Hi there!
This is my first post on Substack. I'm writing about how we tiny, inadequate, unknown humans will have a supermassive effect on the planet we live on and love on.
Photo: Agus Prianto @agusprianto via Unsplash
I won't rehash the hundreds of ways we humans are slowly and quickly killing the planet we live on. My writings are intended to inspire hope and action. None of us is powerless. Though many of us are convinced we have so little influence, the guage may as well read zero.
A little bit multiplied by many, over time will produce any result we can imagine.
Today I'll share how a few people using the tools of capitalism will transform every part of our daily lives. We can achieve energy independence, address food scarcity, education bottlenecks, and transportation challenges, among others.
It's a Big Idea. More than a person can absorb in a single sitting. For today I'll share just the outline.
My post-secondary education was courtesy of the US Navy, where I learned how to operate a nuclear reactor. On that note I'm going to borrow a metaphor from nuclear physics: the hydrogen bomb.
An H-bomb has three stages: the first, in which high explosives drive together two or more chunks of a fissionable metal, either highly enriched uranium or plutonium. When the material comes together it starts a chain reaction which feeds on itself; a positive feedback loop. If we stopped there, we'd have a nuclear (fission) bomb.
An H-bomb is simply a fission bomb surrounded by hydrogen. The initial fission reaction creates the ultra-high temperatures and pressures required for fusion. Because much, much more energy is released when hydrogen becomes helium as compared to breaking apart plutonium, the resulting blast is many times larger than the plutonium reacting alone.
Three stages; each of them orders of magnitude larger than the previous stage.
By now you may be wondering what in the world this has to do with water scarcity and income inequality. The answer is, we're shooting for fusion in the economic sense.
The word DAO stands for “Distributed Autonomous Organization.” You can think of it as a company with nobody in charge. Not all DAO's operate this way, but the one I'm involved in does: We're all in charge — in equal amounts. Every person who takes the time to vote has a say. Your vote as a customer has as much weight as a vote from one of the employees, shareholders or investors. Or as much as the CEO if it had one.
This DAO, the one I'm describing, is designed to provide every person on the planet with a Basic Minimum Income.
Along the way we'll also house the homeless, provide health care for all, de-carbonize our electric grid and fix what's wrong with social media.
We live in a very ill society. There's no shortage of problems to solve. What we need is a way to concentrate our energies, our best ideas, and our infinite human potential on the projects which solve the multiple challenges we all face.
Enter, the DAO.
The first stage of the DAO resembles a company which provides home services. Think Uber for plumbers, electricians, roofers, and appliance repair.
Let's imagine one day your furnace quits working and needs repair. You call an 800- number and get connected to Susan, a woman who works from home and lives in your city. Susan has a directory of qualified HVAC technicians and companies in your area, with their minimum charges, years in business, and cost estimates for your situation. After you choose your service provider, Susan calls the company to schedule your appointment.
A technician arrives at your home, provides an estimate, makes the repair and bills the DAO. Susan pays the repair company and bills the homeowner, adding a fixed fee of $20-$30 per repair. Susan’s pay comes from that fixed fee amount, along with the DAO's bookkeeping and tax requirements.
If you ever need to call back, your call is automatically forwarded to Susan’s phone. Does the driveway need repair? Time for a new roof? Kitchen sink leaking? Susan is your full-time project coordinator for all your home maintenance needs.
The profit from Susan's work is re-invested into the DAO.
The network of customers, service providers and “Susans” can grow as quickly as more people hear about it. It’s designed to be infinitely scalable. Nationwide within weeks. International within months.
The second stage is designed to disrupt industries. If homeowners and landlords had ever been asked, “How many years would you like your next refrigerator or washing machine to be in service?” the answer would certainly be, “Longer than they do now.”
Currently, home appliances live approximately 10 years. Three billion households with electricity times seven machines in each (water heater, furnace, washer, dryer, stove, dishwasher, refrigerator) is about 2 billion machines in service today. If we replace 10% of them each year, that's 200 million dead machines each year!
I'll grant you, some of those machines are less efficient than new ones. Another plus, is that manufacturing, selling, and installing new machines keeps a few of us employed.
But it's insane, what we humans are doing to ourselves. We dig up resources, refine the metals, turn them into new machines, transport and install them — all to arrive back at the same place we were last week? How do we get off this hamster wheel?!
Most of us are in the habit of working to pay for a new fridge every 10 years. And we buy a car so we can go to work. Along the way we leave our children with strangers, so we can work to pay for our cars. It's like an insane merry-go-round! Planned Obsolescence robs us of our time, our energy, and our resources. We'd do far less harm by simply giving money to those of us who lost their jobs to automation and other efficiency gains.
The solution: A couple dozen homeowners, amateur inventors and a few engineering professionals is all we need to reimagine our home appliances. What if we designed them to be upgradable, easily repaired, with long-lasting components? They'd be out of style before they quit working, but we can update the look with a snap-on cover similar to a cell phone case.
We'd manufacture the machines people want to own, cut out several middlemen, and save the environment all at the same time. This way, we can minimize the river of dead appliances currently headed for the recycler or landfill.
Just apply the idea, “What would the customer/ end user choose for herself/himself?” to other industries, and you will begin to grasp the breadth and influence of stage two.
Stage three is where things get fun! We (the participants in the DAO) receive the profits of industries we have overhauled, or are in the process of overhauling, and we choose which projects to invest in. We become our own angel investors.
Got an idea to provide Los Angeles with desalinated water in an environmentally sound manner? Let's hear it! We all get a vote, and the projects with the greatest environmental benefits will be funded first.
How would you protect our rain forests? Couple that idea with a way to produce a profit or just break even, and you'll get the funding you need to get started.
Last year we ordinary humans were consumers of content. 2022, The Year of the DAO, we are now the creators of our planet's future.
Let's get started!
Thanks for reading, and thank you for your participation in the DAO.
Joe
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Joe can be reached directly at HappyJoeDharma@gmail.com. Any questions will become a topic for the the next blog post. Your email and personal information will remain private.
This article is cross-posted on Medium.com