Goodbye 2021 and Hello 2022 (Part 2: Hive Content)

Happy New Year Everyone,

In Part 1, I discussed some of my personal experiences from 2021 as well as some of my plans for 2022. In Part 2, I want to discuss my Hive content. I had a busy 2021; at times, my Hive content took a backseat to my other activities. Despite my busy year, I still managed to publish plenty of posts as well as a handful of videos. In this post, I want cover a few of these posts to provide a flavour of my content from 2021 as well as a little of what to expect from my Hive Channel in 2022.

Many of the main topics I covered in 2020 rolled over to 2021. These topics related to Covid-19, the Great Reset, contests and applied economics. I managed to bring back the economics challenge series after a three-year absence. I also made several new videos. There were a few areas, which were neglected. I did not post to my @captainhive account (alternative account). I did not do anything to promote my economics community. I did not publish my ebook or even get any momentum in doing so.

Covid-19

In early 2021, my attention was focused on Covid-19 and the Great Reset. At this point Covid-19 had been around for over a year. There was plenty of information about the virus and the many types of Covid-19 restrictions that had been put in place over the course of that year. The new area of focus became the vaccines. Amazingly, several Covid-19 vaccines were developed and approved for use in just under a year. Normally, vaccine development takes over ten years and approval drags that out even further. The rapid development and approval times are a cause of major concern. I discussed these concerns in my post My Concerns about the Covid-19 Vaccines.

I spent almost a decade conducting Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) for various project types (mostly road and transport) as well as researching and enhancing CBA techniques. I applied my skills and experience to design a basic framework for conducting a CBA for vaccines and other responses to Covid-19. The post outlined a 14-step approach, which included:

• identification of the problem (severity of Covid-19)
• the effectiveness of the vaccines
• the dangers of the vaccines
• the costs of development of vaccines
• an overall comparison of the benefits and costs of developing a vaccine
• the benefits and costs of consuming the vaccines for various groups of people

You can read more about the framework in my post Outline of a possible Cost Benefit Analysis Framework for Covid-19 Vaccines.

As the year progressed, my concerns regarding the vaccines grew stronger. The Government, the media, Government scientists, and even celebrities strongly promoted the vaccines. Any opposing views regarding the vaccines were heavily censored. However, they could not be completely silenced. Thanks to some great work from alternative media and various groups of scientists, some information could escape the intense censorship. Some of that information can be found on Hive, which is censorship resistant. Hive made it possible for me to publish and share information about Covid-19 and the vaccines that would have been censored on most other forms of social media.

I dedicated a post that summarised the key findings of a report by David John Sorensen and Dr. Vladimir Zelenko. See, Summary of the Vaccine Death Report. The report contained information about:

• the number of reported incidents and deaths linked to the Covid-19 vaccines
• links and summaries of scientific reports outlining the dangers of the vaccines
• accounts from medical professionals who have witnesses the impact of the vaccines
• social media posts from people who have relatives who have suffered severe reactions to the vaccines
• the ineffectiveness of the vaccines in stopping the spread of Covid-19
• pharmaceutical companies’ exemption from liability for adverse reactions to the vaccines

I strongly recommend that you read my summary of this report with an open mind.

The Great Reset

I also began the year seeking more information about the Great Reset. I began my research by reading the book ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset’ by Professor Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret. The book focuses on taking advantage of Covid-19 to change how the economy and even society function. The book criticises capitalism for causing and increasing inequality in the world. Instead, the book proposes stakeholder capitalism. This focuses on developing a system where businesses are run to the ‘benefit’ of all its stakeholders rather than its shareholders or owners. For this to be possible, Government intervention would be required. This would lead to increasing the power and size of Government. The book goes even further by advocating for bigger roles for international bodies. The biggest and most powerful countries would have the largest roles in these bodies and thus the most power. I discuss the book in detail in my six part series.

The Great Reset is only outlined in the book. The World Economic Forum (WEF) goes into much more detail about the Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, based on earlier work from Professor Klaus Schwab, which feeds into the ideas presented as the Great Reset.

In my post A Peripheral look at the Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution, I explored the WEF website. I focused on an interactive diagram/wheel that connected and linked various parts of the Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution. The diagram contained many interesting topics and subtopics. The topics and subtopics that I discussed are as follows:

• blockchain
• artificial intelligence
• climate change
• Covid-19
• family businesses
• human rights

The figure contains many more topics and subtopics that I did not discuss.

Almost all of these topics and subtopics linked to either global governance and/or other various forms of centrally controlled governance. The themes described on the WEF website convey a message of centralised control by National Governments, Global bodies, and the largest companies.

