Have you had enough yet?

It strikes me as odd that people don’t realise they are becoming economically poorer every day. Central banks and bankers have been actively increasing the prices of basic necessitates for 3 years now. But none of the “older and wiser” generation seems to care. They let the bankers earn their bonuses and the politicians continue to lie to the public and embezzle taxpayers’ income in exchange for opinions. Dividing the people is the best way to stay in power. They will continue to have debates and enquires whilst ignoring all the conclusions. Where do people think all the money comes from for these lavish public enquiries? Its more and more debt burdening our society with payments we don’t wish to make. Remember in the UK the largest part of society is the baby boomers, they are unlikely to do anything to change their lifestyle – even if it means the destruction of society after they have long passed away. The Media are equally guillty of self interest - why is the Levenson enquiry into media the number one news story, when we our very economic foundation is failing?

I believe this will all end badly. We do not seem to have enough economically active participants in society. A generation has been mollycoddled into believing that money is the new God and owning “things” will make them happy. There comes a time where the leaders in commerce, politics and society have to think about a purpose greater than just having a quiet life and ensuring their children are safe and happy. This is that time. We need leaders who remember that they can change history and inspire confidence in society. They can change the very nature of our consciousness. I only hope they realise the sense of accomplishment that comes from a greater purpose before its too late.

We are looking at war. As the price of basic food stuffs increase and society becomes increasingly divided, people forget about the empathy that binds humanity and destruction ensues. To ensure we remain divided our leaders (unable to think of new ideas) simply ask us to turn on each other rather than using our collective power to generate ideas through which we succeed. Maybe this time might be different – but I doubt it.

What we should be focusing on how to fix this:

Dilution of vested interests

We need competition to keep them busy and actively free market. Break up the “Too Big to Fail” banks ensure that we enshrine into law the inability for a firm to take more than 15% of a market thus forcing companies to move into other markets to grow and compete through ideas. Banking is a special sector it is not really a service it is the providers of capital to make our system work – it should be efficient but boring and stable! After all its risk management. They should not have growth targets set by analysts, capital should be provided to them through equity looking for a safe place to invest not speculate for capital growth. Stable dividends and growth with inflation! The same with any part of society that is linked to our basic needs – utilities, food. Speculators have plenty of other riskier ventures to investigate – films, fashion, new technology, developing world economies and towns etc...

Debt for measureable return

Arguably what bankers are meant to be good at? They should evaluate the risks and provide debt to governments and companies where they expected return and risks are carefully balanced. Of course we should spread our wealth, investing in a few risky items; but the majority should be linked to the obvious investment we need in housing, education, defence and economically productive work.

Link economic goals to average life span

We should be able to predict the size of various sections of our economy. Eg 0-10 year olds, 10-25, 26-39 and so on. Each section has clearly documented needs. We need to link our economic goals to the age groups and execute clear plans to enhance each of these sections of our society. As an example we need to link state pensions to average life expectancy to enable retirement age to rise as our chance survival increases.

Farmland and Food production

Push to enhance mechanisation and new bio-technology industry and can feed the world with a smaller amount of natural resources. Whether its Myco protein or laboratory enhanced plant produce. We need the world to buy our ingenuity and create food for the starving people of the world in an affordable way. This would be far better than continuously giving them a bit of development aid.

Education & Invention

We need to link these two concepts. You need to learn through practical experience. Develop an understanding of education and the real world applications.

Generation of Power

We need to invest in scientists and R&D to develop a new power generation system .Whom ever does this will be the strongest nation on the planet. There are two arguments to this. Either necessarily is the mother of invention and we start a war to turbo charge our R&D to destroy an enemy or we provide huge incentives, tax breaks and prizes to companies and individuals around the world to gain the expertise necessary to do this. We discount maths, engineering and physics and chemistry fees at university; give firms incentives to pay these people more; and develop R& D discounts which increase when products generate larger profits through international sales.

Smaller more community based local government

Much has been said about David Cameron’s “big society”. No one really knows what it is or how to do it. What we agree on is that the government is too large and we need competition which enables change in our communities. I would advocate the “open source” approach. Why do programmers work for free in open source communities to execute a new piece of software and then maintain it? It’s because they are passionate about it and find it interesting. We need to do the same in our communities. Why doesn’t the government open source their requirements in local communities and ask the people who want to help to engage? From improving council tax collection to keeping the streets clean, the government needs to publish the data they have and allow people to take control. Like any organisation, they need to create a free and open area for people to communicate and create so build a government version of SourceForge.Net. We have the resources and the passion to help why not provide the tools to do this?

Simple ideas that have impact:

• Linking council tax IDs to payment, billing, housing, benefits and tax systems online
• Enabling communities to send it repair requests through mobile phones and keep abreast of community changes
• Develop an auction style system for government projects where Limited companies bid for work and build up a reputation of success through a feedback and recommendation system that is transparent.