How To Get There 29/12/19

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, December 29th, 2019 - 6 comments
Categories: Deep stuff - Tags:

 

This post is a place for positive discussion of the future.

An Open Mike for ideas, solutions and the discussion of the possible.

The Big Picture, rather than a snapshot of the day’s goings on. Topics rather than topical.

We’d like to think it’s success will be measured in the quality of comments rather than the quantity.

So have at it!

Let us know what you think …

6 comments on “How To Get There 29/12/19 ”

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  1. Dennis Frank 1
    29 December 2019 at 9:53 am

    When considering how to get to the future, we can see two clear pathways. The easy way is to go with the collective flow, and that's always the path most travelled. The hard way is to make progress.

    Making progress requires a goal, collaboration, a plan of how to get there, and a technique for correcting whatever goes wrong along the way.

    "Browne’s central idea — that every society needs to think big and plan physical infrastructure for the future — is obvious but needs constant repetition because so few governments and leaders do it." https://www.ft.com/content/fd60cd76-86e1-11e9-b861-54ee436f9768

    The baron, having made the transition from top capitalist to aristocrat, recycles the western myth of progress unconventionally: he uses engineer as archetype, whilst anchoring his logic in multidisciplinary contexts. "Progress happens when we connect ideas from different fields of human endeavour, mix them up, try things out, learn from our mistakes and try again; that is what is meant by `trial and error', and it is the fundamental process that gives us progress."

    In his first chapter he gives us all the evidence we need to deduce that the hard road ahead is the right road for all. Due to disease eradication; "The proportion of the world's children that die before they reach the age of five has dropped from more than one in five to fewer than one in twenty-five. In the world's richest countries, the infant survival rate is ten times better still. During my lifetime, average life expectancy has increased by more than two decades."

    "The prime instigators of these advances have been the systems we have engineered to provide medicine, food, water, sewerage, energy, and, in it's fullest and most liberating sense, prosperity. And whereas nearly three quarters of all people lived in extreme poverty in 1950, less than 10% do today. People are, on average, not just better off; they are also better informed and educated – global literacy rates have climbed from just 35% to more than 85% during the same period."

    This has been achieved by a blend of capitalism & socialism in governance. This application of both/and logic in political praxis has had a devastating effect on the status quo. Anyone who still thinks going with the flow is the only way to go is refusing to learn from history. Yet we cannot strive all the time – resting is part of life too.

    Seems to me politics now requires synthesis to replace the stand-off between thesis and antithesis. That's why the Greens chose to be neither left nor right: the integral frame includes both, and it is what works on the global stage. Let's do it.

  3. Puckish Rogue 3
    31 December 2019 at 12:24 pm

    So I was having some drinks with a lefty mate (the good kind) and I was inspired by the can I was holding (and the contents) to ask how much, if any, recycled aluminium is used in creating drink cans

    A few more drinks led us both wonder about how many every day products could be recycled (plastic products especially) because while it would be expensive to begin with it could also lead to economic growth (well he said that, I was a bit dubious)

    A few more drinks and we both had decided that the government needs to implement quotas for the use of recycled materials (and putting a moratorium on dairy farms in Canterbury, Central Otago and the Mackenzie District but I digress)

    Does anybody here have knowledge on how much recycled aluminium goes into cans or similar items and how much it would cost to set up such a system?