I was growing more concerned from what I was learning about the Great Reset as well as the authoritarian approach to Covid-19 in many countries. I wrote a post titled ‘A Possible Grim Reality’. This post highlighted the increasing anger and discontent people around the world have with their Governments. This can be seen from the increasing number of protests and incidents of civil unrest around the world. It appears society are being attacked from all directions. Governments are becoming more authoritarian. The media has become almost entirely focused on spreading propaganda to support both overt and covert agendas. Banks are controlling access to funds and forcing people to be at the mercy of their demands. Education institutions are focused on brainwashing students instead of enabling them to be educated. Big businesses are forming oligopolies; they are limiting people’s choices while increasing prices and reaping higher profits. People are waking up and standing up to the system, but we could be moving too slow.

Applied Economics

In 2021, I continued posting about areas where economics could be applied. I briefly revisited the blockchain (I had hoped to do more posts). Online shopping has become very popular. The Covid-19 agenda has given this area a huge boost as High Streets have been forced to close. The biggest winners have been businesses that fundamentally operate online. Amazon have seen revenue in the fourth quarter triple over the past 5 to 6 years. See Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Amazon Fourth Quarter Revenue (2016 to 2020)

Source: Research FDI
Note: Q4 2022 is an estimate

Small businesses have struggled to compete online. However, this does necessarily need to be the case. Virtual shopping centres/hubs can enable small businesses to be more competitive online. Blockchain technology can be used to enable businesses to work together in an online environment. Information about products and transactions can be stored on the blockchain. The blockchain can link to the shops in the hub as well as the hub as a whole. My post Blockchain based Virtual Shopping Hubs explains the application of the blockchain as well as describes some of the existing virtual shopping hubs.

I explored a few topics in what I refer to as the dark side of economics. I revisited two important topics and described how their application has been combined to the detriment of society. These topics are Controlled Opposition and Divide and Conquer. Controlled opposition is used to ensure the desired outcome is always achieved and is intended to derail any real opposition. Divide and conquer is used to build tension between various groups so that they oppose each other rather than attack the real causes of their problems. These two strategies work well together as they both direct attention away from the real problems and those who are causing these problems (usually some form of authority).

I also discussed and analysed several other areas that have been used to manipulate, control, or deceive people. These include racism and addiction.

Racism has been used successfully to divide people because it is such a sensitive topic. There is a long history of prejudice and discrimination based on race. It is easy to blame existing inequalities in society on race. All it takes is one tragic incident that has occurred because of racial discrimination (e.g. killing of George Floyd by a police officer) to trigger a rebellion based solely around race. The media and politicians have fuelled racial divide by emphasising and highlighting how race plays a major role in income, wealth, and social inequality within countries.

Addiction is another area where Government intervene in an attempt to gain more power. Addiction comes in many forms. It is always dangerous to some extent. However, some addictions are more dangerous than others. Governments intervene by taxing products such as alcohol and cigarettes or by banning them such as illicit drugs. Taxing does very little to reduce consumption of addictive substances. Instead, people sacrifice other things in order to be able to afford the alcohol or the cigarettes. Banning does not necessarily help reduce consumption of drugs but it could lead to the consumption of lower quality or contaminated drugs that could be more harmful than if the drugs had been available legally. However, Government policy does ensure higher tax revenue for themselves without reducing revenue to major alcohol, cigarette, and even drug producers.

Videos

In 2021, I aimed to get back to making videos. Prior to 2020, I normally published written posts and videos on the same topics. The written posts and videos supported each other and made the content easier to digest for a larger audience. Unfortunately, in 2020, my videos fell behind my written posts. For the first 6 months of 2021, I returned to making videos. I began by making videos on topics I had written about in 2020. I needed to make up some ground. Below are some of the videos that I consider more important.

• Broad Political Spectrum (Video)
• Power, Money, and Me Me Me (Video Version)
• Prevent, Solve, or Manage (Video Version)
• Why I choose to be an Economist on Hive

For the second half of 2021, it became a little more difficult to make videos. My house moving process was in full swing and I could not find the time to get to nice locations such as the lake to film these videos. Instead, I focused more on written posts, which could be done from the comfort of my office. I did not completely stop making videos. I continued making simple videos for my monthly Buying and Selling Game contests. The videos are necessary to generate the results of the contests. I do not determine the winners. Instead, I use a Microsoft Excel Model to generate prices or demand, which is then used to determine the profits made by each participant.

Challenge Series

I ran the Buying and Selling Game for most of the year but in July and August, I went one-step further by bringing back the economics challenge series. In 2018, I previously had a six-week challenge series on Steem. I wanted to run this challenge series every year but the price of Steem kept falling and my followers started disappearing. I felt running a challenge series would be too costly with very little return. The creation of Hive, the bull-run, and my accumulation of more Hive Power facilitated the return of this challenge series. For the 2021 challenge series, I had seven instead of six challenges. Seven goes better with my SpectrumEcons theme (seven colours of the rainbow).

