Zero Interest Policy and the New Abnormal: A Critique

In the "New Normal" central banks set their interest rate to zero and print money through massive quantitative easing, while finance ministries run huge fiscal deficits. Yet inflation remains minimal. This book explains why. It also explains why the New Normal is really the New Abnormal, and why it can't last. The academic roots of the New Abnormal are traced to a conceptual confusion about the "natural rate of interest,"' and postmodernism in macroeconomics, exemplified by the DSGE (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) movement. A theory of "existential risk" is developed, which is concerned with the collapse of political economies such the Bretton Woods system and the New Abnormal. Existential risk expresses itself in the growing gap between the natural rate of interest, measured by the rate of return on capital, and the real rate of interest. Existential risk is also expressed in the development of cryptocurrencies. A theory of "kinetic inflation" based on Keynes' liquidity trap is developed, which accounts for the absence of inflation in the New Abnormal, and predicts its outbreak when zero interest policy ends. The adverse social consequences of the New Abnormal for fertility, pensions, house prices, economic inequality, and intergenerational equity are explored. A causal link is established from the New Abnormal to Covid-19 mitigation policy, and from the latter to the intensification of the New Abnormal. Finally, the prospects are assessed for ending the New Abnormal, and an orderly return to the Old Normal. The alternative is to crash out of the New Abnormal chaotically. © Michael Beenstock 2022.

Singularity and Coordination Problems: Pandemic Lessons from 2020

Are there any indications that a Technological Singularity may be on the horizon? In trying to answer these questions, the authors made a small introduction to the area of safety research in artificial intelligence. The authors review some of the current paradigms in the development of autonomous intelligent systems, searching for evidence that may indicate the coming of a possible Technological Singularity. Finally, the authors present a reflection using the COVID-19 pandemic, something that showed that global society's biggest problem in managing existential risks is its lack of coordination skills as a global society. © 2020 Tamkang University, All rights reserved.

Extrinsic and Existential Mortality Risk in Reproductive Decision-Making: Examining the Effects of COVID-19 Experience and Climate Change Beliefs.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has presented an immediate risk to human life around the world, climate change poses an arguably greater-although less immediate-threat to our species' survival. Within the framework of life-history theory (LHT), this pre-registered study investigated whether extrinsic risk (i.e., external factors that pose a risk to an individual's life, e.g., COVID-19) and existential risk (i.e., risks with outcomes that threaten the existence of humans as a species, e.g., climate change) had similar or different relationships with reproductive decision-making. A UK representative sample of 325 participants between 18 and 35 years of age was asked to indicate their ideal number of children, ideal age to start having children, and whether their desire for a child had recently changed. Participants were asked about their experiences of COVID-19 and given a series of scales with which to assess their beliefs about climate change. In support of LHT, the study found evidence that knowing people who had been hospitalized with or died of COVID-19 was associated with a greater ideal number of children. Conversely, there was no clear evidence of a relationship between climate change beliefs and reproductive decision-making. The repercussions for understanding how we interpret and respond to different forms of mortality risk are discussed.

Optimizing Island Refuges against global Catastrophic and Existential Biological Threats: Priorities and Preparations.

Human civilization is vulnerable to global catastrophic biological threats and existential threats. Policy to mitigate the impact of major biological threats should consider worst-case scenarios. We aimed to strengthen existing research on island refuges as a mitigating mechanism against such threats by considering five additional factors as well as recent literature on catastrophic risks and resilience. We also analyzed the performance of potential refuge islands during early phases the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a composite indicator (scored from 0-1) based on 14 global macroindices, we present analysis supporting Australia (0.71), New Zealand (0.64), and Iceland (0.58) as the leading candidate island nation refuges to safeguard the survival of humanity and a flourishing technological civilization from the threat of a catastrophic pandemic. Data from the COVID-19 pandemic supports this finding where islands have performed relatively well. We discuss the persisting weaknesses of even the best candidate refuges and the growing literature describing what preparations such a refuge should ensure to enhance resilience. Refuge preparations by Australia and New Zealand, in particular, may additionally provide some immunity against winter-inducing catastrophes such as global nuclear war. Existing disaster resilience frameworks such as the Sendai framework could be worded to mandate preventive measures against global catastrophic and existential threats. The issue of island refuges against certain global catastrophic risks should be raised at relevant international political summits.

Lessons from the past, policies for the future: resilience and sustainability in past crises.

This article surveys some examples of the ways past societies have responded to environmental stressors such as famine, war, and pandemic. We show that people in the past did think about system recovery, but only on a sectoral scale. They did perceive challenges and respond appropriately, but within cultural constraints and resource limitations. Risk mitigation was generally limited in scope, localized, and again determined by cultural logic that may not necessarily have been aware of more than symptoms, rather than actual causes. We also show that risk-managing and risk-mitigating arrangements often favored the vested interests of elites rather than the population more widely, an issue policy makers today still face.