objection. Coherently, some military vocabulary made its way into traditionally civilian realms;
An act is not necessarily singular or concentrated. It can be distributed among agents, across the system and/or in time, its parts can look or be claimed to be unrelated or anodyne, or be individually too weak to get detected. Similarly, outcomes of an act can be distributed. These should have measurement- and legal implications, including for accountability about AI and LAWS / AWS;
International law and the rights framework are being interpreted ad hoc and implemented only selectively, in contribution to such siege. This strongly compromises their legitimacy. As they are not implemented for and on all, they are but one more tool of segregation and siege.
In that siege process, we are manoeuvring ourselves into more and more stringent rules of behavior, requiring more control and allowing for no digression, as our "inner circle" is getting smaller and smaller and the rest of the world - humans and nature - is getting more and more menacing, as well as due to the technologies we use in our strategies.
With that, we should ask ourselves the question: where do we think we are actually going?
One aspect of where we are going or where we are may be: committing atrocities. Indeed, the typical first step toward atrocities is dehumanisation or vilification, which we seem to have completed with a few human and institutional targets by now, then segregation, in which we are quite far for some targets, including internal ones. Our risk of being further than this for internal targets is 100%. Moral disengagement takes place like the sea retracts before a tsunami. The idea that this is good for future generations is not defensible.
When only one contained actor commits atrocities, it is possible for humanity to continue on a positive evolution after having fully addressed actual root causes. If the entire world commits atrocities at any point, humanity isn't a thing anymore, and it will be difficult to re-emerge, from a civilisational perspective, from that abyss.
Now, in a world where our limits became visible to us, do we really intend to let parts two to four above live? Such excised parts could still function on their own resources, build strategic defense capacity and produce notably CO2, wouldn't they? Do we intend to remove in some way their access to resources? Or use kinetic, biological or other aggression, not to mention what we intend to do in the issue of our internal targets above? If yes then how dare we argue about anything using the concept of "human rights"?
None of these prospects would be speakable, meaning effective goals cannot be stated. Therefore:
The transmission of decisions becomes inarticulate and foggy even to folks down a voluntary hierarchy who would proactively seek related instructions to implement.
Folks who sense the issue and feel powerless tend to cover up facts and emotions and develop and solidify an indifference toward themselves and toward others. This necessarily also taints social dynamics at a larger scale.
Stated goals and effective actions diverge yet must be rationally linked. Therefore:
The meanings of words get hijacked, the words we use for domains and institutions don't correspond to what is done in them anymore;
Tools and solutions are put in place purportedly for one use, yet can be handily implemented for another. For instance, a safe space can limit mobility and freedom of action. Food waste reduction make of a certain group of people the unaware consumers of damaged goods. And so on.
The basics of logics and rationality get recalibrated to comply with ad hoc imaginary frameworks, gradually rendering folks less and less able to think accurately, and this includes decision makers at all levels.
We acknowledged planetary limits latest in the 70s, but it took us until roughly now to acquire the technology to tele-actuate and tele-sense, replace more human services with automated ones, and get humans to comply more readily. We are not really considering that automated systems did not evolve with the rest of the world over millions of years, therefore aren't environmentally as sound as humans for say the same effort. One may argue that automation brings services that humans can't and not consider the knowledge drift away from reality that AI brings about, nor the risks, including safety-, security- and geopolitical, that the thereby heightened mining and other activity needs constitute.
A fantasy of the whole world turning into a fully automated, vertically integrated and self-maintaining single general-purpose factory seems to exist. Considering that competition exists at all levels, robot wars should be part of that fantasy, meaning also more internal combustion (see white paper above for that expression) that we can't actually afford.
We demonstrably have an amazing capacity to change things in the way we decide to. Yet, we have a sticky tendency to miscognize new information so as to match preconceptions or perceived constraints. We start out a sentence in a sensible manner, only to then make an impossible triple backflip to land in our partial understanding of the world again. In other words, we habitually hammer square pegs into round holes. We hardly ever manage to get out of our boxes. Is it that impossible? Turns out I provide a seminar with a colleague on "systemic- and critical thinking", which may help.
Business doesn't stop when reaching a wall (for instance of sustainability, of access to markets, or of competition on productivity), and changes character so as to punch a hole through it. Instead of truly reconsidering our directionality, we only accelerate on our downward spiral, tragicomically applying ourselves to it with more vigor and effort.
