What matters more; a new smart-phone or food security? Spending billions developing AI to make life more confusing, or improving the environment and social cohesion? Science and Technology can address humanity’s biggest problems – but how do we ensure they are focused on the right ones?
Markets are focused on the immediate debt-ceiling crisis, and the short-term game of guessing rates vs inflation. Down the line are the bigger challenges of the medium and long-term: issues we need to be investing in now to garner long-run returns or just to survive!
Labour Leader Keir Starmer has announced growth is a core mission for the next UK government. He should look how Clarkson’s Diddley Squat Farm and the threat to obliterate my village of Hamble with a wholly unnecessary gravel quarry demonstrate how the UK’s local planning and over-regulation stifles growth, hope, and expectations. The process isn’t fit for any purpose. Bureaucrats have anything but the interests of local people in mind. Big money walks all over them.
May markets are finishing on a dead-cat bounce - things could get more unstable through June. The outcomes in Ukraine are looking less favourable, and Europe will struggle with sanctions. The weakest link is unsurprisingly Italy. A bigger crisis in terms of famine will shortly become apparent in North Africa.
Why do we worry so much about debt, the dollar, inflation and growth, when the only really, really important things are Energy, Food and Commodities and how we pay for and get them?
