The Globalist agenda of the UN

Map day today. I must admit I'm a bit of a map and chart geek; ever since I learnt how to read - I mean really read - the 1" OS edition as a child, they've fascinated me. My father's stint as an instructor, trying to teach young army officers how to map read (a frustrating period of his military career) left me with three War Office manuals the contents of which I absorbed like blotting paper, so even now I can scan a mass of contour lines and identify dead ground, fields of fire, arty FO points and so on. Not much use on a Sunday ramble in the country, but better fun than twiddling with a bloody mobile phone when on a walk. Yes, I mean you. You know who you are.

Right. Below are a pair of Worldmapper cartograms for 2018 population and GDP - each country's area on the map is relative to the magnitude of these factors.

Each country, no matter how geographically large or small, no matter how big its population, no matter how great or insignificant its wealth, has one vote in the UN General Assembly, an equal chance of a rotating seat on the Security Council and a fair go at all the lucrative posts. Indeed, since its inception (the original United Nations were the allies who defeated German fascism and Japanese militarism, the permanent SC members) its Secretary-Generals have all been drawn from the smaller nations; Norway, Sweden, Burma, Austria, Peru, Egypt, Ghana, South Korea and Portugal.

Given that there are far more small, poor nations than large, rich nations how would you imagine an organisation so constituted would evolve, over time, its mission, objectives and strategy? Yep. It's not some tinfoil conspiracy theory or lizard takeover plot - the natural progression for the UN since 1947 has been towards making smaller poorer countries richer and more powerful. Unfortunately, the consequence over the past twenty years has been the economic decimation of the working and middle classes in the higher-GDP lower-population developed world.

Two factors are at play - often confused but actually quite separate. Globalization and Globalism. Globalization is a change that has come about through advances in communication technology, trade, transport, education, and aid and outreach programmes that have spread medicine, infrastructure, agrarian science, and post-Enlightenment culture across the globe.  Globalism is a movement to establish government, legal systems, economic systems and corporate entities without hindrance of national borders across the globe. It is therefore Globalism that drives the agenda of the UN - in concert with other supranational bodies working to the same ends; the EU, World Bank, IMF and WTO.

Lost in the noise of Brexit, the UN endorsed the Global Migration Compact in December 2018. Several nations refused to sign up - Austria, Australia, Bulgaria, Chile, Czech Republic, Dominica, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Israel, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland and the USA. Our own government agreed it - on the basis that it is 'non-binding' under international law. However, as New Zealand's law officers have warned, non-binding does not mean legally irrelevant - and "courts may be willing...to refer to the Compact and to take the Compact into account as an aid in interpreting immigration legislation". This applies also to both UK courts and the ECHR and ECJ.

The migration compact is an unashamedly Globalist policy instrument - to the disadvantage of the peoples of the developed nations, but to the benefit of both Globalist corporations and organisations. In addition, it will shape future EU legislation, which will be framed so as not to contradict or act against the intentions of the Compact.

I do apologise for the uncharacteristic 'Globalism 101' tone of this post - this is for the benefit of our new readers, who have only the most basic notion of how political policy evolves into action. In the past few weeks I've realised how my old dad felt in trying patiently but unsuccessfully to teach somewhat dim young subalterns the difference between the contour lines of a spur and a gully.

Capturing the benefits of the AI revolution

Our people and our economy face a triple whammy over the next ten years or so. Firstly are the effects of globalisation we are already experiencing - the 'elephant' mentioned in the comments to the post below, and the uncorrected distortions from the 2008 crash that have left large cohorts of our people worse off but highly taxed. Secondly will be the whirlwind of the coming downturn, for which the banks are better prepared than a decade ago but the British people are not, now carrying record levels of personal indebtedness. As QE is winding down, China slowing, bond market manipulation reaching its peak and the Eurozone intensely vulnerable to shocks it all seems to be coming together for next year. However, if we are to have another 1931, remember it wasn't all bad news; the boom in domestic demand for electrical goods and motor vehicles helped shift British manufacturing from steam and rivets to the industrial infrastructure needed for a war economy a few years later.

The third blow of the whammy will come from the effects of AI. I recommend a report from pwc that takes a middle course between the low and high estimates of AI impact on UK jobs - which range from  10% to 47%. Pwc guess that 30% of UK jobs will go in the next 15 years, and the report does a fair job of rationalising the losses. However, it's what the report doesn't say that's important.  

Unequal impact
AI will hit those with lower levels of education and skills disproportionately - 47% of the low skilled losing their jobs in the analysis above compared to 10% of graduates. The C1,C2,D&E cohorts have already been hard hit by globalisation effects, and are coping with a purchasing power significantly reduced in the last decade. AI changes will kick these cohorts when they are already down. In addition to making the worst-hit even worse-off, AI will increase inequality between the flexible, mobile, literate metropolitan elites dominating the media, politics and public administration and the disadvantaged - with the elite groups potentially being able to take substantial economic advantage of AI.

Tax and wealth impacts
AI isn't coming because of some sort of historical inevitability, but because it offers economic advantages in increasing productivity. Pwc and others assume blandly that the benefits of increased productivity can be captured by taxation and increased GDP, the wealthy global graduate metropolitan elites buying ever more advanced iPhones, or eating ever more diversely-sourced curries. However, no consideration is given as to WHERE these benefits are captured - and if globalisation is left unchecked, it is quite feasible that AI will be the Elephant Mark II.

The great challenge for UK governments of the next two decades will be to ringfence changes to the UK by balancing a 30% job reduction with a concomitant increase in UK GDP and UK tax-take - for this compelling need alone we must be free from EU restrictions and governance, and free to set our own tax and tariffs. Without action we will drift into a game-plan run by the global corporates for their own advantage - with the job losses and their costs borne by the UK, but the benefits, GDP and tax takes enjoyed elsewhere. The only domestic beneficiaries from ungoverned change will be the same establishment elites that have already done well from globalisation, at the expense of their fellow Britons. 

New models of social benefit 
I've yet to write a third in this mini-snapshot series to cover Localism, democracy and governance and don't want to trespass on next week's thoughts. But It's already clear that AI impacts to the economy will need fundamental reform to the way in which we tax and spend. I'll leave it to the Pwc report to introduce the options ..

(Social safety nets could be enhanced) by extending existing social security benefits, but more radical solutions include the idea of a universal basic income (UBI). This is an old idea, but it has gained traction in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in recent years as a potential way to maintain the incomes of those who lose out from automation and (to be hard headed about it) whose consumption is important to keep the economy going. The problem with UBI schemes, however, is that they involve paying a lot of public money to many people who do not need it, as well as those that do. As such the danger is that such schemes are either unaffordable or destroy incentives to work and generate wealth, or they need to be set too low to provide an effective safety net.

Nonetheless, we are now seeing practical trials of UBI schemes in a number of countries around the world including Finland, the Netherlands, some US and Canadian states, India and Brazil. The details of these schemes vary considerably, and it is beyond the scope of this report to review them in depth, but it seems likely that more pilot schemes of this kind will emerge around the world and that they will come on to the policy agenda in countries such as the UK as well. While UBI in its pure form may not be politically or economically attractive, some variants on it might be if they involve a greater degree of conditionality (e.g. requiring some form of paid or voluntary work, education and training, family caring responsibilities or similar activities to qualify for payments). Some aspects of the idea, such as providing a universal lifelong learning fund for each person that they could draw down when they needed it, might also be worth considering further even if a full UBI scheme is rejected.