Ever since I came across the comic series Magnus, Robot Fighter during childhood I am enthralled by a world where robots interact and support human civilization. I would have never thought that I will experience that moment in my own lifetime, but recent advances in robotics make me believe the age of robots is just about to arrive.  

Mechanic robots paired with AI technology promise a break through in what these intelligent machines will be able to do. They will not only set humanity free from toilsome labor, their emergence will give us new problems to solve, which relate mostly to social inclusion, the question what it means to be human and how we continue to forge a common ground across humanity and within societies, when predominant aggregation dimensions like nation states, professional identities, paid work, etc. become obsolete. 

Sociologist Emile Durkheim described at the onset of the industrial revolution ANOMIE as a social condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral values, standards or guidance for individuals to follow. Anomie is believed to possibly evolve from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community (both economic and primary socialization). I believe overcoming anomie will soon be the central question for humanity to deal with.  

One might think of Elon Musk as the nutcase inventor Rotwang in Fritz Lange's legendary film Metropolis, but there is no doubt that he is one of the true shapers of our common future. He envisions a "post-work" future driven by advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and humanoid robots, leading to an "age of abundance" where labor is optional and a Universal High Income (UHI) is implemented. Musk predicts that by 2030, robots will outnumber humans, and by 2040, there could be 10 billion or more robots worldwide. Whatever the timeline, I agree with him that a big number of our species will pursue a half farmer / half x lifestyle - you will find after this article a collection of earlier posts. 

1. The "Age of Abundance" & Post-Work Society

• Optional Work: Musk believes AI and robots will perform almost all tasks, both physical and cognitive, making traditional employment unnecessary.
• "Protopia" Vision: He envisions a gradually improving world where scarcity is eliminated, turning work into a voluntary "hobby" rather than a necessity for survival.
• Deflationary Economy: As production costs for goods and services approach zero, the cost of living will collapse, making money largely irrelevant. 

2. Universal High Income (UHI)

• Beyond Basic Income: Musk differentiates UHI from Universal Basic Income (UBI), suggesting that UHI will be a substantial, unconditional financial distribution that ensures a high standard of living, not just survival.
• Funding Mechanism: The UHI would be funded by the massive economic productivity gains generated by AI and robots (often termed a "robot tax" or direct AI-generated value).
• Impact on Wealth: Musk claims in this future, "the poorest person... will live better than the richest person today," with everyone having access to high-quality healthcare, food, and transport. 

3. Tesla Optimus & Humanoid Robots

• Rapid Deployment: Musk is aggressively pushing the development of the Tesla Optimus humanoid robot, with projections to start low-volume production for internal use in 2025 and wider sales in 2026.
• General Purpose Use: He predicts a future where every person will want a personal robot (like an R2-D2 or C-3PO) to handle mundane, dangerous, or repetitive tasks.
• Ubiquity: Musk believes robots will become a standard utility in households and factories, similar to how computers and smartphones are today. 

4. AI and Superintelligence

• AGI Timeline: Musk has predicted that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—AI that can outsmart any human—could arrive as early as 2026.
• Superintelligence: By 2030–2031, he believes AI will be smarter than all humans collectively.
• AI Training Data: Musk argues that his platform X (formerly Twitter) is essential for training AI, as it provides the most up-to-date, human-generated data.
• Safety & Alignment: Despite his optimism, Musk has frequently warned about the existential risks of AI if it is not aligned with "truth and beauty". 

Potential Risks and Concerns

• Inequality: Critics warn that if AI/robot ownership is concentrated among a few companies (like Tesla), it could worsen wealth inequality rather than eliminate it.
• The "Purpose" Crisis: If work is eliminated, humanity may face a profound crisis of meaning and identity.
• Uncertain Timelines: Musk is known for missing aggressive deadlines, leading some to be skeptical of his 2026/2030 predictions.
• Planetary scarcity of required ores in particular copper makes such plans look completely unfeasible, but does explain why Musk pushed under the veil of "humans must become a multiplanetary civilization" for extra-terrestial settlements: what can not be found on Earth, needs to be mined elsewhere.  Books by Vaclav Smil (how the world really works) or Ed Conway (Material World) explain the earthly limitations to Musk's plans well.  

