Episode 18: Bridging Humanity and Technology: The Quest for Water Rights and Global Welfare

Discover how the advancement of technology intersects with the fundamental human right to clean water and safe sanitation. More than two billion people worldwide grapple with accessing clean water, while 3.6 billion are deprived of basic sanitation. Throughout this episode, I unpack the moral and humanitarian imperative for addressing these critical issues that affect such a staggering portion of the global population. By drawing on my own experiences and the potential of innovative technologies like robotics and medical tech, I explore how business growth can be harnessed for humanitarian impact, making life-saving health interventions more reachable for those in need.

As we journey through the conversation, I spotlight the power of knowledge and self-sufficiency in transforming communities. From the democratization of water purification tablets to the broader implications for food security and health, we discuss how empowering people with basic needs is not just an act of charity, but an essential stride towards honoring our shared human dignity. This dialogue is a call to action, urging a societal commitment to ensuring these basic rights and reflecting on our collective responsibilities as we look towards the ambitious horizons of human growth, such as space exploration. Tune in for an in-depth look at building an open-source ecosystem that could change the face of global welfare as we know it.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Full Circle with Sean. As promised, today we're going to talk a little bit about technology. I will try to keep it high level, but just a really basis on some of the foundational work we've been doing and what that has in context with technology. So let's start with universal access to clean water. Now, a lot of us, a lot of people that probably listen to this podcast, have access to clean water. They turn on their taps or they can get bottles from the store, but they have pretty much access to clean water and fresh water. Now let's look at this in context, to start with. So there are, say, almost 8 billion people in the world okay, and over 2 billion people don't have access to clean water. 2 billion that's 25% of the population of the world don't have access to clean water. In fact, they think that. Or the UN came out with a report that said 3.6 billion don't have access to safely managed sanitation. So 3.6 billion people, that's 45% of the population.

Speaker 0: 1:23

Now some people would say, well, that's their governments or that's their societies. They haven't done that for them. They live in a greedy society where their politicians are doing that to them, and that is the case in some cases, but that's not the case. In a lot of cases, it's our preconceptions. To sweep it under the rug. Right, it's not my problem Put it under the rug, but in reality we are, at the end of the day, we're all people, right, and what are the basis that we think that people should have, just because they're people? And I think it's water, I think it's sanitation, I think it's enough food to live and I think it's a roof over their head, and I think that's the basis. And there might be more, you know, but I do think that's the basis of what people should get, should expect. I mean, we don't treat our prisoners that way, our prisoners that have committed crimes in society, no matter how bad they are, they get a roof over their head, they get fed, they get sanitation and they get clean water. So all of the rest of the people of the world that are suffering, why would we not think that we should help them?

Speaker 0: 2:48

So, if you get where I'm going, one of the things that I think we need in technology is access to fresh water, and there are a lot of technologies out there that can give access to fresh water. The issue isn't the technology there. We've built the technology, it hasn't become cheap enough to be in the places where people don't have money right and companies and governments don't want to just eat the cost to give it to them and teach them how to use it and stuff like that. Now there are groups that do that sort of sort of work and they do help people and and so on and so forth, and and I do advise that, go, look for these groups, but also be cautious of where they spend your money, and it's always better to donate something. So if they have, you know, water purifiers and stuff that they take over, buy a water purifier, you know. Help them. Help them. There. We did a whole thing where I donated to charities for kids and, instead of giving them a whole bunch of money where I didn't know where it went, I think we bought a thousand blankets and a thousand teddy bears and all this other stuff for them to make sure that they got something that they needed, and it could be the same way there. But there are also ways to build better technology and build cheaper technology or even invent methods that they could do themselves. But that takes a coming together of corporations and people or even just very smart people that are backed somehow with some money, because you need money to develop this stuff, right, but without the goal that you're going to get rich off of it. So maybe the constitution of the company is to build this stuff, to release it for free, open source, to help people.

Speaker 0: 4:49

And let's look at, say, malaria right, and it has a big part in clean water and sanitation. Right, you can breed mosquitoes. Mosquitoes transmit malaria, right? So big malaria outbreaks and everything. Malaria is something that we have a tablet for. That is very easily treatable, that is very easily preventable if you have the tablets I mean, I took them in the military when I was in Africa they give you the tablets of a. It's just normal. You just take the tablets and you don't get malaria. Or if you do get malaria, it just goes away. Right. But they're too expensive for people in a lot of those affected countries, a lot of those third worlds, to afford and that's a problem, right. So I think the prevention, just the prevention stuff, is about $200 for 24 tablets. And obviously we got them for free in the military and I'm sure countries subsidize them.

Speaker 0: 5:53

But how, if you don't have access to fresh water or um or sanitation and your, obviously, your your food security is probably not that great either. Do Do you have that kind of money? If we look at how many people are dying of malaria each year, it's around 600,000 or more. 600,000 people are dying for something that we can cure, we can prevent, and we're more into what making a profit of it. It's despicable, right? So I get it that a company had to make it and a company needs to get those funds returned, but is there any reason why, you know, scientists can't come together and create something that's open source, or governments to buy it and open source it? And that's really just one example of where we can do better.

