[liberationtech] investing in liberation tech

[hellekin]

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On 11/10/2014 02:12 PM, Jesse Krembs wrote:
> I believe there is a distinct motivational conflict of interest for
> Angel/VC folks, and liberation tech related ideas. 
> VC want a 100 mill return, lib-techers don't care, they want to change
> the world. 
> 
> This isn't to say such things don't exist to certain degree, but either
> party ends of making some serious core compromises to achieve closure..
>
*** Indeed, there's an inherent conflict of interest.  But free
software, free hardware, and liberation technologies suffer a systematic
lack of resources.  If the only alternative to capital investment is
either to rely on crowdfunding (i.e. pre-sales) or on DARPA/DoD/NSA/CIA
funding, or EU funding, we cannot go much further: we're working with
blood money.

You're not alone thinking about how to turn existing financial resources
into community-empowering investments.  There's a complete misalignment
of values between profit-making ventures (supposed to be evil) and
care-taking endeavors (supposed to be non-profitable).  This needs to
change, one way or another, because the profit motive is not going to
take us off course of smashing against the solid wall of reality:
infinite growth fueled by quantum jumps in technological progress won't
prevent "progress" and "growth" from self-destroying our species.  In
science, when the theory do not match the experimental results, you
change the theory, you don't insist on reproducing the same failing
experiments over and over.  But in business, apparent success (short
term, revenue intensive market approval) seldom comes with actual
sustainability (long term, reproducible and renewable,
community-empowering, ecosystem-rich approval).

So if investors actually care for their children's children, and other
people's children, and the success of humanity on Earth as a species,
they will realize that there's no exit strategy to this planet except
death.  Is growing capital now profitable?  Yes.  Is it profitable in
the long run?  Probably not.  Is care-taking profitable?  No.  Can we
make it profitable?  That is the question.

==
hk
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