The series was a little different from the previous one. The first series required participants to respond with full posts. This series only required responses in the comments section. The first series had fixed prizes. For this series, the number of participants determined the value of the prize (it was possible that 60 Hive could have been given away in each challenge). This series also had an overall winner who was determined by how he or she performed in the seven challenges. To learn more about the challenge series, you should read the following post.

Spectrumecons Seven-Week Challenge (Coming Soon)

Plans for 2022

I have learnt over the years that it is very difficult to make a plan and stick to it entirely. This is not necessarily a bad thing. We live in a world that is constantly changing where new challenges and opportunities can spring up at any time. It is important to remain flexible and be able to adapt to whatever comes our way. However, it is still useful to have some sort of plan. It can give us direction and focus. It can help us prioritise events and activities. In terms of my Hive content, below are a few of the areas I want to focus on in 2022.

• Freedom Based Economics
• Build the economics community
• Rediscover Hive
• More videos
• Applied Economics
• Another Challenge Series
• More Contests
• Update Channel and Community

Making videos, writing on applied economics themes, running the challenge series as well as the regular monthly contests is a continuation of content from 2021. In addition, to these areas I want to focus on Freedom Based Economics. During times when Government and other forms of authority are desperately trying to gain more power, it is important to remember the importance and value of freedom. For example:

• Enjoying our own freedom.
• Using are freedom to express ourselves.
• Understanding and appreciating others right to be free.
• Unlocking our own potential and creativity through freedom of exploration and learning.
• Freedom to compete and cooperate to attain meaningful achievements.

I also want to rediscover Hive. At one time, I was very familiar with Hive, its DApps, tribes, communities, tokens, DAO, etc. Over the past year, I have paid less attention to developments on the blockchain. A lot has happened and is happening; I want to be able to get back up to speed with most of the important developments over the past year. This will help me understand the blockchain better and I will be better able to share this information with other people. There is a possibility I could create another short Udemy course about Hive. To do so, I need to be confident that I understand what is happening on the blockchain and the value that it offers to different people.

Over the past year, I have neglected my Economics Community. I want to change that this year by promoting more content in the community. I think Hive is ideal for sharing economics content. Economics supported by the mainstream is not the only economics that is relevant. Media reports economics as if all economists have reached consensus on various issues, which is seldom true. Opinions that do not support or disagree with the main narrative are buried or censored. Hive enables economists or people who have valid views relating to economics to have a voice without fear of censorship. My Economics Community should be able to offer that type of support and service.

Finally, I believe it is time to update my profile, channel, and community. I think it is good to change the look of a page, avatar, or signature every couple of years. I will most likely dig into my bag of PNGs to come up with a new look. I may even create a few GIFs; they can be fun and reveal more than just a single picture. I will likely do this gradually over time. So keep a look out for something new.

In 2021, I wrote quite a few long posts about Covid-19. I do not plan to write as many posts on Covid-19, as the pandemic theme is close to running its course. The emergence of the Omicron variant has significantly reduced the threat of Covid-19. This is apparent from the rising number of cases without any noticeable increase in deaths (Worldometer as of 06/01/2022). The Government attempting to continue to fool the people about the seriousness of Covid-19 beyond this point to gain even more power makes little sense. However, Governments are likely to maintain many of the powers they have awarded themselves and we can expect them to try to expand them using the next “crisis”. Sadly, doing some of the things we love such as going for an overseas holiday/adventure will still be difficult. I will be writing about the next "crisis" if it occurs in 2022.

Wishing Everyone an Exciting New Year

That wraps up my brief ‘Goodbye 2021 and Hello 2022’ series. I hope everyone has an exciting next 12 months. I feel 2022 could be a big year for many. The crypto bull-run appears to be still on and does not look close to FOMOing out yet. Hive is going from strength to strength with many exciting developments as well as great growth in adoption (Big thanks to Splinterlands). The world is waking up a faster pace. People are turning against the system and the establishment. This could lead to difficult and tumultuous times but it will be better than the path to dystopia.

---

More posts

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These 'Collection of Works' posts have been updated to contain links to the Hive versions of my posts.

My CBA Udemy Course

The course contains over 10 hours of video, over 60 downloadable resources, over 40 multiple-choice questions, 2 sample case studies, 1 practice CBA, life time access and a certificate on completion. The course is priced at the Tier 1 price of £20. I believe it is frequently available at half-price.

Future of Social Media