Category Archives: Futurism

Fast Radio Bursts

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) have been baffling scientists since they were detectedin 2007. Now, two physicists are suggesting to the scientific community that they may be evidence of space-faring aliens.

FRBs are extra-galactic, 5-millisecond bursts of radio emissions that generate 500 million times the energy our own sun emits. Finding them to begin with was such a feat that scientistsdubbed them Lorimer bursts after the astronomer who discoveredthem. Since then, astronomers have detected over 17 FRBs,but until more evidence arose, the initial discovery of FRBs was hard to understand.

Studying FRBs was a challenge for researchers. It was similar to walking in a crowded mall and noticing a whale as you peruse the room. However, when you quickly look back to see if the large mammal iss really there, you dont see anything. Just like you think you could have been hallucinating, scientists are confused that FRBs do not repeat.

In a sense, collecting data on FRBs requires a bit of luck. Even some of the most powerful telescopes like the Very Large Array near Socorro, New Mexico, cannot study the sky quick enough to register an event as quick as the FRB. While there are other, less powerful telescopes that can detect the signals FRBs put out a little quicker, they are unable to pinpoint the exact source of the FRBs.

Scientists, therefore, believe that FRBs may be as common as one every 10 seconds, but are there is no consensus when it comes totheir origins. Some claim that the FRBs are caused by the merging black holes, colliding neutron stars, or isolated supernova explosions, but these explanations fail to explainall observations recorded.

Astrophysicists from Harvard University, Manasvi Lingam and Avi Loeb,are suggesting that the FRBs may be from extra-galactic light sails. Loeb believes that, in an absence of a natural source for answers, we shouldlook at an artificial origin for the source, such as a light sail.

While once a concept of science fiction, light sails are gradually gaining traction in our world. Light sails are hypothesized to travel through space with virtually no fuel. These sails are expected to utilize the momentum of photons and last as long as the structure could sustain itself.

In theory, it could be possible that an advanced alien civilization has mastered these technologies and utilizes them to travel in space. The Astrophysicist team postulates that frequencies of the FRBs are optimal for powering a light sail, and that the beams could be artificially produced by an emitter that is twice the diameter of Earth. The team goes on to suggest that the FRBs detected could power payloads that weigh 106tons, but smaller lightsails couldwidely prevalent but difficult to detect because their spectral flux densities are too low.

Why Havent We Found Aliens? An Analysis of the Problem [INFOGRAPHIC]

Its important to note that Loeb taking a speculative approach of the data, meaning that he hopes future astronomers can possibly rule it out based on evidence collected in the future.The full study will be published in the journal, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Read the rest here:
Physicists Suggest That Recently Found Cosmic Radio Bursts Are Evidence of Alien Life - Futurism

Dear Balilla Pratella, great Futurist composer,

In Rome, in the Costanzi Theatre, packed to capacity, while I was listening to the orchestral performance of your overwhelming Futurist music, with my Futurist friends, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carr, Balla, Soffici, Papini and Cavacchioli, a new art came into my mind which only you can create, the Art of Noises, the logical consequence of your marvelous innovations.

Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men. For many centuries life went by in silence, or at most in muted tones. The strongest noises which interrupted this silence were not intense or prolonged or varied. If we overlook such exceptional movements as earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, avalanches and waterfalls, nature is silent.

Amidst this dearth of noises, the first sounds that man drew from a pieced reed or streched string were regarded with amazement as new and marvelous things. Primitive races attributed sound to the gods; it was considered sacred and reserved for priests, who used it to enrich the mystery of their rites.

And so was born the concept of sound as a thing in itself, distinct and independent of life, and the result was music, a fantastic world superimposed on the real one, an inviolatable and sacred world. It is easy to understand how such a concept of music resulted inevitable in the hindering of its progress by comparison with the other arts. The Greeks themselves, with their musical theories calculated mathematically by Pythagoras and according to which only a few consonant intervals could be used, limited the field of music considerably, rendering harmony, of which they were unaware, impossible.

