One of the things you might notice today is that ideas or inventions that seem brilliant, but nothing ever happens with them. You hear about something, you think I’d use that, that would make my life easier, that would solve this problem, but then nothing happens.
And what you have to understand is that for anything to be produced at scale, to be manufactured and sold, it has to be considered commercial, not useful, not brilliant, commercial.
Can we sell it? That is how things work.
You can only make a product that people are willing to fund, and those willing to fund want to get rich or want to protect their riches.
The system now functions as a power filter, those with power, those with interests that might be threatened by your idea, your invention, or may just not like it on ideological grounds, can not only withhold funding, but make sure you never get funding.
Yes, there are the various funding sites, but that requires another sort of privilege to know how to navigate that system well. And this is the problem, what if your skills, your talent, your idea, is what you specialise in? What if you have a new idea for less toxic plastics, an organic battery, better energy storage, where do you go, what do you do?
Do you think the Billionaire mining and oil executives would appreciate competition that might eradicate their business. Do you think someone who got rich by exploiting workers, currying favour with governments, avoiding environmental regulations, would be happy to see someone come up with something that is not only not toxic, but would eradicate their business, and threaten their position of power.
That definitely won’t feel commercial to them.
Commerce is the trade of products and services, but when you have the power to restrict that, control that, move entire markets, is that really what we had in mind when you started trading goods with each other, or is that more like having Kings and Queens, and the rest of us are just their mere subjects?
Leilani Cowern - Speech at Funding Inequality Conference