Not so crazy after all

When I was a young adult and CD burners were first becoming a fad (yes, I'm old), I was out with my father for dinner one night and I told him I'd had this great idea: What if there were "jukeboxes" in music stores. Each could have a computer screen where you could pick a bunch of songs--any song, any artist--and have the computer cut the disc for you right there? You'd buy a token at the checkout and would walk out with your very own mixdisc!

That will never happen, said my father. First off, how popular would that really be? Yes, kids like making mixtapes, but it'd take a whole lot of them to make that a going proposition. Then there's the problem of royalties. The music companies would demand enough royalties to pay their expenses, and that on top of the CD Jukebox company's expenses would make the final product too expensive for anyone to want to buy.

So I gave up the dream, but a few years later, the iTunes store made history doing just what I had planned.

Why tell you of my missed shot at billions? Because Kali pointed me to this post of hers about an idea for greener and more accessible healthcare--a post whose last paragraph started with "This idea may be implausible but that is not my point."

It's actually not implausible at all. Go read the post--the idea is completely solid and has a lot of the same talking points that Al Gore makes: don't put people out of business by making the world greener, put people to business at the job of making the world greener.

In the Philippines, mass transit consists, in part, of "Jeepneys"--hop-on-hop-off diesel-fueled, brightly colored buses. Jeepneys create an unbelievable amount of heavy-particle pollution. So someone thought that it would be cool if there was a jeepney that was electric--no smog! Better yet, the thought continued, what if the electricity used to power this E-Jeepney was generated by creating biofuel from organic waste?

That'll never happen, I'm sure some people said, and yet... the E-Jeepneys were made. But no one will ever use them, others probably said, and yet it took very little time for them to be approved and used.

The US Veteran's Affairs Administration has come to the startlingly logical conclusion that it's often difficult for rural veterans to travel the hundreds of miles it might take to get to the doctor. So why not bring the doctor to them. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council advocates mobile clinics to reach urbanites who wouldn't normally see doctors. Would an electric mobile medical van (let's call it an EMMV for now) in every county be something these groups might think of getting behind?

And wouldn't making these EMMVs be killing an awful lot of very troublesome birds with one very efficient stone? There are jobs to be had--retrofitting the factories that once made RVs or whatnot, hiring back the people who used to work there to build these new vehicles, providing training for community clinic workers in healthcare, and hiring those clinic workers to provide care. There are environmental benefits--even if the vehicles aren't alternatively powered, they will still cut down on the number of miles traveled. Assume ten people needing healthcare in a ten-mile radius. If they each have to drive a hundred miles to get it, then by driving one van a hundred miles into their area, you've shaved 900 miles off the trip. And of course, people who can get regular healthcare are diagnosed and treated faster, which costs less, which brings it all back to the economic side of things.

The simple ideas people have can span every facet of life and reach into every corner of the world. The Solar Electric Light Fund in California thought it would be great if African farms out in far rural areas had solar electricity to pump water to irrigate their crops. Now, they just thought it would make pumping the water easier, because diesel gennies are expensive and dirty and so is the fuel they use. But that one small idea is making the air healthier (no more diesel generators running the water pumps), the economy healthier (no more paying for that diesel), and the people healthier (no more smog and more food). One little idea is currently packing one heck of a punch and benefiting every aspect of life in that little corner of rural Africa.

So never say "it'll never happen," "it's not plausible," "it's not feasible..." Instead, research the possibilities and if you can, give a little monetary push to those who do things you think can make a difference (even if you don't believe they'll really sell). If you have a great idea, tell the president. Write a letter to a hospital in your area, suggesting that mobile, affordable, green, socially-conscious healthcare is a good, politically expedient idea. Go to your local homeless clinic and figure out what you can do to help. Figure out if your idea indeed is plausible. People everyday are designing and building their own ideas of the future--how do you think I got the Mac I'm typing on right now?

The more people with real, green, responsible, plausible ideas that are actually implemented, the more this world of ours changes for the better. So don't keep a "crazy idea" to yourself. You may not lose out on millions, like I did with my CD Jukebox, but you might not get your one chance to save the world, either.