Post Scarcity Economy

Why is there so much civil unrest and more expected in the UK?

Civil Unrest and Its Expected Growth

It’s not just the UK. There has been a trend toward increasing civil unrest around the world.

Global Growth Trends in Civil Unrest

Global Protests and Riots Almost Double from 2011 to 2018

Institute for Economics & Peace | Experts in Peace, Conflict and Risk

The Institute for Economics and Peace provides an in-depth analysis of civil unrest in the UK specifically through the .pdf available from the link below:

Click to access UKPI-2024-briefing-web-1.pdf

Note from this quote a clue as to the causes of civil unrest:

“The UK has become less peaceful in the last decade. Peacefulness in the UK deteriorated by almost 11 percent in 2022, the most recent year of measurement. This is the eighth deterioration in peacefulness in the last decade and the first since 2020. Fifty-eight Police Force Areas (PFA) deteriorated, while eight improved. This is the largest number of PFAs to deteriorate since 2018.

Of the five UKPI indicators, homicide was the only one to improve, while the remaining four — violent crime, weapons crime, police officers, public disorder — deteriorated”

This suggests the aggravating factors for civil unrest do not lie within social dynamics among the population but an overall level of dissatisfaction with systems failing to meet the needs of the people.

Sadly, the propensity for ignoring causes and treating symptoms has exacerbated the problems as police have increasingly adopted militaristic policies for “serving and protecting” the public.

The militarization of the police has made this phenomenon worse, not better and they’ve been allowed to evolve in a counter-productive strategy that fails on every front from inciting civil unrest to increasing incidents of their wrongdoing as police are responsible for up to 40% of all domestic violence incidents.

Police Stress Results in 40% Involved in Personal Domestic Violence Incidents
Police Stress Results in Alcohol Dependency Issues

Click to access ED338997.pdf

The strategy of militarization of the police has turned them into a terrorist organization for many citizens. This is a consequence of conservative politics because imposition is the only language they understand.

Here is a summary provided by Chat GPT on social events in which Police catalyzed riots as a consequence of their inept approach to conflict de-escalation (from a U.S. perspective):

Numerous social events throughout history have seen police actions catalyzing riots. Here are some notable instances:

1. 1965 Watts Riots (Los Angeles, California):

– Trigger: The arrest of Marquette Frye, a black motorist, by a white California Highway Patrol officer.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and extensive property damage.

2. 1967 Newark Riots (Newark, New Jersey):

– Trigger: The arrest and beating of John Smith, a black cab driver, by white police officers.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, 26 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and widespread destruction.

3. 1967 Detroit Riots (Detroit, Michigan):

– Trigger: A police raid on an unlicensed bar, or “blind pig,” in a predominantly black neighbourhood.

– Outcome: Five days of rioting, 43 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and significant property damage.

4. 1968 Chicago Riots (Chicago, Illinois):

– Trigger: The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., followed by police actions during protests.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, 11 deaths, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.

5. 1980 Miami Riots (Miami, Florida):

– Trigger: The acquittal of four white police officers in the beating death of Arthur McDuffie, a black motorcyclist.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, 18 deaths, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.

6. 1992 Los Angeles Riots (Los Angeles, California):

– Trigger: The acquittal of four LAPD officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, a black motorist.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, 63 deaths, over 2,000 injuries, and widespread destruction.

7. 2001 Cincinnati Riots (Cincinnati, Ohio):

– Trigger: The police shooting of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed black teenager.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, resulted in injuries and significant property damage.

8. 2014 Ferguson Unrest (Ferguson, Missouri):

– Trigger: The police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer.

– Outcome: Weeks of protests and riots, resulting in injuries, arrests, and property damage.

9. 2015 Baltimore Protests (Baltimore, Maryland):

– Trigger: The death of Freddie Gray in police custody.

– Outcome: Several days of protests and rioting, resulted in injuries, arrests, and property damage.

10. 2020 George Floyd Protests (Nationwide, USA):

– Trigger: The police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

– Outcome: Protests and riots across numerous cities in the U.S., resulting in deaths, injuries, and significant property damage.

These events highlight the recurring issue of police actions triggering significant social unrest, often reflecting deeper systemic issues within society.

Imposition is conflict escalation NOT conflict resolution.

Although the militarization of the police is entirely the wrong way to go in addressing social unrest, they are a symptom of resolvable political problems beginning with the short-sighted views of conservative politicians who interpret every problem as a nail because they have learned only how to wield a hammer.

Nuance escapes them.

The patience required to facilitate peaceful resolutions runs contrary to a profit-oriented mindset that equates time spent with lost dollars.

The core problem is also exacerbated by their sycophantic support of the conditions that led to last century’s Great Depression and were responsible for triggering the Second World War. We are watching those conditions and their consequences replaying themselves right now in real-time with the horrifying implications inherent within the corrupt American system.

No nation is immune to the impact of economic distortions feeding despair among the public.

The core problem catalyzing the increase in civil unrest is economic by nature.

It’s the Economy, Stupid!

The core problem feeding the despair driving otherwise peaceful citizens into extreme action is the economic distortion corroding the basic patience, tolerance, and decency of otherwise peaceful people who want only to live modestly dignified lives but cannot because we have all been robbed of trillions in a class warfare that seeks to resurrect a facsimile of governance resembling a medieval caste system of two classes of people; rulers and serfs.

Middle Class Wealth Vanishing

This trajectory is unsustainable and will continue to feed unrest.

