Lifeboat Foundation

• Mark Zuckerberg spoke at Harvard’s commencement, saying that basic income is an “idea worth exploring.”
• With his endorsement of UBI, Zuckerberg joins a growing list of experts and innovators who believe supporting basic human needs must precede innovation.

This week Mark Zuckerberg spoke to the latest class of Harvard graduates, offering advice about the future and inspiration to grow on. Among his ideas was the notion that universal basic income (UBI), a standard base “salary” for each member of society that can help meet our basic needs regardless of the work we do, is worth exploring.

Future generations are on course to become enveloped in the biggest pension crisis in history, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF), unless policymakers from the world’s leading economies take urgent action.

The Geneva-based organization predicted the challenges of an ageing population could result in the world’s largest economies being forced to tackle a pension time-bomb.

Analysis from WEF showed six countries with the biggest pensions, including the U.S., Canada, U.K., Netherlands, Japan and Australia, as well as the two most densely populated countries in the world – China and India – would face a retirement savings gap in excess of $400 trillion in 2050, up from around $70 trillion in 2015.

Continue reading “Pensions time-bomb for world’s biggest economies could explode to $400 trillion, says WEF” »

The science community just figured out why we wont actually be doing space mining, until capitalism is no longer a factor anyways.

It might have just pushed back its manned mission to Mars, but NASA just fast-tracked a planned journey to 16 Psyche — an asteroid made almost entirely of nickel-iron metal.

Estimated to contain $10,000 quadrillion in iron alone, if we could somehow mine Psyche’s minerals and bring them back to Earth, it would collapse our comparatively puny global economy of $78 trillion many times over. Fortunately for the economic stability of our planet, NASA plans on looking but not extracting.

Continue reading “NASA Just Fast-Tracked Its Mission to Explore a $10,000 Quadrillion Metal Asteroid” »

He was 101 years old. I had the honor to meet Jacque and Roxanne Meadows last year at The Venus Project in Florida. I wrote an extensive article for Vice Motherboard on Jacque and the Resource-based economy: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/eliminating-money…chnoutopia And Now This Future did a video on my visit with him that now has 14 million views and over 180,000 Facebook shares: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisFuture/videos/1500983249942850/ I’m grateful I met Jacque. He was an amazing person! And his important work will live on.

China is also planning to use the initiative to flex its scientific and engineering muscles, officials made clear at a 2-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation that ended yesterday in Beijing. “Innovation is an important force powering development,” Xi said in a speech to the opening session of the forum. And so the initiative will include technical cooperation in fields including artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and smart cities. He also mentioned the need to pursue economic growth that is in line with sustainable development goals, and that rests on environmentally friendly approaches.

Investment also planned in artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and other fields.

The full impact of self-driving cars on society is several decades away — but when it hits, the job losses will be substantial for American truck drivers, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs.

When autonomous vehicle saturation peaks, U.S. drivers could see job losses at a rate of 25,000 a month, or 300,000 a year, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Economics Research.

Truck drivers, more so than bus or taxi drivers, will see the bulk of that job loss, according to the report. That makes sense, given today’s employment: In 2014, there were 4 million driver jobs in the U.S., 3.1 million of which were truck drivers, Goldman said. That represents 2 percent of total employment.

Continue reading “Self-driving cars could cost America’s professional drivers up to 25,000 jobs a month, Goldman Sachs says” »

At the beginning of 2016, Bitcoin was fairly steady at $430. Richelle Ross predicted that it would finish the year at $650. She would have been right, if the year had ended in November. During 2016, Bitcoin’s US dollar exchange rose from $433 to $1000. In the past 2 months (March 24~May 20, 2017), Bitcoin has tacked on 114%, rising from $936 to $2000. _{[continue below image]…}

If this were stock in a corporation, I would recommend liquidating or cutting back on holdings. But the value of Bitcoin is not tied to the future earnings or property value of an organization. In this case, supply demand is fueled—in part—by speculation. Yes, of course. But, it is also fueled by a two-sided network built on the growing base of utilitarian adoption. And not just an adoption fad, but adoption that mirrors the shift in our very understanding of bookkeeping, trust and transparency.

Despite problems of growth, governance and regulation, Bitcoin is more clearly taking its place as the future of money. Even if it never becomes “legal tender” in any country—and is used only as a mechanism of payments and settlement, it is still woefully undervalued. $2000 is not an end-game. It is a beginning.

_{Philip Raymond co-chairs Crypsa & The Bitcoin Event. He is columnist & board member at Lifeboat Foundation,
editor at WildDuck and is delivering the keynote address at the 2017 Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.}

This is an extensive new interview on my major platform proposal to eliminate all poverty in California (and eventually the nation) and to restore the massive wealth of government resources to your wallet. Also, I’m currently calling this a Federal Land Dividend, as that name sits better with libertarians, though it is of course a new way of paying (withut raising taxes) a #basicincome to everyone. It will also massively jumpstart the economy and end the healthcare affordability issues, since everyone would be able to afford healthcare.

Zoltan Istvan is running for governor of California in 2018 and has made headlines for his proposal to develop California lands and use the revenue to form a Universal Basic Income for all California households.

Continue reading “Interview: California gubernatorial candidate proposes state-wide basic income” »

This month we look at important questions about our future: is it time to have a serious the debate about universal basic income?; the weaponisation of AI; and we review Vivek Wadhwa’s book about our unease over industrial revolution 4.0