Drone Delivery Service

Automated transportation systems in the sky are the next step from automation in the warehouses and on the highways



With all the excitement about robotic inventory management in warehouses (pioneered by the giant amazon.com's $775 million purchase of Kiva Systems) and creating distribution fleets of automated delivery trucks, it is easy to forget about the 3D frontier right above us.

Previously, I have noted that automated passenger and cargo blimps in the future obviously benefit from direct point A to point B travel. These would be robotic transport solar panel covered airships that land on water to convert H20 into hydrogen fuel and then proceed to make scheduled stops unhindered by traffic or friction with hard surfaces. The renaissance in airships is mostly led in advances in superstrong yet light nano metamaterials, military's need for transport and perpetual high atmosphere surveillance, and the bourgeois desires for a return of long distance luxury travel that is different from either large yachts or a private jets.

However, on the inevitable road towards automation in many aspects of industry, there is a simpler and quicker route to automated air transport on a mass scale. Quadrotor quadrocopters delivering bags of goods straight to your door, roof, or even your window. This is the ultimate foot in the door towards highways in the sky for much heavier vehicles transporting objects such as people, refrigerators, etc. There is already a joke service (?) about the taco delivering quadrocopter in the San Francisco bay area.  However, consider the amazingly versatile, high speed, and highly maneuverable capabilities of quadrocopters as demonstrated here, here, here, and below:

There are also Hexacopters capable of incredibly fast lift off and return. Watch it lift a Coca-Coca bottle around 9:30.

It is obvious that a larger version with a cutting edge battery can make a jump across the city rapidly to deliver a package and come back for recharging. Whether delivering fresh organic vegetables from a vertical farm in town, a pizza from a much larger automated pizza plant than the current pizza vending machines, or a certain size package from the postal service, possibilities for smooth rapid transport are endless. The booming private drone industry isn't going away. It somewhat reminds of the early popular rocketry and airplane experimentation in the early 20th century. Elon Musk equivalents are bound to come along to pull drone businesses together and cut out large swaths of the delivery human proles out of the equation. Clustering quadrotors vertically with a central cable for extra lift allows heavier object transport without taking too much horizontal space. We don't want a silly unwieldy looking contraptions like this just to deliver a television. Of course even that is preferable (along with quadrotor/small sleek blimp integration) if it saves on driver and energy costs and is able to deliver packages to rooftops of apartment buildings in a much more timely manner.

Here at The Pragmatist, automation is regarded as the greatest social disrupting force of the 21st century. Within automated production and distribution systems we see a total merger of the industrial and information age with corresponding questions about the problems it causes and potential long term consequences of these problems. As such, the faster automation and mechanization develops, the faster it forces collective thought on how to create a bridge between society of today and society of tomorrow. 

Consider the neighborhood pizza place. IF quality Brooklyn oven style pizza (or whatever foodie preference of the day) is mass produced by an automated pizza making hub according to the standards of some new food equivalent of six sigma quality control and the finished product is hopped across the city in minutes by a quadrocopter, then, if history is any guide, a lot of service jobs go out of business. And that is the point. The beauty of automation is that even the demeaning service sector is rapidly encroached upon. This begins a massive social dialogue on what to do next as a species. Many in United States for instance don't realize that when manufacturing companies return factories back from China, these factories are massively automated. Even recent manufacturing villains like Taiwanese FoxConn now have plans for replacing their suicide prone proles with a massive investment into 1 million robot units.

But back to quadrocopter delivery systems. Besides delivering lunch to iron cutters working in high rise construction buildings, these quadrotor wonders can actually aid in the construction of skyscrapers themselves by delivering building materials rather than continuing reliance on standard assembly of cranes on the upper floors. Of course these quadrotor craft would be dramatically larger in scale. Considering they are more aerodynamically stable and reliable than traditional heavy lift helicopters, large industrial quadrocopter lifters (modular so they can link up and form geometric chains when flying) appear like the they can aid in logistics for rapid construction efforts as being pioneered currently in places like China. We're familiar with the incredibly fast relay postal service that existed within the Mongol empire where a chain of race horse outposts was operated. One race horse rode to exhaustion and another picked up the package. A similar relay system for large automated industrial quadrotor vehicles can be implemented very rapidly and cheaply. Any parking lot can be a relay and a recharge station. Once again, the distance between relays is only limited by nanotechnology within best available lightweight industrial batteries to power these machines. Pools and ponds providing hydrogen for fuel cells are other potential rest stops.

You find it demeaning that a foreign immigrant drives a bicycle through the rain to deliver your food for a 2 dollar tip? Then call your lame do nothing congressman and ask for investment in automated quadrotor air delivery. 

