PETER Diamandis, the author of the book “Abundance” predicts that all of the basic needs of mankind will become abundant in our lifetime, and that the only hindrance to that is the greed of man.
Although he offers new insights on the conflict between abundance and greed, there is really nothing new about that phenomenon because abundance and greed have always been in conflict with each other, being simply just a reflection of the battle between good and evil.
We need not think deep and look far, because even before, during the lifetime of our fathers and grandfathers, there would have also been an abundance of foods and medicines, except that greed got into the way, and that is why many people are not getting enough to eat, and many people are not getting cured of their sicknesses.
If we are looking for someone or something to blame for so much greed that has caused so much scarcity, our first suspect would be capitalism, because it is capitalism that breeds the giant corporations that are commercializing the supply of basic human needs.
To be fair however, not all capitalists could be blamed, because there are many giant corporations that are truly socially responsible, and many of them are offering products and services that are fairly priced therefore affordable.
To be sure, we should just say that it is only runaway capitalism that should be blamed and not capitalism in general. In the overall analysis, we could say that the corporations that are already practicing fair trade rules could hardly be blamed.
Sad to say, the greed of giant corporations is not the only hindrance towards the abundance of mankind’s basic needs. The slowness or the inaction of governments could also hinder the coming of abundance.
The manifestations of these would surely differ in every country, but suffice it to say that here in the Philippines, the hindrance could be due to the lack of appropriated funds, or the inability of public policy to catch up with the influx of new technologies.
As it actually happens, a government agency could only implement programs and projects up to the extent that their appropriations could finance. Aside from that, they could only devote their resources to their existing approved targets.
Even if government agencies would have available appropriated funds, the strict procurement rules would require them to always bid out what they would buy, and because of that, it would be difficult for them to justify the procurement of new and emerging technologies.
That is perhaps the reason why there is always a wide technology gap in the government, between what is available in the market, and what they are able to procure. Meanwhile, there are many online and mobile based solutions to problems that the government agencies could avail of by way of fee based, web based and cloud based subscription services. (To be continued/PN)
