The Health Ranger explains Innovation Decentralization and the Structure of Grassroots, Open-Source Revolutions

Wednesday, February 11, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: innovation, decentralization, human revolutions

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(NaturalNews) As most Natural News readers know by now, we're less than two weeks away from the launch of the Food Rising grow system technology that produces food without electricity, at very little cost, with almost no effort. (www.FoodRising.org)

I've put countless hours into designing the 3D parts for this system, and huge dollars into testing 3D printers to test print designs that the public can reliably reproduce. This has been a resource-intensive project from the start, but it's well worth it, and in this white paper I attempt to explain why.

The conventional wisdom of modern business says that I should patent these innovations, monopolize them and attempt to maximize the financial profit from them while denying others the right to reproduce these ideas. That's how the traditional corporate business system works, after all: maximize profits, prevent competitors from having your technology and even seek to prevent competitors from introducing similar products. You see it all the time in Big Pharma, where billion-dollar pharma companies actually pay generic drug producers millions of dollars to delay the introduction of lower-priced generic drugs.

But that model of greed only denies humanity the innovations really needed to uplift human civilization and create a better future.

That's why I believe inventors and entrepreneurs like myself need to find more opportunities to give back to the world by sharing our innovations openly and freely. While there's nothing wrong with making an honest profit selling honest products in a competitive free market, sometimes we have to take a leap of faith and just give away great ideas for the benefit of humanity.

How giving away great ideas benefits everyone

That's exactly what I'm doing with the Food Rising grow system technology. The 3D printable parts I've painstakingly developed -- some of them have over 100 revisions and prototypes -- will be posted on www.FoodRising.org where anyone can download them for free.

Far from trying to prevent people from copying these ideas, I am urging others to copy, share and improve these ideas, all while encouraging them to also share their own ideas freely with the world. We'll even be posting user-submitted object files on FoodRising.org so that great ideas can be shared with an ever-expanding audience.

At the same time all this is launched, I'll also be launching the DIY videos that show you how to make your own Food Rising grow systems using common items found at any hardware store. These instructional videos are also freely provided with the intention of sharing great innovations with people who can add to those ideas with their own revisions, innovations or add-ons.

Simultaneously, we will offer pre-made grow systems as an option for those who wish to purchase ready-to-go systems. Importantly, the first 250 of these systems we're manufacturing are getting donated out to schools across America so that children can experience the joy of learning how to grow their own food (which also teaches them food self-reliance, seed saving and more).

Beyond those 250 systems, the next batch of systems we manufacture will be offered for sale to those who want them for whatever reason (they don't want to make their own, they don't have the skills to make their own, they're in a hurry to get started, etc). But my first priority is to teach you how to make your own systems at home, using your own tools and know-how.

Real revolutions supersede mere profit motives

Why would I do such a thing? Because this is not about capturing profits. This is about launching a food revolution for the world. Chasing profits for their own sake is a fool's errand, but chasing the dream of inspiring a whole new generation of children to learn how to grow food is, as they say, "priceless."

I don't want to live in a world where every person and corporation is consumed with their own personal gain. That path has already led to far too much suffering in our world, thanks to oil companies polluting our oceans, pharmaceutical companies poisoning our bodies and big agricultural giants poisoning our food with pesticides, herbicides and GMOs. A path of total greed pursued to the exclusion of all else is a path of total destruction. Those individuals who have been blessed with financial abundance through innovation, ethical business operations or even from just inheriting wealth have a special obligation, I believe, to find ways to direct at least a portion of those resources into projects that might inspire a better future for all humankind.

This does not mean, by the way, just writing checks to wealthy non-profits like the American Cancer Society. For many non-profits, all you're doing is funding the large salaries of their executives or supporting their hidden corporate agendas. (My own work at the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center, by the way, is purely volunteer. I don't earn a dime for the effort.) So pick your projects wisely. I believe it's better to take a hands-on approach where you are directing your resources to people or projects in a way that you can monitor for efficiency and integrity.

For example, in our own donations of Food Rising grow systems to schools across America, I'm personally overseeing the manufacturing and production of the grow systems. I built the very first prototypes myself and refined the geometry that works best. I programmed the CNC machines that make the precision cuts as part of the manufacturing process. I personally lab-tested the plant food nutrient formulas on our ICP-MS lab instrumentation and made specific improvements to the mineral concentrations in order to deliver vastly increased nutrition. I'll be overseeing the shipping out of the donations to U.S. schools, and I hope to get an opportunity to visit some of these schools in person and see these grow systems in action.

There is no replacement for being there in person, watching your efforts being translated into real experiences for real people.

The corporate greed model is unsustainable for our world

I have nothing at all against an honest entrepreneur or corporation making an honest living while operating within ethical boundaries, but it seems that the larger the corporations become, the more readily they abandon ethics in the name of profits.

As a result, the corporate model of endless greed being practiced today is simply not sustainable for our world. Consider just some of the massive global problems caused by corporate greed:

* Mass deforestation promoted by corporate agriculture.