As mentioned in a previous article, governments are being hollowed by the private sector. Resources, capabilities, infrastructure, information, registers, authorities, wealth, operational power etc. All assets, mobile or not, tangible or intangible, are being made liquid and private, tradable, speculatible, where relevant tele-actionable and data-collecting. This makes e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. sanctionable, siege-able (siegible?), and ultimately automatically so. (It is notable that in a frequently fantasized decentralisation of governance, this makes erasing any node that doesn't agree with 51% of nodes, or who is arbitrarily picked to be sacrificed in order to salvage the overall network, very painless, paving the way for atrocities, not to mention cybersecurity implications.) Legwork in tech can still be made accessible to some "others". Trade, including with "the global south", focuses on digital services, which allows for future automation and severing.
What cannot bring enough returns of various kinds is dropped, not developed. What can under these constraints be developed is done so with the funds of governments, while yielding returns for the involved private entities. Basic administrative, health and education services that don't bring enough returns are not seen as investments, thus the government, which by proxy is, and we tend to forget this, the general population, picks up the bill.
Avenues for political propositions that diverge from the mainstream are being cut or reduced. Their reach on social networks as well as the size of open spaces in cities are moving toward being reduced. In at-risk live events, questions, if allowed at all, are screened, rendered fully digital even at in-person events, curated and de-risked, and participants filtered. Our current implementation of inclusivity is a homogenising, converting one that erases diversity other than the genetic pool, some initial knowledge addition and access to previously external resources, and is accompanied by a paradoxical exclusivity. The feeling of certainty in general, of conviction to be "meant for" something, or of being motivated to lead others into non-mainstream waters, are denigrated. Folks self-censor. Coherently, extremely high individual wealth is also denigrated, as well as corporate power only if it seems to entail an autocratic risk. The highest net worth individuals as well as the "low net worth" ones are being dispossessed by a united front of very-high-but-not-highest-net-worth layer which folks are fighting to join. Anything that may bypass the nascent dystopian system is blocked. "Leading" others to implement mainstream policies as instructed is glorified. Those who may see our directionality nevertheless actively choose to serve it in a way that reminds me of the Minions (an animated feature series). They forget that the incentives are for the service and not the servant. Those with children seem particularly willing. It is a heartbreakingly tragic condition in which the only act that seems to help one's children also condemns each of them. This is because the measures and strategies taken today to create exclusive advantage also create self-exploitative and risk-boosting outcomes. Meanwhile, the fire within most folks feels somewhat diminished and media dependency and the lived experience of the last few years rendered folks lesser resources themselves.
Global governance rudiments are emerging:
Fiscal service including tax collection, procurement and fiscal spending authority: Sovereign Wealth Funds, not impossibly created - speaking of the risk arrow this is more like a risk rocket - through the destitution of a state's central bank reserves, funds governed as an association or other form of union; and PPPs, handled in PPP units; whereby the relative position of the IMF and other institutions to these can be discussed. National tax authorities become mere local service providers for tax- and information collection. The destitution of central bank reserves also deprives states from much of their ability to maintain a functional economy, meanwhile severing themselves from the ability to make a multi-governmental coordinated sale of a given foreign currency. In a world where economic action is part of war, central bank reserves are part of national defense. This should impact the mandates of institutions.
Humanitarianism becomes the global basic government services provider, linking to local administrations. Covering possibly basic administrative, education and healthcare tasks which don't provide sufficient profit to even "crowd in" for-profit actors.
The role of insurers is varicolored and seemingly boundless: They (can engage in money laundering and) own steering and executive power through:
The provision or non-provision, and pricing, of insurance, with decisions on a granular basis, making it financially possible or impossible for the policy holder candidate to run or not an activity, or to provide or not a product or service, or to obtain or not medical treatment. This also allows insurers to decide who can live in which neighbourhood, by raising fees for a person in a specific location, thereby facilitating gentrification and potentially selective removal of persons, for instance those above a given age.
The potentially granular provision, delay or non-provision of reimbursements following damages.
The targeted triggering of bankruptcy by suddenly claiming back some amount previously granted over a possibly long period.
The design of coverage, which notably recently started involving an exclusion of war or state-attributed action in cybersecurity, which incentivized insurers to push for accusing a state or for calling an event an act of war, which has international implications.
Intrusive structures and personnel/agents in the field and legal workforce for the recovery of third party assets following an event and for the granular and agile hindrance of events.
The automated surveillance of the policy holder, policy holder candidate and insured objects as well as the structures they all are embedded in.
A granular, evolving and opaque setting of rules that provide the requirements for the coverage to remain or the fee not to rise.
