The future is coming. Not to a galaxy near you, to your own - and it is a lot more exciting than you may think

I will start this article with a warning. Contrary to my usual aim, this is not a facts analysis article, designed to use facts to unravel usually held misconceptions. It is rather opinion and vision. I sent it to some mainstream media last year, but it was not published, so I have now decided to publish it here.

Last year brought us some political events which shook our understanding of the World in such a way that it was hard to pay attention to anything else. But many other things, more relevant in the long term, happened, and were missed. For example, news that a driverless truck operated by Otto, a technology start up owned by Uber, had made the first driverless delivery of cargo in human history. The truck drove 100 miles unassisted in the State of Colorado, from an Anheuser Busch brewery to its final destination. It is true that a human was in the cab and drove the last few miles in traffic, and a patrol car followed the truck throughout its journey. However, it is now surely not long before the technology is trusted enough to avoid these then superfluous precautions. The writing is on the wall.

The first reaction to these news is probably: Cool that we can have a truck drive itself. After a bit more thought, this is a lot cooler than it first appears, but it also has complex implications. Firstly, it is easy to see a not distant future in which driverless trucks, powered by electricity, move all goods at times and through routes with lowest impact to traffic, unencumbered by current needs to organise trip times and routes around the inflexible, prone to tiredness, obsolete human drivers. A World without trucks on motorways when humans are driving and without diesel fumes from HGVs? Sign me up!

However, there is a flip side to this coin. It does not need to be negative, but it will be, unless we start planning for it right now. What are all those delivery and long distance drivers going to do for a living? This immediate thought is closely followed by much wider ranging ones: And what about taxi drivers, Uber drivers, airplane pilots, train drivers, air crew, air traffic controllers? Our transportation system will soon and inevitably be replaced by automation. And the same will happen to many manufacturing jobs. A little later, to many other jobs, such as diagnosers (doctors), treaters (doctors) and surgeons. Postmen. Retail employees. Soldiers. Bankers. The more you think about it, the longer the list gets, the question for each one of these professions being when, not whether.

This, believe it or not, is good news for the working people of the future. But only if our education system does not let them down by preparing them to do jobs which will no longer exist. A major rethink of how we educate is urgently needed. And not only of how we educate. Also of how we conceive work and working careers.  Our thinking about all these issues is currently constrained by experience. A backward looking understanding of education and work would lead to the conclusion that unemployment will soar with the advent of automation, bringing about all the social problems we expect from low occupation figures. That conclusion, however, would be a result of framing our vision of the future on our learning from the past, rather than on a detailed understanding of the new opportunities afforded by technology.

A major change in paradigm is needed, which can deliver much happier and well off humans. Automation can only contribute to a better society, and that means a better life for you and me, if we use it in the right way.

So, how can it do this? For example, automation enables a model where a general, significant guaranteed income is possible for all citizens of the World. The need to work as a means to survive could disappear. Sufficient goods could be available to cater for all. The biggest question this leaves is: What is everyone going to do and how are we going to distribute? And this is where the future really gets exciting.

Imagine a World, 20 years from now, where a group of individuals decide to drive an initiative to solve a human problem. For example, energy. These individuals crowd source, not only for funding, but also for skills and labour. A mission statement could read something like: ‘We are going to solve nuclear fusion in the next 20 years and deliver free energy to all, and for that, we need as many physicists, hardware, electronic and software engineers as we can get’. Based on this initiative, humans interested in this project could train themselves, unimpeded by the need to work for a living, to fill those roles and contribute to that effort, drawing huge rewards, both pecuniary and in self-realisation, when it succeeds. Education material would be readily available (MIT and many other educational institutions are already making their teaching available online, allowing millions to potentially qualify in anything that interests them). 10 million ex taxi drivers, delivery drivers, doctors and soldiers, even bankers, could train as physicists and join the effort. Solutions would be arrived at much faster than with current economic and research models, and every human problem solvable by human endeavour could be tackled simultaneously. When a solution is achieved, we all benefit. Cancer, poverty, heart disease, fundamentalism, conservation, biodiversity, climate change and many other problems could cease to be intractable.

Utopia, I hear you say. But it is not. This picture is very close to being possible. Some of the key elements needed to make such a model work are:

• Significant guaranteed income for all. Possible? With better distribution and the new work force of automation, yes. Tick.
• Communication platforms which allow humans anywhere to become aware of collaborative projects and join them. Tick.
• Data repositories and project management tools which support this massive size collaborations. Tick.
• High quality educational resources freely available to all those who want them. Tick.
• The will of humankind to change the way we understand and address the World around us and believe that such a future is possible. This is most likely the biggest obstacle. Change is never easy, and typically those who stand to lose in the short term will oppose it, whilst most of those who stand to gain in the long term do not realise it, or wait and see.

