Taking a shot at COVID-19.

An unfortunate consequence of an obsession with power is the placement of one’s own political fortunes above those of the people. We are living through a time when the United States is being led by a narcissist, who seems to lack the fundamental capability to elevate our collective humanity toward the greater good. He lacks the power to harness the crowd against the COVID-19 virus.

Hearin is is a pirate conundrum, where is the point that the crowd acts with wisdom to fight the threat against the collective society? Where is the balance point between individual liberty and collective security?

In this international crisis as brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we see worldwide opportunistic attempts to exploit the crises to profiteer as well as to grab power. The Pirate movement is about removing impediments to the bottom-up collective power of the crowd and it is better to buy stanchions to control the crowd. Patent and copyright restriction within the framework of a pandemic can make it impossible to mass-produce the equipment and medicines required for mass testing and treatment. Patent and copyright owners who maintain copyright and patent monopolies during a health crisis are then just profiteers, endangering the public good for a quick profit.

The Internet gives our global society the ability to push the production of almost any required product down to the cottage industry level. People with sewing machines can produce and distribute masks, people with 3d printers can produce face shields. By the same token every lab in a state, nation, or continent can be harnessed to create test kits. If you are short of cotton swabs, give citizens the raw material and coordinate drop off and pick up at their homes. If you are short of reagents give the raw materials to places with the equipment to make the reagents.

Doing these things with transparency and cooperatively ensures that our actions are crowd optimized. Key takeaways here are the empowerment of people and harnessing our collective wisdom and talents to end the crisis.