The Middle Ages, with the development and modification of the Greek tetrachordal system, with the Gregorian chant and popular songs, enriched the art of music, but continued to consider sound in its development in time, a restricted notion, but one which lasted many centuries, and which still can be found in the Flemish contrapuntalists most complicated polyphonies.

The chord did not exist, the development of the various parts was not subornated to the chord that these parts put together could produce; the conception of the parts was horizontal not vertical. The desire, search, and taste for a simultaneous union of different sounds, that is for the chord (complex sound), were gradually made manifest, passing from the consonant perfect chord with a few passing dissonances, to the complicated and persistent dissonances that characterize contemporary music.

At first the art of music sought purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound.

This musical evolution is paralleled by the multipication of machines, which collaborate with man on every front. Not only in the roaring atmosphere of major cities, but in the country too, which until yesterday was totally silent, the machine today has created such a variety and rivalry of noises that pure sound, in its exiguity and monotony, no longer arouses any feeling.

To excite and exalt our sensibilities, music developed towards the most complex polyphony and the maximum variety, seeking the most complicated successions of dissonant chords and vaguely preparing the creation of musical noise. This evolution towards noise sound was not possible before now. The ear of an eighteenth-century man could never have endured the discordant intensity of certain chords produced by our orchestras (whose members have trebled in number since then). To our ears, on the other hand, they sound pleasant, since our hearing has already been educated by modern life, so teeming with variegated noises. But our ears are not satisfied merely with this, and demand an abundance of acoustic emotions.

On the other hand, musical sound is too limited in its qualitative variety of tones. The most complex orchestras boil down to four or five types of instrument, varying in timber: instruments played by bow or plucking, by blowing into metal or wood, and by percussion. And so modern music goes round in this small circle, struggling in vain to create new ranges of tones.

This limited circle of pure sounds must be broken, and the infinite variety of noise-sound conquered.

Besides, everyone will acknowledge that all musical sound carries with it a development of sensations that are already familiar and exhausted, and which predispose the listener to boredom in spite of the efforts of all the innovatory musicians. We Futurists have deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. For many years Beethoven and Wagner shook our nerves and hearts. Now we are satiated and we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearsing, for example, the Eroica or the Pastoral.

We cannot see that enormous apparatus of force that the modern orchestra represents without feeling the most profound and total disillusion at the paltry acoustic results. Do you know of any sight more ridiculous than that of twenty men furiously bent on the redoubling the mewing of a violin? All this will naturally make the music-lovers scream, and will perhaps enliven the sleepy atmosphere of concert halls. Let us now, as Futurists, enter one of these hospitals for anaemic sounds. There: the first bar brings the boredom of familiarity to your ear and anticipates the boredom of the bar to follow. Let us relish, from bar to bar, two or three varieties of genuine boredom, waiting all the while for the extraordinary sensation that never comes.

Meanwhile a repugnant mixture is concocted from monotonous sensations and the idiotic religious emotion of listeners buddhistically drunk with repeating for the nth time their more or less snobbish or second-hand ecstasy.

Away! Let us break out since we cannot much longer restrain our desire to create finally a new musical reality, with a generous distribution of resonant slaps in the face, discarding violins, pianos, double-basses and plainitive organs. Let us break out!

Its no good objecting that noises are exclusively loud and disagreeable to the ear.

It seems pointless to enumerate all the graceful and delicate noises that afford pleasant sensations.

To convince ourselves of the amazing variety of noises, it is enough to think of the rumble of thunder, the whistle of the wind, the roar of a waterfall, the gurgling of a brook, the rustling of leaves, the clatter of a trotting horse as it draws into the distance, the lurching jolts of a cart on pavings, and of the generous, solemn, white breathing of a nocturnal city; of all the noises made by wild and domestic animals, and of all those that can be made by the mouth of man without resorting to speaking or singing.

Let us cross a great modern capital with our ears more alert than our eyes, and we will get enjoyment from distinguishing the eddying of water, air and gas in metal pipes, the grumbling of noises that breathe and pulse with indisputable animality, the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags. We enjoy creating mental orchestrations of the crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din, from stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning wheels, printing works, electric power stations and underground railways.