What does this mean for individuals and for education? Individuals will be able to work in different projects, even changing discipline, and to re-educate whenever desired to change fields and join new efforts. Challenging? Yes. But would you rather spend 40 years behind the wheel of a taxi, or behind a desk in your own groundhog day, or solving the World’s real problems and continuously learning in the process. The satisfaction derived from the latter alternative is immeasurably higher. For our education system, this means we need to equip our young people to be able to learn, retool and switch disciplines continuously. Emphasis and effort should move from delivering and teaching content and information, which will in future be available in external media, easily interfaceable with humans (wearable clothing, accessories, tablets and other devices), to teaching how to quickly and effectively use available information to create solutions. Current educational focus on memory, information retention and structured thinking, all of which computers can do better than humans, needs to shift to efficient usage of technology, synthesis capacity, puzzle solving and creativity. A population with these skills will be in a position to benefit hugely from the great opportunity afforded by the impending obsolescence of most of today’s occupations. Work will be something you do anywhere, at any time, in any field, with whatever approach and within whatever structure you choose at any given time. Training choices will not determine the next 40 years of your working life, trapping you in a monotonous profession, but equip you with flexibility and the power to derive satisfaction from any endeavour you choose to undertake. A new security would be found in freedom, flexibility and adaptability.

We need to commit to this vision, and we need to do it now. Automation is coming. Our societies need to develop humanistic ways of life and distribution models which ensure that automation is not used to increase corporate profits, by reducing costs whilst keeping benefits away from the workforce. We need to collectively choose to use technological advancement for the betterment of all our lives.

Current events such as Brexit, the rise of populism, the American election, nationalism and fundamentalism are the result of large swathes of the global working population seeing the writing on the wall and no longer understanding what their place in the World is. They can see their jobs and skills becoming obsolete, and they cannot see how they may replace them. Technology and globalisation are overwhelming for Neolithic Man. The time has come to evolve. To understand what our technological prowess can offer us, and to adapt to it. As part of the process, we will need to address many other social constructs which are no longer relevant, such as office environments, large educational establishments, pension systems, traditional marriage, country borders, etc. But this will be part of the process. The start is the change in the conception, by the majority of the global population, of the opportunities the future offers and the shedding of all limiting assumptions rendered irrelevant by our newly acquired technology. Lose the fear. Embrace hope.

So, are UKIP dead, or are they playing dead?

I have been disappeared for too long, completely failing to deliver on my intention or commitment to publish once a week. I will not be able to make good, but hopefully I can at least pick that intention up and carry it on from here.

Today I want to write about UKIP. It is something I have debated long and hard whether to do. 

Should I even acknowledge UKIP by writing about them? Do they deserve that exposure? As much as I despise most of their views, they have the support of a significant percentage of the UK population, were instrumental in engineering the Brexit referendum and are therefore a force to be reckoned with in UK politics. As a UK immigrant, I guess continuing to ignore them, although good for my mental health in the short term, is not sensible in the midterm.

Common wisdom is that UKIP have had their day, have served their purpose and will now disappear from UK politics. However, I am not so sure. I think that Mrs. Nuttal and Farage, although they are in my view certainly Nuts and a Farce, are a lot more dangerous than they look at first sight.

It is clear that there is a lot of anti EU sentiment in the UK, I could argue and prove that in another post, but I think most people, after the referendum, are probably prepared to accept that, so long as I limit the statement to:  ‘A significant percentage of the UK population are anti British membership of the EU’. UKIP preaches to this constituency. If you listen to their new mantra (now that the £350Mn a week for the NHS, etc. have banished), they continuously repeat the following, which I paraphrase in the interest of brevity: ‘We are here to ensure that Theresa May delivers the Brexit deal the UK want. She may not, and if she does not, we will be back’. So, a failure by Theresa May to deliver the deal UKIP and many Brexit voters believe they should get, would see UKIP come back stronger than ever. Can Theresa May deliver that deal? Basically, is the UK in a position to get all they want from the Brexit negotiation?

Again, if you listen to Paul Nuttal, yes, definitely. The argument, repeated again in the election radio debate today, goes like this: ‘The UK has a big trade deficit with the EU. The EU sells more to the UK than the UK sells to the EU. Therefore, the EU needs the UK more than the UK needs the EU. Therefore, Theresa May has a strong negotiating position and should deliver the deal Brexit voters expect’. This all seems logical at first sight. If the first statement is true, the others may well seem to logically follow… The EU is making money out of its relationship with the UK, so how could they not want to make a deal?

As often, however, first sight appearances can be deceiving. Populism prays on lack of analysis. So, what does analysis tell us? What are the facts? (I am at least returning to my commitment of writing about facts, and yes, I admit the first part of this article is too opinionated, but, from here on, we are going to deal in facts and allow you to make your own mind up).