Sources:

• https://fortune.com/2026/01/19/when-does-elon-musk-say-work-will-be-optional-and-money-will-be-irrelevant-ai-robotics/
• Elon Musk at WEF 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrB2tQDVLLo
• What is anomie?
• The Evolution and Future of Work
• The Future of Work and Education - and what we can do now
• Robert Friedman speaking about the future of critical minerals
  

This short essay deals with the question of whether the existing world order, which has regarded nation states as the smallest unit of international relations since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, will continue to exist, or whether a different world order will evolve. There are two extremes to choose from: complete globalization on the one hand and complete localization on the other. In between, there is a broad spectrum that includes, for example, the formation of new imperial powers or cooperation between eco-regions.

The director’s annual lecture at Chatham House somehow got my attention these days. How would one of the top think tanks on international relations see the year ahead?

In summary: 
Director of Chatham, Bronwen Maddox, essentially wants the international order not to change. She puts herself and Chatham therefore into the camp of nationalist, i.e. those who want to keep nation states as smallest units of the international order in place. The other camp, the globalists, strive for the human being as the smallest unit of international order. For more on this, watch the great dialogue between Yuval Harari and Chris Anderson. I am truly disappointed in this lack of vision and was even more so in the mostly absurd follow up questions from the audience, which reflected how far current IR professionals are detached from what matters to the people on the ground.

In detail:

• Her main objective is to salvage the international order, but isn’t this exactly what needs to change? She reiterates the words of Henry Kissinger, who perceived in 2014 the rise of China, Islamism and supranational organizations like the EU as the greatest threats to world order.
• She urges her audience to defend existing institutions and create new one’s - dont give up UN. But isn’t exactly the UN an institution which supports the current world order, an order of nation states, which is in contradiction with the science of biogeography and post-growth economics?
• Member states of the IMF and world bank should push back on the US’ cut of funding. But what a futile undertaking, when China has like with so many other Western institutions established a shadow organizations to the World Bank and actively works towards a sinocentric world order.
  

If we want something different than a pax americana or pax sinica, we need to reshape the World Bank into an organization which really serves the people and not their governments. One vision for a new World Bank would be an institution which deploys and safeguards global distributed value accounting and channels a conditional basic income to the bank accounts of planet Earths citizens according to their contribution to the health of natural and cultural ecosystems.

The next day, I facilitate for the probably tenth time a moderated screening of Helena Norberg-Hodge’s documentary The Economics of Happiness. The film is like the anti-thesis to the Chatham House recording. Norberg-Hodge preaches localism, Maddox lectures globalism.

The film in a nutshell:

Ladakhi practiced local agriculture and regional trade - their lifestyle was finely attuned to the local ecosystem > wide general well-being, nobody left behind. With the arrival of modern economics and global trade, the Ladakhis felt poor and miserable, how is that possible? Modern economics introduced most importantly a psychological shift from collective well-being to individual achievement. Compare this with Ken Wilber’s AQAL framework. The advertisement industry has contributed its fair share to this shift in self-perception.

Yet, making globalization the new enemy is distorting the focus. It’s not globalization, but the power and profit driven actors who use globalization as a vehicle to pursue their goals at the expense of human and natural resources, which are the enemy. 15 years after the creation of this film, it is evident that the dichotomy between globalization and localization must be overcome. We are members of one super-organism, one spaceship and need to collaborate to continue having a home. We need to move past in- and out-group thinking. That’s the globalist dimension in this equation.

We require however a human scale anchor in this world and we can only live in a concrete place and nourish the relationships with a handful of real people. As such we are as human species like any other mammal deeply tied to a specific local territory for which we should act as stewards, preserving its integrity for future generations. That’s the localist dimension in this equation.

The future is - in lack of a better wording - glocal. The picture which I have for this future in my mind is however a human hive, i.e. a global planet which is organizationally structured in local combs. What we need at this turning point in human history is an organizational backbone for the combs to interact with each other on questions of regional and global relevance. A new world bank, which adopts the human hive structure and abandons the nations state concept, could be very well such an organizational backbone.

