nigelcohen

[nigelcohen]

Any Quiche

This recipe is for a quiche dish that is 11 inches (27cm) in diameter. It is divided into two. The first half explains how to make the Pastry. The second half explains how to make the filling.

Ingredients for Pastry

250K flour

180g butter

2 eggs

Pinch salt

2 tbsp water

Instructions for the Pastry

1. Mix the ingredients in a bowl with a spoon or your hands.

2. Tip onto surface sprinkled with flour. Sprinkle more flour over the dough. Kneed a few times, sprinkling with more flour if too sticky. Pull together into a ball, cover (eg. cling film or put back in the bowl and cover with reusable material, such as a damp towel or a silicone lid). Put in the fridge for 30-40 minutes.

3. Preheat the over at 180C.

4. Tip back on to surface sprinled with more flour. Sprinkle more flour over the dough if too sticky. Press the ball into a plate shape. Use a rolling pin to flatten to the thickness of a £1 coin (around 3mm), at diameter of around 13 cm.

5. Roll up onto the pin and unfold over the dish. Press the bottom down carefully, to avoid breaking the dough. There should be enouth to lay up and over the sides. Cut off any dough that hangs back over the outside of the dish. Put parchment paper and baking beans into the dish and put the quiche into the oven. Cook for 20 minutes or so, then carefully pull the baking beans out using the parchment paper. Put the quiche back in over for another 5-10 minues or so, until the pastry is a lovely golden brown colour.

6. Take out and leave to cool for 5 minutes or so.

Ingredients for Custard (Filling)

300ml cream (or 200g greek yoghurt and 100g milk)

2 eggs

Salt/pepper to taste

Ingredients for the Fillings

You can choose just about anything you like, for example

Ingredients for Tomato, Cheese and Onion quiche

1 x onion

6 medium sized tomatoes

100g grated cheddar

Ingredients for Broccoli, Stilton and Walnut Quiche

75g Stilton

10 walnuts

100g broccoli florets

Ingredients for Broccoli Quiche

100g broccoli florets

100g grated cheese (eg. Cheddar, Gruyere)

1 onion

Instructions for the Custard/Filling

1. Precook any ingredients that need to be cooked ahead of time, such as onions. (They taste good sliced and cooked in oil for around 5-10 minutes until caremlised).

2. Mix together all the liquid ingredients in a bowl. Add any dry ingredients and fold in. Keep back any dry ingredients you want to layer over the top (eg. Tomatoes or cheese).

3. Pour into the cooled quiche dish. Layer any dry ingredients you want on top. Put back in the oven (still at 180C) for 30-40 minutes, until the custard is no longer liquid or wobbly.

#recipe #quiche #cooking

[nigelcohen]

Homemade Jam

Ingredients

400g Fruit (eg. raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants)

400g Jam Sugar (or add pectin to ordinary sugar)

1/2 lemon

2 x sterilised, empty jam jars

Instructions

1. Make sure the empty jam jars and lids are sterilised. Otherwise, the jam is liable to go off. You can sterilise the jars and lids either in the dishwasher or by submerging them in boiling water for a couple of minutes.

2. Put fruit in a heavy-bottomed pan. Bring to the boil, gently crushing the fruit to a pulp as it heats up

4. When starting to simmer, add sugar in batches. Stir in until dissolved, then add the next batch. Then squeeze in lemon juice.

5. Simmer and stir for around 10 minutes. Whilst simmering, some fruits produce some scum which will float on the surface. Gently scrape off the scum. Keep stirring and de-scumming until done.

This is how you can tell when the jam is done. Take a very small blob of the simmering jam and drop it on a plate. Wait 30 seconds or so until it cools down. Lightly run your finger through. If the drag mark remains, the jam is done.

Pour into 2 x sterilised jam jars, cover and leave until cool.

#recipe #cooking #jam

[nigelcohen]

Baked Spinach and Artichoke Pasta

Ingredients

250g penne pasta

2 tbsp olive oil

2 garlic cloves

1 red chilli (or 1tsp chilli flakes)

300g baby spinach (fresh or frozen)

300g artichoke hearts

450ml double cream (or natural yoghurt)

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup grated mozzarella (or cheddar)

Salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Cook pasta in boiling water for 8 minutes. Drain the water.

2. Heat the oil in a pan. Add crushed garlic and chilli and cook for 1 minute. As spinach bit by bit until wilted. Chop the artichoke hearts and stir in until everything is mixed together. Stir in the cream or yoghurt until heated through. Stir in the Parmesan until melted. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Remove from the heat. Pour over the pasta and stir together. Add around half the mozzarella or cheddar cheese and stir together.

4. Transfer the pasta to a casserole dish. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top. Bake in the oven at 170C (350F) for 20-25 minutes.

