the Collective Age

We are entering the Collective Age. Connections are circumventing traditional systems. An age of horizontal eco systems that disrupt the top down Industrial era. An age we’re we will not be governed for long. An age where the owners of the factors of production are desperate for our input and use of these idle resources. An age where we don’t vote and hope, rather where we collaborate and create. An age where every garage will become a factory – via innovations like 3D printing and sharing designs of stuff on-line. An age where National Government data is being handed back to us so we can mash it up and create software applications to run our cities and countries better than they ever could. An era were we can use digital communications to organise ourselves in real time…. and change our landscape before the bureaucrats have time to realise what has happened.

Technology is facilitating emergence, we are finally becoming one organism that serves the collective.

In fact, this hasn’t happened yet. And it may not happen if we let it pass us by – the question for entrepreneurs is how will we embrace this opportunity for revolution to create the actual world we want to live in?

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My family is fine, how is yours?

I was interested in reading an article in this weekends Australia Financial Review which was titled ‘What worries the rich?’ – Firstly, who cares? Not me. Not because they are rich, just that it is an irrelevant question. We all have worries, and the worries of a particular demographic are no more important than any other demographic. However, in reading one particular persons comments I was astounded at the irony.

The rich person in question was Bruce Mathieson, who has a net wealth of over $1 billion. He said:

“I’d hate to think that I had a lot of money  but my family and everyone around me were unhappy. That would be an absolute disaster.”

For anyone who doesn’t know, Bruce made the majority of his wealth via Poker Machines. Here is a guy who “sells hope, and provides misery” – claiming he’d hate to make anyone unhappy. Is he serious?

Poker machines provide nothing good to society. The only thing that poker machines are good at, is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. And governments falsely believe the tax revenue outweighs the cost of the social ills they create.

You might think this is slightly off topic for startup blog. But for me it sent me a clear message about what business is all about. Creating value for all those who participate in the value chain – not one sided value.  If the cost of being wealthy, was creating heart ache for people, I’d rather be poor. In addition, I like to think we are entering an age where wealth creation is more often a result of creating value for society, not by tricking people.

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