The Byzantine General’s problem” is defined as a set of interrelated sequence of dynamics that depends on each other in order to arrive at a successful outcome, but each individual actor is or may be unreliable, so the question arises how each component or actor can be successfully matched or sequenced to in order to operate as a functioning whole or face catastrophic failure?
Our world is built on anomalies, which paradoxically is the most consistent thing we’ve designed, know and have come to accept. We create problems that create more problems in order to provide masses of employment for the smartest people to resolve those problems, the solutions of which are for the most parts themselves riddled with future problems. Mankind spends most of its waking hours doing only three things, enriching himself at the expense of others, sorting out legacy problems and working towards the sustainment of life.
We can agree that we don’t agree on much but pretend to agree even though these disagreements are quantitatively expressed and actualised in the most nonsensical and anti-human industries of all time. The defence industry, which may best be described as the only industry in human history that’s meant to deny life, human life. In a word, it’s anti-life. World military expenditure grows to $1.8 trillion in 2018. (Stockholm, 29 April 2019) Total world military expenditure rose to $1822 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 2.6 per cent from 2017, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). So let’s put this figure, which represents a certain type of imperialist thinking into perspective, if no-one wants to conquer no-one, no-one would need a military. It’s actually a misnomer to call it defence spending if by definition; the industry is designed for offensive purposes. The United States of America will spend $680 billion in 2019, making it the largest spender on its military and its budget being bigger than the next 26 nations combined. In fact, so big is the United States military budget, that conversely, it could fund the military budgets of the next 25 countries below it in respect of spending.
When you look at the pharmaceutical industry, it is weirdly a “for profit” business which is completely counter-intuitive, if you consider that the medical profession is founded on the Hippocratic philosophy of the right to life and magnanimity, yet, this industry rival both oil and the military in sheer size. Global R&D for the pharmaceutical industry sits at about $160 billion, now this may at first seem like a big enough figure, until you realise that there are 195 countries in the world, which would put the average spend per country at just over $800 million. Should one divide that figure by the number of known diseases that afflicts mankind, which is 100 000, then you can very well see how little “Big Pharma” is actually spending on research and development, and also just how few cures there are for these diseases? Strange isn’t it?
If one interrogates how we grow how food crops, modern animal husbandry, fertilizer driven farming methods and pest control, the situation looks even crazier, or shall I say anomalous? Right at this point in our history, all the systems and subsystems designed by us are driven, dictated to and underpinned by the economic system of heterotopian, extractive, megalomaniacal, neocapitalism, a system that is the most destructive ever invented, yet used, praised and defended by our finest minds. A system that is the root cause of all the poverty, misery and preventable deaths experienced by the vast majority of the earth’s population. A system that deliberately promotes greed as good and indeed healthy…..