#cooking #pasta #vegetarian #recipe

[nigelcohen]

French Bread Recipe

Ingredients

400g French Bread flour

310 ml water

1 1/2 tsp yeast

1 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Warm 10ml water and add yeast. Leave for 5 minutes until it starts foaming.

2. Pour flour into mixing bowl. Add salt and mix in briefly. Pour in watered yeast and mix in briefly. Pour in rest of water and mix together until the dough becomes the consistency of dryish putty. Cover with damp cloth for 30-60 mins.

3. Sprinkle flour on table. Tip dough onto floured table. Sprinkle more flour over the dough and slightly flatten to a square shape. Fold each side over the other and flatten again into square. Twist 90 degrees and repeat process. Gather dough into ball shape and return to bowl. Cover with wet cloth and leave to rise for another 1-2 hours until doubled in size.

4. Flour surface again. Tip dough onto floured surface. Sprinkle with flour. Flatten slightly into rectangle. Cut into 4 pieces. Roll each into long roll shape. Lay each dough roll on a lined or floured baking tray. Cover with damp cloth and leave for 10-30 mins.

5. Slash lightly each dough roll with a knife with 4 diagonal strokes. Sprinkle with flour and out baking tray in oven at 200C. Put another bowl with water in the oven to create some steam, which makes the french bread crunchy. Bake for 25-35 mins.

#french bread #recipe

[nigelcohen]

Rye Bread Recipe

Ingredients:

200g rye flour 200g white or brown bread flour 20g (1 tbsp) honey 240g water 7g yeast 1 tsp salt 1 tsp carraway seeds 25g olive oil

Options:

Use 100g (1/3 cup) molasses instead of honey Add 25g (1/4 cup) cocoa powder

Instructions:

1. Warm water until feels nicely warm. Pour in honey and yeast, stir and leave for 5 minutes

2. Mix the two flours with salt and mix together

3. Pour water mixture into flour and stir.

4. Put in bread maker and run a Dough setting for white bread.

5. Pour into bread mould, cover with damp cloth, leave to rise for 1-2 hours

6. Bake at 200C for 30 minutes, until the bread sounds hollow when you tap the top. Cook for longer for more crusty bread.

#bread recipe #ryebread #cooking

[nigelcohen]

Granary Bread recipe

Ingredients:

225g white bread flour

225g granary bread flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp caster sugar

7g yeast

150ml warm milk

1 egg, beaten

1 tbsp olive oil

100ml warm water

Instructions:

1. Mix ingredients together.

2. Knead for 10 minutes

3. Put dough in lightly oiled bowl, cover with damp cloth, and leave to double in size (1 hour or so)

4. Roll dough into roll shapes or pour into bread tin. Cover with damp cloth and leave for 30 minmutes or so.

5. Bake loaf for 20-30 minutes at 180C (or rolls for 15-20 minutes at 200C)

Photo: Alexandra Kikot on unsplash.com

#bread #granary #recipe #cooking

[nigelcohen]

Bagels recipe

Ingredients

2 tsp active dry yeast

45 g granulated sugar

520 ml warm water

1 Kg bread flour

2 tsp salt

Optional Toppings:

Caraway seeds, cinnamon sugar, coarse salt, minced fresh garlic, minced fresh onion, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, everything bagel seasoning

Instructions

PHASE I

1. In 150ml of the warm water, pour in the sugar. Stir. Then add the yeast and let it sit for five minutes, and then stir the yeast and sugar mixture until it all dissolves in the water. Then add the remaining 310ml of water

2. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast and sugar mixture. Pour in yeasted and remaining water. Mix and stir. You want a moist and firm dough after you have mixed it.

3. On a floured countertop, knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Try working in as much flour as possible to form a firm and stiff dough.

4. Lightly brush a large bowl with oil and turn the dough to coat. Cover the bowl with a damp dish towel. Let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in size. Punch the dough down.

PHASE II

5. Carefully divide the dough into 16 pieces. Roll and/or shape into a bagel shape (eg. take a dough ball, and press it gently against the countertop moving your hand and the ball in a circular motion pulling the dough into itself while reducing the pressure on top of the dough slightly until a perfect dough ball forms. Press your finger into the center of each dough ball to form a ring. Stretch the ring to about ⅓ the diameter of the bagel).

6. Place on the cookie sheet, cover with a damp kitchen towel and allow to rest for 10 - 15 minutes.

PHASE III

7. Preheat your oven to 200ºC and boil water in a large pot.

8. Use a slotted spoon to lower the bagels into the water. Boil them until they float (around 1m.) then turn over for another 1 min.

9. If you want to add toppings to your bagels, use an egg wash to get the toppings to stick before baking the bagels.

10. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, or until golden brown (I usually err on the side of 20 minutes).