It would however not be staffed by diplomats sitting in posh offices in New York, London or Hong Kong, but its delegates would be the mayors of villages, towns and districts who represent the interests of their community members. Compare Leopold Kohr’s The Breakdown of Nations. We need to rejuvenate democracy, make it agile and less representative. We need to break down power concentration with large countries and corporations.

Other observations - there is always sth new to be detected in this film:

• interesting interview with Chinese youth about cultural self perception. It would be difficult nowadays to find a Chinese saying this.
• urbanization is very resource intensive and has a higher ecological impact on the planet than rural living.
• we need to change the institutions which structure and run the world - individual choices can’t transform societies to the point it is needed
• we need to develop local identities: integrating bioregionalism in public education is a great vehicle to achieve that goal
• emotionally strongest scene: Ladhaki women in western elderly care home observing an apathetic old women sitting alone in front of the TV
• Norberg-Hodge’s solution is a match with Bill Plotikin’s observation that establishing a connection with others and the natural world is the most important task in the education of children and youth.
  

The book remains – 10 years after its publication - utterly relevant. It's not because it is clairvoyant about which technologies will shape the future, but how they will transform human labor, labor markets and how we deal as a society with the distribution of wealth, when jobs increasingly fall away as a distribution mechanism.
The crisis in natural resources is after all less relevant – yes, I hear all the people from the regeneration movement and biodiversity restoration shout “what is wrong with this guy?” – but in my understanding the key to solving the crisis in natural resources is to solve the crisis in human resources. We experience a consciousness ciris as late Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, which has grown so serious that it has turned into a social and ecological disaster of global dimension.
There is already a great cinematic take on this dilemma in Alexander Payne’s Downsizing. ROW should look at China’s rapid technological progress paired with its state capitalist model as an opportunity to deploy social innovation and move to the next level of consciousness.

1. Technology and social progress:

• Automation is a condition for more social fairness and unfolding of human potential: EU and its MS invest too little in mechanical and digital automation and therefore threaten well-being and living standards.
  

• Master plan for automation is needed: automate what people don’t like to do as a focus of technology deployment and make it possible for people to pick up jobs which they actually want.

• Electrification must be an industrial priority: clean, renewable and sufficient (PV) energy is the foundation for increasing automation to not put stress on the environment and make automation a force for social AND environmental good.
  

• China has understood the above three pillars of progress and executes them like a role model. Despite its advantages of high population density and a large home market, South Korea has shown that high industrial automation levels are not dependent on a large populace.
  

• Looking at the 2024 IFR data (10 years after Ford wrote this book), it is evident that Marxist China has deployed state capitalism to turn into the world’s largest owner of manufacturing assets. If China is ‘one enterprise’ it has turned into the world’s foremost capitalist (compare 2025 trade deficit) and has pushed ROW into class struggle.
  

• China applies large scale primitive accumulation[i] strategies to keep its system running. Industrial fishing is one striking example.[ii] Raw earth production another.
  

2. Social innovation   

• Social contract 2.0: social innovation is how ROW can balance China’s industrial might in a competitive rat race which creates massive waste. A citizen dividend must be explored on a communal level. Municipalities should apply Leopold Kohr’s idea of village government and experiment with the right incentives to work and take part in society.
  

• A conditional citizen dividend is the vehicle which guarantees increased social capital and less environmental impact. The basic income should be paid by regions and municipal governments according to contribution aka proof of work.
  

• Jason Hickel calculates that 65% of US GDP – and with it, an immeasurable amount of resources and working time – would be eliminated if the goal of an economy were general well-being rather than national prosperity. According to his calculations, an income of USD 14k would be sufficient in the US to achieve maximum well-being, while the current GDP per capita is USD 59k. System transformation in the Anthropocene is therefore class struggle under new premises.
  

• Coupled with the predictable and already unfolding consequences of automation and machine learning, a rethinking of the concept of “wage labor” is inevitable. We must engage in experiments in model labor markets that either combine traditional wage labor with social and ecological contributions or prohibit work entirely as part of “extractive economies.”
  