Nor should the newest noises of modern war be forgotten. Recently, the poet Marinetti, in a letter from the trenches of Adrianopolis, described to me with marvelous free words the orchestra of a great battle:

To attune noises does not mean to detract from all their irregular movements and vibrations in time and intensity, but rather to give gradation and tone to the most strongly predominant of these vibrations.

Noise in fact can be differentiated from sound only in so far as the vibrations which produce it are confused and irregular, both in time and intensity.

Every noise has a tone, and sometimes also a harmony that predominates over the body of its irregular vibrations.

Now, it is from this dominating characteristic tone that a practical possibility can be derived for attuning it, that is to give a certain noise not merely one tone, but a variety of tones, without losing its characteristic tone, by which I mean the one which distinguishes it. In this way any noise obtained by a rotating movement can offer an entire ascending or descending chromatic scale, if the speed of the movement is increased or decreased.

Every manifestation of our life is accompanied by noise. The noise, therefore, is familiar to our ear, and has the power to conjure up life itself. Sound, alien to our life, always musical and a thing unto itself, an occasional but unnecessary element, has become to our ears what an overfamiliar face is to our eyes. Noise, however, reaching us in a confused and irregular way from the irregular confusion of our life, never entirely reveals itself to us, and keeps innumerable surprises in reserve. We are therefore certain that by selecting, coordinating and dominating all noises we will enrich men with a new and unexpected sensual pleasure.

Although it is characteristic of noise to recall us brutally to real life, the art of noise must not limit itself to imitative reproduction. It will achieve its most emotive power in the acoustic enjoyment, in its own right, that the artists inspiration will extract from combined noises.

Here are the 6 families of noises of the Futurist orchestra which we will soon set in motion mechanically:

In this inventory we have encapsulated the most characteristic of the fundamental noises; the others are merely the associations and combinations of these. The rhythmic movements of a noise are infinite: just as with tone there is always a predominant rhythm, but around this numerous other secondary rhythms can be felt.

Follow this link:
The Art of Noises

In the 20th century we got used to a certain way of thinking: if you needed something, you boughtit. Cars, houses, records, you named it. Efficient manufacturing and logistics made it possible to createan unprecedented global overflow of stuff. Ownership quickly becameabout being someone; it was a way of definingwho you are.

All ofthis is still very much the case today: buying and owning things is a huge part of our lives. Yet something is still markedly different now: most of us have stopped buying CDs and DVDs. Young people arent buying cars anymore. Books are selling fewer copies. Many things we used to buy and keep at home we no longer do.

Let us take a closer look at what is happening with music, for instance. Artists still release albums, but very few people actually buy the physical album. Instead, they might buy the songs digitally on iTunes, and a growing amount of people will listen to the track on-demand. Music is accessed, not owned. The same goes for your favourite film. Ten years ago you would have bought a DVD to watch over and over again. Now you have iton stand-byon Netflix.

And this is just the beginning.

Things get really interesting when we start talking about cars instead of music. What would it be like to access a car on-demand? You might say that we already have taxis. But a taxi isnt as convenient as Netflix is. What would it be like to actually have the convenience of your own car without owning it?

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a model for traffic without ownership. You pay a monthly fee for it, like with Spotify, tell the app where you are going and get instant access to taxis, Ubers, buses, and so on. Everything is available on-demand and ownership is no longer needed.

MaaS is part of a trend called the as a service model. The frameworkbegan as a simple idea in software development, when companies started paying for access instead of buying permanent licenses for office programs. Now the same model is moving into the material world. Netflix, Spotify, AirBnb and Uber are all as a service companies.

As a service models become more and more feasible when the number of sensors that surround us increases. This development is often called the Internet of Things.But when we consider the Internet of Things from the perspective of disappearing products and the increase in newservice models, we caneffectivelyconclude that it is, in fact, the Internet of No Things.

What is so revolutionary about the as a service model then? Why is it good not to own things? There are two main reasons and these are related: First, ownership makes us lazy. Second, the planet cannot survive with us consuming somuch stuff.