Involvement in the point on 'fiscal' above, through investments in infrastructure, which may also enable the installation of some sensing and actuating apparatus needed for the previous points.
Judgements, evaluations and ratings would be within the nature of their capability.
All of the above can be leveraged to induce a certain behavior or action, including that of pressuring a third party toward a certain other behavior, or 'siegeing' such third party.
Pension funds, typically requested to invest in a fully diversified manner (yet apply sanctions and cover environmental costs, for which other investors as of 2024 still claim not to be able to make market prices, leaving the costly role to pension funds, therefore retirees), somehow reminiscent of the character of central banks, as if representing the value of accepted economic activity, or representing the ground in electricity. Not much to do with funding folks' retirement anymore, for which another income, of passive character, becomes needed. I would also argue that if you invest in a fully diversified manner, you remove the 'canaries in the coal mine' of the classical economic cycle and incorporate those sacrificial containers (see container model in the RRE white paper above) into yourself, which, without safeguards, may also facilitate a rebound that accelerates such damage, leading in a straight line and faster into a monolithic crisis. When you break, the entire economy breaks and the then non-financial power acquired becomes "the" power. The idea of cryptocurrencies should not let folks salivate at this prospect even in the absence of any knowledge of risk recursion and the risk arrow, because things can get overly destructive, coercive and violent in that crisis. It feels like a return to times with fortifications but with tech.
As states are losing their wealth, the international organisations (IOs), although starting from a high tangible- and intangible assets position, are becoming dependent on private money and turn into a servicing- and consulting enterprise on steroids, with direct normative, legislative and soft steering capabilities, as well as global operational capabilities (for instance: human rights treaty bodies and other IO assets are set to turn into a permanent global intelligence service of sorts, as well as military and technological capabilities built with the help of the funds received from Member States, biotech, AI), but without guardrails against a conflict between the interests of the various clients, including against the creation of a sequential treatment that provides a first mover or last mover advantage. One may argue that the following proposition is invalid, considering that, for one thing, states mostly aren't what they used to be: "IOs technically stopped representing their Member States as such, and take the party of the private sector, believing that IOs have something to gain in serving it: snatching its power some day? Or are strong private sector actors moving into these IOs and boosting their positions?"
Exploitation (see RRE white paper above for the "Non-Sundering function) still appears between countries, but also within each country, facilitated by the very own folks, and the sundering of the self takes place, individually and in time, as part of the competition between markets.
This means that the right to live will hinge on 'sufficient individual productivity' and this will apply to all, at all levels, in all circles. The more privileged circle may take more damage under this regimen, offering a more attractive prospect for scavengers, and the sooner one of them stops living, the sooner the scavenging can take place.
Meanwhile, just as the cut-throat productivity and positioning competition among the most developed countries is leading them to their reciprocal and respective '(self-)mutilation' and harm to their own folks, competition among private players is equally fierce, and coalitions are built, sides taken, whereby leaving may not be an option in this new order where trust is scarce and fragile. These lead to damages and to the great mess.
When a country's borders are porous, all folks need to take on a border role to a certain extent. Similarly, when state structures recede, every private actor needs to take on every role, or they need to recreate basically the same functions as the government. Unfortunately, in addition to resulting in the 'sufficient individual productivity' issue above, on the one hand, the process leading to this necessarily interacts with the rest of the system, to some extent interfering or leading elsewhere than the envisioned result, and on the other hand, private actors as well as other organisations and consortia compete, creating a multitude of incomplete and redundant but not exactly overlapping propositions for the various regulations. The wild West.
Absent a consolidation (see RRE white paper for the relevant consolidation framework), legislation may end up being made by judges, hence the scramble for the socialisation of judges, yielding a likewise great and costly mess.
The bottom line is that in our current framework, competition is incompatible with the human system.
As I mentioned in a previous blog, negotiation between partial positions leads to an irrelevant middle ground if a deal is reached. Similarly, a competition between partial positions in this great mess leads to (redundancies, excessive activity and) avoidable damage if it is won by anyone, as well as to avoidable damage if it is not won by anyone.
Let me boldly posit that the only competition that is beneficial to you, whoever you may be, is one about who contributes the most to the reaching and maintenance of the resilience-to-robustness equilibrium (see white paper https://zenodo.org/records/10633773).
Having conveyed the above candid impressions and knowledge, I am not trying to, respectively I am trying not to, influence certain major decisions. My aim is to inform folks of how the world is made, in terms of a single system, and which directionality therefore would be appropriate - when we are ready.