• Comprehensive ‘distributed value accounting’ of the social and ecological impact of every (professional) activity is necessary if we want to meaningfully separate destructive behavior from regenerative action.
   
  “Very few events have as much impact on civilization as a change in the basic principles of organizing work.” - Peter F. Drucker
  

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation_of_capital
[ii]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341264612_Captain_Planet_and_the_Planeteers_What_could_Xi_Jinping_do_to_avoid_climate_change

Paulo Freire explains in this glossed segment of his 1968 book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” why formal education – as part of public administration - keeps power structures in place. He also shows why formal education is a powerful agent of capitalism and the main cause of why intradisciplinary solutions to climate and social crisis have not been found so far: the banking model of education, as Freire calls it, keeps knowledge structurally separated in an assembly line of highly specialized faculties. As of 2025, his analysis gives me hope that advanced artificial intelligence will not only transform education but also social power structures and thus establish climate justice.

According to Freire, liberation is never about the democratization of violence, human misery and obscene poverty. Liberation that resolves the contradiction between the oppressor and the oppressed can only do so by the appearance of the new man and women, neither oppressor nor oppressed, but man and women in the process of liberation. The inability to resolve the contradictions between the oppressor and the oppressed to make linkages and to become a tramp of the obvious, as Freire would say, is directly related to what Freire identified in the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” as the failings of a prevalent banking model of education, a process through which education becomes an act of depositing in which the student is the depository and the teacher is the depositor.

Instead of communicating the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits while the students patiently receive, memorize and repeat. This is the banking concept of education in which the scope of action allowed to the student extends only as far as receiving, filling and storing the deposits. The banking model of education is largely at work in instrumental literacy programs for the poor in the form of a competency-based skills banking approach to schooling and even through higher education, the highest form of instrumental literacy for the rich acquired in the form of professional specialization (gloss: e.g. training to become a notary, dentist, lawyer, or surgeon).

However, despite their apparent differences, the two approaches share one common feature: they both prevent the development of critical thinking that enables one to read the world critically and to understand the reasons and linkages and to behind what may appear seemingly obvious but remains ill understood (gloss: e.g. class self-awareness). Literacy for the poor through the banking concept of education is by large characterized by mindless, meaningless drills and exercises given in preparation for multiple choice exams and writing gobbledygook in imitation of the psychobabble that surrounds them. This banking and instrumental approach to education sets the stage for the anesthetization of the mind as poet John Ashbery eloquently captures in “What is Poetry”:
 
In school all the thoughts got combed out.
What was left was like a field.
 
The educational cone for those teachers who have uncritically accepted the banking model of education is embodied in practice sheets and workbooks, in mindless computer drills and practices, that mark and control the pace of routinization. This drill and practice assembly line numbing the student’s capacity of thought leaves the ground prepared for the teacher’s instruction with a narration with the teacher as narrator leaves the student to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into containers, into receptacles, to be filled by the teacher. The more meekly the receptacle permit themselves to be filled, the better student they are. The students have been measured by high stakes tests that reflect often militaristic control transaction of the teacher’s narration and the student’s memorization of the mechanically narrated content. Hence the dominant effects of this mechanistic banking education inevitably create educational structures that favor rote learning and necessarily reduce the priorities of education to the pragmatic requirements of capital and anesthetizing students’ critical abilities to domesticate social order for its self-preservation.

At the other end of the spectrum, the domestication of the social order is achieved by an equally mechanistic approach to the education for the rich by the hyper-specialization that, on the one hand deposits high level skills, and on the other discourages the linkages of different bodies of knowledge in the name of pure and specialized science that produces a specialist subject who according to the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset knows very well his own tiny corner of the universe but is radically ignorant of all the rest (gloss: compare e.g. Return to Meaning – a social science with something to say)
 

#PISA, #SAT, #高考, #AISSCE, #TOEFL

How much rote learning is necessary to harness lateral thinking? How much value training and empathy building is required to devote one’s life not to personal profit but collective progress i.e. genuine growth?

