Extreme Welfare Shows
June 24th, 2008[ General ]
Paul Polak was on The Hour a few weeks back. From what little I saw, I like Paul and his company D-Rev. The quick story, most major innovation and design is aimed at the wealthiest 10% of our population. D-Rev is “Design for the other 90%”.
One point Paul which struck a cord with me was when discussing the treadle pump and it’s total cost of $25. He said that one of their goals is NOT to give things for free. You can’t gift people out of poverty, hand outs are not a way to end poverty but a way to create a welfare system. Instead they require that individuals invest and pay for a pump themselves. If people aren’t willing to invest $25, it likely doesn’t bring them enough value. “Virtually everything we do is designed to give a 300 percent net investment, and that way, they can leverage up”.
It got me thinking about my kids and allowances. I remember hearing the author of a book called Young Bucks say that giving your children an allowance was a great way to raise welfare children. Bold statement I’m not sure Paul would disagree with.
It also got me thinking about extreme welfare shows like Extreme Makeover. Everytime I see them tear down a rat infested shack and replace it with a multi-million dollar mansion complete with grounds, pools, and fancy gadgets to maintain, I wonder how insane a leap that would require. To go from the human and capital cost of not maintaining a one room shack to maintaining an estate. Who can do that? Someone should start a show where they return to these homes a year later to see how all those gadgets are holding up.
The people on these shows are no doubt in need of help but when it comes to long-term, sustainable results, I’ll take Paul’s help anyday over ABC’s. Paul and D-Rev are eye opening as it’s way too easy for us in business to get lost staring at the people with the big wallets.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:38 am
This reminded me of a seminar by Iqbal Quadir (founder of GrameenPhone) a month ago, entitled “Technology Empowers the Poorest”. From the summary:
A lot of myths cloud the good intentions of developmental aid, Quadir says. Myths such as: poor countries have no resources, or that the poor don’t have discretionary spending, or aren’t concerned with brands,or aren’t good credit risks, and so on. All these assumptions have been proven untrue over and over again, and especially so with GrameenPhone. The chief myth it dispelled was that government needs to subsidize technological development, when in fact there is good money to be made enabling the productivity of the poor. As Quadir says, “You don’t make money on the poor, but with the poor.” At dinner I asked Iqbal what he would have done differently with GrameenPhone. He replied, “Kept more shares.”