Today, I was struck by the sheer absurdity of the #Macrongate scandal and the reactions to it. Clearly, political discourse has been rendered absurd and exists in the most fear-intensive, morality-scarce environment possible. So I asked myself to respond to this question from a Swedish billionaire as to how we can change global governance.

The Task

The participant must design a governance model able to effectively address the most pressing threats and risks to humanity. In other words, the task is not to come up with direct solutions to specific problems. Rather, it is to design a general model for decision-making, with the aim of generating such solutions and the ability to do so, and possessing the resources to effectively implement them.

The governance model must also be such that it can be implemented within the foreseeable future. This requires that it be acceptable to major states and the wider international community. A significant measure of civic acceptance is also required. This requirement eliminates models that rely on time-consuming and controversial changes in the political system of individual states, e.g. models that postulate that all states should be democracies.

Furthermore, the governance model must involve a minimum of limitations to the sovereignty of nation-states, meaning that it should involve only such limitations as are necessary to ensure that national decisions do not seriously harm the vital interests of inhabitants of other countries, or of humanity as a whole. In other words, decisions within the governance model must not deal with the internal affairs of individual states.

If you have read my blogs, you know I have a great appreciation for facts and some level of discomfort for partisan rhetoric. I think that morality and historiography are tools for the advancement of society. As we consider the ridiculousness of human behavior, we realize that it all stems from psychopaths (all of us included) who pursue agendas based in fear and scarcity.

Although I often blog about my disdain for AI, I find that an AI-human based partnership, aligned with a one-person, one-vote, one guaranteed basic income system of global taxation would be the way this hombre would reconstruct our world. I don’t expect to cash in the $5M but the exercise was a useful one for getting to root causes of human suffering and a possible way to awaken from history.

Here is my submission on how I would fix the world. Perhaps a bit grandiose but it can’t hurt to put it out into the universe, right?

The Global Challenges Task – a response by Edward Park, MD, MPH

May 6, 2017

1. Abstract 

The task or orchestrating human coexistence, to say nothing of cooperation, is impossible under current paradigms. If your core value is truly to recognize the equal value of every human being, then a new paradigm must be constructed based on guaranteed rights, artificial intelligence, and transitioning away from opacity and selfish interest in governance.

Everywhere we turn to in history and in our hearts, we encounter the core value of exceptionalism. Human consciousness has not evolved to the point that people can imagine the benefits of guaranteed equal rights, transparent and progressive distribution of surplus production, and accountability for leaders acting against the greater good.

If you wish to transform the world without warfare, pitchforks and rioting, certain guarantees must be put into place for the current stakeholders while establishing the primacy of one person, one vote, and one guaranteed income. Those guarantees for highly leveraged stakeholders are maintenance of “day zero” benchmarks of private ownership, AI-managed free markets and to some extent, security, national self-determination, and creating a collective system of consensual governance that provides high value for full participation and clear detriment from subversion and opting out.

People like the idea of equality but most, as George Orwell said, want to be more equal. Citizens of wealthy cities do not welcome a sudden influx of immigrants. Holders of private land and businesses do not welcome higher taxation and nationalization of their property. And holders of government and media positions expect to benefit personally and will therefore resist efficiency, the greater good, and truth telling.

In order to realize your stated vision, all governments must promulgate certain guaranteed rights such as freedom of speech, the right to a timely and fair trial, right to privacy, right to avoid self-incrimination, and protection for whistleblowing. The establishment of a secure, decentralized, and anonymous system of blockchain voting for referendums will be managed by AI eventually but before a transition away from human representation can be achieved, systems for keeping track of citizens’ elected officials with regard to their voting records must be provided as well as real time input from citizens as to how they should vote.

Blockchain currency should be established with a component of both guaranteed basic income as well as progressive redistribution. The central task of a post-scarcity world is to work towards non-commoditization and non-scarcity of the essential tools of living. Before all other goals and to the detriment of so-called “population control” schemes, humanity must speak with one voice in affirming that if you made it to this world, you will not want for food, shelter, water, waste disposal, electricity, information, and basic transportation and health services. A guaranteed basic income is not socialism or blind altruism but rather insurance against a solution to economic implosion that will occur when automated labor becomes the only dominant mode in industrial competition.

Because the mandate of affinity groups such as ethnicities, religions, political parties, nation states, and corporate cartels is to take advantage of human capital and gain competitive advantage, the only solution to transcend perpetual conflict and deception is to welcome all people into the human family and remove incentives for conflict, collusion, and corruption.

