UKC

It's Friday afternoon. Time for a new political debate that's not about the CFKABMC, the rising state of fear in Bavaria (far too close for my comfort), BREXIT, nuclear energy or the apparently abominable habit of outdoor bumblers (amongst whom I count myself) to absent mindedly forget to unclip their prussik loops from their harness before climbing indoors. You guessed it: Auntie Hillary and Uncle Donald.

Now that the nominees in the US presidential race of 2016 have been finalised, I have only one remaining and prevailing thought on the matter: Hillary's victory is all but assured. My "bremain" prediction was tragically wrong but I feel much more sure of this one - she'll win because she holds the highest two trumps, several other trumps and has a void in three suits - every card in her hand is, in fact, identical: she's not Donald Trump.

She'll be POTUS for four years and I'd hazard a guess that she'll probably be re-elected. Eight years of Hillary Clinton. What happens afterwards?

Hillary is a creature of Wall Street in my opinion. The wage disparity between the lower classes and the 1% is only going to increase and the ailing middle class is only going to decrease under her. She's proven a bit ambiguous or undecided on TTIP. She's also likely to be fairly trigger happy so we can expect more drones, more involvement and probably more boots-on-the-ground in the Middle East.

This sounds a lot like more of the same... or worse. Will her time in office simply concentrate and accentuate the status quo that allowed a being like Donald Trump to gather the support he weirdly has?

Perhaps the real question is: What happens after Trump?

I doubt he will survive this election - he won't be back. But who will follow? Who will be Trump 2.0 in eight years from now? Who will rise out of the quagmire? The quagmire's certainly not going away!

In reply to Xharlie:

what makes you so sure that trump will lose?
I'm not, unfortunately.

she wont manage 8 years. shes pretty despised in her own party, let alone GOP. someone better will come along in her term.

I almost hope trump does win, so that america and the world can see how bad it can be, and turn their brains on to start doing some real good, rather than plodding along with the same beige politicians.

In reply to Xharlie:

I don't think Hilary will last more than one term because she's too old and she's already had a couple of health scares. If you look at the pictures of Obama before and after 8 years as President and see how much the job has aged him I doubt Hilary will be up for a second term.

My guess is the single biggest economic and social factor over the next 8 years is not going to be anything to do with politics but the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence and the consequences are going to make both traditional capitalism and traditional socialism less relevant.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

You've got a bit more faith in robotics and artificial intelligence than I do, then.

But what do you define as traditional capitalism?

I'm interested, because I don't think we have traditional capitalism, today. "Too big to fail" and bailouts is NOT traditional capitalism.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I reckon it'll be water scarcity, which is far more of a concern in developing countries and there'll be a punch up over it.

There's also potential for climate change to get exponentially worse, apparently marine biologists are saying a slight pH change in the oceans can kill off plankton, who happen to capture loads of carbon dioxide, which would then be released and all plankton reliant marine animals (all of them,) would go and loads of carbon dioxide would be released....

And pokemon go 4 will have been released for the west.

In reply to Xharlie:

I've been listening to the AI guys BS for about 30 years but over the last four or five years it is starting to come true - although its arguable if the breakthroughs are anything to do with AI researchers rather than conventional computer and electronic engineering. But when you see self driving cars racking up hundreds of thousands of miles and when you meet someone at a technical conference and you can say "Hey Siri, who is X" and it actually brings up the guys personal webpage you need to think something is starting to work.


Yes, we are probably already past the point where central banks are already interfering so much that traditional capitalism is just an illusion.

I think there is a fundamental problem in that debt based money is a zero-sum game where life is not: someone can have a good idea and create a massive amount of new 'value' from nothing but the amount of money stays exactly the same unless people borrow more. Which means people who own scarce assets like land or money get richer for doing absolutely nothing as a result of technical progress. Over the last 30 years the best way to make money out of the technology revolution would have been to buy houses: not invest in or work in technology companies. You can easily find some companies and some periods of time which come out miles ahead but over all companies and over 30 years it hasn't been that great a place to invest money or have a career.

As computers take on more and more tasks government need to switch away from taxes on consumption and income and replace them with taxes on wealth, land and money. It should be very hard to get or stay rich by sitting on property or financial assets, much easier to get rich by working hard at something useful and there should be a guaranteed basic income sufficient to have a reasonable standard of living without working in the conventional sense at all and spending your time on sport, studies or creative activity. We also need some global challenge projects like space exploration to give us focus and a goal as a species.

In reply to Xharlie:

I got lost after the first acronym, or rather
IGLATFA

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

We definitely need a global challenge.