"We find that two-thirds of the global population (4.0 billion people)
live under conditions of severe water scarcity at least 1 month of the
year. Nearly half of those people live in India and China. Half a
billion people in the world face severe water scarcity all year round.
Putting caps to water consumption by river basin, increasing water-use
efficiencies, and better sharing of the limited freshwater resources
will be key in reducing the threat posed by water scarcity on
biodiversity and human welfare."
This is scare. And it's another reason to worry about anything that might hurt the fresh water supply, like fracking.
"My favored model is an unconditional basic income, high enough to cover a
person’s basic needs and given to every man, woman, and child as a
right of citizenship. There are many good ways to finance it. I favor
taxes on resources and rents. Start charging the market rate for the
broadcast spectrum instead of giving it away; the Fed should make money
off the banks instead of vice versa; land value should be taxed; all
forms of pollution should be taxed; and so on. But there are other ways
to raise revenue. A wealth tax is a great idea, but you could also
finance a basic income with an income tax—even a flat income tax. All of
those are workable, good ways to do it, and all of them will effect
redistribution from the very wealthy to the middle and lower classes."
"I approach UBI by dividing people into three age groups: You have
children, you have elderly, and then you have adults. Children should
receive allowance handed out by the parents. Elderly people receive
old-age pensions, which are often already a kind of basic income. And
adults would get the universal basic income. One approach would be to
have it replace all other adult benefits. If you’re going to do that,
you could make it pretty high, probably equal to 10% of GDP."
"Here
is what [Ghonim] concluded about social media today: 'First, we don’t know
how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people’s biases are now
believed and spread among millions of people.' Second, 'We tend to only
communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media,
we can mute, un-follow and block everybody else. Third, online
discussions quickly descend into angry mobs. … It’s as if we forget that
the people behind screens are actually real people and not just
avatars.'
'And
fourth, it became really hard to change our opinions. Because of the
speed and brevity of social media, we are forced to jump to conclusions
and write sharp opinions in 140 characters about complex world affairs.
And once we do that, it lives forever on the Internet.'
Fifth,
and most crucial, he said, “today, our social media experiences are
designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over
discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations. … It’s as if we
agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with
each other.'”
I think the lesson is that if you have 1 simple goal, social media can help you reach that. If you have a complex goal, like turning a country from dictator to democracy, that is where things break down.
Jeff has a B.A. in Religious Studies and a B.S. in Political Science. He is a progressive and an activist who likes to speak in the third person. cultxpt@gmail.com
