This page contains short ideas, separated by the headlines.
Revision of the patent laws
It is not unreasonable that the inventor of a new product can take out a patent for a time in order to reap a benefit of that product. It should not be possible for a new product to be brought forth, the inventor taking out a patent and then some big corporation buying up the patent, burying it in a drawer somewhere so that a new technology that could compete with their existing business is squashed at the outset.
Can you really say that the person who invented a new product has ownership of it? Does there not come a point where one has to say that there are certain products, certain forms of technology, that are so important for the good of the all, that we cannot allow one person or one corporation to control the use of that technology? Imagine that in some distant past a person had taken out a patent on the wheel. You all had to pay a fee to some monstrous corporation for the fact that you have wheels on your cars.
There are certain forms of technology that are given to humankind for the benefit of all. Where do new inventions and technology actually come from? Well, they do not come out of the blue, nor do they come out of the mind of one person. They come from a realm of higher awareness. The people who supposedly invent something are simply the recipients. They are not inventing, they are tuning in so that they can receive what is already there in the higher awareness as a fully developed idea. The person who can tune in and bring forth a new invention deserves to be rewarded, but the invention should be seen as a gift to all people, and it should be used for the good of the all.
As just one example of this, is it reasonable that a private corporation – controlled by a very small group of people – can have virtually total control over the software that runs 90 percent of the world’s computers? Does there not come a point where one has to say that computers have become too important for the world at large to allow greed and profit to drive development? We cannot allow greed and profit to enable a corporation to control the use of software, the use of computers, to the point of squashing innovation that could threaten their unique position.
The computer industry is relatively young, and therefore society has been somewhat taken aback by its emergence. Nevertheless, it is never too late to step back and rethink everything. There is a need to rethink so that either society gives Microsoft an ultimatum of changing its control and ownership of the software, or society decides to create a publicly owned, completely transparent entity that will develop new software that can run on all computers.
If we want to avoid computers being used to control every aspect of our lives, then we, the people, have to claim ownership of computer technology. This means that we have to demand the greatest possible degree of transparency in every aspect of the development of the crucial software that literally makes the world run.
From aggressive businesses to creative businesses
Gradually there can be a shift where you begin to realize that the old-fashioned capitalist model of businesses has become completely and utterly obsolete. We are all beings who have the potential to expand our awareness and grow, all of a sudden there will be this shift. Business will shift away from the current capitalistic model where it is the more aggressive businesses that survive and thrive, where businesses are seeking to out-compete each other, they are seeking to destroy the competition, they are seeking to gain a monopoly.
Instead, there will be a shift and it will be demonstrated, as it is to some degree already, that those businesses who have the greatest creativity will prosper because they are the ones who will come up with the new ideas. They are the ones who will invent, or rather be the instrument for receiving, entire new industries that the old-fashioned capitalists could not even envision or could not take seriously.
There is a large American company, called Xerox. They had a small research branch that were given some freedom of creativity, and in the infancy of the computer age they had invented the computer mouse. The executives of Xerox were presented this little gadget and they were saying: “Do you seriously expect Xerox to promote a device called a mouse?” They completely rejected the technology, which was then discovered by the founder of Apple computer who saw the potential and all of a sudden an entirely new industry was developed that the old-fashioned capitalists could not even fathom. Still, there are some of these die-hard capitalists who cannot fathom what happened with the computer industry. They are actually waiting for the point where the computer industry will decline and lose its importance and we will get back to the old ways of doing business.
This is like the dinosaurs that refused to die but eventually became extinct. In the Age of Higher Awareness, in the not too distant future, there will be this shift where at first, many business leaders will go into denial and attempt to continue business as usual. Yet more and more will see, and more and more new leaders will come up who see, that the real key to the future is creativity. Therefore, there will also be this shift where you see that well, what is creativity?
How can we actually expand creativity? How can we promote creativity? Well, is it not logical that when people raise their awareness, their level of consciousness, they free their creative resources, they become more creative? These business leaders will start promoting this in their businesses, they will start demanding that society does this on a large scale. All of a sudden there can be this shift where you shift away from the more aggressive forms of doing business and you shift into a focus on creativity.
This can also cause a shift where people see that there has been a certain cycle in the evolution of many businesses. First, a business starts up in a new field. It is in an expansive phase. There may, in fact, be some room for creativity, but then a business grows to a certain size where now it dominates either the entire industry or it dominates a certain country. Suddenly, there is a shift where the business now becomes more concerned about maintaining its market share, its markets position, rather than expanding, rather than being creative, rather than finding new fields. This actually has caused many businesses to stagnate or go into a decline. Many businesses have even disappeared because they could not re-invent themselves. Instead, some other company came up that was more in tune with the times, more in tune with the new opportunities, more in tune with the needs of the people and suddenly they took over the market. Business leaders will become more aware of how to avoid this and that they do want to avoid this.
A new ownership model for businesses
There will be a shift where business leaders begin to realize that in order to attract truly creative people, truly dedicated people, truly balanced people that have the psychological wholeness to actually carry out their tasks, they need to find a new ownership model. It is not enough that one person or a small group of shareholders own the business and most of the employees work for it for a salary without ever getting a sense of ownership or physical ownership of the business.
As the consciousness is raised and as there comes to be more of an awareness of the power elite, it will be acknowledged that businesses – the businesses that are most creative – cannot allow themselves to be taken over by a financial power elite who are simply shareholders. They go out and when a company becomes big enough or seems to have a growth potential, they buy the shares so that they can make the profit when a company grows. Otherwise, they absolutely do not care about the business or the people working there and if it comes to it, they are willing to sell their shares, sell the business, merge the business into others, have it be taken over by bigger companies or whatever.
These new business leaders will see that what needs to be created is an ownership model where the people who are working in the company are the ones who own the business and are reaping the rewards of its success, instead of having some shareholders that have not contributed to the business but are simply extracting money from it. In the process, they are willing to kill the business if they can make a bigger profit on that in the short term.
There will be various ways of implementing this new ownership model and this will, of course, give the people who work in the business a greater sense of purpose, a greater sense of personal involvement and ownership, a greater sense they are a part of something. They are allowed to be creative and allowed to make a contribution. Again, it will be seen that these businesses are the ones who will prosper and they will begin to take over the economy in many nations.