When we buy things we easily get bored with them and forget they exist, or, alternatively, use them only because we own them. On-demand is about using things when we actually need them. It leads to the more effective use of resources. AirBnb gets more people to use the same apartment and Uber gets more people to use the same car.

It takes alarge amountof natural resources to manufacture a car, house, or smartphone in the first place. We are now running out of those resources. Thats why digital as a service platforms show great promise. In the future the as a service model will revolutionise some areas of our lives that are completely unsustainable right now such as housing, mobility and communications.

Can you imagine a world where you no longer have a phone in your pocket but instead pay for communication as a service? It might sound like sci-fi, but companies around the world are already offering housing and even Smart City as a Service.A world without smartphones? It may very well happen.

Read the rest here:
The Era of Ownership Is Ending - Futurism

Chinas Mission to the Moon

China is working to develop a new spaceship that can both fly in low-Earth orbit and land on the moon.

Their announcement comes shortly after the US announced plans to fly two private citizens around the Moon by late 2018, under private aerospace company SpaceX.

Chinas spacecraft will be designed to be recoverable, with better capacity than other similar spaceships, capable of shuttling multiple crew members. Spaceship engineer Zhang Bainian, who spoke to Science and Technology Daily, compared the planned spacecraft to the NASA and the European Space Agencys Oriona spacecraft equipped for a moon landing operation, which they hope will be able to bring astronauts to space by 2023.

Despite joining the space race fairly recently (their first crewed mission was in 2003), Chinas achievements have firmly established the country as a major contender in the field.

In terms of rocket launches, China has already overtaken Russia in volume and is at par with the US, reaching a total of 22. In contrast, Russia, despite having a long-established space program, fell behind with only 17 launches. According to Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, the US could have achieved more if the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fleet had not been grounded after an explosion in September 2016.

In addition, Chinas most recent crewed mission saw two astronauts spend a month aboard the Chinese space station, with plans for a permanently crewed space station to start operations within five years.

See the original post:
China to Send People to the Moon by 2020 - Futurism

For those not familiar with this old idiom, it means its less costly to avoid problems from ever happening in the first place, than it is to fix problems once they do. It also happens to be the entire logic behind the invention of the vaccine, and it is my belief that universal basic income has the same potential.

The savings provided by vaccines are staggering to the point of almost being beyond comprehension. The human suffering avoided through vaccinations are immeasurable, but the economic benefits are not, and in fact have been measured. Lets start with polio.

We estimate that the United States invested approximately US dollars 35 billionin polio vaccines between 1955 and 2005 The historical and future investments translate into over 1.7 billion vaccinations that prevent approximately 1.1 million cases of paralytic polio and over 160,000 deaths. Due to treatment cost savings, the investment implies net benefits of approximately US dollars 180billion, even without incorporating the intangible costs of suffering and death and of averted fear. Retrospectively, the U.S. investment in polio vaccination represents a highly valuable, cost-saving public health program.

For every $1 billion weve spent on polio vaccines, weve avoided spending about $6 billion down the road. And thats purely the economic costs, not the personal costs. You might think our investment in fighting polio is perhaps as good as it gets, but its not.

Most vaccines recommended are cost-saving even if only direct medical costsand not lost lives and sufferingare considered. Our country, for example, saves $8.50 in direct medical costs for every dollar invested in diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine. When the savings associated with work loss, death, and disability are factored in, the total savings increase to about $27 per dollar invested in DTaP vaccination. Every dollar our Nation spends on measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination generates about $13 in total savingsadding up to about $4 billion each year.

Just $1 spent on a single MMR shot can save $13 and a DTaP shot can save $27 that would otherwise have been spent on the costs of the full-blown diseases they protect against.

These vaccinations save us incredible amounts of money and suffering as a society, as long as we continue vaccinating ourselves. But what kind of savings are there to be found, when we go all-in and invest in a massive vaccine program so large, its aim is to entirely eradicate something?

Reported as eradicated from the face of the Earth in 1977, and in possibly one of the greatest understatements of all time, the eradication of smallpox by the U.S. proved to be a remarkably good economic investment.