#cooking #bread #bagels #recipe

[nigelcohen]

Wholemeal Bread Recipe

Ingredients 500g whole wheat flour (you may need as much as 4 1/2 cups) 240g warm water 10g active dry yeast 1tbsp (20g) honey 60g unsalted butter, softened 1 tsp salt

Instructions 1. Place the warm water and honey in a large bowl. Stir then sprinkle the yeast on top. Set aside for 5 minutes to allow the yeast to proof.

2. Mix flour and the salt. Add in butter and mix together.

3. Pour water/honey/yeast and stir in until dough pulls away cleanly from the sides of the bowl.  

4. Knead on floured surface, adding additional flour as needed, until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

5. Place dough in large greased bowl and cover with damp cloth. Let rise in warm place until doubled in size, 30 to 45 minutes.

6. Punch down the dough and put in bread tin. Cover with damp cloth and let rise in warm place until doubled in size, 30 to 45 minutes.

7. Heat the oven to 180C. Bake bread for 40 to 45 minutes or until loaf sounds hollow when lightly tapped.

#cooking #bread #recipe

[nigelcohen]

Cultural Dynamics

01/08/18: What Economists should know about the role of Culture in economic outcomes

Spiral Dynamics is a model that identifies some critical drivers of human behaviour. With our share of seemingly overwhelming problems around the world these days, any clues to how we can work out how to live together more harmoniously needs to be taken seriously.

Introduction to Spiral Dynamics

Spiral Dynamics identifies eight phases of human psychological development, that progress during the course of our lives. As we transition from one phase to the next, we learn how to adapt our thinking and behaviour to suit the new landscapes fed to us by our maturing perceptions.

The first phase, for example, is the “survival state”, where as babies, our exclusive focus is on getting our immediate needs met. The fourth phase is a pre-adolsecent “absolute order”, where truth comes in shades of only black and white, largely determined by a dominant figure, perhaps a parent, religious leader or an absolute king. It it characterised by laws that are universally applied, bringing order to our ways of life, along with a new set of challenges relating to compliance. The sixth phase is the “egalitarian order”, where the focus is on establishing fair and equal rights and opportunities for everyone.

These phases of development are mirrored in the societies we create. Spiral Dynamics conceives equivalent phases in the progression of society. Each phase is determined by the collective centre of gravity of the personal phases inhabited by each of society's members.

There is good reason for having distinct phases. Each phase is characterised by established social norms and acceptable behaviours. They combine to inform people in that phase about how the world works, which Spiral Dynamics refers to as a “worldview”. The early Tribal Order's worldview, for example, helps people to handle a scary, unknown world. It offers an understanding of spirits who need placating, where people need to band together to survive. Its expressions of “home sweet home” and “blood is thicker than water” encapsulate an expectation of togetherness. Tribal communities create living conditions that provide safety for people emerging from the earlier Survival phase, but it punishes them from experimenting with the successive self-interested Powerful-Self phase whose appeal is liberation. Each time someone transitions from one phase to the next, the previous status quo is threatened. It is a time of tension that often sees significant social unrest as old-guard leaders fight to maintain their traditional ways of life. Each of the eight phases has its own self-stabilising set of values, social norms, rewards and punishments that lock members of the community into its own phase.

Political Phases of Development

Pre Statehood : Stage 1 - Survival, Stage 2 - Tribal Order

Anarchy : Stage 3 - Powerful Self

Autocracy : Stage 4 - Absolute Order

Adolescent Capitalism : Stage 5 - Enterprising Self

Mature Capitalism (Valueism) : Stage 6 - Egalitarian Order, Stage 7 - Integrated Self, Stage 8 - Global Order

This stable state is referred to as homoeostasis. As with all other forms of evolution, no state of equilibrium is immune from progress. Something happens that opens the door to change. It might be a traumatic event that highlights the shortcomings of the current stage. It may be some form of alienation or constraint that is perceived as suppressing personal achievement. Or it may be a calculated design that visualises better outcomes through change. These moments of change offer the opportunity for society to advance to the next phase of development, with its more sophisticated ways of solving life’s challenges, serving an ever greater proportion of society. It is these moments we seek when we find ourselves stuck with problems we are not able to solve within the status quo. Spiral Dynamics helps us to understand the dynamics of change that directly impact the effectiveness of our economic output.

The Role of Spiral Dynamics in Economics

The underlying concept behind the Inclusivity Project is that the purpose of society is to deliver human wellbeing. Economic output is defined in terms of the quality of life society delivers to its members. Success is measured by reference to the aggregated life conditions of each member of society, and how well society serves their needs, desires and hopes. In the emerging paradigms of economics, quality of life is also referred to by other terms, such as wellbeing, prosperity and happiness. The terms are all interchangeable.

