Product Designers, Robots, Cancer Drugs and Stalin

The thing about capitalism is, everything depends on money, and so human progress can be somewhat delayed if it’s not making money for the right people.

Say you have an amazing idea, something that is just simply so brilliant, but then you speak to some product designers, find out how much it would cost to manufacture it, and discover it costs too much to make.

There must be loads of brilliant ideas that just haven’t come to fruition because it’s not economically viable.

I’m going to tell you now about some ideas I have that I think, if made, would really enrich my life beyond belief.

I’m a big fan of attention. Not emotional attention, but physical. I love to have my hair stroked as I watch TV, or have a really nice massage. Ideally I’d have these things every night, but I’d settle for every other night.

I don’t have any human in my life that’s willing to indulge me in this kind of pleasure, so there’s the deficit; the need for a product.

Now, a nice robot to carry all of this out would be just super. It could massage my back when I woke up in the morning, and stroke my hair at night when I went to bed or when I watch the telly. It would be heaven; we’d be happy, me and the robot. The robot wouldn’t mind because he doesn’t have a mind to mind with, does he?

I’d love the robot. I’d actually love an inanimate object.

Of course, product designers would say it’s not possible, it’s not economically viable.

This is a very selfish want, of course, and on a wider scale, capitalism affects others in more serious ways.

For example, if you were unlucky enough to fall ill with cancer, there are a host of drugs in existence that would offer you a high chance of eradicating the disease from your body, but whether you receive them or not is all down to money. If the companies that made the drugs charge a lot of money for them, you probably won’t be given them , unless you pay for them yourself.

This is one of the sick and sad facets to modern economic systems, but then look at what Stalin did; not exactly perfect either. What’s the answer?