Kiva Robots that are replacing thousands
of  warehouse workers daily help US 
narrow the robot gap

Building Cities of the Future

In addition to innovation hubs, building "governance hubs" by moving the capital cities to new locations would help many countries showcase their emergent economic strength. 


Creating a new high tech political management center further attracts investor capital, brings youthful foreign talent, diversifies country's vital urban zones by function, and stimulates an energetic burst of national renewal.

Before being accused that moving a political capital elsewhere is a ridiculous and impractical idea, lets look at two construction trends already occurring where function specific "micro-cities" are rapidly materializing around the world. Although these deal with finance and innovation for now, it is not too outside the box to speculate development of political micro-cities with cutting edge infrastructure to experiment in combining innovation and governance. There are already precedents for it.

Trend A: Financial Centers

It has become common practice for many "developing" countries (quotation marks since really, which country these days isn't in dire need of super rapid and constant development) to build financial downtowns from scratch that emulate southern Manhattan and City of London. Considering the 50 trillion dollar plus valuation of overall stocks floating worldwide and the similarly 50 trillion dollar plus global bond market, the temptation to attract a major slice of that fiat money is certainly understandable.

Some examples of popularly known construction efforts at more efficient capital management magnets include..

Dubai International Financial Center (although it is hard to overlook the hideous caste system slave labor used to build and run it)

Shanghai World Financial Center (Shanghai sure changed in 20 years)

Seoul International Financial Center (IFC)

Moscow International Business Center (a lot of these blatantly try to copy lower Manhattan waterfront view to appear "Western" enough for the promotional advertising photography and video)

Trend B: Innovation Hubs

The Pragmatist had previously touched upon an idea of building a true innovation hub via a concentric circle approach for an enclosed "Science Lab-Factory city" which would enable rapid reindustrialization within the Western world. This concept of a Research & Development to Prototype to Factory production assembly line city is not yet ready for prime time within popular imagination. It may eventually be attempted by some region if certain psychological obstacles are overcome. These obstacles include potential accusations of too much central planning and top down control in the beginning (even if the city is to be governed by direct democracy) and perceived regimentation that may result in creative stifling (since residential area lay out would also be a macro "human talent assembly line" within city's concentric circles). A fine line between human autonomy and desired speed of infrastructural construction/efficiency will need to be calibrated in the 21st century. Lessons from past FDRist and Soviet developmental approaches should be studied in order to create synergy of nourished individual autonomy and systems engineering approach so the former ends up aiding the latter in breakneck infrastructural efficiency rather than be stifled by it. Nobody wants to feel like a cog in the machine (even if the machine is run for the collective betterment of all versus fattening shareholder pockets).

In the meantime, rapidly developing countries are attempting to build their innovation hub micro-cities in the form of glorified and super expanded gated hybrids of commercial areas and college campuses. This creates an attractive investment showcase environment for foreign start ups, their bourgeois workers and families, and the capital necessary to sustain it all. 

In essence, we're seeing efforts to build MIT and Silicon Valley type environments from scratch and geared to specific broad clusters of industry. In fact, considering how much MIT has cooperated with these efforts, it may be time for MIT management to start thinking in terms of creating the first global technology university franchise (one may refer to this half jokingly as McDonaldsization of MIT, only in a good way...). These gated showcase cities of course have an umbilical cord both to the state and partially to their financial hub city brethren. This is absolutely necessary for now. The state should get a lot more financially involved in these projects and their supporting infrastructure since 21st century challenges simply cannot wait for usual organic business growth to provide solutions quickly enough.

Some recent examples include:

Masdar City in Abu Dhabi - A totally solar powered zero carbon footprint city and a hub for advanced green technology development.

Skolkovo in Russia - An attempt to replicate base of US technological innovation in the 1970s-1990s period from the top down and through a centrally planned effort. Even DARPA equivalent is in the works.

Now these do not begin to approach the scale of Tsukuba initiative that allowed Japan to become the most futuristic technological power on the planet in the late 20th century. Neither do they focus purely on breakneck scientific innovation and exploration like enclosed Soviet Naukograd cities did. However, these top down efforts can always be rapidly duplicated and paralleled if a very efficient design formula is found. 

It is said that college towns would become the new centers of civilization after a nuclear war due to the prevalence of labs, equipment, expert personnel, and scientific/technical manuals. Innovation hubs (even if their original design partially relies on attraction of gambling chips from transnational financial casinos of Wall Street, Hong Kong, etc.) can always be streamlined, clustered, elaborated upon, and quickly replicated if an effective and internationally and transculturally transplantable design is discovered. In a way, cities from scratch allow creation of a parallel embryonic global civilization in the shadows of the old one.

