What If?

I have a confession to make. I do not believe in the ability of government or any leading organisation, be that media, private corporations, humanitarian or charity groups will ever unlock the potential we have built up in society to increase the living standard of the vast majority of the population on earth.

We are wealthier and more secure now than we have ever been. Yet we tolerate suffering and pain even in our own communities. I don’t believe in making anyone ‘lose their minds,’ I’m not going to ‘call anyone out’ or ‘own’ anybody. If that actually made a difference YouTube would be the undisputed king of the world. Calling out individuals or organisations for actions while not bad in itself doesn’t account for the good that might have been achieved as well. Whatever your opinion of Facebook the company has done a lot for connecting the world. Just because that didn’t result in immediate utopian lifestyles for everyone doesn’t outweigh the good in those actions.

I know that I am not smarter than anyone, the coolest projects I have been involved in always came from a collective. The only way to make something that has a chance of survival is through group effort. Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey are just names that given time will go the way of Andrew Carnegie and George Westinghouse. I don’t know who invented capitalism and I’m guessing it wasn’t just one person. But capitalism won’t be forgotten for a lot longer than any of those people. This is not a new idea, together we are stronger than apart. Can I play an uncredited part in developing an alternative system?

Could you play an uncredited part in developing this system?

To do so I believe that we need a system that is tolerant. So tolerant it has to be able to deal with bad actors. It is known that capitalism is not a perfect system, but it has its own internal forces that maintain a tension between people trying to game it and those trying to play fair. This is my first attempt at building a system. I’m sure it’ll be a shit attempt, but with a little luck and hopefully help from others it can become greater, or it can develop in a direction that builds towards something that can allow the greatness of others to shine.

And I’ve chosen to address poverty. Not in the way that a foundation will ‘work to eradicate poverty.’ I’m looking at you Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I mean in the way that the United Nations have attempted to define it as it’s number one Sustainable Development Goal. Lets define it, lets see what steps can be taken and lets take one or two of those steps. I look at universal basic income and I see something that has the potential to be one of these first steps.

So here is my idea, selling t-shirts. It’s dumb, I know that. And it’s not really about selling junk nobody needs to make profit for someone who most likely doesn’t deserve it. I am attempting to automate the processes that go into a simple t-shirt business, from inspiration, to concept to design, to manufacturing, to sales, marketing and logistics. I’ll build in returns and customer service as well. The experiment is to see if it is possible to completely automate an entire business. It’s just a test. A goof really. Because if it was possible that a completely automated business was possible (like really possible, not like those YouTube channels talk about  making passive income on the side scams) if it was actually possible you get to start asking yourself bigger questions.

For instance, you might ask the question, what other businesses could be completely automated? Could we automate the generation of a business idea from concept to fully functioning business without human involvement? If that was possible what does it look like? Could you have automated businesses working together to generate profit? Heck, just because people generate profit as the main goal of our businesses what would it look like if that wasn’t the main goal? What if the main goal was something akin to reducing unemployment in a geography? Reducing crime? Building better work life balance in a region or state?

Could we build the algorithms and open source them to give communities the ability to make and generate collective social wealth? A self funded universal basic income if you will. Could we work on addressing poverty on a large scale by side stepping government or charity?

There are a lot of questions there and they are all based on huge what if statements. But that’s why I’m attempting to build a t-shirt company. It’s just the first what if in a long line of them. This is what I want my peaceful shock and awe moment to be. If it fails I gave it a go. I made an attempt. And I’m sure with the help of others my next attempt will be better than this one.