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Here is the third installment of a quarterly check-in on what the signals are saying regarding After Capitalism. (See Q2 2024 here.) Drum roll please! [NOTE: For many years I captured my hits in Diigo, but it has become unreliable and I have been trying out Factr. So far, so good.]
Parametric insurance gains traction
Insurers are experimenting with parametric insurance as they explore ways to use big data for creating credible indexes, monitoring triggering events, and the simple settlement. It actually dates back to the 1990s, although it didn’t become popular at the time. With a parametric insurance policy, the insurer and the insured agree upon a predetermined threshold for payment, such as wind speed, temperature, or the magnitude of an earthquake, as well as a payment amount based on expected losses associated with such an event. If the threshold is met and the loss is confirmed, the insured receives a payment for the predetermined sum. “It’s a simple concept. When the condition is met, the payment is triggered,” confirms Kevin McLain, Senior Consultant at Nationwide.
AH Comment: I heard about this at a convening on Texas Sustainable Futures 2040 hosted by the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation. It’s basically taking some of the guesswork and hassle out of insuring for climate risks. It’s fascinating to watch what and how insurance is thinking about regarding future risks. When there is a lot of money on the line, the big brains get involved and come up with some interesting ideas now and then.
OpenAI Pivoting From “Benefiting Humanity” to “Making Lots of Money”
OpenAI announced that it would be restructuring around a core for-profit entity, which formalizes what outsiders have known for some time: that OpenAI is seeking to profit in an industry that has received an enormous influx of investment. The company started off in 2015 as a “nonprofit artificial intelligence research company” that was committed to advancing the tech “in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”
AH comment: Does anyone even remember Sam Altman waxing eloquently about how OpenAI would revolutionize knowledge and sharing and “we better figure out UBI” cuz this will change everything [still true if you’re a shareholder!] So, they scraped all our data with the promise of sharing it back, but, well, sorry about that … sigh. I include this to remind us – it is possible. Okay, so, not this time, but maybe next time?
South Korean Young Climate Activists Score Landmark Victory
In Asia’s first-of-its-kind ruling, the Constitutional Court of Korea said on Thursday that the South Korean government’s unambitious climate targets are unconstitutional as they fail to protect the rights of future generations. A top court in South Korea on Thursday ruled the country’s measures to fight climate change insufficient for protecting the rights of its citizens in Asia’s first climate litigation ruling of its kind.
AH comment: What fascinates me about this is the relatively rapid pace of values change in South Korea. [I’ve written about the slow pace of change, and values changes are one of the slowest kinds.] South Korea’s postmoderns [see Values shifts and After Capitalism] are growing and becoming more influential and pulling the Old Guard into the future.
— Andy Hines
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