Which brings us to...

Trend C: ? -  Governance hubs as a "A Fresh Start" in the minds of the public, to create a new psychological atmosphere and sense of urgency for politicians, and encourage experimentation with Internet enabled democratic legislation. 

Creating a psychological feeling of a "fresh start" in the tired social psyches of many of the world's countries and their elites (particularly the stagnant Western world) by relocating key government buildings and functions to new governance hubs.

A number of nations have already moved their capitals around for geopolitical purposes. Most federal buildings were moved from Bonn to Berlin following Germany's reunification and recently there is even serious debate in Russia to move the political capital for the third time in a hundred years. Historically, urban decentralization has made a country stronger (one city being entertainment capital, one business, one political, one industrial, one cultural, etc). Germany is a good example of being a cluster of healthy regional capital level cities.

Notable examples of capitals being built anew from nothing are:

Brasilia, Brazil - Rapidly designed and built from scratch to be Brazil's futuristic political capital in the mid 20th century. It is closer to the center of the country than Rio, allowing better and closer geographic rule while stimulating nearby regions by opening up new trade, energy, and informational links.

Astana, Kazakhstan -  President Nursultan Nazarbayev decided to move his country's capital from Almaty to Astana in 1997. This allowed a fresh economic start to construct an architecturally modernist showcase city, create an enormous amounts of new jobs, reinvigorate an entire region of the country, and psychologically enable new thinking in officials that settled there.

Once again, capital was moved to a more central location in the country for better national consolidation (think moving key federal government functions away from tired and hated Washington DC and closer to the center of United States so USA's occupied peripheries like Texas and California don't resent being ruled from thousands of miles away). 

Real investment will flow once the world's elites see that a country has a futuristic vision for rapid growth and development that takes advantage of very capital intensive infrastructural projects that have the government elites' committed long term backing. 

Moving the nation's capital to a new more central location fed by high tech infrastructure and treasuries undivided support accomplished this. The trends of constructing financial and innovation hubs will spawn a final binding tendency that better manages the entire process holistically. Humans are primarily shaped by their environment and that includes politicians. Elderly men and women sitting in crumbling buildings hundreds of years old will not do as much innovative managerial thinking as those who legislate in a fresh high tech development (preferably one that has structures with high ceilings). 

Picking the right location for the move is a story in itself as it would stimulate unprecedented series of cultural, social, and economic ripples from the entire country.

Future of International Film Industry

Creating a non-superficial global cinema will require finally figuring out truly universal values of a planetary culture. These values derive from human biology.



Capturing and holding audiences from all the continents isn't easy. Many have tried.

Modern mass entertainment often serves as a deeper and more important global language than English. That is because present day Hollywood industry inadvertently created a process that increasingly touches upon basic physiological human needs and aspirations. Profit driven use of visuals, characters, and themes (that were scientifically researched to be as marketable and appealing to widest possible multi-ethnic audience) is steadily pushing towards a universal formula. Although we're still at a point where the appealing "supranational" characteristics of mainstream Hollywood involve the usual (explosions, special effects, sex appeal, mental escape through hyperindividualistic protagonists, etc), we will begin to see deeper basic cinematic themes emerge that cut across all cultures in the near future. The basic reasons will be:

1) Same corporate profit motive that gave us the rise of neuromarketing will push for figuring out physiological substrata that makes simultaneous global release movies more emotionally appealing. Digital piracy will make physical movie spaces ever more important for revenue generation. Conversion of movie theaters into expensive 3D/concert/theater type spectacles will need research to be successful. You WILL be satisfied with the global release whether you're in Nigeria, Japan, Ecuador, Texas, etc.

2) Emerging Internet culture finding its way to the mainstream as globe trotting generation Y takes charge of the industry.

3) Dawning realization by Western elites that globalization has stalled. Their scramble to rethink and proactively improve globalization and its integrative forces. Goal of preventing a major and rapid slide into mercantilist (potentially even hostile!) continental economic blocks will see elite efforts to create stronger intercontinental "glue". Efforts towards discovery of media/art/Internet driven truly global culture should be part of the effort. Most states currently subsidize their movie industries behind the scenes as national propaganda PR moves. This practice can be turned on its head if applied towards supranational themes and purposes.

The spread of this Hollywood lingua franca is a microcosm of globalization itself. When analyzing integrative processes of globalization, special attention should be given to the film industry in particular.

