Several months have passed since the effort to repeal and replace
Obamacare failed to get a majority vote in the House of Representatives.
For all the arguments proffered by opponents of repeal, a critical part
of the conversation is missing: Health care delivery, ever-evolving
from a core physiological medical discipline, is meshing with
information technology creating wholly new disciplines such as
bioinformatics, and changing the very conversation.
The genome sequencing project, cloning of Dolly the sheep,
tele-medical advances, as well as recent prospects of neural lacing are
all possible in part due to advances in Nano-computing utilised to
address humanity’s most daunting health care challenges. This places
health care delivery in the prism of information technology. Thus, the
denial of health care could ultimately be a far worse preposition than
denying broadband access to rural communities.
Preparing for the implosion of AI, recent debates around the world
about robotics replacing and displacing of workers across multiple
disciplines, feature ideas such as universal basic incomes (UBI).
Perhaps, those left out of universal coverage could now find purpose and
justification for inclusion by simply feeding a “universal” health care
delivery engine, driving real time changes to their healthcare. Such an
aggregate of health-related knowledge has the potential to improve our
understanding, delivery of care, prevention of diseases, and more, all
in exchange of a universal basic income.
The debate over health care coverage therefore poses an existential
threat to humanity. This should concern every law maker around the
world, and each solution is best tailored to embrace their local
challenges. Today, the debut of Green X Prize presents an opportunity to
gather together brilliant young minds whose primary objective will be
to solve challenges facing both the sciences and humanities with
sustainable solutions. It is worth highlighting a couple of the fixtures
in the “Go Green, Get Rich” memoir which anticipated and predicted this
several years before the international conversation took its current
turn.
The first is a paragraph on political conundrum, pointing out that
individual and party political positional shifts are the result of a
self-interest driven agenda, each threatening the foundational purposes
of most democracies.
Take, for instance, 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Following the
killings in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, Romney offered a tepid
response to the question of whether the country should enact new gun
laws. Whether Romney himself believes that US citizens should be allowed
to own arsenals of semi-automatic weapons does not matter. Modern
politics dictated the thing that mattered in that moment: Romney did not
want to upset or alienate the National Rifle Association. And he
certainly didn’t want to lose their financial support.
Barack Obama visiting victims of 2012 Aurora shooting
My intention is not to pick on Romney or even the conservative right.
What I am demonstrating is that even in the case of a politician who
believes that green initiatives are important for a healthier economy
and environment, change might not occur because of political influence.
Instead, many politicians have been indoctrinated to rally behind big
oil and eschew everything that even suggests the introduction of
greening. Politicians will always abhor polices that are good for the
planet or otherwise, if they do not fit into the core principles of
their political party or the sources of their financial backing.
It is not just politicians who suffer from self-centeredness. Take
anyone you like from any background and you will find that their chief
priority is looking out for themselves. There is not anything inherently
wrong in this; self-preservation is important. But, it is also
important to consider the larger world.
Imagine a bartender in a big city. Suppose his family has worked in
the retail distribution of liquor for at least a generation. Having
grown up in and around a bar, we can guess a few things about his
background and perspectives. If it is a seedy bar, he might hold a
worldview steeped heavily in the realities of the underground. He has
seen his fair share of addicts and drug dealers, prostitutes and pimps,
perhaps bookies and hit men and all other sorts of the criminal element.
We surmise that he has likely seen and served many alcoholics, and even
though he knows drinking is harmful to them, he will continue to serve
them liquor because he is more interested in the welfare of his family’s
business than his patrons’ health.
Similarly, when a person is elected to office, he does not change his
stripes. He continues to compromise the welfare of his constituents in
the same way that the bartender com- promises the welfare of the
alcoholics in the bar. His voice will sound human and caring, but his
actions will be fruitless and unproductive. His drive will be to speak
as powerfully or as meekly as the circumstances require, to safeguard
the interest of the party and to get paid generously by special interest
groups, while ignoring the needs of his constituents.