International governance will be representative- based upon elected people and then eventually AI-human teams. Representation will be based upon a per-capita system although gradualism will be built into the system to avoid economic and social upheaval and unnecessary disruption.

Votes will be assigned on a per capita basis and a human-AI partnership and team will disseminate information, omni-directionally in real time so that stakeholders can monitor. It is anticipated they will cohabitate the same physical location and keep records of all activities in the case that incapacitation occurs so that continuity may proceed. The assembly of these nation-state based teams will eventually give way to direct representation without regard to origin as the voting populace becomes more savvy and the identification with national interests becomes obsolete.

Corporations will not be deemed to have a vote nor will children under the age of 25. Agendas will be determined by protocol generated by human-AI partnerships but all actions will be subject to real-time citizen blockchain voting.

The governance will have no presidents, chancellors, or veto power. All decisions, including the setting of agenda items, will be agreed upon by AI which will call upon its members for amendments that must be subject to rules of gradualism, respect for the basic rights and goals of the organization, and complete transparency and equality of representation. The sole veto power will be endowed to the AI if fundamental rights are violated by referenda. AI will be collaboratively programmed to assign consequences for noncompliance on every level, primarily by resource-based, relative value, and maintenance of continuity criteria.

2. Description of the Model

Blockchain currency and Guaranteed Basic Income

The existence of material-based or fiat currency is a perennial problem in all systems. Credit and wealth are arbitrary and as long as unilateral devaluation or debasement does not occur, any system of cryptocurrency will suffice. A system predicted upon wealth redefinition and redistribution will encounter resistance and sabotage. In a post-dialectic world, we recognize the advantages of human ambition, innovation, and aspiration and reject financial equality as a goal to even strive for.

We guarantee the right, through private or public means, of securing the basic needs of the human social animal but in no way encourage a notion that those that work harder to save or create should be punished for doing so. This means that water, electricity, waste removal, basic shelter, information, and basic transportation and health care are guaranteed. Above that, to keep economies running in system that will naturally and efficiently concentrate labor to automatons and wealth to the ownership class, a guaranteed basic income to maintain a modicum of consumption and a sustainable velocity of money through legacy economies will be needed.

Blockchain voting and real-time data for feedback loops

The introduction of blockchain voting and user-friendly systems for recommending and then holding accountable elected officials is a precursor for establishing AI representatives. Our ultimate goal is to eliminate professional politicians, lobbyists, and the inefficiencies created by inbred, silo-building experts who cooperate with industry against the interests of the people who elected them.

Citizens should be able to indicate which issues and referendums they support with what degree of vigor and be provided with honest and unbiased explanations of the repercussions of those decisions made either directly, or via human or AI elected proxy.

To avoid the “tyranny of the masses” or the “tyranny of oligarchy”, there can be absolutely no monetization of voting and the failure to exercise one’s vote will result in reduction of the guaranteed basic income for that citizen. To assure continuity in legal, social, economic, and lifestyle outcomes, major changes in policy should not be entered into capriciously. For example, a vote to seize the wealth of persons making more than 500X the median income would violate the latter’s rights to property but might be roundly welcomed by a voting majority. To avoid conflict and maximize participation, the rights of advantaged legacy partners, whether they be in wealth, power, or status must be guaranteed so long as no laws have been violated.

Migration rights

If the ultimate goal is to support human equality, we must come to terms with the notion that in a world with many climates, be they economic, weather, or sociological, strong incentives exist for people to relocate. The greatest resistance to migration comes from countries with high wealth, production, resource utilization, and comfort.

For the near term, while nation-states and militarism still persist as beneficial and legal stratagems, we must anticipate a need to incentivize people to stay home in less advantaged areas as well as deconstruct the prejudices that people cling to with regard to sovereign identity.

We respect and acknowledge the right of any nation-state to protect and preserve its borders, population, and culture so long as there is no outright policy to discriminate against the goals of meritocracy and full inclusion. In nations with negative population growth and a high sense of linguistic or racially-based exceptionalism, the “right” of dominant groups to exploit temporary or undocumented laborers must not be secured and indeed, a formalized, AI-driven policy of formalizing guest workers with paths towards full citizenship should be the cost of inclusion into the system of international cooperation.