Modern capitalism makes a false assumption, that maximising wealth is a direct pathway to maximising prosperity. There are certainly connections between wealth and prosperity, but there are also important differences. Human prosperity requires a basic level of material wealth for survival and comfort, but prosperity is impacted by so much more. For example, people need to connect with others to feel part of society. Depression and low self-esteem are consequences of poor relationships/connections with others. Legal and cultural barriers impact on the ability of victims to participate fully in society. Poor health influences prosperity independently of material wealth, even though material disadvantage undermines the opportunity of a healthy lifestyle or of access to health care. Modern capitalism, in its adolescent phase, fails to reflect many critical constituents of prosperity in its measures of success. This is why new models of economics are emerging, in which Spiral Dynamics has a pivotal role to play.

The effectiveness of society, its ability to deliver prosperity, is underpinned by the eight structural pillars outlined in the chart below.

The cultural pillar is assessed on a scale that measures the cohesion or division within society. Spiral Dynamics helps to understand the mechanics of the cultural pillar. It also has a role in explaining how legal and political structures are crafted, how effectively resources are deployed, and how fairly and members’ opportunities and rewards are made available. The measure of overall social cohesion in society is a direct determinant in the output of society.

Good evidence exists that societies with strong social cohesion deliver better outcomes for its members than societies with social division. In 2017, Richard Barrett carried out research into the correlation between the Spiral Dynamic phase at which a nation operates, which he calls National Consciousness, and the happiness index. He assessed the stage of a nation's consciousness with reference to more than a dozen global indicators. He applied his values principles to map their results to his largely parallel stages of consciousness. He charted the state of each nation's happiness against its stage of consciousness.

The chart above shows a strong correlation between the level of a nation's consciousness and its happiness rating. Happiness is a limited measure of human outcomes , so it is not a reliable substitute for wellbeing. But the signficant findings of Richard Barrett's work provides compelling evidence that the Spiral Dynamics model of a nation's social and cultural progress has direct relevance to society's economic outcomes.

The chart offers insight into how the dynamics of culture can be projected into its impact on prosperity. It provides a powerful tool to identify specific areas of misalignment between what society delivers to each person and what they need to live a fulfilling life, from which policy can be devised to improve outcomes. It also offers an awareness of the cultural impediments to progress that may need attention.

Defining Spiral Dynamic Values

The word “values” has more than one meaning. So we need some definitions to avoid ambiguity,

Firstly, there are the values words that articulate a concept, such as “trust”, “equality” and “greed". Actually, they articulate deeply human motivators which, without the values words, are difficult if not impossible to describe. Generally, the values words relate to concepts of human interaction and relationships – they describe the principles that drive our thinking and behaviour towards each other. So collectively, they are much more than simply words. They are tools to communicate our inspiration, helping us to describe our worldview, and helping us to connect with and relate to other people's actions towards us.

Secondly, there are the values that individuals adopt in their lives. These are the values that motivate an individual person to be courageous, compassionate, honest or jealous. Some of the values support positive interactions, such as trust and kindness. Others limit interactions, such as hate and contempt.

The school's movement Values-based Education (VbE) has carried out an exercise that seeks to understand a community’s collective values. VbE ask the entire school community which values they most want their pupils to learn at school. The school community comprises its students, staff, governors, parents and local community impacted by the school. Each VbE school invites the entire community to participate. It organises small groups of five to ten people to discuss their preferences, and to report back on their three most important values. Each of the groups feed back their preferences into a collective summary of the community's values, prioritised by how many times each individual value was chosen. VbE reports that they rarely if ever see limiting values, such as greed or jealousy, included. Instead, school communities create a list of positive values that are most valued by the community. It probably comes as no surprise that the lists from schools throughout the world are almost identical, with differences being limited more to rankings than to content. Clearly, there are a number of positive human values with universal appeal, such as trust, respect and compassion. We refer to these values as positive universal values. They have a particular role to play in the mechanics of the Spiral Dynamics model.

Thirdly, there are the values structures that are described by Spiral Dynamics. The structures are a particular set of self-stabilising values that are adopted by society, that underpin its current phase of development. The adopted values evolve into a community’s social norms and practices. Conformity to the values structure are rewarded, breaches are subject to social shaming, exclusion and other personal disadvantages.

The Role of Values in Spiral Dynamics

The Spiral Dynamics model describes a number of circumstances that need to be present for transition between one stage of development and the next. One of the conditions is life circumstances necessitating change. The essence of change is an individual’s perception that their current phase of development no longer meets their needs. Typically, this mindset is associated with some sort of trauma or distress that pushes the individual to look for new solutions to their current problems.

