We need a new Operating System:

Here's why: We are living with a plague of crises – a calamity of crises, if you will – unprecedented in human history. Not least because they’re man made. They seem to be distinct and coming at us from different quarters and directions – and like wildfires no sooner do we get one under control that we are hit by one or two more.

When treating the symptoms isn’t working it’s time to examine them, stand back and look at them and the available evidence for a deeper cause. That’s hard to do when the view is blocked by a screed of common assumptions, that need to be challenged, and common wisdom based upon them.

OUT NOW: Humane Economics & the #CovidSpring series


Listen To The Latest Episode
Listen now to the #CovidSpring series as a podcast on Apple Podcasts / iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more - or watch the video interviews on YouTube.

Inequality across the world continues to increase

When ‘Anonymous’ Occupied Wall Street and demonstrated at Canary Wharf they were asked for their answers – what they were for, rather than what they’re against – a diagnosis and prescription – they had no answer. They knew they were, again, against what was happening and it continues to happen to us all, but without a prescription (let alone a diagnosis) it was inevitable that the protest would eventually fizzle out without getting to the root of the problem.

So, for the first time since the first industrial revolution, inequality across the world continues to increase – in a process that continues to accelerate, bringing increasing levels of poverty even in the world’s richest nations.

Extinction Rebellion have fought, and are fighting, perhaps the most successful campaign of protest ever seen – an existential battle to end an existential crisis. But it’s far from clear how the battle to avoid extinction – or massive climate change that wrecks the planet and kills more people than any pandemic ever has (according to Bill Gates) – can be won in time. Certainly not by incrementally chipping away at it. Running against the tide. Meanwhile as a global debt mountain threatens to engulf entire nations, and us all, the global pandemic has stricken not just many nations health across the globe but economies too, exacerbating, and bringing to a new level, the mental health crisis created by insecurity and financial stress.

Stress and insecurity we are seeing poison politics and threatening the major democracies which we had grown to take for granted. Little wonder when the next generation cannot afford to buy a home and high and rising rents make saving all but impossible, claiming most – often all - available income beyond the basics.

Could all this really have the same route cause?

If so, how come it is not on the front of every newspaper? Being discussed in chancelleries across the globe? Forming the basis for government policies and international action?

Could the cause really be hidden in plain sight? So familiar and accepted that we’ve long forgotten it’s there. The premise behind the premises of the questions that politicians routinely dismiss when questioned? Something toxic we swallowed long ago but have long forgotten?

Humane Economics will not only answer these questions, challenging those assumptions and exhibiting the evidence, much of which is indeed hidden in plain sight. It will be a book – it is, for now, and will continue to be a Linear Conference, Conversation and Debate Accelerator.

Humane Economics: A Linear Conference

Our Toxic Economy

How did our world economy become so toxic – both our planet and its people? And... What can we do about it?

We will trace this toxicity back to its surprising roots and explain the mechanism – clearly visible in plain sight – how that toxicity happens to both the planet and its people

We’ll explain why and how our planet’s Operating System became corrupted by an idea that was able to take hold of and dominate our very operative values and philosophy, while shielding itself from view or scrutiny behind a subtle untruth.

This will enable us to answer questions including:

  • Why is the economy not working for us?
  • Why are there more people in poverty now than at any time in living memory - yet many more millionaires and billionaires?
  • Why have standards of living not risen since the 1980s?
  • Why is almost everyone working longer and harder yet drowning in debt?
  • Why are house prices now beyond the means of young professionals - and rents so high as to take up most available income?
  • Why does all the new wealth created each year now go to the 1% - and mostly the 0.1% - and how?
  • Who are the financial engineers and what role do they play?
  • Are the (British) banks so powerful that they can dictate to government?
  • What are the implications of money going digital (CDBCs and the fall of cash)?
  • What do climate change, rising debt and rising poverty have in common?
  • Why doesn’t (left/right) politics work (the same) any more – is democracy failing?