Speaker 0: 6:57

And that's one of my passions. I want to grow the businesses that I have. I want to grow this robotic firm that I have, because I want to make stuff and I want to fund stuff that might not be commercially viable in some aspects it could be this malaria thing but I do have ambitions in the medical field for some technology that I want to build, and I do have other ambitions for things that will be sold, that are not things just as a benefit of society it's their commercial aspects but there are things that are benefit for society that nobody's going to build, or if it's built, it will get shut down because either it'll affect somebody else's business, it'll affect the bottom line of different things, but also they don't want it out there. And I'm not some conspiracy nut with that, it's just economics, right. If somebody makes something, they need to get a return for their investment. That's economics. That's what I do. I'm in business, right, I need a return for my investment.

Speaker 0: 8:01

Eventually mean that we can't build some of those things that people deserve because they're people and give that out. There's no reason as a society we can't come together and do that. And people donate, right. People donate lots of money for all sorts of things and those are good things. There's lots of plenty of good things to to donate for, like, like cancer research, right, um, and we're going to talk about uh, research and and stuff like that in in later episodes.

Speaker 0: 8:37

But I mean, if I I think some of it also is everybody wants to, everybody wants to cure cancer, okay, and and and absolutely. And there are some really great treatments coming out now and some some really good research going on, but there are a lot of teams researching, which which means that if you're not getting that much out. It means that your teams aren't um, uh, aren't focused teams. They're, they're not. Maybe they're not the right people and maybe they're not led by the right people, so you're wasting that funding. It's kind of like when I started and I had some engineers when I first started and I was throwing a bunch of money into it and then I realized that they're not the right engineering team to build what I was trying to accomplish, and then I rebuilt the team, and I rebuilt the team until I had the team that could actually do what I was trying to achieve.

Speaker 0: 9:29

And I think you find that in some of these teams that are doing it, I've seen some really great tech coming out for cancer. But I think there's a lot of money wasted in teams that really shouldn't be doing it. And maybe they have the passion to do it, but maybe they're not led by the right person, maybe they don't have a full team, maybe the resourcing isn't actually what they need, maybe they don't have a full team, maybe the resourcing isn't actually what they need, maybe they need more, maybe there's so many intricacies to it that just throwing money everywhere might not be the solution. But maybe you don't put all your eggs in one basket either, right? So how do you find out what actually works and that's something that we can work on. How do you find out what actually works and that's something that we can work on as a team, as a group, and I'm happy to have that discussion with everybody about how to better effectively build teams.

Speaker 0: 10:17

I actually did a podcast on teams, but it does merit a much deeper conversation. So we've given the example of, you know, universal access to clean water. So what can we do there? Obviously, big things like desalination really, really expensive, right but I've seen much simpler water purification technologies, in fact, in the army. In the army, we had a drill sergeant and he actually went into a toilet yes, a toilet, an outside port-a-potty and he grabbed a glass of whatever liquid it was and he dropped one of our tablets in there that's supposed to purify everything, and after so long he drank it and he said it tastes horrible but it's safe.

Speaker 0: 11:10

So there are things we can do, right, and that's pretty gross, but there are things that we can do. And if that's been around for 20 years, there would be other things that we can do. And we need to challenge ourselves to do better, and if it's all run by VCs, you won't do better. Okay, you just won't. There's too much profit on the line. You'll come up with the next best thing that'll benefit our first world countries and not everybody else. And we need to have a baseline for humanity that humanity thinks is unacceptable. If we don't reach that baseline for humanity and there will be some places where it's out of your hands Sorry there's some political environments where you're not going to be able to help the people, and hopefully the people understand that. Move that government on, if that's the case, or get out of there, and I'm not gonna throw up any examples, but there are going to be places like that.

Speaker 0: 12:14

But for a lot of places it's just they lack the money to buy the technology. They might get some by donations and stuff, but these are big populations we're talking about, so they need something that they can enact themselves. And they have really smart people. Just because you're in poverty doesn't mean that they're stupid people. Some of these people are really really intelligent. They just lack the means or the methods, and that's why you need to open source it and give it out right.

Speaker 0: 12:44

And then there's things like food security. So I know there's plenty of places that pay people not to grow certain foods because they want the price to go up in certain places, and I understand that, because farmers need to make money and they need to pay for their land and their machinery and everything that comes with um, with developing food. But there are um, there are ways to to give um technology or or you know that we have modified crops that have higher yields and and better drought resistance, and we, we can teach people precision of architecture and and a lot of these things are of architecture, and a lot of these things are secrets to a point, you know, because people make money off it, you know. So it needs to be. What can we do to help people with food security? And I guess it really goes to we need to teach them to do it or we need to empower them to do it. It's not.