Until relatively recently, Hollywood released its mega movies domestically first and abroad only months later. Then, to combat immediate digital piracy from places like China it became a more common practice to have simultaneous global openings for very big budget titles. The preparation and logistical coordination of this represented stage three in the emergence of a truly globalized film industry.

Lets briefly go through the stages:

1) 1950s-1980s: Mass cultural exports of the post-war period. Influx of Hollywood products into occupied territories and satellite states. Increasing cooperation between West European studios/agencies and Hollywood resulting in an international entertainment business sphere. Some partial work done on "universal" values within the ideological framing context of the cold war. Both Western and Soviet intelligence have a heavy role in informational shaping of entertainment to influence perceptions of the present world and prime expectations of how the world's future will develop (the dystopian-utopian spectrum of how the 21st century was popularly portrayed in movies is an interesting example of this). Genuine attempt at discovering universal values is hidden and distorted by individual private and corporate interests behind the militaries of the NATO pact.

2) 1980s-1990s: Hollywood studios rapidly expand beyond NATO's sphere of influence and become truly global as most markets are now accessible. Majority of key studio revenue now comes from abroad. Consolidation in number of transnational media corporations that own the studios. Streamlining of their operations along lines of fellow tangible good producing transnational companies. Rapid horizontal creation of international links to reduce costs and create an immediate global reservoir of cheaper talent, locations, and equipment. Actors and actresses become supranational super celebrities recognized anywhere. Global businesses are increasingly synchronized in space and time.

3) 2000- present: Merging of dozens of national and regional markets into one planetary market that allows rapid global penetration and hype generation (via local auxiliaries). Simultaneous global cinema and disc openings. "Epic" large cash infusion Hollywood movie making style is rapidly emulated by other players like Beijing and Moscow. Besides profit, this is partially done to increase their soft power and control domestically. For non-Western (particularly BRIC) powers to be successful with their mass media projects, they need to absorb/buy Hollywood's cutting edge technical, CGI, and art talent. That is already happening and is currently causing peripheral cooperation/merging between movie studios of all key regional political powers on earth.

Stage 2 saw the serious streamlining ("dumbing down") of plots and character backgrounds of biggest budget Hollywood pieces so not too much appeal is lost in the translation for foreigners. Reliance on cartoony cardboard cut out Americana archetypes for characters still continues (with other ethnic archetypes increasingly playing a bigger and bigger role).

Stage 4 will be the most interesting one yet.

Wages in a Resource Based Economy

Compensation in resource based economy will be underlined by energy accounting



The main question that technocrats all over the world are asked is "how will we get a herd of 7 billion monkeys to transition away from the current fiat monetarist system towards a real economy based on resource and electrical energy quantities? How will they be motivated beyond promise of self-aggrandizement and greed?"

Simple answer is that transition to a resource based economy will involve all the same gimmicks used by rulers since the dawn of civilization: greed, fame, honors, and promise of some inequality (although much more reasonable and controlled than currently). Some key differences from the present system are an ever rising safety net baseline to meet basic needs of the populace and compensation in material/energy backed units. Late 20th century methods of artificial scarcity management, central bank printing presses, and Soviet rations have run their course.

Here is one basic outline among many: ( sidenote: The Pragmatist is not an unofficial media arm of any existing technocratic organization even if I provide a link to a wonderful technocracy video introduction at the top right corner of the blog. Check it out! There will be many competing energy accounting and resource accounting systems in the coming decades and they will begin to converge in basic themes eventually.)

1) 10 wage compensation levels with level 1 wage as guaranteed minimum income and level 10 wage as maximum income (10 is used here for metric system style simplicity, it could very well be 6 or 8). There are physiological limits to how equal humans are but there are also physiological limits to how unequal they are. One human receiving no more than 10 times the amount of reward, living space, fame, and electrical output is about right. No human, no matter how strong or gifted is more than 10 times smarter, stronger, productive, "better", than the weakest (multiply IQ of 20 by 10 as an example).

2) At the age of consent everybody starts as a level 1, receiving say, 10,000 units of electrical energy as a basic living stipend (in addition to minimum level 1 modular housing unit, level 1 simple food ration, and provision of equal baseline education and healthcare for all). A level 10 would receive a stipend of 100,000 electrical units to do with as he/she pleases since amount and increase in top compensation is pegged to level 1 baseline.

