Dear Friends,
It seems to me that I have several business ideas but I do not have sufficient time and interest to make them work. I am offering them free to anyone who wants to put them into production for his or her own profit. Maybe some are already in the works elsewhere but I offer these two in good faith. In the end, that is all we ever can do, offer in good faith, since no one has perfect knowledge. Someone however, maybe you, may get very rich from reading this blog…
The first is an oil shale extractor. Surface deposits of oil shale and tar sand of varying degrees of productivity exist all over the World. These are, at present, untappable sources of, sometimes high quality, crude oil. They are often remote or in too small in size to make building a giant factory, on site and custom designed, profitable. The initial costs far outweighing the productive potential of the site. However if a small scale design could be commercially produced. One that could be moved to the site cheaply. Similar in size to a modern crushing/ screening operation, (which it would be an add on or adjunct to). Producing a relatively small amount of oil, but at $100.00 a barrel, a production range of 100-1000 barrels a day, would be quite profitable, especially for a small scale operator. The other output, dirt, would be sold as clean fill. This scale operational output could be efficiently trucked by roads or shipped via railroad to a port or small scale refiner.
Ideally, it would use a recovered solvent instead of heated water to extract the oil, in the ground up shale or sand. It would be containerized, so it could be efficiently transported, World wide, directly from the factory. The machine would probably be tracked so it could be moved around the quarrying or mining operation to make it more efficient. (Line it up with crushers, loader areas, oil loading areas etc…) It would be as modular as possible making equipment maintenance as easy as possible. A modular design would make equipment repair much more simple but would also enhance the profitability of each machine that left the factory floor. This would be a relatively simple engineering task for a large, or maybe small but entrepreneurial , producer of crushing equipment.
Distributed crude oil production would drastically reduce the power of the point producers. Oil could be produced locally and refined locally as well. This would necessarily lessen the World’s need to ship oil over long distances thus reducing the likely hood of a large scale disaster. Producing oil in this way would also bring billions of barrels of newly recoverable oil onto the World markets. The lot of Mankind would be greatly improved.
The second is an EMP protective laptop/tablet computer case. The Sun is entering an active solar cycle. It has been overly quiescent for a few years and scientists are expecting it to enter an extremely active cycle. This will result in heavy bombardment of Earth from the Sun in the form of solar flares. They can have powerful effects on electronic equipment. In the case of an unprotected laptop or tablet computer, the expensive machine can be destroyed in such an event, with loss of all the data it contained.
It would be made up of a hard case made of hard nylon reinforced mu-metal, a foam rubber layer with a fine copper screen then a nylon cloth inner sleeve. The copper screen would be a faraday cage and would probably be connected to the mu-metal outer shell with capacitors. The outer shell would be coated with neoprene rubber of various colors. Or perhaps silicon, whichever has the best characteristics for slippage, durability and adhesion to the hard case.
The EMP laptop/tablet case could have an optional solar battery charger and compartment. This would enable the owner to charge a laptop even if the power grid were down for a time. This would allow a person to be productive or if the internet is up they would have access to valuable information. Such a system would only be effective if the laptop or tablet were in it. However, the likely hood of a person’s data surviving such an event, would be exponentially better if he or she had one than if they didn’t. Especially if some public notice were given.
These are a couple of the ideas I thought someone might be able to make some money on. Perhaps you. But, what is important is the point that, what makes a business idea good… is that it will profit your fellow man. If an idea creates new luxury, makes old luxury necessity or in some other way improves the lot of Man, it can be said to be a winner. Mo Ti said that it is in our interest to be of profit to our fellow man.
That is the reason capitalist societies flourish while others flounder.
Sincerely,
John
