Madeira Consorcio

138 Madeira Consorcio meeting 28.10.2023

Oct 29, 2023 at 11:58 am | Posted in Posts | Leave a comment
Tags: globalization, Madeira, social media

Hello Team,

We met in the Gallery and saw an interesting video about the upcoming world order:

The next world order will be based on three points: security, economy and digital order. The last part will be the most powerful, controlled by companies which run social media (Meta, X/Twitter, etc)

Elon Musk seems to think that he is God; he wants to get into banking, brokerage and other business sectors. Tesla (producing in China) and Space X are successful and seem to be making profit. Investors buy his shares and expect a return of 10%.

Social Media (SocMed) are addictive; we are moving toward a TikTok dictatorship. The USA and other countries are attacking the SocMed giants and will try to break them up.

Many features in our lives are being put into Apps and whoever hasn’t a Smartphone with these apps, is left out.

U.fought this successfully. Credit card payments can be authorized via a bank App but also via SMS and another security code. It takes effort to set this up with the bank, but the Smartphone stays in the drawer.

People who have businesses, have to go with the trend and use SocMed. On an individual basis, people can get out of the App/online SocMed wave.

Everything is based on SocMed and the use of the internet now.

K. bought the German 49€ “Deutsche Bahn” rail subscription for herself on her Smartphone but she cannot do this for Cl.. Without Smartphone, he has to find other ways to get it in Germany. Also, the validity of the ticket is checked by reading the QR Code in the phone. Paper tickets have to show the QR code as well.
H. has an old client in Germany who got a new job. He asked his employer for a parking space which they will give him but only if he also buys the 49€ Bahn subscription. This way the company can boast that all her staff are using the Bahn to get to work, which many do not do. The appearance is more important than the reality.

U.’s cousin can leave his car at the train station and then travel three stops to his workplace, but only once per hour. Overtime results in longer delays to get home, so he tends to revert back to the exclusive use of the car. This we way, we are screwing it up.

The “Superpedestrian” scooters: Paris stopped the use of the scooters, but Funchal is now starting up with it, mostly being used by tourists. Three scooters already ended up in the river by Bazar do Povo.

Better ways to counter the growing numbers of cars on our island are car sharing (you rent a time slot for car use) and carpooling which is being used by some coworkers in companies.

Amazon is being ordered online. People who could go to a bookstore to get a certain, book, prefer to order it online for convenience.  (For our island, we have the excuse that Amazon supplies items we could not get at all otherwise.) Plane passengers, when answered why they don’t fly less to save the environment, say “The plane flies, whether I am on it or somebody else.”

During Covid, proof of vaccination was in the phone QE Code, and people had to jump through hoops top get the proof on paper (with the code as well).

As individuals, we haven’t got a great impact, Governments should regulate these companies and try to lower the impact on the environment.

Globalization brings every plus and vice to Madeira.

Continente is already trying to buy most of the produce from local suppliers, but with a global economy, we have apples from China in the shops.

B & B clients bring a lot of stuff to the island which they leave behind, to be recycled by somebody else. In the Maldives, tourists have to take all their rubbish back with them.

Older people do not trust the Government with everything but young people don’t have these qualms with SocMed companies. Permanent supervision via the Smartphone does not scare them.

The SocMed companies now have the power and they can shut down anything at any time.  Gaza was offline. Russia shuts off services, and China builds its own Internet control into the system from the start.

The traditional Media cannot counter this and have a bias toward news they expect to happen; they ignore news which do not fit the picture. So they do not come up with the Truth either.

We have hope that the younger generations will smarten up and use the SocMed that keep it open. They are moving away from Twitter and Meta, toward Online services which do not twist everything for profit.