The Massive Trump Failure
I’m not talking about racism, misogyny, bigotry, willful ignorance or incompetence. I’m not even talking about total moral and ethical degeneracy as we have lost the ability to even understand those terms except as the hate speech common to the political vestiges of corrupted ancient religions. The only issue that is allowed to be whispered in the ethical realm is the potential of, dare we say it, conflict of interest in not even pretending to divest himself of businesses as required by the constitution. But I’m not even talking about that.
Trump and all of the people who voted for him are locked in fear and ignorance of the paradigm shift now accelerating into the fourth industrial revolution. As sited from Greg Gascon’s linked article Trump is fully dedicated to ignoring the irreversible juggernaut of self learning automation of digitized processes and this will destroy him as anything other than an incidental symptom of this planetary change. In fact Trump appears to be so far out of understanding what is happening that he probably won’t even try to limit automation. The simple tragedy for Trump and the minority that panicked and accidentally elected him into the most powerful position on the planet is that nothing they do will work to return the jobs that were “stolen” or “given away”. What will, of course, work is the huge increase in wealth flowing to the massively affluent and elimination of any barriers to that flood. I feel very safe in saying that is the only goal or “policy” that Trump understands. He has surrounded himself with people who have the same goal or will personally benefit as an acolyte while being used as a political tool. The only satisfying thing will be the short life expectancy of those positions excluding, of course, his family.
So what will happen? The disappearance of jobs will accelerate leading to escalating unemployment over the next four years. Because Trump is an idiot and surrounds himself, primarily, with idiots this will be a continuing surprise (conspiracy). At this point the majority of rulers, leaders and managers are also blind and facing the same problems and same panicked reactions in their own domains. As many people have begun to realize by picking the worst possible idiot the US has tremendously accelerated the inevitable and simultaneously abdicated our leadership of the planetary economy. Merckle, Abe, Trudeau, Putin and others are scrambling to take the reigns but are either only slightly less deluded than Trump or burdened with their own demons of personality and history. Trudeau seems to have a bit more grasp of this but I certainly can’t say. It will be a time of surprises. Interest in Trump will almost certainly fade quickly as his failures grow. His reaction, of course, could be to blow us all to hell but we have to hope for some modicum of sanity.
Out of this smoke and rubble (bad choice of words there), which will continue to mount, there are some fairly obvious emerging anchors for the new post capitalist economy. The only thing certain is that these will be continuously ignored or attacked by the forces of the old school. Education, already critical to any hope of success, will be fought over as the forces of political domination deny it in the name of stability and maintenance and the growing forces of change recognize it as a critical, essential right for all sentient beings. (Yes, it will become fully inclusive.)
Making a living will be unlinked from capitalist work with some form of basic income and/or combination of rights. Creativity will be rewarded and work may also but it will not be essential for life. The old work for a living jobs will be gone anyway and must be replaced to prevent chaos. Those regions who begin to actively experiment with how to do this will be the new planetary models and havens. Those groups that continue to fight for hunger and suffering as a motivation for people to support an elite risk being overwhelmed with suffering and isolated by their neighbors. This is already happening and is visible in the Trumpistan portions of the US.
A very important emerging point of agreement, but by no means certain, is the combination of AI as managers of process and humans as creators. It is clearly understood in education now that people need to develop creativity and not waste time learning process. Systems already far out pace us in running processes that we rely on for, well, everything. The most respected positions will increasingly be creative ranging from artistic creations, social creations, and technical troubleshooting and redesign as creation. To make everyone as creative as they can be will be an incredible challenge but we all know that is also the route to long term happiness. We have always recognized that as of higher value than material or manufactured goods. We need to work to build the post scarcity economy that focuses on creativity and well being and it finally appears that the fourth industrial revolution can begin to deliver that. If we can get through this incredible process of change and clear away, then reeducate the idiots who made the mess. That’s us incidentally . . .
