Real creative solutions are worldwide and invoke fundamental change in the way the whole modern society deals with the world. Creative solutions come from big ideas that cause universal change. In Critical Path Buckminster Fuller’s ideas were so big and will cause so much change, the world hasn’t been ready, yet, to incorporate them into practice.
He knew the world was heading for a crisis. He knew that his ideas would be more welcome the closer to the crisis we got. He said it takes fifty years for ideas to germinate from their inception. He was sure someday the world will change.
Buckminster Fuller said, with computers we are able to take into account everyone’s needs all over the world. Before the invention of computers, it would have been impossible.
Likewise, all of the world’s resources, assets, and income can be accounted for with computers, and distributed to supply all of the people of the world's needs.
The way it is now, he says, with every organization, company, state, and nation using their strength to get as much for their constituents as they can, whether they need it or not, is a big waste pushing the world deeper into chaos.
In Small is Beautiful E.F.Schumacher address' the two economies in the world that parallel each other. The main economy is the world economy with its high technology. Its workforce is educated and trained to perform their tasks. Then there is the sub economy of the poor in pockets of every nation and every region of the world.
This economy runs on 18th century technology and is left behind by the main economy. The people in this economy don’t drive automobiles. Many don’t have modern conveniences like electricity, running water, indoor toilets, or indoor heating. They often barter or trade in their day to day survival.
When the people in the main economy try to help the people in the sub economies break their cycle of poverty, they come up with strategies to try and bring them into the main economy. Schumacher says that is a mistake. We would do better by recognizing that they have a sub economy and strengthen it.
When planning foreign aid for developing countries, instead of bringing in heavy equipment to build roads, we should bring shovels and utilize the local manpower, giving the poor, uneducated people in the low tech, sub economy an income. Better yet ship in supplies to make shovels and put even more people to work manufacturing shovels.
In searching for creative solutions in today’s world we need to incorporate some of the ideas of these great thinkers. In every city in the world there is an economically depressed area where people live in these sub economies.
People of conscious could take an area like South Central Los Angeles, or East St. Louis, or Liberty City and Overtown in the Miami area or the slums in Sao Paulo, Brazil and canvass the area. They could get everybody listed on computer data bases, who are living in sub standard conditions.
Also list the people of conscious in the main economy, who want to donate, and match them with people in the sub economies. The donors could adopt a family and donate $26,000.00 as a yearly income, and help them find a way to make an income.
All the money could be deposited in a bank built in the target area, and owned and operated by citizens in the sub economy. The funds could be dispensed to the families in a weekly income of $500.00.
The $26,000.00 donated to each family could be used to capitalize the bank. The bank could then loan money to the residents of the target area to build businesses that the residents can own and operate.
They could start grocery stores, clothes stores, restaurants, and appliance stores selling televisions, radios, computers, refrigerators etc. Schumacher says even the automobile could be amnufactured and oil refined into gas on a small scale. Businesses could be started to manufacture and sell automobiles.
Schumacher says people in the substandard economies can't compete in the high tech economy. So they sit idle in poverty. He says before they invented machines people made things by hand.
He says if we let the poverty areas have a closed economy, a economy within an economy, people could sell to each other with a captive market. They wouldn't have to compete in the world market.
In all the businesses in the target area the products sold will not be bought from the main economy, but manufactured by citizens in the sub economy by hand with hand tools.
Food could be grown in home or community greenhouses and packaged to sell in the local grocery market. Clothes, TV’s, computers, refrigerators etc., all could be manufactured by hand and retailed by local people out of their own homes..
Everyone could buy their own home in the target area with the $500.00 a week income, and pay local carpenters, plumbers, and electricians from the target area to refurbish them. The people in the target area could agree to buy only from the local sub economy.
After one year the community would be self sustaining and never need another infusion of money from the outside. This could be done in city after city all over the world.
The ball is in the court of the haves, and the have mores, to help the have nots to change the world.
