An open letter for socioeconomic reform using symbiotic systems
I would urge you to take this all with a grain of salt.
I ended up watching several videos from TED (http://www.ted.com/) thanks to LICD and courtesy of Sohmer, who I will scorn for all time for giving me too much to think about 
Mike Rowe - Dirty Jobs (you'll see where I'm going with this shortly)
PW Singer - Military Robots
Hans Rosling - Let my dataset change your mindset
Paul Romer - Charter cities
Paul Collier - New rules for rebuilding a broken nation
So what is so important about these particular talks, they talk about the organism that is the entirety of man kind and it's insight in to important aspects of our vision of today's workforce and the future. Let me start and mostly I will follow on with information from Rosling.
Edit: totally changing this part below, its not what I meant (14/01/10)
We live in a growing and changing world, the terms developing and modern world are a defunct proposition. We have scales of growth in countries under different conditions and the curve is changing. What people lovingly or not so lovingly refer to as the "developing world" is catching up and the "modern world "makes progress at less of a pace than it once did. The population of the "modern world" (lets call it the Stable Socioeconomic Sphere) is ageing and the population of the "developing world" (lets call this the Progressive Socioeconomic Sphere) is at a point we were decades ago. The countries producing less than a dollar a day, lets call these the Non producing and the war torn or declining countries of the world are a separate factor (Declining/Unstable Socioeconomic Sphere).
The views presented and talked about in regards to Rosling's students present a wealth of information about how we perceive this Progressive Socioeconomic Sphere. Where do we picture ourselves in this grand scheme and where is it we imagine this 3rd world fits in to the next half century? The answer lies somewhere about the same as people pictured it in the mid to late last century, with few notable exceptions. Our grouping of nations in to inorganic homogeneous clumps skews our vision of the real picture. The reality is that some nations are starting to build sky scrapers, when we still imagine them in huts. Whilst others have access to 3rd generation media devices and yet have no basic infrastructure. In some cases this can be occurring in nations in the same region and yet we would define them both in the same way. The rules can be sloppy, the order can be completely reverse.
Here is my question to you, what are we doing about it?
Many people will introduce the argument at this point that countries considered developed are a large component of a multitude of development projects or aid work throughout the world that is allowing this "catch up" to occur. I agree that the countries within the sphere provide a support that helps to grow or stabilize nations within different stages of advancement or decline. The problem is the perspective we take on countries and the lives people live within them; what conditions DO they live in, what help do they actually NEED. The world can argue the subject of "is what we do enough" without engaging me, it's not the point.
Is it the right solution, what are we denying ourselves and the people we are trying to help with our approach.
Countries within the PSeS range have a lot to offer countries within the SSeS and in turn countries within this stable sphere have technology and specialist professionals vital to the growth of these nations. Within Paul Romer's panel he discusses the possibility of global partner ship on a micro scale (relative to the world as a whole) to create charter cities that will become catalysts to nation building in a tailored fashion. Based on the Economic and Technology Development Zones being tried in China these Cities would be joint efforts between nations of separate spheres in specially zoned areas in a purely Opt-In basis. Building safe and secure cities on open mindsets that allow for greater education advancement and stable utilities, this is not a case of "if you build it they will come"; it's about a population coming together to build something for themselves with a little help and furthermore without the pity or condescension that can occur in other humanitarian works.
The flip side of this particular coin is the workforce advancing countries can offer to the currently aging and ultimately declining population or the presently stable states. This is not where I talk about shoving foreign workers in to Mike Rowe's "dirty jobs", quite the opposite. I'm taking about the integration of foreign workers in to a nation to fill real and by the status quo "normal jobs" and on any range of the scale. The legal status of these individuals and length of stay would obviously require work during treaty/partnership deals, but partner nations can easily provide an active workforce that fills a role in our economy; builds, learns and returns to advance the state of their own nations by their experiences.