So here we have the primary problem, the ultimate political
conundrum: how to make hundreds of self-serving politicians look beyond
their immediate personal interests and start doing things that benefit
the world at large? With so few substantial green technology patrons
available and able to buy the loyalty of the people in power, it is
likely to be an up- hill battle. Until then, politicians will likely
maintain their course, upholding unsustainable, environmentally
damaging, economically draining, and national security-threatening
energy policies.” (Addaquay, 2017)
In addition to this example from the book, we found such positional
changes employed skillfully, if unexpectedly, by none other than the
president of the
United States himself. (
goo.gl/4kXAGY)
As the healthcare debate raged on, after the eventual rejection of
Trump Care, pundits were quick to point out that the U.S was ceding
power to China. We have theoretical anecdotes favoring that possibility,
with the U.S eventually ceding economic supremacy to China. Much as
Great Britain ceded
economic power to the United States, as
Adam Smith so long ago predicted would occur, pointing to the clumsy and expensive nature of
British colonization,
compared to the United States’ embrace of wealth acquisition through
corporations. Smith accurately forecasted the end of Great Britain as an
economic super power
“Consider the Occupy movement. What began as a
peaceful demonstration against Wall Street on September 17, 2011, grew
into massive protests in more than 600 communities across the country.
Given these numbers, politicians and business leaders should count
themselves lucky, as protests today look far different than they did at
the time of the American Revolution, when public beatings, imprisonment,
and wanton destruction of property were the norm. The substantial
turnout of the so-called “99-percenters” represents what I believe to be
a sign that the US and the world must brace for dramatic change. This
is no blip in the economic cycle. We are on the cusp of a new epoch of
wealth creation which we have not seen before, at least not since the
Industrial Revolution.
I will demonstrate the parallels between the economic and social
upheaval that led to the collapse of empires, and the rise of industry
and the new frontier of individual wealth creation rendered possible by
recent advancements in consumer technology. In short, if we examine the
sum of American economic history, what we will find is that this country
has experienced three distinct eras of wealth generation:
1) The first period saw the creation of wealth solely at the
nation-state level. This was the age of empires, wherein sovereign
nations used their military advantage to amass economies steeped in gold
and silver.
2) The second era would be known as the Industrial Revolution, a time
when the dynamics of wealth creation were increasingly privatized due
to changes in economic thinking and the development of mass production.
3) The third and latest era has been borne of technological
advancement, as key developments of consumer technology have led
directly to substantial wealth creation. What was once attainable only
for a nation-state became possible for a powerful corporation. What was
once only possible for a titan possessed of a massive workforce and
tremendous control over raw materials became possible for any basement
programmer with a great idea.
King George became
John D. Rockefeller, who became
Mark Zuckerberg. As with
Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments,
first published in 1759, and the concept of assembly-line labor, the
current model of wealth creation is in need of a new and powerful idea
to render it stable. We need an idea that will make individual wealth
creation more accessible to the common man, an idea that will take this
tumultuous world economy and turn it on its head for the better.
In 1776, the world economy was shifting toward a new world order.
Advances in technology and economic thinking paved the way for a new,
privatized, model of wealth creation, placing it in the hands of
industrial titans. While economic disparity often leads to social,
political, and economic change, it also sometimes leads to a gradual and
relatively peaceful decline. Consider what happened to the British
Empire following the American and Industrial Revolutions. The Empire
declined greatly over the century that followed. Britain’s cost of
support and control had become too substantial for it to sustain its
sprawling territories.
Whenever structural economic change happens, the legislative branch
of government loses its prioritizing capabilities. This was evident
during England’s transition from a nation with military priorities to a
country with industrial imperatives. The Great Depression ushered in
social changes that made taxes increasingly necessary, due to the
increased cost of social programs and the size of the government. Since
the Great Recession of 2008, there has been some confusion in the
priorities of our legislative branch, to say the least.
Today, the US may succumb to a similar fate. The world’s new economic
power appears to be China, while the US appears to be fading and
becoming dependent on China. Unless this country can come to embrace new
economic principles and technologies, it stands to go the way of the
British Empire.
Without a new brand of economic, political, and social thinking, the
Great Recession may never truly end. This is why a new way of earning
wealth is so important.” (Addaquay, 2017)
As you embark on this journey, bear in mind that future innovations
will go a long way towards eventually healing our planet. We hope to
sustain the rewards monthly, after the maiden winner is announced. Good
luck and may the best person/team win.
By,
Thomas Addaquay
www.greenxprize.com
Source: https://www.greenxprize.com/think-green-article/A-Critical-Omission-of-the-Healthcare-Debate