* Near-wipeout of many ocean food species due to endless overfishing.

* Widespread chemical contamination of the world's waterways caused by pharmaceutical manufacturing.

* The routine killing of cancer patients with deadly chemotherapy treatments that were obsolete decades ago (but are still profitable).

* A global food supply nearly devoid of mineral nutrition, transformed into dead "factory foods" and heavily contaminated with synthetic chemicals for added shelf life.

And then you've got other issues that fall into a whole different category of greed that actually crosses the line into violating basic human rights:

* Monsanto's war on farmers and the GMO contamination of our world's food crops.

* Nestle's attempts to monopolize the world's water supplies and force people in developing nations to buy their water from wealthy globalist corporations. Nestle is also the same evil corporation that once attacked breastfeeding and tried to brainwash women in developing nations to feed their infants processed food formula instead of breast milk.

* The war industry's endless staging of global conflict to justify its own existence.

These are the results of runaway greed, and humanity is worse off because of it. Personally, I think the greed-driven corporate model of our global economy is coming to an end.

The end of the greed paradigm

I have a knack for seeing things way ahead of time. I called the dot-com crash in 1998. I called the housing bubble crash several years later, and in 2013 I called the Bitcoin crash less than 24 hours before it took place in the Spring of that year.

In 1999 I predicted the fall of the "dinosaur media" and the rise of the decentralized, alternative media we see thriving today. At the time, of course, the mainstream media called me crazy and kept churning out propaganda stories with news anchors like the serial liar Brian Williams, thinking their media hegemony would never be challenged. Today, we know the mainstream media is on a death march, and all the really informed people are reading alternative, independent news sites like TruthRevolt.org, Ben Shapiro's wildly successful conservative news site (Shapiro is one of the sharpest young minds in America today).

It's no secret that I see a global economic crash coming. But the global economic crash is not merely about a milestone economic event taking place that will harm the financial interests of billions of people; it's also about what I see as a systemic failure of the very model of centralized corporate greed.

A global economic collapse will have the result of reverting economic activity back to a local level. While you won't see an end to multinational corporations, of course, you will see a strong rise of local agriculture, local manufacturing and local barter systems.

When you read the word "local," think "decentralization." The localization of economies is essentially the decentralization of economic entities. For example, local farmers' markets are a decentralized version of corporate-run agriculture.

Decentralization is good. Centralization, on the other hand, is usually bad. This is true whether we're talking about economic power, political power or even legislative power. When economic, legislative and political decisions are made locally, they are more in tune with the local needs of the people. They tend to be more just and egalitarian.

Decentralization creates redundancy and security

Decentralization also means redundancy and security. For example, food security is high in a nation where a large percentage of the population grows food in home gardens or small farms. Food security is low in a nation -- such as America -- where food is produced by corporate entities that control and dominate the food distribution supply lines.

Centralized systems suffer from risks of single points of failure. Decentralized systems are redundant precisely because they are "failsafe" in their very structure. One or more nodes of a decentralized system can fail while the other nodes continue to function. The TCP/IP protocol on the internet is an example of a fail-resistant decentralized redundant system. It was originally designed to survive a nuclear attack while data kept flowing through the available nodes.

Seed security -- i.e. "seed diversity" -- is also high when there are hundreds of small seed companies producing seeds. But seed diversity gets crushed under the monopolistic tendencies of corporations like DuPont, Syngenta and Monsanto, all of which have bought up and consolidated literally hundreds of seed companies over the last few years. This has caused a dangerous loss in the diversity of the available seed supply. You could even call it a "crop eugenics" program because it has wiped out many genetic strains of heritage plants which are not "desirable" by the biotech corporate giants.

I not only believe in the power of grassroots, open source, decentralized revolutions for humanity; I am working to practice and demonstrate these principles in my own work.

How I'm helping support the decentralization, grassroots revolution for humanity

It's not enough to be a so-called "Egghead libertarian," where people sit around and academically debate what policies work best. It's important that people like myself who have the resources and capabilities engage in practical action that sets an example of what we believe in.

I believe the future of free currency is peer-to-peer crypto currency. It may not be Bitcoin, but Bitcoin helped set the stage for free currencies that cannot be manipulated by the criminal central banks. Similarly, I believe the future of innovation will come more and more from independent inventors like myself, rather than from institutional research organizations such as universities or corporations.

I also believe that real revolutions happen from the ground up, grassroots style, and that the "top down" government domination system of our world has run out of ideas. Now, governments are running on little more than debt fumes and delusional fairytale promises they can never keep. The global debt Ponzi scheme will, of course, eventually unravel, causing global financial chaos and demonstrating yet again the outright incompetence of centralized control systems that try to exercise domineering control over free people.

Giving away great ideas, where possible, creates a better world for everyone

The future of innovation requires nothing more than smart people making the decision to give away great ideas in the interest of contributing to a better world. And I intend to be one small part of that effort, joining a long list of others who have already done this in the world of open source operating system development (Linux), open source software (such as the Cura slicer for 3D printers), and even the RepRap 3D printer movement itself, now embraced by open source printer companies like Lulzbot.