This is where positive universal values have an interesting role. In communities that promote them, community members tend to have a much more secure social base from which to explore change. Values such as togetherness, persistence, courage and respect equip individuals with the social support to try out new ideas. They are not punished for trying out new ideas, rather they are encouraged to realise their potential. Their strong sense of connection and mutual trust with others affords them the space to grow.

Weak social foundations:

Schools can be seen as microcosms of society. The VbE movement provides insight into the workings of society at higher levels. At values-based schools, pupils flourish. As they transition into a new phase, they are supported to experience and perfect the phases' new solutions to problems they encounter, in real life situations. When they have perfected conformity to the new social norms, and learnt to apply them in a healthy way to social situations they encounter, they are supported in experimenting with ways found in the next phase in their development.

Strong social foundations:

Spiral Dynamics presents economists with new tools that help societies progress into the more advanced phases, which deliver greater and more inclusive human prosperity.  Communities that are conscious of their positive universal human values, that promote them and translate those values into the behaviour of its members, enjoy a more harmonious existence that is especially effective in helping society achieve its objective  - of people living and working together for mutual benefit. Positive universal human values smooth and support the transition from earlier to later phases of development. They provide additional understanding of critical social problems, helping to understand how they arise, and providing insight for policy makers and community leaders to help craft solutions for a more sustainable, socially harmonious and mutually supportive world. And all the current economic evidence points to these being the essential ingredients for society to deliver a more sustainable, and more inclusive prosperity to its members.

#blog #artlcles

[nigelcohen]

Sustainability

30/05/18: How do we measure sustainability?

I have just published a new paper on measuring sustainability. It provides new ways to measure our use of resources. The measures link the concept of sustainability with the emerging economic theories that are focused on delivering human prosperity over absolute wealth.

Definition Sustainability is the ability to reprocess resources to sustain life, indefinitely.

The new definition for sustainability is focused around sustainability of life. The key point is that "life" refers to both the quality and quantity of life.

Measuring Techniques

The paper identifies that resources can be categorised in many ways. One way distinguishes vital resources, those resources that are needed to sustain life, from inert resources that do not. The ultimate waste is when we reprocess vital resources (say water, crude oil and captured solar energy) and combine them into inert resources (say plastics that are no longer usable).

Sustainability essentially measures how quickly we destroy vital resources. It warns us how long we can keep going the way we are, before we run out of resources. It also provides tools to measure critical threats. These are threats from our use of resources, which may be using them up too quickly, or creating bi-products (such as CO2 gasses), which have the potential to decimate life. The measures focus on identified problem areas, comparing the actual problem against the level experts identify as global tipping points. It also provides an overview of life, by measuring changes in the quantity of life on earth.

Key Results A 2015 discussion document reported the results of a comprehensive evaluation in 2009 of nine planetary boundaries. The chart below is based on the evaluation. The red columns are roughly based on the findings. The blue columns are fictitious numbers to illustrate how the chart works.

By 2009, we had already exceeded two of the planetary boundaries, and we are not far off many of the others.

A second report was published in 2016, which estimated the total quantity of life on earth over the last 2,000 years. Here are the results:

Since the birth of Christ, we have been party to the destruction of getting on for 50% of life on earth. The rate of destruction has been accelerating out of control for the last 100 years.

Discussion We need to have a debate about whether humans have a responsibility for our own lives, and for the lives of our children grandchildren and future generations. The debate needs to extend to whether we have a responsibility to protect the other life forms on earth.

My contribution to start the ball rolling is that we have to look to our own future, even if we are happy to ignore the future of others. But almost everything we eat comes from some form of life on earth, and almost all life on earth is part of an intensely complicated ecosphere where changing any part of it has implications throughout the rest of the ecosphere. The success of our own future is entirely interconnected with the success of our children and of other forms of life on earth. The temptation to focus exclusively on the here and now is valid for people who are living on the edge of survival, but foolhardy for everyone else. We need to protect our planet, with the life and resources we rely on for our own lives, even if the only reason is to protect ourselves into the future.

Conclusion The new measurements of sustainability need fleshing out. But just from the preliminary charts above, the measures show we are very advanced along the path of destruction. We have no way of understanding the implications for our own safety of what we have done to life on earth since we started climbing the evolutionary ladder over the last 20,000 years or so, or of what happens if we continue the trends of destruction and disregard for our future.

We need to ensure everyone understands the deeply disturbing implications of what we have been doing to our planet, in terms of our own future at the very least. The purpose of these new measures is to help the general public to  understand what is happening. We need to translate the raised awareness into support for a new form of global leadership that will help us shift from a society built on consumption of vital resources to a society that is capable of regenerating them as it delivers what we need of it - human wellbeing. We need to use these new, simplified ways of understanding the seriousness of the threat so that we find the will to take action, before we no longer have the choice.