Firstly, what is the real trade situation between UK and non-UK EU? The numbers from the Office of National Statistics (https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/bulletins/uktrade/mar2017) are as follows: UK exports to the EU for goods and services were £242bn , whilst imports were £302bn in 2016. A £60bn deficit. So, Paul Nuttal’s first statement is right. The EU is making money out of trading with the UK. Is his conclusion right, does this fact put the UK in a strong negotiating position with the EU? To understand this, we need some more numbers. This is what is commonly known as context, something most politicians (some more than others) and many voters (idem) often ignore.

Visits and research in a number of sources (IMF, Eurostat, Office of National Statistics, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp, (http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/),  (http://data.worldbank.org/region/european-union and (http://www.eudebtclock.org provide the following information about the 2 economies (all in Billions of GBP per annum, 2016 numbers).

UK and EU macroeconomic numbers in billions of  GBP

For a lot of people, these large macroeconomic numbers don’t mean a lot, so things are easier to understand if you turn them into smaller numbers, such as those used by a family or a small company.

Let’s take the UK first, and imagine it is a small company, UK Company Ltd, which has total annual revenues of £100,000 from sales (that would be the total export). If we translate the rest of the numbers to the same base, UK Company Ltd is buying in £110,182 in total, and therefore losing £10,182 per year from trading. UK Company Ltd is selling £44,000 per year to EU Company Ltd, its biggest customer. Imagine a situation in which the contract with EU Company Ltd was cancelled (the equivalent to a super hard Brexit). Now, suddenly, UK Company Ltd is selling £56,000, whilst spending £110,182. The loss has gone up to £54,182, nearly the same amount as the total revenue. To break even, UK Company Ltd, would ,have to increase its sales to other customers by 96.7%.

Now let’s look at EU Company Ltd, also with revenues of £100,000. It is buying in £94,830, therefore making a small profit of £5,170. Its biggest customer is UK Company Ltd, to which it sells £16,787. Imagine a situation in which the contract with UK Company Ltd was cancelled (the equivalent to a super hard Brexit). EU Company Ltd is now selling £83,213, whilst spending £94,830. The loss has gone up to £11,618. To break even, EU Company Ltd would have to increase its sales to other customers by 14%.

The question you have to answer is, which party stands to lose more from a cancellation of the contract? Which company needs the other more?

Now let’s look at imports and what a lack of a trade agreement may do, by introducing tariffs. For this example, I can use a family. The UK family has 2 working parents with total budget for the year of £50,000, to use a number familiar to many (its GDP). It spends £5,278 per year with its electricity supplier (EU PLC). Suddenly, due to an oil crisis (Brexit and introduction of tariffs), there is a 25% increase to its electricity cost. The family now has to find an extra £1,319 per year to pay for electricity, but wages are constant.

Down the street lives the EU family, which also has 2 working parents with total budget for the year of £50,000. It spends £749 per year with its electricity supplier (UK PLC). Suddenly, due to an oil crisis (Brexit and introduction of tariffs), there is a 25% increase to its electricity cost. The family now has to find an extra £187 per year to pay for electricity. The parents get an annual wage increase of 2.5%, or £1,250.

The question you have to answer is, which family stands to lose more from a tariff increase by its electricity supplier? Which will struggle more? Which family is therefore in a better position when going to the negotiating table and risking the introduction of such a tariff?

The point is that, whilst exports from EU to UK are bigger than the other way in absolute terms (if we forget the billions, £302 and £242 respectively), as a percentage of the UK and EU economies, both exports and imports from the EU are much bigger for UK, than the other way, because the EU economy is so much bigger.  To drive the point home, £242 (the UK exports to EU) mean a lot more to a guy who earns £2,861 per month, or £17.88 per hour (the UK GDP) than £302 (the EU exports to the UK) mean to a guy who earns £16,152 per month, or £100.95 per hour (the EU GDP). In a poker game where the player who earns £17.88 per hour in his day job has £242 on the table, and the player who earns £100.95 per hour in his day job has £302 on the table, the second player is going to be a lot more relaxed, £302 makes no real difference to him. This, of course, is not a poker game. It is a serious negotiation between 2 political entities which have a lot at stake, but it seems that the strong negotiating position is with the EU, and that Theresa May will bring back the deal that the EU want, which may well not be bad for UK, but which will most definitely not be the one Brexiters want, since they want it all in exchange for nothing.

The final question, which you also have to answer yourself is: Does Paul Nuttal really not understand this? Or are UKIP deliberately massaging the truth to set up Theresa May for failure, in the expectation that such failure would bring hordes (I choose the word carefully) of angry, disappointed voters, back to the UKIP ranks?