The elephant of inequality revealed by USA – the herd leader.

Since 1974, upward redistribution of wealth to the business classes has cost the American labour force $50 Trillion. That’s enough to pay every single person working in the bottom 90% an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year. America has become more unequal during what seemed to be a golden age of wealth. …
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The Blue Economy

Here’s a nice 6 minute video that puts us in the picture.  The big picture. It’s not the whole story, but its brief and is a super introduction and a refresher for old hands.. We are past the point of stopping disruption.  It was 15 oC this evening.  (Ireland, December) 13 oC would be OK, …
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System change, social media and your choices.

COP21 comes to a close as the wind howls and Jaspar’s rugby game is cancelled because so much water fell on the pitch last night.  Climate change is great, but it’s not good.  I love the warmer weather so here in Ireland it’s almost as warm as Hong Kong in the winter; you can go …
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Numbers That Matter – COP21

Is the scale of marches for change today a significant number?  They are certainly the largest individual marches and the largest globally coordinated march, and the first to include a virtual march which allowed people to participate without travelling long distance. They say about 600,000 marched (excluding virtual marchers) around the world. That’s a lot …
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Are you feeling it, Celtic Tiger?

They say that Ireland is back from the brink.  The data shows it, the traffic on the M50 around Dublin shows it and the budget displays a touch of the old hubris we knew from the noughties. GDP might be above 5% but we’re not feeling it so much on the ground.  The growth is …
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Cyborgs are coming to take your job, especially if you’re young.

The prospect of your job being automated is increasing.  The convergence of neuroscience, computing, biology and engineering has already made robotic prosthetics a reality and everyone carries a small thinking machine so that they can remember phone numbers, birthdays etc (media device/phone). We are certainly choosing a future in which we don’t work.  We haven’t …
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What happens when you destabilise a suboptimal system? It implodes.

The death of John and Alicia Nash on 23 May brought attention to game theory and the Nash Equilibrium, which offer insights into resolving the problems of today’s world. As The Economist succinctly says: “In the real world of less-than-perfect competition, a “Nash equilibrium” may well be stable, but not optimal.”   Game theory shows that …
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