"On your left is an Orc fighting a Troll" - travels in hyper-reality offer lessons for the poor

Synthravels offers travellers unique experiences by guiding them to destinations that many would never ordinarily visit.  As a business they don’t sound particularly remarkable.  What makes them rather out of the ordinary is that none of the places that Synthravels takes you to exist.

Synthravels specialises in leading new entrants through the vast online gaming worlds of Second Life and World of Warcraft.  This travel company proves that the number of ideas available to entrepreneurs is infinite.  We will never run out of things to do or new things to invent and, when we get there, someone will always be available to sell us something.

The speed with which ideas and businesses can propagate over the Internet is so rapid that those left off it are getting further and further behind.  Yet, far from leaving them with fewer opportunities, it leaves them with more and more.

Consider:  If the most exciting coffee available for purchase anywhere in the world is filter coffee, then any place that doesn’t sell filter coffee only has an opportunity to start that business.  Now, say someone invents espresso coffee.  Firstly, there is the opportunity for selling the machines that make it.  Every single existing coffee shop now has the opportunity to upgrade and improve.

When Starbucks developed Seattle coffee culture it spread throughout the world creating millions of jobs both directly and peripherally in the supply chain.  In cities where no such services existed they became an exciting new addition to the entertainment scene.

The invention of a new process allows that process to become an opportunity for everyone.

Websites like Springwise.com list thousands of business ideas, from the quirky to the mundane.  There is no lack of ideas around to stimulate even the most barren of minds.  If those businesses seem too expensive to set up then Wikineur.org has dozens of ideas that cost less than $ 100 each to set up.  If even that little finance is a problem then Kiva.org, an innovative service in which people lend money from around the world via the web to small businesses in poor nations, is a good place to start.

Poor countries, bereft of infrastructure and even the most basic services, are rich in opportunities.  Everything that developed nations take for granted is still required.  From the simplest laundry to the most sophisticated medical services; all of these have yet to be formulated and the market is wide open to any of these businesses.

Yet few businesses, except the most basic of retailers, are present.  Could it be that the people of desperately poor places do not want these things?  If that were true then they cannot be poor, for poverty is defined as being unwillingly without.  If they do want it and it is not there then why not?

There are plenty of ideas and support for people looking for opportunities.  If countries remain impoverished then it must be that the circumstances there favour poverty.  Either through government policies that prevent investment, or corruption and legal practice that terrorises business owners, or even that people choose it.

It is a statement that could earn heaps of abuse for this writer but, ultimately, perhaps it is that the poor of the world are destitute because they choose it for themselves.

Populist governments in poor countries have so degraded their economies - through neglect, incompetence, or outright corruption - that homegrown entrepreneurs and innovators have left.  Then, like a one-way gate, they deny entrance to foreigners wanting to bring in new ideas for fear that they will take away opportunities for themselves.  

The corruption and incompetence of these incumbent governments is usually supported in one way or another by the majority.  It is in their hands to change the way they are governed – outsiders (as the US discovered in Iraq) cannot bring about dramatic change.

There is no shortage of opportunities or ideas.  Developing countries start from the advantaged position of being able to copy the most successful ideas that have gone before.

If they’re not doing so it must be that they don’t want to.

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