A total of $32 million was spent by the United States over a 10-year period in the global campaign to eradicate smallpox. The entire $32 million has been recouped every 2 months since 1971 by saving the costs of the smallpox vaccine, administration, medical care, quarantine and other costs. According to General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates from a draft report, Infectious Diseases: Soundness of World Health Organization Estimates to Eradicate or Eliminate Seven Diseases, the cumulative savings from smallpox eradication for the United States is $17 billion. The draft report also estimates the real rate of return for the United States to be 46 percent per year since smallpox was eradicated.

We also didnt stop at eradicating it from within our own borders. We invested our money in the world.

It has since been calculated that the largest donor, the United States, saves the total of all its contributions every 26 days, making smallpox prevention through vaccination one of the most cost-beneficial health interventions of the time.

Even if we let these numbers sink in for a bit, its a huge challenge to fully appreciate because these savings are what we dont experience. We arent spending tens of billions of dollars that we otherwise would have. Had we not spent millions then, wed be spending billions on all of the effects of smallpox to this day and long into the future.

Try to imagine a world where we didnt eradicate smallpox. Aside from the obvious increases in our already sky-high health care costs and the deaths of over 100 million people, millions every year would be calling in sick to work to care for themselves or a loved one with smallpox. Businesses would be paying more for sick leave and losing millions of hours of productivity (estimated at $1 billion lost every year). Medical bankruptcies would likely be higher. Crime would likely be higher. The entire economy would suffer along with all of society.

But we didnt take that path. We chose instead to pay for an ounce of prevention in order to avoid paying for a pound of cure.

Unfortunately we cant see the effects of what we did, because we made them never happen with the ounce of prevention. Were saving what will eventually be trillions of dollars, and dont even give this incredible fact a second thought.

Not only is it hard to see the pounds weve avoided, but we also have a really hard time recognizing the pounds were paying for, because we consider them normal, just as smallpox would today still be normal if wed never chosen to eradicate it through mass vaccinations. It would just be an ugly fact of life like poverty.

What if poverty is like smallpox?

What if the realities of hunger and homelessness arent just facts of life, but examples of those costly pounds that we currently consider normal that we could just instead eradicate with an ounce of cure? How much would it cost to eradicate? How much could we save?

As Ive written about before, a report by the Chief Public Health Officer in Canada looked at this question of potential savings, and estimated that:

$1 invested in the early years saves between $3 and $9 in future spending on the health and criminal justice systems, as well as on social assistance.

Its rare to see this kind of return on investment. That is, outside of vaccinations. Thats the power of immunizations. Spending $1 on a vaccine for a kid can save $10, but also just giving the same kid $1 can save $9 some decades down the road too. How can this be? Because childhood poverty is hugely expensive.

Our results suggest that the costs to the United States associated with childhood poverty total about $500 billion per year, or the equivalent of nearly 4 percent of GDP. More specifically, we estimate that childhood poverty each year:

Reduces productivity and economic output by about 1.3 percent of GDP;

Raises the costs of crime by 1.3 percent of GDP; and

Raises health expenditures and reduces the value of health by 1.2 percent of GDP.

The above numbers are from 2007, and since then the child poverty rate has increased from 17% to 25%, so we can safely assume the hit to GDP has increased as well. Assuming a proportional increase, the 2015 loss to economic growth of child poverty could now be 5.6% of GDP, or $981 billion. And thats only child poverty, not adult poverty.

For the same reason its cheaper to just spend $10,000 on the homeless providing a home, than it is to instead spend $30,000 in medical and criminal justice system costs, it is cheaper to prevent people from ever living in poverty, than it is to pay the full costs of poverty. In addition to the costs of child poverty above, these full costs include a significant portion of the estimated $1.4 trillion spent on crime, the $2.7 trillion spent on health care, and the trillions of dollars spent on its many other effects every single year in the U.S.

These numbers are just economic costs. There are biological costs as well. Poverty even rewires our brains. The new study of epigenetics show us such biological costs can be paid spanning entire lives.

Coming of age in poverty may lead to permanent dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex and the amygdalawhich, according to the researchers, has been associated with mood disorders including depression, anxiety, impulsive aggression and substance abuse.

