Opinion Piece and Near Future Predictions

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Here we are just a few days into the New Year and I'm catching up this morning on all of the latest news from around the world and meditating on what it might mean for our future. I don't get my news from the television or mainstream established sources like CNN or Fox, at least not primarily or directly. I tend to scan Twitter, YouTube, Steemit and other alternative sources to try and find out what is really happening in the world. I don't just view the sites or listen to the people who are saying what I want to hear either, I try to get a variety of opinions and I want to know what the people who hold contrarian beliefs and views are saying and why. I want to know what they base their ideas on and how they draw their conclusions.

So in this blog, I'm going to base my opinions on the aggregate of the things that I have been reading or listening to from these various sources, and I'm going to try and put it all together for a big picture view of what I'm expecting in the next few days, weeks, months and years. I also want to let you know that my worldview is mostly Constitutional, Free-Market, Christian, Conservative with strong Libertarian leanings, I draw a line over moral issues that many pure libertarians don't. This will be an experiment to see how well I'm seeing future trends and gauge how well these perceptions are received. It is scary to write down what I'm thinking about our future and what might transpire in the days ahead because I'm more apt to make a complete fool out of myself than not. On the other hand, I have been doing this for myself for a long time and although my timing is not always correct because there is always new data being interjected that changes the dynamics, the general trends, and direction of events do frequently happen just as I predicted they would.

News

• The Natural World is going through a major cyclic change and we are going to hear a lot of interesting and sometimes scary news about Space Weather and in how the sun cycles affect life on earth. There will be new understandings of how the universe works and the discovery of new objects that will affect our solar system. The number and intensity of earthquakes will continue to rise and volcanic activity will increase worldwide. Another tsunami event can be expected soon that will destroy a major tourist destination. The Antartic will continue to thaw and a past civilization will be revealed beneath the ice, while the ice cap will grow in the Arctic and new glaciers will form.
• The polarization of ideologies in the West will culminate in violent demonstrations and riots. Some of these will end with harsh crackdowns on freedoms and liberty as we watch cities burn and the innocent victimized.
• There will be major scandals and political upheavals as massive crimes against humanity and Government corruption are revealed. President Trump will use this time to consolidate his power and eliminate his enemies using many of the new laws that were enacted post 9-11. Nationalistic sentiment will run high as fed up citizens that feel disenfranchised and betrayed because of the past corruption will demand "America First" and will chant "Make America Great Again."
• The threat of war will loom ever larger and an event in a seemingly obscure location that is out of the public eye could ignite the fuse that leads to a short but very deadly engagement over trade routes and the current world financial status quo. I look for something to happen in South or Central America first, or perhaps one of the smaller African Nations. If it does begin in N. Korea or Iran as many are expecting, then I look for those Countries, who are currently nervous and sitting on a hair trigger, to act suddenly in a massive first strike over some seemingly minor incident or provocation. It is the use it or lose it mentality of the leaders of those Countries that I fear, because if they ever see war and their own demise as inevitable, then I believe that they may act irrationally.
• Financially I believe that mass adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrencies is already underway, but is yet in the early stages. This technology will revolutionize everything from how Governments and Corporations operate, to how people around the world interact with one another. There will be a very solid wall in the future between things that are and need to be private, confidential and secret, and the things that should be and need to be public and open. Privacy will continue to become a big issue and blockchain technology will solve this and many other huge information transfer problems. The blockchain technology will also make it virtually impossible to "Cook the Books" or hide nefarious transactions. This will lead to a massive black market where criminals and dissenters will live and operate off of the blockchain.
• Education will begin to change and large Universities will begin to be affected by the ongoing economic changes and worldview. The price of higher education has peaked out and the benefits versus cost will soon be judged to be out of proportion as recent graduates are no longer able to make the payments on their student loans. This will cause a collapse of the current system and over the next few years, education will merge blockchain and virtual reality technologies to create virtual Universities online.
• There will be a similar failure of the current medical and insurance systems as bloated and out of proportion medical expenses will begin to overwhelm the ability of insurers, including Government programs to pay. The blockchain technology will make the current medical record keeping process of health providers and the current insurance provider system obsolete. In the future citizens on the blockchain will pay into a crypto fund, and they will have the opportunity to shop for the best medical care and pricing online. The price of their treatment will be taken directly out of their "Rainy Day" Insurance crypto fund immediately after successful treatment has been rendered and their required contribution to that fund will go up or down accordingly. In this new system, both the reputation of the service provider and the user can be permanently recorded giving each a huge incentive to treat each other with dignity and respect. This model will repeat itself through most types of service providers.
• Governments will begin to transition over to the blockchain, more and more Government services and transactions will be performed using blockchain technology and recorded historically on a distributed network. Both the people of the world and the Governments themselves will see the need to end corruption and illegal activities using transparent financial disclosures and by insuring property rights and ownership that is verified and permanently recorded on a blockchain ledger. Future elections will be transacted securely on the blockchain through accurate, private, anonymous votes that are verified to be legitimate by the use of private voting keys.
• Blockchain will provide for Internet 3.0 and many of the problems with the existing Internet will disappear overnight. Malware and Spyware will largely be a thing of the past and all advertising will be specifically targeted and desired by Internet users. In fact, most sales will shift to the Internet and will come through these ads. Users will receive huge benefits from looking at ads from their favorite suppliers and shoppers can quickly find the best deals on the products that they need. Internet access will become free to users and almost everyone will have the same high-speed access. Transmission providers will be paid by the sites that users visit, and both content providers and users will pay each other appropriately and instantly as they interact online and provide a benefit to one another.
• Steem grows exponentially as Smart Media Tokens begin to pop up everywhere, some of these will fail and others will be hugely successful, potentially surpassing even Steemit itself. Steemit will begin to separate into communities of like-minded members which will morph into channels of super high profile content providers that members can interact with. Many long-time Steemit users will find their bandwidth to be worth more than the content that they provide and they will lease it out for a handsome income. In the end, a member will be able to switch between communities like changing channels to view and interact with their favorite personalities and content providers like we currently change television channels. The potential exists for this future to be swallowed up and absorbed by EOS, which will be able to provide the same function on a larger platform that may be protected by better legal benefits for content creators. If this turns out to be the case then big name content providers will be on EOS and Steem will become a distant cousin. Either way, I see bright futures for both platforms and a kinship between them.
• By the end of this year, many current blockchains and ICO's will have disappeared or will be failing to receive adoption. There will be some big winners and some epic failures with large fortunes being made and lost in the blink of an eye. This process will continue until everything stabilizes into a completely new world paradigm.

Well, there you have it for good or for bad. I have stuck my neck out there and committed to permanently logging these predictions and insights on the Steem blockchain to either one day be revered as near psychic, or ridiculed with great scorn. If nothing else I hope that you found these ideas to be entertaining or at least interesting. I would also like to say that it is my great hope and desire that each of my readers has a blessed and prosperous future ahead of them!

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