The 1% Economy & The Fourth Industrial Revolution
“I’m super-optimistic. Let’s put our ‘optimism goggles’ on” said will.i.am at the Davos forum. Well…so am I Will!
And if you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll know I’m pretty positive about the human condition.
But there’s plenty left to fix. So here’s my two cents on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, globalization and the employeeless factory.
Part of the global deal is that we can no longer be satisfied with our local quality of life and ignore what is happening in less developed areas. Globalization has its global downsides. The inequity of wealth distribution is unsustainable and will lead to global social cohesion problems unless addressed.
Geopolitical turmoil continues to dominate the headlines and the insanity of global terrorism brings the world’s worst horrors to our doorsteps. Terrorism is fed by religious radicalism, but also by poverty, inequality and ignorance.
The global inequality crisis is reaching new extremes. The richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined. — Oxfam
The top 2 per cent owns over 80 per cent of the world’s wealth while half the world lives on less than $2 a day. According to the UN, more than a billion people still live in extreme poverty.
In the affluent West we have broadband internet, mobile phones and navigation systems, yet in huge swathes of Africa and Asia, people not only do not have a phone, they have never made a phone call and probably never will. Millions of children die each year from curable diseases.
Since the Second World War the world population has soared from 2.5 billion to 7 billion people, stretching our planet’s resources. Criminality has also gone global and trafficking in drugs, arms, precious metals and even people has created underground multinational enterprises.
Against this unstoppable globalization, our governance institutions operate at a parochial level. Global institutions are doing their best to keep up, but their best is not yet good enough. We need to envision, architect and build some form of global governance structure that is capable and empowered to take a global view of our economy, our climate, our wars, and our religious dichotomies.
Capitalism cannot be simply an economic and financial arrangement — it must be a system for global sustainability and peace.
Thomas Piketty, author of the surprising economics bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, warns that current projected levels of economic growth will lead to a situation whereby the inequalities between the very wealthy and the rest will no longer be compatible with our values of democracy and meritocracy.
He alerts us to the disappearing wealth of the middle classes and the potential impact on society as a whole. Our society will have to change to ensure all people can participate and share in the wealth of what Davos dubbed the fourth industrial revolution.
Top leaders, be they political statesmen, business executives or heads of charitable institutions must have the wisdom and moral fibre to stand up to the task. And so must we all.
That’s my thinking…what do you think?
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