As a loving reader, it is my profound hope that the various innovative visions and columns illustrate what can be possible in the near future for our beloved island of Aruba and its inhabitants. In this column I am taking the time to elaborate in a detailed manner what my goal and deep motivation is regarding everything I have written in the previous years.
Human suffering
From the first ancient texts and our own daily experience, we can easily conclude that there is a lot of human suffering around the world, but also in Aruba. On the global scale, examples like extreme poverty, that takes the shape of people who do not have enough to eat or are exploited in all kinds of manners. On the local level, think about topics like chronic illness, like a person who is handicapped after a stroke. Examples of extreme suffering abound. The goal that I have is to reduce this suffering that we all see outside of Aruba and that we experience ourselves.
It is my belief that technology, if used in a responsible and strategic way, can help relieve a lot of problems that we are confronted with, both on the local as well as the global level.
In the following sections I want to illustrate that on the global level there is more than enough capital available, and that combinations of altruism and monetary gains for investors are surely present.
213 trillion US dollars available
According to a report from the investment bank USB, the top 1.5% of most affluent people in the world have more than 213 trillion US dollars in value. This is an extremely huge amount and frankly almost unimaginable. Thus we can conclude simply by saying there is enough capital to invest in all sorts of beneficial projects.
According to a big report from Delloite, the companies that handle this capital indeed are busy and giving priority not only to the need to generate monetary gains, but also to make our world a better home for one and all. Think about projects of abundant energy, zero hunger and eradication of poverty.
Which combination of investment can create the biggest impact?
We have concluded that there is capital available and already emphasis is being put on altruistic goals. Now the cardinal question is what to invest in first, in which amount, which combination and which sequence. This is an extremely complicated question and varies for each country. On a macro-economic and international level we can find a lot of inspiration from reports and calculations extremely detailed from the United Nations and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There are already tools available to help calculate how the SDGs interact with each other, and how investment can create massive indirect spill-overs in other areas.
“Practice What You Preach”
Sadly and causing a great deal of pain, my vision to improve life for those living in Aruba has been blocked for more than seven years, simply because those in government are not fond of me. It is ironic that my columns somehow reach the highest levels of the investment banking sector in the United States and Silicon Valley. At the moment together with the wide network I have accumulated, I am working hard on a vision of a “Sharp-adjusted Altruistic Innovation Portfolio,” which combines a high Return-on-Investment with beneficial goals for humanity, and that takes into account the entire spill-over complex that investment has on each other.
My biggest hope is that in a very near future we can bring this vision of technological innovation, altruism and international capital for Aruba, to reduce at least a little the human suffering on our island.
