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business
November 2009 
If you could start any kind of business, what would it be?
Posted on Mar 30th, 2007
by 
Ted
Ted
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for March 30, 2007:
The company I would found would address the fundamental issues of justice for every human being.
It is now technically possible (though not at all easy) to produce a set of machines that can build and maintain a duplicate set of machines, and also produce the basic range of goods and services necessary for an individual to guarantee their own existence. The raw material will be rock, and the power source sunlight.
The basic range of good and services would be build and maintain a house, hydroponic garden, recycling toilet, water storage and purification systems, communication, education, electric vehicle, cooking and cleaning.
Creating this set of machines is the biggest engineering problem yet contemplated by humanity, yet the delivered first set of machines is surprisingly small - probably under 2 Ton in weight. Then that first machine would build a copy in two weeks, then those two produce two more in the next two weeks.
In less than two years we can afford to give one to every person.
This achieves several things. Each person can then meet their own basic needs without relying on anyone else. They can then freely enter into collective endeavours with others as equals, and not with a "work or starve" option.
We would get our money from supplying energy and high speed long distance transport to industry.
With ample cheap energy (from efficient low cost photovoltaics) we can clean up all the industrial pollution created to date, and reprocess all of our "dumps" for the valuable elements they contain.
There would be a 12-15 year lead time, of continued capital input with no return, then it would return the entire investment every year thereafter (and probably several times over each year by about year 6 of operation).
It is now technically possible (though not at all easy) to produce a set of machines that can build and maintain a duplicate set of machines, and also produce the basic range of goods and services necessary for an individual to guarantee their own existence. The raw material will be rock, and the power source sunlight.
The basic range of good and services would be build and maintain a house, hydroponic garden, recycling toilet, water storage and purification systems, communication, education, electric vehicle, cooking and cleaning.
Creating this set of machines is the biggest engineering problem yet contemplated by humanity, yet the delivered first set of machines is surprisingly small - probably under 2 Ton in weight. Then that first machine would build a copy in two weeks, then those two produce two more in the next two weeks.
In less than two years we can afford to give one to every person.
This achieves several things. Each person can then meet their own basic needs without relying on anyone else. They can then freely enter into collective endeavours with others as equals, and not with a "work or starve" option.
We would get our money from supplying energy and high speed long distance transport to industry.
With ample cheap energy (from efficient low cost photovoltaics) we can clean up all the industrial pollution created to date, and reprocess all of our "dumps" for the valuable elements they contain.
There would be a 12-15 year lead time, of continued capital input with no return, then it would return the entire investment every year thereafter (and probably several times over each year by about year 6 of operation).
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