Fortunately, the even newer study of neurogenesis (the growth of new neurons long thought to be impossible) shows us these effects also need not be permanent.

Chronic stress, predictably enough, decreases neurogenesis. As Christian Mirescu, one of Goulds post-docs, put it, When a brain is worried, its just thinking about survival. It isnt interested in investing in new cells for the future. On the other hand, enriched animal environmentsenclosures that simulate the complexity of a natural habitatlead to dramatic increases in both neurogenesis and the density of neuronal dendrites, the branches that connect one neuron to another. Complex surroundings create a complex brain.

Essentially, were recently learning that we can potentially reverse the long-term effects of poverty, if we eliminate it.

Poverty currently affects almost 50 million Americans, 18 million of whom are kids coming of age impoverished. To allow poverty to continue in the 21st century or to eradicate it is the same choice between an ounce or a pound as smallpox was in the 20th century, and outside of an experiment in Manitoba, weve been choosing a pound of poverty for pretty much all of recorded history.

As another saying goes, so far were being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Decades ago, we developed a vaccine for smallpox and we used it to eradicate smallpox.

Today, we may already have a vaccine for poverty. Its been tested, and the results are remarkable.

Its called universal basic income.

The idea is to give every citizen enough money to cover their basic needs like food and shelter, no strings attached. For the U.S. to guarantee these basic needs to assure no one would live in poverty would cost about $1,000 per adult and $300 per child every month.

For a significant portion of the population here in 2015, this is where the conversation can stop. Once the napkins are whipped out and its $3 trillion price tag is estimated, the idea can be hand-waved away as too expensive.But is it?

Remember how every $1 spent keeping a child out of poverty can save $3 to $9 as an adult? Well, that means if we started vaccinating kids with a basic income of $300 a month, we would not have to spend $900 to $2,700 a month on them as adults. This also means that when kids became adults, a basic income of $1,000 per month is a savings of up to $1,700 wed have otherwise spent. So why not start vaccinating our kids against poverty, and consider their basic incomes as adults a net savings?

What if we had hand-waved away the costs of eradicating smallpox as too expensive with napkin math? What if we today faced that same choice we did then? What if the price of smallpox eradication now was calculated on a napkin as being $3 trillion? What would we do? What should we do?

What if the discussion about smallpox eradication never included the reality the investment would be recouped every two months? What if no one talked about the 40% annual return on investment? What if we all kept pretending eradicating smallpox would just be too darn expensive and that its just one of those ugly facts of life we just have to deal with until we die?

A $3 trillion napkin-math price tag does not reflect a vaccines true value. The fact that its not even its true price tag doesnt even really matter (Note: its true price tag is more like $1 trillion after consolidation and elimination of many existing cash-replaceable federal programs) because even at $3 trillion instead of $1 trillion, its still an ounce instead of a pound.

Poverty is a disease. Its an illness that even doctors are beginning to recognize as something that requires the prescription of cash in order to successfully treat its many associated diseases:

I was treating their bodies, but not their social situations. And especially not their income, which seemed to be the biggest barrier to their health improving. The research evidence was pretty clear on this. Income, poverty, is intimately connected to my patients health. In fact, poverty is more important to my low-income patients than smoking, high cholesterol, high-blood pressure, obesity, salt, or soda pop. Poverty wreaks havoc on my patients bodies. A 17% increased risk of heart disease; more than 100% increased risk of diabetes; 60% higher rates of depression; higher rates of lung, oral, cervical cancer; higher rates of lung disease like asthma and emphysema It became pretty clear to me I was treating all of [my patients] health issues except for the most important onetheir poverty.Dr. Gary Bloch

We can do more than continually treat povertys many economically and physically expensive symptoms. We can eradicate it entirely with a social vaccine designed to immunize against it.

A social vaccine can be defined as, actions that address social determinants and social inequities in society, which act as a precursor to the public health problem being addressed. While the social vaccine cannot be specific to any disease or problem, it can be adapted as an intervention for any public health response. The aim of the social vaccine is to promote equity and social justice that will inoculate the society through action on social determinants of health.