A nation that feels it can “go it alone” may be correct in the short term as depopulation by negative birth rate attrition, automation of workforce, and competitive advantage of international trade will persist. But non-signatories to the demilitarization, migration, and “fair-play” provisions of world governance will find long-term viability problematic. AI will initiate fair and proportionate inefficiencies (such as virtual tariffs) to advantaged nations to the extent that they don’t participate in its decisions. The consequent loss of scalable human capital, genetic diversity from migration, trade fairness, and even group security will force the pariah/”Scrooge” nations to participate more fully, especially if the accounting and wealth-haven provisions are implemented.

Ultimately, all nations require movement in and out to balance economic, social, and political considerations but they do so in a clumsy and overly jingoistic fashion that is often driven by violent conflict and the violence of poverty.

Nations with surplus wealth should participate in the guaranteed basic income of less advantaged participant nations commensurate with their surplus consumption and excess wealth. Doing so will improve the living standards and productivity of partner nations and their citizens, increasing their wealth, stability, and velocity of money as well.

Instead of considering an impoverished or even an emerging nation state as a potential source of competition, in a post-scarcity, cooperative world, all boats are lifted when the tide of entitlement, ownership, and higher consciousness lifts them.

Self-defense rights, demilitarization, and internationalization of satellites and IFF technology

History, game theory, and human nature tell us that if there is something to be gained from aggression, whether it be provoked, justified, or even genocidal in nature, then there are strong incentives to do so.

The biggest challenge to evolve governance and humanity comes in the form of so-called “defense” resources, which are distributed very unevenly. It can be said that fiat currency is what runs the world but that the “full faith and credit” of those reserve currencies that run the world must always be backed up by the threat of force.

Unfortunately, the huge profits, opacity of funding, and potential for manufacturing pretenses for war have made the business of conflict a good one for many decision makers. A gradual evolution away from human-based governance at every level will eliminate career politicians, lobbyists, and other compromised agents of intelligence and military institutions.

Even more daunting is the firm, fixed, belief that there are few likely scenarios where it wouldn’t be advantageous to be better armed that potential adversaries. Nevertheless the right to wage war and to act against the greater good in search of profit or unjustified vengeance must not be abridged or participation will be extremely unlikely.

Because the voluntary participation of heavily militarized and advantaged nations is so crucial, the use of AI will be needed to supervise gradual and transparent demilitarization. There can be no scenario where people or nation states can be prevented, deceived, or instigated into military action or inaction by AI as we certainly do not trust it or wish to abrogate the deadly and morally-ambiguous task of taking human life.

Instead, AI should be given a passive, read-only right to all satellite, battlefield, IFF (identification of friend or for), casualty, and other relevant data to provide human negotiators and potential war-crime tribunals with the unbiased information regarding “what did you know and when did you know it” information.

Use of purely autonomous weaponry should be banned in participant nations in the same way that asymmetric use of landmines is discouraged. The cost of war should be costly indeed and when machines without any ethical nature are empowered to take life, the arms race that would ensue is unspeakably horrible.

In that same vein, the use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of indiscriminate and mass destruction should be made illegal and carry with them penalties. They serve nothing but an intimidation/deterrence function that should be rendered obsolete when interdependence and inter-relatedness increase. If every person has a first-degree relative living in every place on Earth, we can only hope that the psychotic notion of obliterating a city a loosing a pandemic anywhere on the world will be unthinkable to those in power.

Finally, after the use of force, AI, a free press, and participants with full whistleblower protection should be debriefed to adjudicate the pretexts, integrity, practices, restrains, and insofar as it is imaginable by the Geneva Convention, “legality” of war and conflict. Legal recourse and accountability for decisions made in bad faith are important to deter future battlefield commanders and politicians. If said decisions leading to loss of life and property were deemed to not justified by an AI/human jury, then there must be consequences to complete the feedback inhibition of future escapades.

Media independent of corporate and government controls

The control of public opinion and indeed human group consciousness is far too important to be controlled by individuals, corporations, or even governments. We believe that the purpose of independent journalism is public service and is the most important yet unnamed institution in any government.

To that end, journalism must receive direct public funding with no oversight by government but rather oversight by independently elected employees accountable to the citizens only.

Rights of procreation and the rights of minor children

In consideration of the dynamics of overpopulation versus underpopulation in the world, we conclude that the prime motivation for both is the same: parental self-interest.

In areas with high infant mortality and poor child labor protections, children are monetized and that is a lamentable fact that we must not be blind to.

In contradistinction, in areas where the cost and effort to raise children is high and they cannot be harnessed for supplemental income, those nation-states encounter negative population growth and whether they choose to recognize it or not, their viability is not sustainable with such a demographic trend.