The future is open source. The future is grassroots innovation from the bottom up. The future consists of people like me gathering money from honest, ethical business practices (such as the Natural News Store) and redirecting those funds into amazing projects (such as the building of our Forensic Food Lab, which launched a wave of new awareness about heavy metals in many superfoods). It is this lab effort that caused the organic protein industry to clean up its act and produce cleaner products.

Money is a tool for funding innovation that can benefit humanity

The future will be led by people who think of money as a tool to be deployed, not as a goal to be hoarded. Corporations that are more interested in their share prices than treating their customers with basic human dignity are headed for extinction.

I've often said "the most expensive vehicle I own is a tractor," and it's true. I look at money as a tool for discovery or innovation. That's why I have directed large purchases in the past year toward laboratory equipment (new equipment has arrived and is coming online soon!), manufacturing automation equipment and the 3D print farm I'm now operating in Texas.

Like many inventors, I've been ahead of the curve on identifying many important trends over the last couple of decades. I wrote the very first ethical email marketing software application in 1993 and used it to grow a multi-million-dollar company that counted a large percentage of the Fortune 500 as its customers. A decade later, I played a significant role in the health food revolution that now sees organic foods, non-GMO foods and superfoods in high demand almost everywhere. Now, I see additive manufacturing -- 3D printing -- as a revolutionary new technology that will inevitably reshape the geopolitical and economic landscape of our world.

Think about it: 3D printing is local. It's decentralized. It's difficult for corrupt governments to censor. It also has the power to dramatically improve the quality of life for people everywhere when used for the right applications (such as food self-reliance).

I am so convinced of the power of 3D printing to promote freedom and liberty in our world that I have seriously considered launching a 3D printing news website and resigning as Natural News editor to focus on 3D printing full time. This is the next revolution, and it's a field where technical inventors like myself have a wide open field of opportunities that are rich for exploration. That's why I'm applying this technology to food production systems right now; I already have four additional key inventions on the drawing board to be released in 2015. Each of these inventions can also be 3D printed.

Join me in launching the next great revolution for humanity

I want to urge you to think about everything I've shared here and imagine ways you can share your own ideas and innovations with the world in a decentralized, open source fashion.

I fully realize that revenues are challenging for all of us, and I'm not saying you should give everything away and earn nothing. Obviously, you need a revenue stream to support your goodwill projects, and ethical business practices deserve to be rewarded with honest profits. What I am saying is that once you have some discretionary income or profits, find ways to redirect a portion of those funds into open source, grassroots, decentralized projects that benefit others.

The truth is, you have unique gifts to offer the world. Sometimes the best way to share those gifts is to give them away for free. In fact, my own work on the Food Rising grow systems is based on the discoveries of other such as University of Hawaii professor Bernard Kratky. He taught hundreds of people the principles of "non-circulating hydroponics" (see his research paper here), allowing people like me to learn from those concepts and enhance them with modern-day 3D printing automation technology.

I don't want to live in a world ruled by the 1%

The bottom line in all this? I don't want to live in a world where the wealthiest 1% rule the other 99%. That's the world we have today, unfortunately, and it's a far cry from the abundance, health and happiness we could be achieving if ideas, economies and power were more decentralized. (It's actually more like the 0.0001% ruling everybody else, as most wealth has been heavily concentrated into the hands of just a few globalist families.)

I support technologies, innovations and ideas that empower the 99% to uplift themselves and substantially improve the quality of their lives. That's what the Food Rising grow systems are all about (www.FoodRising.org), and this is also what open source software is about, too.

I'm not talking about welfare for the 99%. Endless welfare is a disaster, and almost every welfare state in the world today is headed for certain bankruptcy (Greece, anyone?). I'm talking about empowering the 99% with solutions they can use to help themselves. Solutions like learning more food self-reliance, for example, so that people everywhere can grow a larger percentage of their own diets and stop relying on government food stamps to purchase processed corporate crap disguised as food.

Instead of giving inner city poor people food stamps to buy genetically modified Doritos, we should be giving them Food Rising grow systems and teaching them how to grow a significant portion of their own food. I'm not holding my breath, of course, waiting for the government to give me some sort of grant to accomplish that. Instead, I've announced an effort to raise the money through private means, enabling us to give away 250 Food Rising grow systems to schools across America.

When we empower the 99%, we make the world a freer, happier and healthier place for everybody.

That's my goal here at Natural News, and that's why I've spent countless hours over the last several months preparing to give away all these innovations for free. It is a calculated strategy to try to help create the world I hope to one day see unfold, where inspired individuals are empowered while evil corporations are made increasingly obsolete. The way to defeat evil corporations like Monsanto is not to confront them, but to make them irrelevant.

If you'd like to help me create this better world, simply subscribe to the email announcement list at www.FoodRising.org , then prepare to help spread the word on the innovations we release to the world for free.

- Mike Adams, the Health Ranger