[pandora's box] the raymond green phenomenon

There's a mate I have who doesn't blog but he does have a computer and follows my blog from time to time. Usually, when we talk about some issue, which is pretty well all the time, he comes out with an idea which I nick and develop in a post. The royalties will be coming you're way, sir, once the idea sells.

This one is no different. Speaking about the device in Terminator 3, which Arnie removes and throws onto the road, what if every household could have one?

I imagined it a bit like the platinum box above and able to fit into any pocket. It would be configured according to its power, using a new unit, say a megazyne and you could purchase a 100 mz unit for powering up a city grid, a 50, a 20 and a 10, for all household power and then a 1 mz unit for personal use, where once batteries would have been used.

Naturally, Raymond Green, the owner, kept it completely shtum whilst he was developing a working model and he was himself a model, as an employer. Everyone who worked on the project had shares and a percentage cut in any profits in perpetuity. This staggeringly philanthropic boss could afford such largesse.

Year Zero

At first, he sells to the cogniscenti and ultra-rich businessmen who naturally try to analyse and duplicate the idea but the trouble is, it is a sealed box, almost self-sustainable and with a shelf life in the region of 50 years. If it is ever opened, it explodes and any parts now corrode to dust, on exposure to air. Thus he protects his idea. Attractively priced at around $U.S.10 000 per megazyne, the Pandoras sell like hotcakes, by word of mouth until, equally naturally, those who wish to suppress the idea make their move.

He's protected himself, in that the devices only work if he sends a code every so often, at irregular and predetermined intervals but he has no idea when and which code. He never developed those codes, which came from 1001 sources worldwide, all of whom are now dead and the device only works when all the untraceable auto-emits are algorithmically combined. There is a money back plus 10% guarantee should any device fail.

One year later

He's been supplying the device to governments, councils and so on for a nominal amount, without restriction, playing no favourites and refusing no enemies.

After three years

Now rich beyond his wildest dreams, he suddenly releases the product to the average citizen, from his offshore base, for 10 U.S. cents per megazyne, with two trillion 1 mz and 10 mz devices ready for shipping, which now power complete home environments, so that the average householder grows all his own produce and has Pandora powered guns for personal home protection [also developed by Pandora Industries], Pandora home perimeter defences, moisture harnessing and conversion devices, solar power enhanced medical ex-plants which strap on to the wrist and so on and so on.

After four years

Attracting the brightest and best scientists and dramatically upping the ante with his own personal security, wave after wave of life-enhancing inventions now pour out and the one year old Pandora philosophy of helping the householder and small businessman, to the exclusion of the monolithic and monopolistic has now produced GK Chesterton's ideal of the three acres and a cow. People are once again town and country based, government and taxation have now fallen into disuse, along with armies, wars and other nasties and what cannot be home grown is bartered for.

Raymond Green holds no public office, he has no desire to run the world or control it, except in removing the necessity for controls and he happily spends the rest of his days on his island, tilling the soil and coming up with new ideas in the evenings.

Warning: This post is most certainly going to be added to, as and when ideas come in, practical objections aired and considered and new thinking on it arises. It is an ongoing work.