So lets talk about those "dirty jobs": The one topic that may seem a little of kilter in this perspective and that is the talk by PW Singer; So allow me to put this in to the context of what I'm saying here today. Robotics in warfare and the workplace have started to become a replacement for human interaction for multiple reasons (including but not limited to):
Risk
Cost
Efficiency
Precision
Stigma
This is reinforced on three particular points in the work environment and those are cost, efficiency and stigma (not to discount the risk component). In a set of countries contained within the SSeS at present, we have people struggling to find jobs. By that same token those people would probably be unwilling to do the jobs that are set under the social stigma of "dirty" or "lowly" jobs. Couple this with companies unwilling to employ workers where a machine can do it for less cost and where do these jobs then go; they to the few willing and to robotics where it's applicable.
So let's talk about a place it's NOT applicable; One of the most important sectors of workers that are falling by the wayside are skilled tradesmen. There are no robots to replace plumbers or electricians and in an aging population with an aging infrastructure it becomes vital to reinforce the importance of skills that maintain the health of our cities. Consider a nation within the SSeS falling in to stagnation; Careers in less than presently desirable professions are fairly pivotal to the continued advancement of nations within the SSeS, the same applies to the foreign workforce retreating to their nation taking with them experiences working in mid to high level professions, where it becomes important to take back working models and perspective to real problems in their chosen field. At the same time the people within that workforce (Both foreign and local) have to come from the established and immigrating population to keep the numbers stable as this foreign workforce retreats (post partnership) and the local population stabilizes.
Stability is also a factor that nations within the previously discussed spheres can provide to nations within the Unstable or Declining Socioeconomic Spheres, but with the same understanding they bring to their own agreements. That Stability is a long term prospect, that peacekeeping may become a viable career export, that it is important to remember that all of these spheres are overlapping and that the stability you provide today brings another nation closer be being helpful and helped by the global workforce. I'm not going to cover the entirety of Paul Collier's panel, I'm going to cover it in a minor way in respect to this post. The present day thinking in terms of peacekeeping is proving inadequate, regional conflicts are only ever settled short term and conflict generally reemerges within a decade. This is because most common process of peace keeping is in quelling fighting, establishing government, treaties and the exit strategy (this is an oversimplification of a long process). The section I'm going to focus on here is "exit strategy"; get in, get out and get it done. If we want to move nations away from an unstable situation, presence is crucial and not simply observation. Consider peace keeping as a job, as well as a humanitarian effort and consider the people we send to do the job.
Setting up key systems to solve problems requires the right people and those people setting up systems at the right time.
Who are the right people? In all likelihood these people would belong to a symbiotic workforce. What that implies is a global pool of workers providing inter-sphere support on each level of the job scale in working, aging and developing economies to benefit the needs of both parties. The unfortunate fact of life is a global pool is not functionally possible with the state of foreign affairs and present international organizations, but this is where we consider the world economy as existing in it's own developing state and accept that everything happens in steps. So lets start of by accepting partnerships and a globally AWARE cooperative workforce. A globally aware workforce requires policy structure and at the same time it requires involvement by the community, with corporations and local government on both sides of the agreement. Education for all scales of involvement would have to be the same and incentives should be given to key industries to promote this awareness of any given partners. At the same time re-tasking existing fields involved in normal humanitarian and military forces is essential to providing stability in new ways for countries in stagnant, declining or unstable environments.
Whilst most economies today are open markets and not isolationist, the workforce is generally insular and doesn't understand the benefits of real interaction (excepting trade). At the same time economies focus on growth, when growth will not always be possible with a localized insular workforce. "Us and them" mentality works for nations within the SSeS today and within ASeS nations, but consider stable and advancing nations as a sin wave form with different nations at (as previously discussed) different stages. Cooperative workforces become a must over the intervening years, there will be times to come where we will take the back seat to nations we consider developing and this is likely to resolve itself with reciprocating action moving forward and only if we start thinking about real global economic interaction.
Food for thought about the ranging effects of a global workforce.
Feel free to agree or disagree, I really didn't cover the subject in a way I'd prefer to so it may come across garbled.
TLDR: we have a lot to learn by working together, symbiotic systems work well in nature with good reason.
Ciao - Dahrken.
