[p2p-research] devastating story on cradle to cradle founder

[Stan Rhodes]

I'd read it before and had the same reaction.  I've noticed amongst the
greenwashers are also the social enterprise phonies, and plenty play both
angles.  I've had personal run-ins with both the deluded and the full-blown
con artists, but I have a special place in my heart for those that want to
patent everything that could improve the world.

I'm reminded of the recent TED talk about "smart outlets" where at the end
they cheerfully mention their 400+ patents on it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_la_grou_plugs_smart_power_outlets_1.html  I
wasn't alone in being digusted, thankfully.  One of the comments on the talk
was

Mathijs Koenraadt, Jun 10 2009: So first we want to patent it over 400 times
to make sure nobody else implements this 10 cent solution. What was all that
about global safety and energy savings? You could have implemented that
already if not wasting so much time (and money) on patents.

The patent-holders' take: "The technology is available for licensing by
receptacle manufacturers at a fair and reasonable cost (www.2d2c.com) to
help recover the development costs."

I particularly like "to help recover," like they'd be ok with taking a loss
after securing investing for 400+ patents.

-- Stan


On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 12:07 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/21/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/130/the-mortal-messiah.html?page=0%2C0
> >
> > This is also a very interesting story to cover for our blog, as it shows
> how
> > the proprietary approach has made the project of cradle to cradle
> production
> > fail,
>
> "...the architect said, 'I want to be the Bill Gates of
> sustainability,' and [that] he wants to make a royalty off of every
> green standard and every green product out there."
>
> This just about floored me, because the vibe I'd been picking up from
> the whole article was "Bill Gates."
>
> The technologies that save the world will be those that ordinary
> people can adopt for themselves at low cost, without paying royalties
> to some greenwashed billionaire.
>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>
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