#blog #articles

[nigelcohen]

America Eighteenth

08/03/18: A new way of measuring economic success

Andy Haldane, the Chief Economist at the Bank of England, was talking to a local community in Yorkshire. He was talking to them about the recovery that followed the financial crash of 2007. “GDP growth has become positive again, and we can expect it to continue at this rate for the foreseeable future,” he said.

“Your GDP,” shouted someone, “not mine”.

The heckler was vocalising what many studies have found. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does not measure economic performance effectively. Too many parts of the economy are not reflected in monetary flows, the monetary flows that are reflected are spread in ways that do not represent the population fairly. And in any event, money is a wholly inadequate measure of human emotion.

The Basis of Economic Success Ultimately, the success of an economy depends on how well it serves its people. So any measure of economic success has to reflect the human experience of its population, to be useful.

We have created a paper, Global Prosperity 2017, that sets out a measure of economic success based on human experience. It sets out its results in “Quality Years”, the number of high quality years an average citizen of each country can expect to enjoy. Top of the list is Switzerland. It provides its citizens with 62.5 good years of life, on average. Bottom of the list is Central African Republic, in which its people can expect only 14.1 good years.

What Makes Life Good? The new economic accountants are currently wrestling with the best way to measure quality of life. Some refer to it as happiness, others as life satisfaction, prosperity, wellbeing and many other terms. But they all have one thing in common. They all seek to measure human experience.

To do so, they rely heavily on research by psychologists about what makes humans tick. It seems all humans have a combination of needs, wants and hopes that drive our sense of wellness. The accountants firstly look at how well basic survival needs are met, such as food, warmth and physical security. They then look at how well our social and emotional needs are met, such as loving relationships, a sense of belonging and being valued. And they also look at what we can realistically pin on our hopes on, of being relatively free to live our lives how we choose, to believe what we choose, to be free to realise our potential to contribute to society and to achieve a sense of meaning and purpose.

Leading the Pack Access to money is capable of serving some of our drives. But once our basic needs and wants are met, there is no clear link between our quality of life and our wealth. This is why GDP no longer hacks it. It is why we need these alternative measures of economic success that are emerging, like the one in this paper. They provide more useful information for how best we can organise our societies.

It has become clear how far America has to travel to come first. It is just 18th in the world, despite its vast economic and structural advantages. It is not going to rise to the top by emulating Russia (62nd on the list) or China (76th on the list). But at least now, if “America First” is truly the goal, the country's leaders have the right tools for the job.

#articles

[nigelcohen]

Social Cohesion?

16/01/18: The fundamentals behind achieving Social Cohesion

One of the fundamental question of our time, and of all times, is how do we, as humans, live together in harmony.

It is an eternal challenge, because our success as a species depends and has always depended on people working together in numbers and ways that no other species has been naturally empowered to achieve. Our intellect and ability to collaborate has allowed us to create a life beyond the limited capacities bestowed on us through natural selection.

Social Harmony Human success is based on our ability both to live and work together successfully. It is based on our stubborn and insistent drive to provide for our individual needs and desires, and also on the collective structures we have developed that empower us achieve those goals. The challenge for individuals, always, is balancing the effort we devote to achieving our immediate individual needs with our contribution to those collective structures that allow vastly greater productivity.

Living together, working together, developing collective structures. These are the building blocks for a successful society. We have deployed to great effect our natural skills and capacities to interact effectively with other people to rise to the top of the animal chain. We still need to deploy those skills and capacities. They yeild our capacities to relate to other people, to make empathic connections with them, to understand their motiviations and aspirations, and to compromise appropriately to achieve mutual understanding and accommodation. There are all very human skills, requiring a very human understanding. These are the skills and capacities needed to achieve social cohesion.

Technical Prowess As we march from the dawn of the 21st century, we experience technological potential of unparalleled opportunity. We also experience a pervasive disconnection and an exploding inequality that threaten the social cohesion that underpins our ability to realise our potential. A survey in 2017 of 1/2 million people around the world identified social cohesion as the single most important aspiration of our time. A review in the same year of 17 of the major global indices on prosperity identified social cohesion as the area of least consciousness. This poor focus on social cohesion amongst voters translates to low priorty for our politicians and leaders. The resulting "leadership gap" is a function not of poor aspiration, but of poor awareness of social cohesion as the fundamental driver of society.

If we want to maximise the prosperity offered by our staggering opportunities, we need to re-enage with the fundamentals of social cohesion. Education, business and politics need to reawaken our natural capacities to engage with each other to deliver a strong, harmonious society through which inclusive prosperity can be achieved. Our education system needs to play its part in conveying not just the know-how to continue our technological advance, but also in nurturing and strenghening our capacities for social cohesion. Our businesses needs to evolve to complement their current focus on creating ever-better lifestyle, with better and sustainable support for the social fabric on which society is based. Our politicians need to switch seek ways to provide a fairer and wider access to opportunity, which will only be achieved when the people who elect them become more aware of the drivers of universal prosperity.

