The Bottleneck That Is Capitalism

On the anniversary of heading back to Cairo

The Bottleneck that is Capitalism - YouTube

From 2019:

I was reflecting last night on the past couple weeks of my travel to Egypt for the conscious tech summit and now here I am in Cairo. Something struck me last night that I wanted to share with the world.

I want to be clear that I'm not specifically talking about the event itself or the people there or the amazing people who organized it or any specific individuals. I'm talking on a social commentary leve;, with a little bit of dark comedy because sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh really.

So, I'm at this Summit where there is something called a shark zone for entrepreneurs. People are pitching their apps, inventions and innovations, looking for investment and investment advice.

There's this guy who pitched, he's got this amazing innovation, and he basically puts a slide up on the wall that says there's 30 million people on the planet who don't have a hand. They are literally missing a hand for one reason or another, whether by accident or a birth defect or other circumstances.

30 million people!

Then he puts his slides up about starting a company that is 3d printing prosthetic hands that work with the muscles and then use VR to get people to learn how to use their nervous system and to move the fingers.

So he starts doing his normal pitch sharing about how most people can't afford to get prosthetics and a new hand like this, and the cost would normally be a hundred thousand dollars when all is said and done. He then shares that his model and his 3d printing and the technology etc has gotten this price down to one thousand dollars per hand at retail cost!!

I'm looking at this slide and I'm thinking 30 million hands, then $1,000 per hand to print them, I think that's 30 billion dollars in total… so technically speaking, 30 billion dollars would give a hand to everybody on the planet right now who doesn't have a hand!

I don't think we need to discuss how amazing that is, how beautiful, and how wonderful… and how we really would want to see that happen under any conditions.

So here I am at this event and he's talking about this and I'm thinking…. what's the response to this amazing innovation? What's the response to this guy's drive to give people hands? And, rather than everybody in this place coming together and thinking, “wow, how do we find thirty billion dollars so we can just create 30 million hands and solve this problem that's on the planet right now,” that's all it is thirty billion dollars. Now there's plenty of money on the planet and 30 Billion to wipe this niche suffering out… that's actually a drop in the bucket for the planet.

I'm sitting there thinking okay let's rally around this guy, what is the solution, what can everybody at this amazing event do to help thirty million people get a new hand? …. and what happens is…. people start competing for funding, this guy's getting asked questions like, “what's your projection, you know, what's your roadmap, how many clients do you have, how are you going to do this, how will you can do that,” and I am thinking, literally, that thirty million people could have hands for thirty billion dollars.

And I can’t stop thinking about it….

…. and we have people asking questions about business plans, roadmaps and projections, and profit, and how much money are they going to make if they help this guy how people get hands.

How ludicrous is that?

So this is the world I find myself in the last few weeks of Nov 2019.

The Summit… I was really amazed, I mean there it was, a conscious tech summit, and honestly I had made some assumptions thinking a lot of the tech was going to be sort of blockchain related or similar to the space that I'm in with sociotechnologies and it turned out that there was a whole range of humanitarian type of innovations and people there.

This guy helping people with 3d printed hands, there were people that were turning organic waste into new food for livestock, there were people who recycle cooking oil here in Cairo, there were people who do a circular economy type of innovation with the shells on shrimp and turn that into a new substance which is organic and can be used in different ways. This event was actually quite lovely in that way… the spirit of people there and what they were working on and trying to create and everyone who is networking and then….

…. you have the bottleneck of capitalism….

…. the very fact that we were sitting there asking someone who has an innovation that can provide hands for the handless about his business model hoping he might win a competition to get some funding to provide the world with hands …. and that's where I find myself.

I don't know if it's me creating bridges, I don't know if I'm not yet 100% in my own alignment, I don't know if I should make anything of it…. I just know that it was ludicrous looking back a week later thinking about this guy's presentation and all these people and I know there's a lot of people around the world that need different things and have different diseases or hardships so not discounting any of that. I'm just thinking about my experience and the absurdity of our current planet and really what excites me which is going way way way beyond triple bottom lines and businesses and investment like that.

It was reaffirming why I do what I do, and why I live the way I live, and why I have the aspirations that I do. It's quite profound actually, being in that space watching us all, watching people compete for money and funding to do things that we all really need being done, and I'm sure I'm gonna be learning some more lessons around that for quite a while but totally inspired to keep on going with what I'm interested in doing and and really going to another whole next level when it comes to innovation on this planet and living co-creation and cooperation and really establishing a different reality, as Rumi said:

Out beyond the field of right and wrong, out beyond the field of business plans and investments, that's where I'll be and I'll meet you all there.

Much love and thanks for listening