Sources: 
[1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/co2-emissions-by-income/
[2] https://www.structural-learning.com/post/rote-learning

“The challenges facing the West and liberal democracy are manifold: on the one hand, there is the destructive force of Donald Trump and the apocalyptic rumblings of right-wing populists from within our own ranks – and on the other, there are Russia and China. The challenge posed by China is just one piece of the puzzle in a perfect storm that seems to be brewing. However, it is the most underestimated piece so far.” - Kai Strittmatter in We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State

Quo vadis europa?
 
What resources does Europe have to offer a regenerative, integrative, and attractive alternative to the obsolete capitalism of the West and the emerging state capitalism of China?
 
Personal background to the question
 
Katja Hellkötter has been running C-Space together with Jan Siefke since 2015, a creative space and place for meeting and learning that is designing new forms of learning, working, and living in Berlin. C*SPACE operates locally in the Pankow district, European as a member of the “European Creative Hubs Net,” and is also globally networked towards Asia.
 
Katja and her family's Easter visit raised many issues that (should) concern us in Germany, Austria, and Europe as a whole. As in the past, our shared history in China was an important common denominator in our conversations, enabling us to gain an alternative perspective on events in Europe.
 
A central theme was the political and economic ignorance of social innovation that we repeatedly observe in our work. Political actors often become competitors because they undermine or copy civil society initiatives and block changes in power structures. Is political innovation currently more urgent than technological innovation? The failure to factor social and ecological capital into economic indicators such as GDP leads to a financing vacuum in the market for NGOs that address important issues.
 
“In fact, social innovation may be of greater importance and have much greater impact than any scientific or technical invention.” - Peter F. Drucker[1]
 
Europe in search of a new systemic identity
 
The result is a Europe in crisis. The dissolution of Extinction Rebellion, the fatigue of the FFF movement, the political drift to the right, and the problems with integrating immigrants are clear signs that previous attempts to address the ecological and social crisis have failed.[2] Radical thought leaders are considering breaking the law to enable systemic change.[3] Europe needs a new, meaningful idea that breaks with previous economic paradigms and sparks enthusiasm for a new way of living together.
 
Under the state-capitalist pressure of an ethnically and culturally more or less homogeneous China, Western capitalist democracy is being challenged and must redefine itself, as economies of scale and authoritarian decision-making patterns will allow China to win in capitalist competition in the short and medium term—even if, in the long term, ecological collapse will mean a bitter end for everyone. We are therefore facing a forced system change that holds both risks and opportunities. If Europe cannot design an alternative system that allows economic, social, and ecological harmony, it is highly likely to become a colony of China. The medium- and long-term consequences of this shift in the dominant culture from West to East should be the subject of a separate debate. However, all Europeans who have lived in China for a long time are aware that there is far too little awareness in this country of what a dominant Chinese culture would mean for Europe.[4]
 
“Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures.” - Peter F. Drucker
 
Realistic utopias – from right to duty[5]
 
Let us reflect on the historical starting point that makes realistic scenarios of transformation possible for Europe. Almost all European nation states adopted a democratic constitution in the 19th century that focuses on the distribution of power and grants citizens rights: voting rights, civil rights, human rights, workers' rights, women's rights, children's rights, etc. This evolution of democracy can be traced back to European antiquity.
 
Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a comprehensive debate on civic duties, in which the German philosopher David Precht has played a prominent role. Refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 has been seen as a moral duty of citizens in order to protect the health of others in an exceptional situation. Analogous to this largely forgotten situation, other duties have been discussed with regard to the ecological and social crisis. What carbon footprint should a person be allowed to have in order not to deprive others of a life worth living? What contribution must a person make to the functioning of local communities? How high can a person's income be without seriously affecting the health and well-being of many others?[6]
 
The common denominator in this current debate is the intersection of changing rights and obligations resulting from limited natural resources and a growing global population. The Anthropocene era is characterized by a circumstance that is less highlighted than the consequence that humans are changing the climate to an unprecedented extent: we no longer live in different ecosystems, but have inevitably become part of a single ecosystem, revealing our mutual interdependence and interconnectedness.
 