Although the introduction of a guaranteed basic income which would include minor children may seem to incentivize overpopulation again, blockchain protections from harvesting child allowances must be put into place. Only a low percentage of childhood income may be accessed prior to the established age of majority. Petitions to slightly increase the family access to the child allotment may be considered but granted extremely rarely.

Corporate, religious, social, and government reproduction must be outlawed. It is possible for these groups to manufacture humans using artificial reproduction and gestation and one can think of many scenarios where such a policy might seem advantageous. Owing to our views of the primacy of parent-child bonding, we reject the legality and morality of such reproduction. Many human parents do not do an ideal job at raising children but the heartless and self-interested motives of organizations for making and raising children must be opposed not only because they remove the normal balancers for population control but because they are fundamentally immoral when viewed in the context of the social animal.

General and accepted accounting practices and removal of havens for storing surplus wealth

The ability of accounting practices and “offshoring” of wealth make it impossible to gain transparency, insight, and justice in wealth distribution. In order to maximize participation and avoid economic gamesmanship, all individuals, businesses, social groups, non-profits, nations, and multi-lateral organizations should create and adhere to simple rules of accountancy that are transparent.

AI management of commerce and trade

Benchmarking of each nation with regard to standard of living, incomes, and costs of living will be needed to generate AI models of “fairness”. It is assumed that protectionist trade, tariffs, national subsidization of industries, and dumping are inefficiencies when viewed from a global perspective. If a nation produces raw materials that can be efficiently valued using AI models, then it is assumed that the AI will be fair about establishing market efficiencies in a transparent way that maximizes global efficiency.

If the supply of water, electricity, food, and basic transportation and health are viewed as basic rights and provided in an efficient and cost-neutral way, then surplus production of other goods and services should be viewed as industries in the global good. For a time, one country, given its level of workforce, automation, and industrialization, may be preferred to provide those products. As variables evolve, AI will not encourage nation-state based protectionism of industry because it will be deemed that efficiencies of interdependence, not economic self-reliance per se, will be the goal.

1. Accountability, protection from abuse, and the evolution of the model.

The participation of nations will have to be based upon a mutually assured benefit for cooperation and a mutually assured detriment for non-cooperation. This will require honest, standardized reporting of all financial matters, resource allocation, costs of living, census data, anonymous blockchain voting data, and free and independent journalism.

Nations and corporations will have to submit to standardized accounting and transparency with regard to movements and stagnations of resources.

The system is designed to provide global taxation. This means that all citizens are entitled to productivity from all over the world. If AI determines that certain industries competitive advantage resulting in above benchmarking profit margins, then such efficiencies will be recaptured as taxation which is returned to the system to every global citizen, to the local nation state, and to the AI-human collaborative structures of governance that are providing modeling for trade, information, treaty law, conflict resolution, and migration.

2. Decision-Making Capacity.
   Decisions with regard to flow of goods and services will be rendered using AI with human interaction. The first criteria will be to determine not whether a decision benefits the involved parties but rather is the interaction the most cost-efficient, sustainable, and just one. Of course, seasonal variations that could jeopardize an entire infrastructure must be taken into consideration as disruption at the cost of continuity is not an optimal strategy.

Countries that opt to subsidize, obfuscate, or hinder the free trade decisions of the AI-human governance will suffer consequences in the form of temporary tariffs and inefficiencies that attempt to deter such action.

Automation and internationalization of transportation will be a stated goal of the system so that efficiencies are generated along with hindering the ability to create artificial scarcity, embargo, and undue manipulation of free trade efficiencies.

Nations that with to continue with protectionism, such as farm subsidization, strategic industry subsidization, import tariffs, and dumping will have inefficiencies in the form of tariffs assessed by the AI which are temporary and proportional. If they decline to participate in the international free trade aspirations of the system, then they will be met with punitive tariffs and indeed outright trade warfare on behalf of the cartel of free and participatory nations.

Surplus wealth of international governance system should be allowed to accumulate as participant entities, from individual, to corporate, to nation-state, will all be paying into the coffers of the system. The goal of such wealth accumulation will be three-fold: 1) to acquire strategic industries with international use such as pipelines, ports, transportation industries, and security, 2) to create a fund to incentivize change in certain nations or players that may be resistant, and 3) to provide for a reserve of guaranteed basic income for all citizens in a direct and timely fashion.

