Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: economics

A new project announced last week will start helping close the gap, though. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) chose Ørsted of Denmark to build a 1.1 gigawatt wind farm off the coast of Atlantic City. Dubbed (somewhat un-originally) Ocean Wind, the farm will be the biggest of its kind in the US and is estimated to be done by 2024. For comparison, the only wind farm currently operating in the US, off the coast of Rhode Island, has a paltry 30-megawatt production capacity.

Ocean Wind’s 1.1 gigawatts of energy will be enough to power about 500,000 homes. The project is slated to create 15,000 new jobs and generate up to $1.2 billion in additional economic benefits.

As of May of this year, there were 15 proposals in the works for new offshore wind farms along the US east coast (and that doesn’t include projects in California, Hawaii, South Carolina, and New York).

Read more | >

So, if something is universal, doesn’t it mean that it will apply to everybody? If so, why are individual countries racing to experiment with UBI? (Sam Altman, chairman of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI, may be the exception to date but he is attempting that in a silo).

To truly address the root causes of exploitation and inequality, why isn’t the paradigm of ‘I win, you lose’ Nonsense surfaced? Is that because you are so preoccupied with surviving/getting ahead for yourself, you are not aware Business-as-usual is the water we swim in?

Most countries don’t even have a minimum wage but Silicon Valley technocrats like Bill Gate, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and others globally are universal basic income (UBI) advocates. To expedite the latest Business-as-usual gold rush, UBI could be an initial bait.

Read more | >

(UNITED NATIONS) — The world’s population is getting older and growing at a slower pace but is still expected to increase from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050, the United Nations said Monday.

The U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Population Division said in a new report that world population could reach its peak of nearly 11 billion around the end of the century.

But Population Division Director John Wilmoth cautioned that because 2100 is many decades away this outcome “is not certain, and in the end the peak could come earlier or later, at a lower or higher level of total population.”

Read more | >

What’s in a name? A little thought and a good cause, according to Jeff Bezos who was recently pressed about why he named his space company “Blue Origin.”

The Amazon founder recently spoke at the JFK Library for a fireside chat event. During the 50 minute conversation, he was asked about his other company, Blue Origin.

Northwest is primed for the space economy.

Read more | >

On the frontlines of the Ebola response are local Congolese workers with temporary job contracts. They are often driven into this work by economic necessity, as well as a desire to help.

Belinda Landu, a tall 28-year-old with long hair who radiates confidence, was making a meager living as a tailor in capital city Kinshasa before the outbreak. While visiting her mother in Beni last August, she spotted an advertisement for a health promoter. Today, she’s passionate about her role: decontaminating the houses of confirmed Ebola patients. “I want to stop the spread of the epidemic,” she said. “My family understand I work here to help people. If we get Ebola people will help us too.”

When she arrives at the scene of a recent diagnosis, Landu changes into a full protective outfit, including a full plastic bodysuit, mask, hairnet, gumboots, and both latex and rubber gloves, and begins the slow process of covering everything — inside and outside a house — with a chlorinated spray. Locals gather around to stare at her. They’re often terrified, she says, though she tries to be kind — speaking to them before she starts, and even stopping to play soccer with children after she changes out of her outfit.

Read more | >

O.o!

With the growing economic success of legalized recreational marijuana in 11 states it seems that national legalization is right around the corner, but could hallucinogenic mushrooms be next?

The city of Oakland recently decriminalized shrooms, a policy likely to be enacted by the entire state of California. Advocacy groups for the outright legalization of psilocybin have gained a lot of traction in recent years throughout California, Oregon and Colorado. We recently interviewed a respected psychologist who believes that legalized magic mushrooms not only could but should happen in America. He was incredibly wise, and made of hundreds of thousands of bees.

Hard Times: Thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk with us today Doctor… what was the name again?

Read more | >

The status quo of economies today seems to be leaning towards automation as the base provider of all products and services. Owing to rise of robots in factories and AI in computing, automation is becoming one of the most integral parts of society.

While self-replicating robots have largely been kept to science fiction books, their rise is becoming more and more likely with the rise of supplementary technologies such as 3D printing.

This technology could hold the key to a truly post-scarcity society. The question then arises, how would the rise of a post-scarcity society affect human institutions such as economy and governance that rely on scarcity?

Read more