Do you know?: What's actually going on here?
Have we already missed our chance for the future? ;-) Even the Green Party is no longer progressive or visionary in any way. Car manufacturers are being put in their place by Elon Musk, and Tesla is now worth more than all German car manufacturers combined. VW is finally trying its hand at the classic construction of modern electric cars, but so far has been rather backward in terms of software. They are also opposed to the development of innovative battery concepts and implementations. Apart from that, the future probably does not lie in private transport, at least not exclusively.
Amazon (and all the others, of course) knows how to satisfy customers. But they also know how to maximise profits through poorly paid jobs and by expanding their sales strategy to include cloud services, data collection and analysis. Google, Alibaba Group, Yandex, Facebook, JD.com, Twitter, Baidu and all the other global players do the same. They profit from advertising companies, tangible products, secret services and thus states. Not a single provider comes from Europe.
Currently, only China and Russia seem to be making enormous efforts to counter the US in this area. It is actually time for Europe to wake up and jointly develop strategies that render the pivotal role (which we currently seem to have) between these major powers absurd, because they cannot get past us. A society that neither wants to control everything like China, nor one like the US, which also wants to control everything without anyone assuming that this is the case. One thing is certain: the future lies in data, and no one here in Europe seems to want to admit this.
What could happen next?
How can it be that after a quarter of a century of commercial internet, we still don't have a strategy for a digitalised society? Instead, we cheerfully build combustion engine cars, fail to promote rail transport accordingly, pamper Lufthansa and fail to equip schools with staff (e.g. IT administrators for every school) and the appropriate equipment. We are allowing our city centres to fall into disrepair instead of implementing greening concepts, for example. We continue to seal our soil with tar and concrete. Who still believes that online retail is not driving local retailers further and further out of business? Are we clinging to throwaway capitalism because the USA, China or Russia want us to? Why not work together visionarily and enthusiastically for the environment and thus for people, developing a circular economy (cradle to cradle), environmental protection, animal welfare, forest welfare, photovoltaics, wind energy, hydropower, more effective energy storage, liveable city centres, environmentally friendly transport concepts, data protection and much more? It would be future-proof, environmentally friendly and would mean a better world for everyone. Surprisingly, it would probably also be more economical and have enormous potential to create new jobs while simultaneously raising living standards. Everything is there, from the concept to the possibilities.
What we are currently doing in politics is nothing more than backward-looking, reactionary and uninspired, leading us into a future that is controlled by others and climatically unbearable, which none of us (and our children) want. Let's hope no one gets the idea of starting a world war so that all these progressive ideas and our economy can be reset to zero, only to start the destruction all over again.