3) Although transition period may involve brief return to deflationary "sound currency", income eventually will be provided in amount of electrical energy available to you for a certain amount of time. For example, a level 3 person may get 30,000 units of energy a year or 576 units a week. If he or she doesn't spend these 576 units that week on art supplies (or additional non-stipend clothing, grooming supplies, level 8 rare food, etc) then the units don't roll over. They "expire" and return to communal use to provide extra kick for energy intensive infrastructure projects. Nobody could thus hoard up or create a banking lending system with their saved up energy within the common grid. Obviously on the side shenanigans can be done with off grid energy supplies and batteries but common grid can be easily kept separate from it. A person trying to compete with common grid and create "energy banking" would be like a mom and pop store creating water/food banking. The energy wage system is a communal and very macro safety/incentive net.

4) Societal honors, social pressures, education, societal attention, and better mating opportunities are the incentive to educate yourself further to qualify for higher wage level compensation. Some may prefer to marry or have sexual relations with apes of only certain levels just like currently. It is relatively easy to create social mechanisms to encourage personal growth, especially when basic needs of shelter, good nutrition, and healthcare are met (one just has to look at how people are compelled to improve themselves and pursue various non-graduation/non-wage related interests on some of the better college campuses).

5) The rise of maximum income wage is tied to rise in minimum income stipend to create incentives for strongest people to improve conditions for the whole herd. Thus if level 10 leadership builds enough new power source infrastructure to raise the amount of electrical power they give themselves from 100,000 units annually to 200,000 units annually, the provision of minimum stipend for level 1 people will also double from 10,000 to 20,000. This way, the gifts of the strongest create a real and automatic trickle down. An enterprising level 10 living in a house 10 times larger than level 1 house may ask his or her level 8-10 colleagues to contribute their energy towards a new experimental project or an idea.

6) This is very easily calculated by seeing and tracking the total amount of electrical energy available within relatively decentralized global "energy Internet" power grid. Amount of energy flux density within any given area is readily seen as well as deficiencies by relating the energy amount to population per square kilometer. Energy accounting is thus the base of the resource economy superstructure. Calculating energy production and distribution is essential for all other material production, material rationing, and distribution. This is a no brainer and rapid construction of new and better energy sources will be the primary societal and leadership task of level 10 people.

7) Electrical compensation is tied to the amount of schooling that was needed for the task and amount of hours spent on the task. Thus a level 10 after years of training, has to work the entire 20 hour workweek until retirement at the age of 40 (yes those aren't typos, think about the technology enabled progress in leisure time that occurred over the last 100 years from 16 hour workday turning into 8 and so on).

8) To repeat, 20 hour workweek and retirement at 40 (with a generous stipend to almost match the wage level) to allow fresh talent to take control in a fast paced 21st century environment where exponential progress in technological gadgets, implants, biological and pharmacological augmentations makes late retirement a danger to the whole planetary herd. Gerontocracy at all levels is a public safety risk of enormous proportions. The elderly should be comfortably and rapidly retired with allowances for extra talented ones to continue working without societal coercion that presently exists (like losing a home). A level 5 would work 10 hours a week correspondingly. We should see surprising amount of volunteering at this stage of human development by people who are restless to utilize their training after years of school. We already saw rise in mass scale volunteering in Anglo-American space in 1960s-2010s period and in Soviet space in the 1920s-1950s period. If there is a grand exciting societal construction project, a new wave of volunteering will automatically be generated considering the new 21st century incentive structure, safety net support, and moral encouragement.

9) Level advancement can also be provided as honors for certain heroic tasks, extra special inventions, contributions to the herd, etc. This can be democratically decided to prevent corruption. Corruption itself at political level greatly reduced by systems such as examination with democratic popular input for highest scoring candidates. 

10)  Systematic targeting of land monopolies that currently exist in the form of landlordism to prevent too much centralization in energy production and distribution and to eliminate last remnants of feudalism. Modification to underlining land ownership structure from private to communal  is essential to prevent creation of unhealthy regional patchworks where areas with access to harder energy supplies (fission reactors) are able to browbeat neighbors. Eventually, with enough globalization and agreement on level 1 stipend standards for continents, some agreement needs to occur on global level 1 stipend goals.

Upon closer examination, none of this is utopian since controlled inequality and greed/sex based reptilian brain incentives are preserved. If one appreciates the sheer technological potential that humanity is looking at with transhuman augmentation, nanotechnological mass production, AI, AND if one understands that the time horizons we're looking at stretch into the 2050s, THEN the simple replacement of monetarism with more rational energy accounting described above is definitely not utopian. Current 2012 living standards enjoyed by more enlightened human wage slave plantations of Japan, Scandinavia, and Germany would have sounded similarly rather "utopian" to people in the 1850s. Yet we don't have to wait till 2150s due to the technological progress in means of production and distribution continuing to accelerate.