Education, business and politics have pivotal roles to play establishing an inclusive prosperity for the future - it is down to us to choose whether that is what we want them to achieve.

#articles #blog

[nigelcohen]

The first of its kind World Inequality Report – by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, Facundo Alvaredo and Lucas Chancel. The Report is an great resource of enormous data and bright analyses, based on a cutting-edge methodology, of our perturbing and troubling socio-economic and political reality. The Report is available in many languages and written in a very accessible manner. Read it, share, teach — Act.

[nigelcohen]

Bitcoins

04/10/17: Beware the Bitcoin bubble!

Bitcoins are something of a technological miracle. They are fake-proof. They can not be counterfeited. And they are completely independent of government. Their security also means their ownership can never be known. They are immensely attractive to two groups of people: those who hate big government controlling everything they do, and criminals whose identify can never be discovered.

Their prices have risen by a staggering amount over the last few years. I read about someone who "mined" 50 bitcoins when they were starting up, which he stored on his computer. He did not take them too seriously, and wiped his computer clean when he upgraded. He has just found out the 50 bitcoins are now worth over £200,000. Lost forever, because of the way they can not be duplicated or put in a bank.

History tells about any number of asset bubbles. The Dot Com bubble in the 1900s, and the South Sea Bubble in the 1700s. (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/062315/five-largest-asset-bubbles-history.asp), to name but two. In every case, people perceive the value of the asset is greater than its intrisic worth, and pay ever increasing amounts in what is effectively a gamble on whether the prices will continue to rise. It is very rare for a bubble not to end in riches for a small minority of early investors and misery for the vast majority of later investors.

Bitcoin has one major flaw. It introduces new money to the money supply, and is outside the control of government. Whilst the value of Bitcoins is small relative to the whole economy, it does not have a significant effect. But the attraction and value of Bitcoins is growing exponentially. Something is going to give. Governments can not afford to lose control of the money supply. China has recently banned Bitcoins for this very reason. Others are sure to follow.

So this is what I see is likely to happen. The Bitcoin bubble will continue to grow, getting stronger and stronger each month. The press will stoke excitement, and more people will find the lure of easy money irresistable. A tipping point will happen, and the government will make Bitcoins illegal. When it happens, lots of people are going to have lost lots of money. It has happened countless times before, and will happen countless times again.

Whilst the bubble inflates, Bitcoins are going to seem increasingly attractive. Beware putting too much money into a system that governments are simply incapable of coexisting with.

#articles #blog

[nigelcohen]

Productivity

04/10/17: Why is productivity failing?

Why does productivity so stubbornly refuse to grow? I have written before about the productivity conundrum. This article provides a little more perspective.

Productivity is important because it allows us to become richer, without someone else having to become poorer.

In our current system of economics, it is a monetary thing. Increased productivity allows companies to pay increased wages without having to reduce profits. Through payroll taxes, this is of benefit to cash-strapped governments who love the idea of "free" money to pay off the debts.

But productivity is not happening at the moment.

There are plenty of articles that explain the productivity conundrum from within the monetary bubble. This article seeks to provide a second perspective to help understand what is happening.

It is a little like assessing why people walking forward the whole time fail to progress. There comes a point when so many people are at the front of the train, some people start to be pushed back. Productivity is being measured on the train itself, within its self-contained monetary bubble. No-one is looking at the 100 mile per hour rush forward of the train itself.

The two problems with current assessments of productivity are (a) we have not worked out how to measure improvements quality usefully, and (b) we keep measuring progress from within the train.

Two linked solutions provide a completely different perspective on productivity. For the solution to both limitations, we need to switch the way we measure progress in society from monetary measures to human measures. Stop measuring absolute growth in relative (monetary) measures. Instead, focus on what output is all about, providing human wellbeing, and start to measure the impact of human wellbeing. It gives a far better insight to the areas we need to address to improve productivity.

But that neat solutions ignores one elephant in the room. The wealth created by society is distributed through monetary objects, which means productivity growth needs to show fully in monetary measures if we want to take advantages of the benefits of productivity gains. At the moment, it is just not happening. It is a limitation of the monetary system we use, not a limitation in our productive prowess. The sooner we realise the naivety of relying on a monetary system to distribute wealth, based primarily on the extent one person has control over another, the quicker we will be able to develop better systems for sharing wealth within society that reflect the reality of productivity growth, for the benefit of everyone. The solution? Replace Monetarism with Valueism in assessing the effectiveness of society.

