Enlightened Capitalism

Essays about how to harness people's natural desire to create wealth and improve their quality of life to solve global problems such as war and poverty.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Solving Poverty

I think differently than (most) other people. The solution to poverty which I have developed is a paradigm shift, and most people do not believe it is possible when they first hear about it. I know it works because I have done it over and over and over again (and I am a skeptical guy).

It was a hypothesis but now it's a law, based on the same concept as Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point", the same methodology behind "Guns, Germs, and Steel", or "Think & Grow Rich". None of those things make sense under the "normal" paradigm. (Who would've thought sleeping with animals was a good strategy for ultimately conquering the world?) My methodology is like a microscope, it allows you to see things that are otherwise invisible, and because they were invisible, people don't believe they exist.

What if poverty were really easy to solve? That poses the bizarre problem of why haven't we done it. You've heard conspiracy theories, you've heard Democrats blame corporations, Republicans blame immigrants, Greens blame capitalism, Christians blame Muslims, Whites blame Blacks, Rich blame Poor, and on and on. Those were the kinds of explanations people had of smallpox before the microscope.

The answer that appears under the microscope is -- brace yourself -- that we don't care. Sometimes we do care, and some people care a whole lot, but the amount of time we spend caring about people we don't know is way less, on average, than the amount of time we spend caring about hub caps, or spiders.

This might sound like a criticism of humanity, but it really isn't. The microscope was not a criticism of the germ world, just a tool for describing it. Once we saw those little microbes we began coming up with ways of manipulating them for our benefit.

So, in a nutshell, the trick is coming up with ways to make it easier and more fun to care about people you don't know. That is what I have been working on for the past 15 years. And, by George, I think I've got it. :)

1 Comments:

  • At 7:19 am, Blogger C N Green said…

    I agree that society is more concerned with saving animals, or the enviornment than saving human lives. Poverty is the effects of human greed and has become a global problem. We as a society should not focus on the problem but the solution. What is the opposite of poverty? The opposite is wealth or as we like to put it PROSPERITY. How do we change the way society thinks about it. By changing how we talk about it. They live below the poverty line But instead think they live below the line of prosperity. It is all in the way we think about it. Are you half way into the forest or halfway out? The focus should be on the solution which is leading humanity to prosperity. Lose the word poverty and gain a prosperous world. We should be leading humanity to prosperity. $1 from every person able to give one dollar will resolve the issue.

     

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