Some unanswered questions

"So will level 4 person get 4 times the food or 4 times the quality of the food or combination of both? Will shelter and food on higher levels also be provided on a stipend basis or will the additional electric units will be required to pay for it? What happens to rich people and their mansions currently? I can already visualize ways to abuse the system, what do we do with the shameless scoundrels? I certainly would like to spend my annual 50,000 units after my 10 hour workweek not on a level 5 shelter but maybe on three level 1 shelters in different sectors and a new kitty cat and maybe 2 cars instead? Can I forgo a stipend in clothing to get more energy units and what happens if..."

It is... too... early... for that.... First it is important to understand why we're on this road to begin with. 

Meanwhile in Libya

Meanwhile in Libya...

"On 15 May, a diplomatic source briefed by Western intelligence officials stated that, beside the tribal rivalries plaguing the country, there was concern about a growing presence of Islamist militants in some areas, specifically the city of Derna. The source said that hundreds of Islamist militants were in and around the town, and there were militant training camps where weapons were also provided. He said one official had described the area as "a disaster zone." Tensions had reportedly grown between local people and the militants. According to the source, the previous month, a number of town residents went to a camp on the outskirts of the city and forced militants to leave. One of the indicators of the militant inter-factional were also the recent spate of car-bombings in Derna..."   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932012_Libyan_factional_fighting

International Police Reform

Although we have become accustomed to unnerving global cooperation in suppression of demonstrators by increasingly militarized riot police, transnational police standards stand to improve civil rights of an average citizen


Current painfully slow but steady movement towards a Type 1 civilization is demonstrated socially in development of increasingly global themes in movies, rapid transmission of underground music to every spot on earth, in continuing advancement of English as world's lingua franca (in parallel with decline of key English speaking countries), in social networking tools, and globalist orientation (world as one country) of generation Y among world's middle and upper classes.

On the state level, we see rapid globalist thrust towards common educational standards for wage slaves via the Bologna Process in the Northern hemisphere and in reorientation of Interpol towards terrorist threats from neo-luddites, religious reactionaries, and politically charged have nots. There's plenty of less glamorous "under the hood" efforts being conducted to internationalize the Internet and put it under UN regulation and of course to deal with communication, transport, energy, law, etc. 

One may argue endlessly whether some competition in standardization is in order (such as having 6 continents falling under 2-3 competing standardization models versus the whole world falling under one potentially faulty and stagnating model). What is clear is that historically, centralized standardized police action improved efficiency in administration of justice by often ignoring and being above the petty corruptions and concerns of localities. Obviously window for brand new abuses was opened up but generally centralization of power and justice was slightly to moderately less corrupt than decentralization of justice (1 rich man's government versus dozens of smaller rich man's governments). We usually hear this mentioned in history books in terms of somebody or a group unifying the tribes, colonies, feudal fiefdoms, etc under 1 relatively detached and impartial infrastructurally minded central authority. Transition from feudalism towards a modern state system was a welcome development in reducing abuses and arbitrary action.

The current relatively politically correct "soft" approach of the UN and Interpol is a demonstration of the above. Often one would rather be apprehended by some UN helmet policeman rather than a small town cop from Texas, Russia, or China. Same occurred when Federal police first appeared on the scene in United States in early 20th century. When it comes to bringing order to the wage slave plantations (or "countries" as they are known currently), global police force and rapid development of global policing standards will tend to increase autonomy for an average human and decrease civil rights abuses.

Major police reforms to be undertaken by individual countries under new global umbrella guidelines

1) Elimination and retiring of 50%+ of police forces. This is easily accomplished by transnational agreements to end the futile drug prohibition as well as hands off approach to consensual acts such as gambling, some forms of smuggling, sex work, etc. Such efforts are already underway in South America. A UN and Interpol commission to create a detailed list of "offenses" that are too absurd and socially damaging to continue being so called offenses. Then creating a hands off guidelines to shame other countries into compliance with new socially libertarian measures. End of drug prohibition in United States for instance will allow mass layoffs of policemen currently employed by the executive.

The current development of world's armed forces is to become "leaner and meaner" and same should and will apply to the police. Modern communication, educational (see below), robotics, and weapons technology makes majority of law enforcement employees obsolete.

In parallel, there will develop a need to absorb a large pool of young aggressive men and women into socially beneficial activities not revolving around military or law enforcement. Traditional venue of sports can save the day once again if new 21st century sports are developed (magnetic levitation football anyone?) that combine physical exertion with new innovative technological and infrastructure construction development. The young homo sapiens should be allowed to tinker with tools and gadgets, aggressively compete in teams, provide their social proof to the community, and get honors for it.