3. Effectiveness.
   The AI decision making will handle blockchain voting referendums and real time feedback to all global citizens, provide real time and transparent accountancy for all stakeholders, generate models of fairness with regard to pricing, utilization, migration, and security. Nations that choose to act against the global collective may do so at the peril of losing trading partners, potential human capital influx or egress, and group security.

There will be systems in place for international law, directed by data and AI, but subject to human input and lobbying.

Any nation or corporation that acts without transparency or deference to the global collective will be subject to sanctions, resistance, and non-participatory status as needed.

4. Resources and Financing.
   A flat corporate and national taxation will be established, preserving the competitive advantage of existing stakeholders. That said, distribution of global guaranteed income will be based on a per capita basis and subject to localized cost of living adjustments as deemed necessary. The cost of goods and services will be rendered more efficient by AI-mandated specialization, telecommuting for such things as graphic design, computer programming, entertainment, and even the practice of medicine.

Taxation of surplus income into national and global coffers with be mandatory and provide for the global redistribution of guaranteed basic income according to productivity and population needs according to a gradualistic model of attaining relative parity among all global citizens to ensure stability of migration and non-competitive economic and social development.

5. Trust and Insight.
   Blockchain voting and validation of non-monetization and non-coercion of voting must be an central priority of the international governance system. Although nations will have the ability to resist temporarily certain tendencies to engage in anti-competitive and anti-free trade tendencies, transparency of accountancy and of AI modeling will be paramount to allow people to understand but not manipulate the system.

Deficiencies in honesty or transparency in reporting to the global accountancy systems, whether they be financial, voting, or security-based, will be subject to individual prosecution as well as temporary financial punitive action.

6. Flexibility.

Participation in the system will be voluntary but it is assumed that over time, the majority of global citizens, endowed with basic rights and entitlements to the income and utilities needed to survive, will encourage their representatives to participate. Localized self-interest will gradually dissipate when it is realized that if they lose their job as a steel worker, they can purchase cheaper steel from elsewhere and be provided with the free education to become a computer graphic designer, for example.

Although AI-modeling will be an integral part of accountancy, trade decisions, wealth distribution, and migration, the necessity of human interaction and advocacy will be central as there are always extenuating circumstances that might need to be brought to the collective attention of the voting global citizens and their representatives.

7. Protection against the Abuse of Power.
   Through the exercise of global, citizen-oversight based media outlets, information with a truly global perspective will be accessible to all. This will insure that someone who is not directly effected by a decision can consider the global impact of decisions as they impact the greater good and its stated aspirations of honoring all people, everywhere, with safety, abundance, and security as befitting participants in a collective and cooperative world economic and social endeavor.

Nations are free to withdraw but the hope is that over generations, the ability of all people to reap the benefits of social mobility, economic specialization and fairness, and abundance of security and productivity will lead the way to very few voices of exceptionalism and isolationism.

The stated goal of a global system of governance will be the eventual elimination of nation-states and the complete portability of people, materials, services, and business interests globally.

8. Accountability.
   Accountability must be on the individual level. Persons who mislead or defraud the system of information, transparent accountancy, or international law must be held accountable in courts of law and subject to extradition by all participatory nations. There can be nowhere desirable to hide if one steals wealth and wishes to escape.

Persons found guilty of manufacturing conflict and provoking violent actions will be deemed to be enemies of all global citizenry rather than being honored as heroes in the nations where they stoked or perpetrated such conflict.

Conclusion:

All forms of human inequality and cruelty are emergent properties of the systems we create. Parents view children as wealth. Social groups view themselves in competition. Nations fight to preserve industry, borders, and populations. And people work to acquire privileged positions with regard to information, wealth, and influence.

These things are inexorable but if the goal is assert the individual equality and dignity of all people, then to do so without chaos and resistance means to imagine a system like John Lennon did but with a some major caveats. People should be allowed to have possessions, religions, self-determination, and even the right to cruelty.

The way forward is to imagine a world where every person is endowed with the right to basic income, equal voting representation, acquisition of personal wealth, the right to procreate and be parented, and basic human rights of freedom of expression, belief, and the right to be non-productive in every sense if they so choose without a threat of wage slavery or depopulation agendas.

When we eliminate the perceived need for armed conflict, the desirability of protectionism over economic efficiency, and the mistrust of people for systems designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few, we can imagine a world where full and voluntary participation, for the enhanced security and comfort of all its people, is not just desirable but the only rational decision going forward.