Comments on: Gates misses the point on 'creative capitalism'

perspective The Microsoft chairman's well-intentioned pitch for corporate activism missed the root causes of poverty. (Hint: it's not lack of corporate charity.)

[pieceofmind]

What about the U.S. of A.?

Personally I'm tired of seeing money go overseas from Corporate America as well as charities. If all that money was directed towards fixing the issues we have in this country it would go a long, long way toward pulling America upward.

[TTschopp]

Specious Argument

McCullaghs' point of view may be correct but I was unable to get past his first argument. He says "But what his Davos speech didn't acknowledge is that corporations already provide money to communities and charitable causes. They pay employees and managers, who are able to write checks to charities as they see fit." It takes a pretty convoluted viewpoint to argue that the money that employees and managers send to charities is really a form of corporate support of those charities. That money is paid to employees as part of their compensation package for the services they provide the corporation. If they choose to share their compensation with the charities of their choice those contributions rightly reflect only on the individuals and not on the any corporation that employs them.

[saintpeterii]

what's the real problem?

possibly those who think in terms of capitalism, socialism and even the steadfast communists have their cannons pointed in the wrong direction. for those who seek positive change it may well be of critical importance to assess the role of bureaucracy in the scheme of things. john kenneth galbraith writes of bureaucracy as having a nature of it's own. that is while not organic, it does respond to stimuli in the environment in accord with the precepts of classical and operant conditioning and has not within any economic system ever done anything other than function to expand and aggrandise itself. maybe it's not too far afield to suggest that the former russian empire was taken down by the bureaucracies it spawned. so mr gates might want to factor bureaucracy in his plans and certainly the bureaurats will factor him in, possibly for billions

[richard.dowell]

Gates is Right on Target

Gates is asking corporations to allocate some of their creative talent to addressing helping the world's poor.

At issue is that can capitalism support this? Let me give you just one example where by just thinking a bit about the challenge you can find considerable profit potential from programs benefitting the poor.

I live in South Carolina and our Governor Mark Sanford and the political leadership of both houses have identifed the biggest barrier to economic development (read improved business climate and opportunities for growth) is the high school dropout rate.

The costs to the state, the business community and the ways to reduce that rate it the savings well justify the supporting investments.

Well I am teaching a new course at the Citadel School of Business Administration on "Building a Successful Business Using the Internet". When I started my own training for teaching the course I realized that teaching high school students this course would give them an opportunity to have jobs when they graduated.

That would certainly for some be an alternative to dropping out. And where would the jobs come from? From local businesses who also could benefit by either establishing or improving a web presence (it's said that if a local business does not have a performing website, it can plan to be out of business within two years).

So it's really a win-win-win situation for all. When I recommended to the Governor that he support this program his staff set in motion a number of steps that could lead to having the course taught in charter schools for at risk students (see my post at creative-capitalism.richarddowell.info).

This is just one idea that could benefit at risk students across the country.

Let me give you a branch to this. When my course was announced in our local newspaper I got a phone call from a local lady. She asked me when she could take the course. Her only income was from social security and she was home bound taking care of her 85 year old father who was bedridden. She had no way to make separate income, but could if she could have a business from her home. Think about it.

Then several week later I had a call from an instructor in Canada. He had 20 years of experience in helping folks who had been out of the workforce for many years return through the training programs he was giving. His success rate was about 25% -- and the local regional governments funded his training programs because it was so expensive to support these segment of society.

The instructor leaped on the opportunity to add this course to the training programs he already had been using.

Now if we can make it work for our own poor, then there must also be ways to make it work in the lesser developed nations of the world -- fund the entire prosperity throughout the world.

Best regards from Charleston, SC

[nprybes]

Unfortunately, you missed the entire point of creative capitalism. It is not, as you infer, to give handouts or to create money-losing projects in the attempt to benefit others. Instead, it is to use a market-based approach and develop affordable technologies/innovations that will actually benefit poor people. For example, a drip-irrigation system that can be sold (for a small profit) to smallholder farmers in Africa who currently have no way of irrigating their fields. The farmers would benefit from increased crop yields, the creative capitalist would benefit through an (albeit small) profit.

Your prejudices to global development are blatantly obvious in this article and espouse a very apparent lack of knowledge on global development issues.