Part 1: the genocide of the poor.

*what is poverty, and what is it to be poor?
*
*lots of definitions. the one that concerns me is
**”poverty means dying of being poor.”
**
*How many people every year die of being poor?
*
**Every year, 60 million people die globally (all causes.)
**
**UN FAO estimates 30+ million of those deaths are affected
**by malnutition. These aren’t people starving to death,
**it’s just that poor nutrition is a factor.
**
**If you start looking at dirty water, cooking on open fires,
**lack of medical care, preventable disease, if you rack all
**of this up
**
**the “povery cluster” deaths that are absolutely directly caused
**by poverty at at least 10 million people a year.
**
**people are dying of poverty many times faster than they were
**killed in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
**
*This is the genocide of the poor, and it is ongoing. Almost never do you
*see it directly addressed or stated in such blunt terms, but I think that
*the numbers warrant this kind of bold and direct statement.
*
*Some historical context.
*
**500 years ago, nearly everybody died of being poor
**
**The kings and queens of europe died of stupid diseases
***and in their 50s
**
**Nobody had good sanitation
**
**Nobody had known-pure drinking water
***they all drank beer to stay well!
***
**Populations were much smaller
**
**There was nothing to contrast poverty to
**
*But still… 10 million people a year is about a thousand an hour.
*
*This problem *DEFINES* serious business.
*
*Mostly these are invisible deaths. It’s 20% infant mortality, it’s people
*dying in their 40s and 50s from preventable diseases. It’s a lifetime
*of bad diet robbing people of their immunity.
*
*I want to make this stuff clear to you because I want you to understand
*how angry these people are going to be
*when they work out clearly
*that we have been completely ignoring them
*while living in absolute luxury.
*
*This is a bomb made from potential political consciousness.

Part 2: what can be done?

*1> food production
*Ivette Perfecto estimates that the agricultural output of the small farms
*can be doubled with simple organic farming techniques.
*
*Simple manual pumps can greatly help with irrigation, also multiplying
*crop yields.
*
*Note that none of this requires hand outs.
*This is about _knowledge_
*
*So this more or less takes care of food.
*
*2> birth control
*This should be obvious. It’s mainly suppressed by religious groups
*(notably the Catholic church, but right wing protestant groups too.)
*
*I hope there is a particularly unpleasant hell for those who
*stood against women’s reproductive rights.
*
*3> drinking water
*a variety of simple techniques exist, from rope pumps through to
*biosand water filters. again, costs are well within local budgets,
*and the net result is drinkable water nearly anywhere in the world
*using more-or-less what is available, or a few cheap imports.
*
*nobody doubts that the technology exists.
*
*4> cooking fires
*cooking over an open fire is like smoking 40 a day
*children in that environment are particularly vulnerable
*millions of people die of respiratory complaints of these types every year
*
*multiple approaches: rocket stoves, gasification stoves, solar cookers
*
*5> micronutrient deficiency
*people are a bit short of folic acid or B1 or zinc and it messes them up
*fortifying common foodstuffs or handing out pills is cheap, but not
*simply about knowledge, as most of these other interventions are.
*
*Note how simple this is. It’s all really simple, basic stuff.
*
*Here’s some facts on telecommunication.
*
*1> 50% of the human race has cell phones now.
*
*2> Projected to be 75% by end of 2011.
*
*3> Likely to be nearly 100% by 2020.
*
*4> On the hardware side, change continues to accelerate – a 2020 cell phone is
*likely to include technologies like video projectors, virtual keyboards,
*face and voice recognition, full access to the internet nearly anywhere in
*the world and so on. Complete convergence between computers and phones is
*nearly certain.
*
*So let’s think about this.
*
*How does having net access affect these scenarios?
*
*Well, _most_ of these critical technologies could, in theory, be learned
*online from detailed videos. These are simple technologies, and even the
*awareness about the health implications of these issues – and the knowledge
*that there are alternative available – could be enough to catalyze real change.
*
*Think about that. 10 years from now, the network will be in place to deliver
*these kinds of ideas and tools – globally.
*
*Will the content be ready? That’s up to us. I’m working on it, and so are
*a lot of other people.
*
3> The Soft Development Path

