Dear Al, (1) It's simply and plainly wrong that "what sells, serves" - sometimes it serves, sometimes it doesn't.
(2) It's again a gross misperception that earnings even of hundreds of thousands of "new" middlemen in ICT-service-distribution-chains "eradicate poverty". (3) If it were true, then your proclaimed benefit of ICT -- that is, eliminating existing (!) middlemen in existing distribution channels -- and eliminating supply-chains for other goods by using ICT, the examples you present as success stories -- would likewise increase poverty. (Actually there are examples where -- looking at a whole country, a region or a complete locality -- the country, region or locality became poorer by eliminating middlemen. Only the new endpoints of the chain -- large corporations, individual producers/consumers -- had some gain, where normally the largest gain was for the biggest players in the game). (4) Please name a single example listed at <www.digitaldividends.org> that shows using comparative data (either before/after or group-in-question/control-group) that the poor end-users of ICT-services were made less poor by using ICT. (I definitely do not accept indirect arguments like "It's bought by them...and because the poor would not buy it unless it serves... hence it makes them less poor". The poor buy also Aspirin, Milk powder, Coca-Cola, Brandy up to -- to make a point -- crack...but none of these products makes them less poor). (5) The most frequent examples -- sales and purchase-prices -- are misleading, as their impact is based not on informing individuals but on informing the public, therefore producing synchronized actions. (As done by the Stock and Commodity-markets and the respective Stock-tickers for about 140 years --long before ICTs -- only fractions of stocks and commodities are really traded at those markets, yet they "define" publicly acceptable prices because they are public). (6) Yet even though already about 80% of the Nicaraguan coffee-producers do know the indicators of NY-commodity-futures on coffee, it doesn't help them significantly. Actual prices paid are determined by about 8 or 9 large-scale-middlemen that trade about 80% of the world's coffee beans. On the other hand, the volume they may offer is insignificant compared to market-dimensions, even if all coffee producers of Nicaragua would agree to sell only jointly. The supposed "counter-examples" of specialty-coffee which obtains higher prices in public auctions is economically irrelevant -- as are the US$ 1,000 a bottle for an exquisite French wine compared with thousands of hectoliters of French wine production, which sell for US$ 5 a bottle. (7) May I stress: I'm definitely in favor of large companies discovering "the poor" as possible markets, yet please don't propagate it using misleading arguments or misnomers. It's a business like any other business: not any less nor more humanitarian than any other. (8) I still have some hope that in some moment in time they also will re-discover an old discovery made by Henry Ford: the key is not only to produce a Model-T car at low cost but to increase the worker's salaries up to the point where they themselves could afford to buy one. Hopefully the Chinese workers producing Cellular Phones, Computers and Cars and other appliances will have in the near future an income sufficient to allow them to buy one. Yours truly, Cornelio On Friday, November 12, 2004, Al Hammond wrote: > For Tom Abeles and others who have joined the conversation recently, I > would like to point out that we have documented a number of what we > believe can be win-win models, and even sustainable models, in > connectivity, agriculture, finance, health care, and other sectors, in > detailed case studies that can be found on <www.digitaldividends.org> or > with links under the resources page of the conference website, > <http://povertyprofit.wri.org>. We have also posted earlier in this > discussion detailed market data characterizing the size of the > low-income or bottom-of-the-pyramid markets in a number of developing > countries. Many of the companies coming to the "Eradicating Poverty > Through Profits" conference in San Francisco next month are seriously > exploring how to serve such markets in ways that generate real local > value, while also yielding a profit. ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