Basic income is a tested social vaccine. Its been found to increase equity and general welfare. It has been found to reduce hospitalizations by 8.5% in just a few years through reduced stress and work injuries. Its been found to increase birth weights through increased maternal nutrition. Its been found to decrease crime rates by 40% and reduce malnourishment by 30%. Intrinsic motivation is cultivated. Students do better in school. Bargaining positions increase. Economic activity increases. Entrepreneurs are born.

With experiment after experiment, from smaller unconditional cash transfers to full-on basic incomes, the results point in positive directions across multiple measures when incomes are unconditionally increased.

Universal basic income is a social vaccine for the disease ofpoverty.

We can keep spending trillions every year to treat this disease and its many symptoms, or we can choose to eradicate poverty as we did smallpox through a mass social vaccination program known as basic income.

It costs real money for us to look the other way on poverty. Unlike smallpox and other diseases we can vaccinate ourselves against, the costs of poverty can be more invisible. We dont get bills in the mail from Poverty, Inc. telling us each month how much we owe, but we still pay these bills because they are included in our many other bills.

When we pay $10,000 in taxes instead of $7,000 because of welfare and health care, thats in large part a $3,000 poverty bill. When we pay $500 a month instead $400 on our private health insurance premiums, thats a $100 poverty bill. When we pay $50 on a shirt instead of $45 because of theft, thats a $5 poverty bill. When were taxed a percentage of our homes to pay for prisons, thats a poverty bill. What other examples can you think of personally? What might we all be spending on poverty every day?

These poverty bills are all around us, but were just not seeing them as they are. And lets not ignore the lack of opportunity bills either.

If just one Einstein right now is working 60 hours a week in two jobs just to survive, instead of propelling the entire world forward with another General Theory of Relativity that loss is truly incalculable. How can we measure the costs of lost innovation? Of businesses never started? Of visions never realized?

These are the full costs of not implementing universal basic income, and they will only increase as technology reduces our need for work as long as we continue requiring the little work thats left in exchange for income.

These are the full costs of being penny-wise and pound-foolish by not socially vaccinating ourselves against poverty.

These are the full costs of continuing to opt for a pound of cure instead of an ounce of prevention.

So now, let us consider a new question.

Is the question for us to answer in the 21st century, Can we afford basic income?

Or is the question, Can we not afford basic income?

Read the original:
Could Universal Basic Income Be the 'Social Vaccine' of the 21st Century? - Futurism

In Brief

Elon Musk is never shy about making grand announcements and declaring his ambitious plans, especially when theyre anchored in his vision for a more sustainable future. His latestpromise is to help South Australia createa solar farm that will address the their energy issues in just one hundreddays orhell do the work for free.

In South Australia, energy prices continue to surge, andlocal companies remain unable to meet public energy demand mostly due to environmental concerns. Last year, storms led to a state-wide blackout that shut down operations for numerous ports and public transportation, as well as disrupting business operations in the fifth most populous state in the country.

To that end, co-founder of SolarCity (and Musks cousin) Lyndon Rive says theyre capable of installing 100 to 300 megawatt per hour battery storage, which could solve South Australias energy issues. And while Rivedoesnt have 300 MWh sitting there ready to go, he told AFR that he can certainly get them.

After making this statement, Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of Atlassian, tweeted Lyndon and Musk if they were indeed serious about the offer.

Musk replied:

On Cannon-Brookes end, he asked for seven days to sort out politics and funding, at which point he also requested that the Tesla CEO send an approximate quote on how much a 100MW battery farm at mates rates would cost.

According to Musk, it would cost $250 per kWh to produce over 100MWh. Hes confident that Tesla could get the system installed and working within one hundred days of signing a contract.

Assuming that Cannon-Brookes can indeed secure the paperwork needed to get the project underway, Tesla certainlyhas a reputationwhen it comes to delivering on its promises. Last year, Tesla took on a similar project in California: a 80MW farm that was completed in just 90 days that provided grid-scale power in response to possible power shortages.

Read more:
Musk Just Promised To Solve This Country's Energy Crisis in 100 Days or It's Free - Futurism