“It is time to talk about human responsibility.” - Helmut Schmidt[7]
 
Gross well-being instead of gross domestic product
 
Post-growth economists have identified excessive capitalism as an economic expression of morally unsound greed and have shown that we can lead healthier and happier lives with less consumption of natural resources and fewer working hours. The key to establishing an alternative system should therefore lie in economic incentives that enable new
lifestyles.
 
Jason Hickel calculates that 65% of US GDP – and with it, an immeasurable amount of resources and working time – would be eliminated if the goal of an economy were general well-being rather than national prosperity. According to his calculations, an income of USD 14k would be sufficient in the US to achieve maximum well-being, while the current GDP per capita is USD 59k.[8] System transformation in the Anthropocene is therefore class struggle under new
premises.[9]
 
Coupled with the predictable and already unfolding consequences of automation and machine learning, a rethinking of the concept of “wage labor” is inevitable.[10] We must engage in experiments in model labor markets that either combine traditional wage labor with social and ecological contributions or prohibit work entirely as part of “extractive economies.” Comprehensive ‘distributed value accounting’ of the social and ecological impact of every (professional) activity is necessary if we want to meaningfully separate destructive behavior from regenerative action.
 
“Very few events have as much impact on civilization as a change in the basic principles of organizing work.” - Peter F. Drucker
 
Conditional vs. unconditional basic income
 
One of Europe's great advantages is its widespread federalism, which makes it possible to test these new forms of wealth distribution in small municipalities and still relatively small federal states and to transform the transform the democratic systems of the 19th century into meritocratic systems of the 21st century. The networking of organizations and individuals who want to support this experiment is now more urgent than ever: Europe needs a new model that inspires through inclusion but at the same time demands a contribution.
 
"If Europe were a person, I would have to rush out and fight for her. For my heroine, who gave me 70 years of peace.” - Klaus Maria Brandauer

Based on the considerations outlined above, experimenting with a conditional basic income as the central pillar of a new European idea is currently the most important LOA for social transformation. It has an integral leverage effect that is unmatched by any other measure.[11] It should be noted in particular that a basic income would reverse rural exodus and could revive dying villages. Another argument that is rarely raised but, in my opinion, is the most important one is the effect of basic income on children's brain development and intelligence: the unequal distribution of wealth robs many people of their potential and thus also robs Europe of the opportunity to devise innovative and regenerative forms of coexistence.[12]

Endnotes:
[1] The Essential Drucker, 2002
[2] https://www.mingong.org/blog-de/uber-die-natur-eines-volksfeindes
[3] https://ark.greensteps.me/library/chris-packham-is-it-time-to-break-the-law
[4] http://www.mycountryandmypeople.org/01-blog-2133823458/tiananmen-july-1st-youth-parade-a-reason-for-concern
http://www.mycountryandmypeople.org/01-blog-2133823458/thoughts-on-the-china-international-import-expo
Kai Strittmatter: Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur
[5] https://www.mingong.org/blog-en/a-lucid-manual-for-transformation-by-architect-friedrich-von-borries
[6] https://www.mingong.org/blog-en/on-failing-democracies-and-spheres-of-justice
[7] https://brennstoff.com/ausgaben/es-ist-zeit-%C3%BCber-verantwortlichkeiten-des-menschen-zu-reden/
https://www.helmut-schmidt.de/helmut-schmidt-im-ringen-um-die-idee-eines-weltethos
[8] Jason Hickel: Less Is More - How Degrowth will save the world
[9]  https://kontrast.at/andreas-kemper-interview-klasse/
https://www.darkmatteressay.org/blog/on-waging-war-and-democratic-decline
[10] https://www.mingong.org/blog-en/martin-ford-enlightened-marxist-or-apolyptic-technocrat
[11] see in particular the detailed considerations of Martin Ford in Rise of the Robots: https://www.mingong.org/blog-de/aufstieg-der-roboter-10-jahre-spater
[12] https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberly_noble_how_does_income_affect_childhood_brain_development