Utopia in Reality

It is encouraging to an optimistic realist that many other people besides myself have been contemplating the wisdom of leveling the playing field so that the poor have the opportunities to better their lives, and not be stuck hopelessly in ghettos or dead-end jobs.

Being a realist, I have been also encouraged by the many effective programs to transform the lives of the poor. For over thirty years, non-governmental organizations, through the coordination of international agencies, have done great work bringing hope and well-being to many people in the poorest countries in the world, literally the poorest of the poor living in a world of high technological plenty.

As a proposed solution, indeed, a challenge, to the thousands of billionaires from all over the world, not only in the USA, Germany, or the other G8 countries, but the ones in India, China, Poland, Russia, Brazil, and all the other countries with billionaires, I see a realistic first step towards utopia by utilizing the combined wisdom of those who have proven themselves to be wise with money, and the political authority of the democratic governments who have the power to bring change to their nations, as well as the self-preservation and entrepreneurial spirit of those most desperately needing hope.

In this first step, I see the billionaires providing what they can do best, and the governments providing what "they" can do best, to help the poor to do "their" best. It is a program that has been working for over three decades, in various small-scale. What I envision is a much grander and self-sustaining program that will help eradicate poverty in the world.

The key is micro-credit. Wikipedia has an extensive article on it, so I won't repeat the operational and logistical detail. It is clear that billionaires do not have the will, the patience, nor the talent, to administer these micro-credit loans to the poor. However, from tragic history, we also know that governments are not competent at the job either. Indeed, more money would be wasted by government agencies administering these micro-credit loans than the money working for the poor. The solution, as I see it, is for the billionaires to "invest" in a myriad of non-profit agencies that administer these loans, and "sit" as board members to advise them. We know that most billionaires are very wise in these area of investing and advising, and they can leverage all the people and passion in the non-profit agencies. To make it worth their while, and to encourage their philantropy, governments can legislate tax credit for the billionaire investment. However, to ensure that they invest their time and talent wisely (which they would naturally do so as part of their inherent nature) the tax credit can be speficied to take effect only as a percentage of the loan repayment rate. This will ensure that the microcredit loans are wisely distributed to responsible people who make good use of them, and not waste them.

The last few decades have shown that the repayment rate is highest for those programs where the participants are not simply given the money, but are mentored through entrepreneurial classes, as well as community support groups. Hopefully, there will be enough funding to launch thousands of these administering/mentoring/support agencies so that each one can experiment with some innovative methods to encourage success, which would be measured using whatever the billionaires devise, to ensure their return on investment can be maximized. For example, in addition to the repayment rate, we can measure the longivity of the businesses created using the micro-credit loans, or the change in standard of living in the people affected, or the size of the micro-credit community created by the agency. A sure sign of failure is a lack of customer. These are measures that billionaires can understand, governments can document, and everyone can benefit.

Governments should be generous with the tax credit legislation to encourage these program's creation because the benefits from these programs are not just to the billionaires, and the poor, but also the society at large. With a decrease in poverty, and a corresponding rise in the average standard of living in society, it can be certain that crime rate will decrease, medical cost will decrease, and unemployment will decrease. The cost to the goverment when NOT funding or encouraging these programs will be far greater than the miserly denial of tax credits to these programs.

I read recently somewhere in print, that the large ratio of rich to poor in today's global economy is a reflection of the meritocracy inherent in the information society. I was not impressed with this assertion when I first read it, and upon careful consideration, I have decided that it is wrong. To claim that the large gap between the rich and poor is a result of the global economy's natural meritocracy is to claim, equally falsely, that the large gap between the aristocracy and the peasants are a natural result of the meritocracy of military feudalism. It is true that intelligence, skills, and knowledge have replaced military might, and physical strength as the bargaining chips in the global economy. It is true that the brightest have been rewarded more than those that are mightest in the traditional measures of prestige. No longer does Might Makes Right; now the author of the above absured assertion is claiming Bright Makes Right. Revenge of the Geeks may be funny in the movies, but is tragically wrong in reality. Satyagrapha means that Right is always right and painful. It means the rich and mighty must sacrifice to make right the imbalance caused by the imperfect accounting methods we have to measure valued added.

As marriage and divorce laws from history have shown, not all the monetary rewards go to the rightful people who contributed to the value-added. Wives have been denied their rightful share of the reward of matrimonial in all cultures since time immemorial, just because the husbands have been the bread winners. The invaluable work of child-rearing, of educating the young, of caring for the household have been under-valued and under-paid, indeed, un-valued and un-paid, for most of human history. It is only in the last century that this has changed.

The same under-value and under-paid culture is prevalent is all societies against the poor. Marx condemned capitalism in part for this injustice. The burden of global warming caused by pollution from industries are equally on the backs of every individuals in the world, yet the benefits from the polluting industries only enriched a few individuals in a few countries. Life is not fair, and is imperfect, but to claim that the poor is poor because they merit their station in life is beyond injustice; it is falsehood. Marie Antoinette may have said the infamouse let-them-eat-cake as a wittism in jest, and probably did not deserve to have her head chopped off for it; but we have no excuse to ignore the suffering of the poor, and lest of all justify their suffering with a falsehood like Bright Makes Right.