2) Doctorate's degree as a mandate to be a policeman and tripling of police wages. The responsibility of having the power to enforce justice with violence and to detain a fellow homo sapien is a heavy one. A policeman should be compensated as well as a doctor and be required to undergo many years of social psychology (herd dynamics), fitness, basic law, and various sensitivity conditioning alongside elite weapons training. Mass layoffs of police will free up resources to make remaining policemen as elite as possible. Now of course many human apes who join to serve will have restless aggressive physiologies and after being screened for psychopathy, they should be allowed to start serving in some capacity right away (guards of various facilities, etc) while having to complete their education in parallel. Thus for example, a well compensated 15 hour workweek in limited power capacity with classes towards a PhD. Nurturing sports and fitness should be provided in addition. We should see a lot of new highly motivated people join the force (similar to how post 2008 economic depression eliminated talent shortage problem in the armed forces). Obviously higher salary and more societal respect does not eliminate corruption (one just has to look at big pharma-doctor cooperation in US) but it does make entry to corruption a bit more difficult.

It is essential to create cooperation between transnational police and college standardizing entities concerning implementation.

3) 1 newly trained policeman being able to ideally replace up to 5 late 20th century policemen. Just as a modern policeman has as much cognitive ability, training, technology, and firepower to replace 5+ policemen in 19th century, a 21st century policeman should do the same to current batch of employees. The profession should be socially even more respected and with the end of prohibitions on consensual acts and rebalancing of power between haves and have nots, it will be. Strict fitness and dietary standards should be applied to new recruits and continual lifelong education and nurturing developed. Conditional well paid retirement at 40 is a good idea to reduce corruption, entrenched authoritarian thinking, and to keep supplying new blood to the force.

4) Strict separation between military and police. This is perhaps most difficult to accomplish considering the mass global Internet led awakening among the poor. However, eliminating the gray area of militarized police will be necessary to prevent even further civil unrest and angering of the mob. A society should either figure out how to allow a large crowd to gather peacefully with non-militarized police present (as if it was was New Year's eve) or it should throw away the mask of civility and bring out the military and tanks when there are large purposeful gatherings. The current gray area just creates militarization of the civilians and a multitude of various neurotic behavior in the herd. 

5) Training population to police themselves. This can be accomplished by reintroduction of firearms training in high schools, civil duty lessons, and following the Swiss model of citizen militia. The generation that will follow generation Y is more than ready to accomplish self policing as well as swelling the ranks of embryonic world police core.

Obviously applying some of these reforms on top of current society (especially #4) is not workable but will become increasingly doable with planet's continuing transition away from current socioeconomic system. This process is a multidecade one and will be most led by countries that emerge from the current financial crisis in their best shape.

Land Value Tax in the 21st Century

Georgism (breaking the power of last remnant of feudalism, the landlords) presents the most important point of contact and agreement between far left, far right, and centrist liberals throughout the world. Such agreement is key during transition to a new world economic system.


H.G. Wells, in The Shape of Things to Come, appears to have been correct (if off by a number of decades) when it comes to predicting Land Value Taxation becoming a fundamental cornerstone of a saner future world system. Whether the landlords are private or public in the form of a government, the unearned rents they collect will be redistributed to all living on the land. This allows most private corporations and individual capitalists to: 


1) Redirect increasing anger against them onto a relatively small number of individuals (buying time).


2) Buy off the poor without incurring too much personal cost (buying time).


3) Eliminate critical inefficiencies remaining from the dark ages and allocate capital more effectively in a world where capital accumulation has been slowing down/stagnating for decades (buying more time).


4) Push governments (that they always indirectly control when not being fused with them) of key great powers in the northern hemisphere to reinvent themselves. This allows the European continent to take the torch from United States in becoming a fortress of safety for capital via even better high tech welfare states (buying time once again by providing livable stipends to elderly and those displaced by machines).

Although it is popular to focus on either financial cartels or inefficiencies of the public sector these days, the sheer absurdity, inefficiency, and tyranny of landlords is often overlooked. It is too much part of background scenery. However, landlordism must be tackled first and directly since it is an older structural problem from a pre-capitalist world system. As we approach an end of a global debt supercycle (with governments of key military powers having to reconstruct social order to continue to function), landlordism should be emphasized as having been the primary cause of the crisis. This would create a convenient (and very necessary!) scapegoat and allow many corporations, oligarchs, unions, and governments to save face during transition to a new world system. Obviously it is one of many causes but singling it out has critically important benefits for humanity in terms of saving political energy expanded this century.