Profit-Driven Corporate Sociopathy

This sociopathic profit motive cannot but lead to chaos.

Global CO2 Emissions by Lifestyle

Making matters worse is that the lifestyles of the wealthy class have put humanity on a trajectory toward its extinction.

No one should be surprised by an increase in public unrest.

Things are going to get MUCH uglier before they get better.

The questions we need to address are:

  1. “How many casualties can we tolerate before we come to our senses?”
  2. How much pain and suffering can we stomach before we lose our shit?
  3. How many millions must die due to preventable causes and the behaviours of sociopaths hellbent on destroying this planet will it take before civilization is a chaotic mess of violent insurrections all around the world?
  4. What will it take for the wealthiest among us to show some leadership and help set this ship of humanity onto a path toward a sustainable future?
JFK — Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

(This post was an answer to a Question posed on Quora — where all my posts on Medium have originated; hence the personal response indicated within this article. — https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/ )

Are people poor because they were born to be poor?

This post is a response to a question posed in its full format as follows: “What can we say for those people that worked hard but are still poor? Is it because they were born to be poor?”

The first place to begin one’s assessment of another’s fortune is with an honest apprehension of the environment affecting all fortunes by all people who inhabit a (somewhat) closed ecosystem.

To suggest some external source of magical influence like fate to factor in any of this merely distracts from an objective apprehension of the dynamics leading to disparity.

It is precisely this kind of magical thinking that every “Confidence Artist” (“conman,” “swindler,” “scammer,” fraud) throughout human history has relied upon to enrich themselves at the expense of their victims.

Making matters worse for the victims is the belief that they’re responsible for the actions of others who impoverish them.

This thinking epitomizes victim-shaming.

It’s no different than blaming one’s attire for “causing” a rape.

It’s precisely the thinking a homicidal monster utilizes when they claim someone else’s actions forced them to commit murder. They twist the notion of self-defence into a justifiable weapon to dismiss responsibility for their actions.

This perverse thinking permits people like Derek Chauvin to suffocate George Floyd until they stop breathing. It empowers all the evil monsters in our midst to invoke sociopathic rationalizations unrelated to the incident in question to justify the commission of murder.

Inmate who stabbed Derek Chauvin 22 times is charged with attempted murder, prosecutors say

It ignores the causal nature of reality. Even the Bible’s Genesis chapter and “list of begats” acknowledge causality.

Bible, King James Version

People are not poor because of some cosmic assignment handed down to them by an authority, as if it were a justifiable assessment of their character at birth. People are poor because humanity has not learned the lessons of our primitive existence — namely, that we managed to survive our cave-dwelling origins only because we worked together as we hunted in groups. Each contributed to the welfare of the whole in ways that allowed everyone to benefit equally from the collective labours of synergy.

Margaret Mead has most succinctly identified the dawn of human civilization in her example of a knit bone discovered during her anthropological studies.

The worst aspect of all of this is that the evidence is abundant. There is no mystery as to why so many people struggle with poverty today.

In our early history, widespread poverty primarily resulted from natural scarcity due to environmental conditions such as an early frost wiping out an entire harvest or poor land management practices such as those that led to “The Dust Bowl” and the “Dirty Thirties.” Ironically, the magical thinking of “Manifest Destiny” driving an initial bump in prosperity contributed to the impoverished conditions that contributed to “The Great Depression,” which contributed to the stressors driving global aggressions leading to a Second World War only decades after the first global aggression.

Dust Bowl: Causes, Definition & Years | HISTORY

The fuel behind all of the poverty and aggression is the same fuel contributing to an increasing number and degree of violent protests occurring worldwide today — income disparity. We have surpassed the stage of income disparity that triggered our first global aggressions due to the stresses of exacerbated conditions of poverty.

This cycle of class disparity has triggered aggressions throughout human history, and many of our popular stories are based on them.

We should know better by now, but we seem incapable of learning this crucial lesson from history.

What makes matters worse is that in today’s “post-scarcity world,” we produce more than we can consume. We have no excuse for poverty today beyond human failings, as expressed through our politics.

Can we feed the world and ensure no one goes hungry?

None of this is a mystery — or should be a mystery to anyone today. Yet, here we are looking for excuses to victim-shame the vulnerable in society who struggle to feed themselves every day.

The information providing clarity exists in abundance. Few people are ignorant of the fact that eight people have as much wealth as the bottom half of the whole of humanity. No one is oblivious to the magical sound of the designation we venerate of a “centibillionaire.” It’s like a status of godhood on Earth that people seriously believe is a consequence of effort and ingenuity and not a dysfunctional system that impoverishes the vulnerable.

Few people perceive that obscenity in terms of the threat to global stability that it is. Few people perceive that amount of power within the hands of an egotist as a direct threat to their livelihoods — unless, of course, they’re one of the thousands who have been displaced on a whim by a megalomaniac who spent $44 billion to own the world’s most enormous megaphone so that they can capture global attention every day.

Few people look at graphs like these two and become horrified by their implications.

Yet… here we are, sending ourselves on a path in which the logical conclusion of the trajectory summed up by these two graphs is the end of human civilization as we know it. Instead of focusing on how to correct our course, we’re looking for reasons to victim-shame the most vulnerable among us.

It’s entirely disgusting that so many people are so willing to demonize the victims in society that it is mind-boggling how such utterly primitive thinking can exist in modern society.

Centuries from now, if we survive this insanity, this mindset will be viewed as the horrific equivalent of witch trials from our history.