For over a decade I’ve had a personal-side interest in development economics -- and being a businessman, I have my personal perspective on the subject. In a nutshell, it seems evident to me that poverty only goes away when there are good jobs, and that good jobs can only come from business directly, or from the taxes business pays. Government can smooth the way for things, but it can’t create wealth where there wasn't any. At risk of being simplistic, the eventual cure for poverty… is wealth.
For years I’ve hung around the sidelines of the IDC - the International Development Community. Nonprofits/NGOs, the big multilaterals like the UN, academia, donors, policymakers - all good people, and all (without exception as far as I can tell) either openly antibusiness or, if they do appreciate the role of business in development, just plain goodhearted but naïve. In either case, whenever they do jump in to “enable” business activity in pursuit of development, the only two tools they know to use are debt and/or advice. I believe both of these to be poison for any aid-receiving business, especially when offered by outsiders.
This problem, if you agree with me, and if you think about it, is super-intriguing. Super-gnarly, even. I just can’t see how the IDC - by its very nature - can EVER be expected to “get” business. The minute there's a profit, they naturally want to divert it to some "good" use helping poor people, forgetting that the original idea was to have a surviving business at all, and maybe even expand it. The minute somebody is actually making money, they suspect there's quite probably been a theft, forgetting that the original idea was to create wealth out of thin air where before there was only poverty. If the workers get paid nothing more than a decent local wage they see injustice, forgetting that the original idea was to have steady jobs where before there was unemployment. If a business really provides a better service at a better price, and so actually gets big, they tend to mistrust that very trait of Bigness -- hence mistrusting success -- and embrace instead all the little uncompetitive businesses that can't make it anymore. Their default view of business is that it's always strong, powerful, even somewhat dangerous, like a nuclear power plant you can just plug into; whereas in fact the typical business -- even a larger business -- is a living thing: unsteady, fragile, subject to forces beyond its control, and needful of continuous attention to survive.
They are in a completely different line of work, they spend their entire working lives under completely different forces, attending to completely different goals. It would be like expecting a teacher to be excellent at warfare, or a military general to be excellent with little kids. Yet the IDC has BIG money earmarked for “helping” business; development-community people are smart and sophisticated and not-unaware of the foundational necessity for prosperous businesses as a precursor to poverty alleviation. They just don’t know any way to effectively spend their money. Sometimes, aware of the problem, they’ll bring in experienced businesspeople to help. But along the way even these outsiders to the IDC forget where they came from, start talking just like the development people they’re working alongside of, and completely lose their rudder. It’s not like I have an answer to this problem in mind. Honestly, I’m thinking quite seriously, there probably isn’t one.
Meanwhile, back at Transrio. None of this applies to what I’m doing at work. But I am in an interesting position, with a particularly nice vantage point for simply staying curious. And since I’m curious about this specific problem anyway, it adds to the general interestingness. I have a job with one foot in a very rich country, the other in a quickly-developing country; in my work I’m always searching for ways to actually make money, to be paid for what I do, to be truly useful in a business sense, while steering clear of finance-finding or advice-giving. So if along the way, by great good luck and serendipity, I were to stumble on something interesting from a development standpoint, I would probably notice it. And if that thing were replicatable and scalable, there is always the potential perhaps to tap into all that IDC money, and parlay it into something that really does help small businesses.
But my thinking doesn’t go beyond that. That would be a completely different company, if it were even possible, and something for a completely different day.
I believe in the benefits of globalization for poor people,
animals, and the earth. People are not going away; the only answer is to spread
best practices. I see the risks –
I also believe that people are a good species, biased to compassion and caring - that happy, educated people will usually do the right thing, and should always be trusted over governments. I don’t believe that people are the most important species, or that everything should be optimized for people – but at the same time it is evident that any solutions for the earth as a whole will have to involve the evolution of humans – human development – simply because we are so dominant, empowered, and ubiquitous.
There’s a negative meme that the global economy is being put together by rich white guys, and that it works primarily for their benefit. I don’t buy that at all, I think that’s negative and destructive, a disempowering belief. Diversity can flourish alongside expanding opportunity, they aren’t at odds; we don’t need walls of protection, or choices intentionally limited, doors intentionally shut, keeping the poor untainted, keeping them poor. The new global order is something everyone is building together, as a sumtotal of free choices, for their collective and mutual benefit – not just rich old men (though they can maybe make more happen), not just Americans and Europeans, but also smart professional women worldwide, young hard-driving entrepreneurs, community organizers, and all the smart creative people living in developing countries, right out to the smallest cities and towns.