I spent this past week in Quebec City. I was there for GridSecCon 2023, the electricity sector’s annual security conference, where I met a lot of old friends and made a few new ones.
One of the keynote addresses really resonated with me. Francis Bradley, the President and CEO of Electricity Canada (and a good friend for nearly 20 years) spoke about challenges we face today and in the future. He identified three. The first was identity politics, and the second was climate change.
The third issue really stood out for me. He said, “The scarcity of affordable options for basic needs, the challenges of urbanization and supply chain crises will set the economic agenda.” That first phrase, “The scarcity of affordable options for basic needs” is the most elegant description of modern poverty I’ve ever seen.
I used to work in an offshore drilling company in Houston called Atwood Oceanics. My boss was Jim Gillenwater, an ex-Vietnam War medic who spent the rest of his career on or around offshore drilling rigs. Every time someone did something that got them fired, (or in the language of the industry, ‘run off’ or ‘sent to the house’) he would say “some people just don’t like prosperity.”
So, I had to put together opening remarks for a panel I was facilitating on threats to the future grid, and I (clumsily) tried to weave these themes together. The North American electric grid is how we distribute and deliver prosperity today, through safe drinking water and food, entertainment, communication, transportation, etc. (In other words, critical infrastructure) A lot of people can’t participate in this prosperity, though, but they can see others enjoying it. It must be a terrible thing to tell your children that they must do without those things that their friends, and the rest of the world they see in social media, treat so casually. Prosperity must be shared, for all the good reasons: it’s the right thing to do, it’s the human thing to do, it reduces political conflicts that threaten us all, and it increases public safety. We need to find ways to increase prosperity for all. Fortunately, tech billionaires have found a way.
If you want to test your blood pressure medication, read ‘How Billionaire Philanthropy has turned selfish’ in Axios. The link is here: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/21/philanthropy-selfish-billionaires The argument is that some tech billionaires think they are philanthropists simply by doing the work that they do to make themselves billionaires, making them sort of like a self-licking ice cream cone for public good. The more we support tax and regulatory structures that created and support them, the better off we, and the future, will be. It’s a great read, and it got me out of bed this morning. I also recommend you click on the link in the article that refers to ‘the trolley problem.’ (Oh hell, here it is anyway: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/11/the-trolley-problem-will-tell-you-nothing-useful-about-morality)
Thank you for reading this.