#articles

[nigelcohen]

A Better World

04/10/17: My second book on how to make the world a better place

I have just published my latest book, Models for a Better World. It is the second book in the “Better World” series.

The book introduces the Social Framework. Its prime purpose is to create a shared language and objective for people working in this field. It is the first step to transitioning from a collection of people with great ideas into a movement for change.

The book introduces a number of interesting new ways of looking at the world.

1. Opportunities The left and right of politics are seen as two sides of the same coin. They are replaced with the polar extremes of societies based on equal opportunities on the one side and societies based on class on the other. This is not socialism by another name, where class means division between rich and poor. Instead, "class" means any arbitrary grouping of people in order to treat them differently. Examples of group classifications of people who are currently prejudiced against include ethnic minorities, religious minorities, women, old/young, children of poor parents, newly arrived residents such as immigrants or foreigners, couples who are unmarried, and members of LGBT communities.

2. Reward The way we reward people directly influences their contribution to society. The polar extremes are reward based on contribution and reward based on control. Where we reward people by reference to their contribution (generally we don't), they contribute in socially advantageous ways. Where we reward people by reference to the level of control they exert, contribution tends to be more self-focused, holding back the potential for society to advance. Today, our societies reward people increasingly based on their level of control. Replace the word "control" with less appropriate term "power" to get a sense of what this means.

3. Democracy Democracy is distinguished between the structures of democracy and its reality. The structures of democracy deal with aspects such as voting rights and voting patterns. We call this Political Democracy. The structures seek to offer a voice to everyone, but they fail too often, in too many ways. Democracy needs to be measures in terms of its reality. This emerges only when leaders reflect the interests of everyone in society fairly in all major decisions. They way they are elected is secondary. We call this Representative Democracy. The state of Representative Democracy has a substantially greater impact on outcomes than the state of Political Democracy.

4. Culture Culture has a tidal impact on society. No individual cultures survives on its own. Each is supported by a whole raft of other cultures that reaffirm the overall narrative of communities. They can be identified in half a dozen or so distinct structures of culture. The most primitive involve fairly violent ways of establishing justice, and tend to be applied unequally amongst different groups. At the structures become more advanced, the tides push societies forward, both in material and social outcomes.

5. Outcomes The outcomes of society are measured in human terms. This shift in perspective away from the predominant focus on monetary wealth allows a fundamentally different way to solve problems, to unlock the blockages that hold us back from social progress, and enrich humanity.

Both books in the series are available as a paperback, as a Kindle eBook, or free to download as a PDF from: inclusivity.world/economics/

The Model

The full model used to predict the success of society, as described above, is set out below:

#articles #blog

[nigelcohen]

Loneliness

04/10/17 : Reflections from Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur is the holiest of the Jewish festivals, where we reflect on living better lives. What can we do to make the world a better place? This year, one of the themes at my synagogue, Maidenhead Synagogue, was loneliness.

Reflection Loneliness is a flimsy boat, beaten and battered by stormy seas. It is a precarious, unsettling state forever threatening, forever dark. Its salvation, a simple dove, a white love carrying leaves of stable land. 

Loneliness Loleliness is widespread. Over 5 million people in the UK say their primary source of company is the TV. It is rarely talked about, leaving people humiliated, insecure with no one to call on for help.

It is a problem in its own right, for people who are physically unable to get out, without able friends or nearby family. Elderly and disabled people suffer loneliness. It is a problem for people who are economically deprived, who are unable to afford to have friends over, or to meet people for coffee or a meal or the cost of entry to meeting places, such as cinemas, sports stadiums or clubs. It is a problem for people within relationships, but who feel unvalued or unloved by their partners, families or friends. It is a problem for people who feel alienated or isolated, with depression, mental distress or hostile neighbours.

Action The question for Yom Kippur is how can we best address loneliness.

One aspect of loneliness is low self-esteem. Many people who are lonely feel isolated, unvalued and often ashamed of their situation. If we can help people overcome their shame or sense of worthlessness, it will give them the confidence to find their own way to meet others, build connections and make friends. How can we give people this emotional foundation to reintegrate with their community?

We can be less judgemental about others, we can accept people for who they are, with unconditional positive regard. If we can create a culture that is more accepting of human individuality, and which is less demanding of perfection, it will help give people who feel isolated the confidence to get out. We can create places for people to meet without cost. We can provide support for individual problems, such as depression or financial pressures, without judgement. We can arrange for people with similar problems to meet together, to help them understand they are not alone, to share ideas about coping with the problems, and creating an environment for people to create a joint approach to solving their own problems.

If we can help people reestablish their self-confidence, we can help them establish the platform from which they can emerge from their sense of loneliness.

#articles #blog