Ten Good Things That Will Happen This Decade (2021-2030)

Being an optimist, I'm excited about what I'm likely to see over the coming years. Here are some of my predictions:

1. Infrastructure will act as an economic multiplier in many developing economies. India has invested significantly in transport infrastructure, and so has China (at home and in the Global South).

2. The India Stack (especially UPI (Unified Payments Interface)) will act as an economic multiplier, thanks to its improved ease of doing business, as well as its unprecedented social inclusiveness. It is being seriously studied by other countries (e.g., France and Singapore), and could soon become a global norm.

3. India and China are in quiet talks to resolve their border dispute. Their efforts could bear fruit in the next couple of years, and an era of cooperation with significant mutual benefits could soon begin.

4. Hundreds of new metro systems around the world are going to deliver huge savings to society in terms of time and fuel.

5. Australia's Consumer Data Right (CDR) legislation is an example of global trends towards formalising the process of empowering data owners and providing informed consent to third parties to use their data. In other words, the OAuth2 technical protocol will obtain global legislative backing. It will ease the development of new services and apps.

6. A cure and/or a vaccine for cancer is going to emerge, not from Western Pharma, but from China and Russia. Although the news has been muted in Western media, it is known that China has made breakthroughs in cancer cure, and Russia has announced a cancer vaccine. People everywhere, including in the West, are going to vote with their feet in favour of these interventions.

7. Energy generation will reach a tipping point with renewable power facilities as well as next-generation nuclear power plants. Energy costs will start to plummet, spurring economic growth worldwide. (Although the topic of climate change has become controversial, this trend is a positive one when viewed from that perspective as well.)

8. Self-driving cars will change traffic patterns and the nature of transport in many respects. Car ownership may reduce drastically, giving way to ride-hailing services, the absolute number of vehicles and traffic volumes could reduce in proportion, prime urban real estate could be reclaimed from roads and parking lots, etc.

9. AI is currently at Gartner's "Peak of Inflated Expectations". In the next couple of years, it may suffer a backlash because of high profile cases of over-reliance that lead to disasters (the "Trough of Disillusionment"). Thereafter, we will see the "Slope of Enlightenment" and then the "Plateau of Productivity". AI will start to deliver great benefits by the end of the decade, once it evolves with feedback, and the world learns how and how not to use it.

10. Space-based technology will start to deliver great benefits. The US now has competition from Russia and China. The cost of space-based services such as GPS and Google Maps will come down drastically thanks to competition from Glonass and BeiDou. Like with India's UPI that the government has mandated to be free, the affordability of space-based services will provide a fertile environment for many new applications to flourish.

My Letter To PM-Elect Anthony Albanese (May 21, 2022)

I wrote a letter to Anthony Albanese on the eve of his election victory on May 21, 2022.

In it, I outlined my hopes and expectations as an Australian citizen for the path his government would take, in a decisive break from the disastrous direction of his predecessor Scott Morrison.

I'm making this public now because I'm disappointed that Albo seems to have been coopted by unelected powers, just as previous governments have been. This post by Bruce Haigh explains just how bad things have now become.

My letter:

Subject: Congratulations from a first-time Labor voter, and a manifesto challenge for you

Dear Albo,

Congratulations on your landslide victory!

Although I have been a loyal paid-up member of the Australian Democrats for over two decades, I crossed the floor today to vote for you, and I am now taking the liberty of writing to ask you to do certain things.

You have the mandate of the Australian people, Albo, and you can and should grasp the nettle and announce some bold changes in direction early on, while you still have the initiative and the momentum. All opposition will crumble if you display boldness and determination.

1. Reset the relationship with China:

It's high time Australia stopped fighting other countries' wars! We've fought Britain's wars in the last century, and we've since switched loyalties to fight America's wars. We have not covered ourselves in glory by joining the US in Vietnam, or in the invasion of Iraq. Australian foreign policy ought to be made in the interests of the Australian people, not in the interests of foreign governments.

The Morrison government has made an indecorous lurch towards the US by scrapping a deal with France, and signing up to a dangerous policy of nuclear confrontation with China by purchasing nuclear submarines. His government has also plunged us into a trade war with China, our biggest trading partner, in a further bid to please the US. In return for our pains, the US has thrown us under the bus by replacing Australian exports in the Chinese market with their own.

Enough!

I want you to re-establish communications with President Xi Jinping at the earliest and normalise our relations with Asia's most important power. We should be aware that we are just a middle-ranking power, and should therefore be extremely wary of being drawn into a conflict between superpowers that will only damage us. The task before the Australian government in this area is two-fold:

- Keep the country out of any conflict between the United States and China. It's not our war, and it would be highly irresponsible on the part of any Australian government to plunge us into a conflict that will only do us enormous damage. - Re-establish favourable trading relations with China so we can both increase revenue from our exports, and tackle domestic inflation through the import of affordable Chinese goods.

(I'm of Indian origin, not Chinese, so I have no personal bias in saying all of this.)

Oh, and there's this sneaky lobbying outfit for the American arms industry that pretends to be a respectable policy think tank, and which illegitimately influences Australian defence and foreign policy to the detriment of the interests of our own people. Yes, I'm talking about the ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute). Declare this an illegal organisation and shut them down. Expel their foreign employees. Investigate their treasonous activities. They have been doing great damage to Australia's interests by controlling our governments and turning Australia into a US client state for their proxy conflicts.

2. Make a strong and unequivocal commitment to renewable energy:

You need to make an early statement that is symbolically powerful. I suggest you produce a lump of coal in parliament (like Morrison did), but throw it forcefully into a dustbin!

Follow that up with clear and ambitious targets to phase out fossil fuels from every sector of the economy.

Renewables are cost-effective and ready to go. The only thing missing is Federal Government support. It's time for you to change that, and dramatically. The foot-dragging by past governments has been utterly shameful.

3. Tackle housing affordability:

Everybody knows the dirty little secret of why housing affordability isn't being seriously tackled. The flip side of making houses affordable for new buyers is making asset prices stagnate or drop for existing home-owners. In other words, you can't please one set without displeasing the other.

So far, the home-owner crowd has been calling the shots because we're the establishment. But as a home-owner myself, let me tell you that I don't mind a stagnation or drop in asset prices if it will help hundreds of thousands of young individuals and couples buy their first home. It's shameful for a problem of affordability to be dragging on for so long in a supposedly prosperous country, and it's time a government did something about it.

Hint: we all know that tinkering with the demand side like providing first home-owner grants only fuels demand and leads to a further rise in prices. The only thing that will work to reduce prices is an increase in supply. Release more crown land, at a faster rate than before. It will absolutely piss off existing home-owners, but you'll be on the right side of history.

There are lots of other problems you'll have to tackle, of course. The old demons of inflation, unemployment and underinvestment in public services. But those are problems with known solutions, and need little imagination or courage from a leader.

The issues I've outlined require true leadership.

I have placed my trust in you with my vote, Albo. I hope you'll rise to the occasion.

All the best!

Ganesh C Prasad (Federal constituency of Mitchell, NSW)