Speaker 0: 13:46

If you have to continually help somebody, that can only last so long right, it might only last one generation, because the next group that comes in might not want to help the next generation, or there's a whole bunch of problems there. But if you empower the people to change their own lives, that's what they want, right. I mean, nobody's going to say, oh no, I'd prefer to live without food security. Oh no, no, you know, I know, I know you taught me how to how to clean the water, but I'd rather drink that toilet water. You know, like drill sergeant, and I don't have any tablets, but it's fine, that's fine, I'll just boil it. Right, I'll just boil it. It that's people want to improve their lives. It's it's empowering them to do it. And and they don't have the money if it means technology. So we need to get past that. Or, as a society, we should come together and say these things don't cost money. These things, they might cost every taxpayer half a cent or a quarter of a cent or something to push out to all of these people, something to push out to all of these people, and that's just what needs to happen. And it doesn't matter, because it's what the basis of human life deserves At a minimum level.

Speaker 0: 15:11

You get this period and if we were in that situation, so a lot of times, oh yeah, but I'm not in that situation, and oh yeah, yeah, but I worked hard, you know, to whatever right, but you've had opportunity. You were probably not born in a lot of those places, and if you were born in those lot of places, you're probably not there now or you had the opportunity to work your way out. But what if you didn't? What if you were still somebody in that environment and wouldn't you want to do whatever it took to get access to clean water or food security or even sustainable housing, right, housing right. So when we talk about housing, you know there's plenty of people that sleep outside in a lot of these countries, or you know in huts that you know leak and all sorts of other problems like bugs or molds, or I mean, think of how dangerous it is to have mold in your house, like in your bathrooms or showers. You've heard the story of a whole family getting sick because there was mold and they found the mold and everybody's fine now, or people weren't fine, and we're in a first world country, so it's more of a rarity, right. So it's more of a rarity, right, but don't they have the right to at least have the base level of care? Is my point.

Speaker 0: 16:48

So when I talk about technology needed, I'm not talking about yeah, we need to build a spaceship, we need to go to Mars, yeah, that'd be cool, that'd be awesome, and I think civilization should look to expand. I mean, that will grow us as humanity. And, yeah, okay, if an asteroid was coming, we need that technology, but that might not be the case. I mean, what we actually need is to start looking at people that have different cultures and different languages as equals, that they still should have universal access to clean water, to sanitation, to food security and some kind of housing, because that's the basic human requirements and I think that it should be provided. All humanity should gain together and provide that. And I know, right, world peace, right, that'll never happen, and I'm not saying world peace because there's always going to be some jerk out there in some country that wants to start a fight with somebody and doesn't care, right, but I do believe that a lot of their population just want to live. They just want to live, they want a to live, they want to want a decent life, they want a better life for their kids than they had, and they want opportunity and they want hope, and that's what we all want as people.

Speaker 0: 18:29

And I've been all over the world and I'll tell you why. It's nice to go to different places in the world, because it's a change of scenery, right, it always makes you feel refreshed and then when you get home, you're like I miss being home and you're refreshed. Okay, but when you go to that other place, if you get out of the touristy areas and you actually go, sit with the family or whatever, maybe have some friends, you sit with them. They're exactly the same as you. They're working, they're trying to build a better life, they want to give a better life to their kids. It's the same everywhere and we should really get into that mentality that, yeah, some countries have more than others and some countries, you know, first world countries, second world, third world, whatever we want to call it to make ourselves feel better, but we should, as a society, want to give everybody that base level of humanity that everybody deserves.

Speaker 0: 19:25

And that's what I mean by technology needed. And we will go through some other stuff. I've got some really cool ideas about some things and little projects that I've worked on and we'll talk about those, you know, obviously at a later time. But yeah, it's something that you can keep in the back of your mind and when you hear conversations on it, you know, think about it, think about all the people out there that don't get what you get. You know, you take all this stuff for granted because your society has grown to that point and theirs hasn't, and people are suffering and that's not your fault. You know. I'm not saying, oh, don't enjoy that drink of water because there's people suffering. I'm saying that we need to realize that and know that if we actually came together as a society, other than arguing with everybody all the time about you know, our first world problems that we could actually make a, make an impact, um, and and help those people.

Speaker 0: 20:24

So, so I guess what what comes down at the end of the day is I just wanted to tell you that that you know what technology is needed, and there's a lot of them.

Speaker 0: 20:34

Um, there's a lot of different things you can do with these topics.

Speaker 0: 20:38

There are some good technology out there that's just too expensive, that could be brought down or could be open source, and when somebody builds a technology and open sources it as well, people find ways to optimize it, they find ways to improve it, they find ways to make it cheaper and, yeah, it really starts to build that ecosystem that helps a lot more people.

Speaker 0: 21:00

But I just felt that I wanted to rant about that today, so I hope you enjoyed it and we'll get back to fundamental building blocks in the next episode. We'll be doing that for a little bit and then we will. We'll move on to to more conversations like this one, to other conversations about other things in general life and things happening and yeah, but I want to keep having these chats with the fundamental building blocks first and even when we get into some of the other topics and some of the deeper conversation about things, we will touch on these building blocks. From time to time, especially when we're about to have an episode on a specific subject, we might build up one of those blocks first and then have that conversation. So thanks again for joining me on Full Circle with Sean and I look forward to chatting about habits, good habits and the outcome of poor habits with you next time.