A few words about the global transition. It will either be orderly (Bretton Woods 2.0) or disorderly (trade disruptions and corresponding hunger related political violence primarily in the southern hemisphere). 


For it to be more orderly, the states will need resources. Resources will be scarce (factories shutting down, balance sheets of governments and corporations in disarray, etc). Tapping private landowners the world over and forcing them to pay rent will free up resources to minimize these conditions of chaos. Since new land can't be created readily, since it can't be hidden, and since private landlords control most of the surface of the earth, it will be easy to find what/who we need and redirect the rent these people normally collect towards infrastructure/welfare of a new world system. 


Although not all landlords have the same parasitic pull, the argument of "what about mom and pop landlords" is much like the 19th century argument about "mom and pop slave owners" who just had 1-3 slaves rather than the hundreds of the large plantations (large corporation equivalent of the day). Having said  that, the small landlords of course will not be physically touched and will become beneficiaries of the new system that they now help provide for. Some countries already implement a partial Land Value Tax system to great benefit. Taiwan is best example today. Future merger of China and Taiwan will hopefully "infect" a large planetary role model with a more futuristic tax code.

Problem of governments as landowners


Writing in 1976, Arthur Selwyn Miller in The Modern Corporate State, articulated the rise and decay of FDRist Social Democratic arrangement in United States from 1937 onwards. What started out as a roughly coequal coalition of large unions, large corporations, large universities, and large welfare government (with emphasis on job creating benefits of the military) has deteriorated. 40 years after the book was written, we are left with large military, large corporations (private governments), large universities subordinate to these private governments, and hollowed out central "public" government subordinate to these private governments. Combined with ever present institutionalized landlordism, this heady brew can only be described as neo-feudalism (especially with the 20th century decay/stagnation of newer dynamic progressive industrial capitalist system). 


Richard Nixon, the last strong relatively-autonomous American president, tried to prevent this and wanted to develop some executive government led (as first among equals) developmental authoritarianism. Franco's Spain in the 1950s springs to mind. Nixon was shown a lesson and now we have a major problem on our hands. How do we prevent the current, mostly privately led neo-feudal arrangement from transitioning to a mostly publicly led neo-feudal arrangement? How do we go forward towards new rather than backwards (only now with a glossier high tech patina).


Tapping and tackling only private landlordism will concentrate so many resources in the hands of the state that potential for mismanagement and confusion (see Soviet and modern Chinese examples) becomes all but a certainty. It will still be a better, saner, and more comfortable social order but one that would rapidly decay unless people in public governments are also viewed as much a (potentially parasitic) landlords as private landholders. This is especially important to keep in mind considering that most states in the world are effectively fused with large corporations to different degrees. Decreasing potential for corruption should be correlated to increasing complexity of civilization since preventing social unrest is difficult as is in such a densely populated world.

taxing land monopolies has no inefficiencies since supply of land is perfectly inelastic

The more proactively humane solution will only be in a legal rabidly institutionalized framework that ties the productive resource benefits derived from the land to each individual homo sapien living on the land directly. This means that governments can no longer serve as self aggrandizing “representatives” with final authority on how to allocate the stipends in the 21st century. This means structurally and legally binding governments, these entities with monopoly on violence in a given area, to only act as middlemen service providers and enforcers of justice. For instance, individuals in a private cooperatively owned and democratically managed private corporation in the future will pay legally mandated “rent” (whether money, electrical energy, resources, etc) to a public government land"lord" (people actually owning the land via planes, guns, and missiles) who will in turn be legally bound to transfer these resources to all people on the land. With cutting edge communication and transportation infrastructure, the line between decentralized and centralized governance will increasingly be blurred.

Sounds straightforward and surprisingly libertarian in the American sense? Yes, this brings us to a prior article on Left-Libertarianism in United States as a “glue” for the opposition. North America will be the hardest hit by the global transition since the people on that continent have utilized cutting edge technology to exhaust the current system first. This also means that most cutting edge and novel experiments in creating a new social order will happen there first. Land Value Tax provides a seemingly sensible yet ridiculously radical point of agreement towards a foundational platform of political coalitions of the future.

The planetary transition (whether orderly or disorderly) to a new international social order will span a number of decades and at first the leadership in constructing and developing it will pass to elites in the eastern hemisphere (Berlin-Moscow-Beijing-Tokyo-etc). However, once US begins to (hopefully) economically recover in the late 2020s and becomes role model for South America again (continent with the worst landlordism problem in the world), leadership should swing back to the land where both hope and world crisis began.