*1 billion capitalists come close to exahausting the world’s natural resources.
*
*There is no way we can have 5.5 billion more people in the same kind of
*lifestyle as the Europeans, never mind the Americans.
*
*It’s not just about running out of oil: it’s about coal, about steel, about
*climate stability, about minerals like coltan, about biodiversity loss,
*about topsoil stripping and mechanized agricuture…
*
*There are a *thousand* reasons why the world will break before we have
*another 5.5 billion people living as we do. It cannot be done.
*
*One simple point: for many resources, oil particuarly, if demand increases
*very rapidly, the goods are basically sold at auction. The single global rich
*buy them, and the single global poor – whatever country they may be in – do
*without. Auction pricing of commodities like oil is bad enough, but when it
*comes to food… anybody remember those biofuels riots?
*
*Like that, but 1000x worse.
*
*Are we going to have a world with 6.5 billion people fighting
*tooth and nail for the 1 billion or so first world lifestyle slots
*while everybody else farms with their bare hands and hopes they
*will get lucky one day and move to the city?
*
*NO!
*
*But, still, we need a coherent model – an path out of poverty, not towards
*the incredibly unscalable and unsustainable model of the current First World
*but towards something else,
*
*something
*
*** DURABLE
*** GLOBALLY SUSTAINABLE
*** REALISTIC
**
*here’s the notion
*
*1> test and deploy these appropriate technology solutions
*
**this has to be a global program
**
**it has to be massively funded
**
**it has to start with volunteers to gain credibility
**
**we are *already* doing this.
**
*2> we document everything, lavishly, and in many languages
*
**so that any bright kid can watch the stuff on their phone
**
**figure out how to build it from the instructions
**
**build it
**
**and solve first their family, and then their village’s
**infrastructure problems
**
**we’re talking about seeding the solutions, all over the world
**
*3> those who want to massively improve their current lifestyle can
*
**fix the causes of such sharply reduced lifespan
**
**improve economic welfare by increasing farm productivity
**
**massively transform education levels through online resources
**
***this isn’t even expensive**
*
4> Capitalism? Communism? NO!

*to a very significant degree both capitalism and communism were responses to
*the problem of “who controls the factories.”
*
*(I’m not an expert, and I’m not addressing Maoism.)
*
*Capitalism?
*
**Right now, the pitch from Capitalism to the developing world is
**
***Worked great for the Rich!
**
***You should try it!
**
***Here, have a loan!
**
**Problem is, they’re *already* trying Capitalism
*
***That’s where all their natural resources went
**
***And only the few rich in those countries are benefiting
**
*Communism?
*
**Certainly the Chinese peasants did much better than those in other
**parts of the world for many years.
**
**The “market communism” of Kerala appears to have a plausible solve
**for poverty – 76 year lifespan on $300 a year – by focussing on
**land reform and providing basic services first.
**
**Kerala may be where several keys to the future of the world
**can be found.
**
**But Chinese communism, like Russian communism, tipped into
**mass-starvation and mass murder.
**
**We don’t know if that would happen else where.
**
**We also don’t have any reason to assume that classical communism
**is stable.
**
**And centralization of power is bad, right?
**
*So what kind of political system is it
*
**where you focus on spreading knowledge
**
**and the knowledge lets people thrive
**
**without having to leave their land
**
***or change their lifestyle
***
**and without making more rules, regulations, commandments
**
**and without levying taxes to pay for it all?
**
**Cooperative anarchy? Digital Gandhi-ism?
**
*Is it a political system?
*
**YES! The body that provides this education, and the social networking
**tools to organize all these people to learn from *each other*
**is providing many of the same services traditionally associated with
**government – it’s an _infrastructure_ house, at root – but it’s
**more like a global digital university.
**
*As an alternative to Capitalism and Communism in the developing world?
*
**Capitalism and Communism might still exist
**
***BUT NEITHER ONE HOLDS OUT THE ONLY PATH TO RESCUING THE
***POOR FROM THEIR LIVING CONDITIONS
***
*If we get the knowledge resources out there, the poor can rescue themselves
*
**without the need for a new ideology*
**
* Although Mahatma Gandhi and Buckminster Fuller worked this all out seventy or eighty years ago.