Thought of the Day

Written on 07/15 at 05:48 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

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“Today, 85 percent of the $400 billion that the government spends to encourage things like home ownership, college attendance, investment and small business ends up in the pockets of the top 20 percent of earners (and half goes to the top 5 percent). Very little ends up helping the working poor. On the other hand, many social benefits cut off when a family’s income rises roughly 30 percent above the poverty line — which is still a far cry from being out of poverty.” (From an NYTimes article titled Out of Poverty, Family-Style)

Think about that.  The government spends money to incentivize the better-off to do what they would be able to do without the subsidy, while they penalize the poor when their income increases.  That is an eye-opening fact, one that puts into stark contrast the policies affected rich and poor in the wealthiest country in the world, and one that should force us to re-think traditional notions of why people are poor.  The truth is that the deck is stacked in favor of those with power.

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My New Favorite Quote

Written on 05/28 at 03:23 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

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As the absurdity of our current budget process becomes ever more painful (we cut services to the poor during a recession but refuse to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans) the extent of our military spending has become that much more egregious.  This quote, by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was an opponent of the then inchoate military industrial complex, captures what happens when we spend more on guns than on education…

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

We are a nation more interested in defense than in what we are defending.  It is time for a new generation of people to emerge that will question--and change--the status quo!

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Thoughts on a Book: “Where Good Ideas Come From”

Written on 12/09 at 05:15 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: philosophy Business

It seems fitting that as all the controversy about Wikileaks is reaching a fever-pitch I just got done reading a book, called “Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation,” that is all about the extent to which open environments--be they natural, office, or other--are essential to innovation.  Two things have really stayed with me after reading the book.  The first is that when we tell the story of great inventors, we always like to think in terms of the “eureka” moment, of the lone genius in his garage; however, the author points that many of these innovations actually were developed over years and were built upon the platforms of other ideas.  This is not to deemphasize the role of the individual in innovation, but rather to emphasize the importance of collaboration and openness to those innovations--for the simple reason that if good ideas are not allowed to flow, then people can’t do anything with them.  The second thing that stuck in my mind from the book was that if we are to really solve social and environmental problems then we must be relentness--if not reckless--in our pursuit of giving away our secretes.  That is to say, if I have a hunch about a new way of doing microfinance in the US, it does no good to society if I hide it from others in the vain fear that the idea will be “stolen.” The book, of course, goes into great depths to refute the notion that the profit motive is the only way to stimulate and encourage new ideas; in fact, he has an entire chapter devoted to what he calls the “fourth quadrant,” which he defines as ideas that were derived from non-market, collective sources (such as academia or governemnt--think of things like GPS and the internet as great examples of ideas that were developed in this quadrant).  By mapping out 200 inventions over the last 600 years, he shows that the preponderence of good ideas have come from this quadrant, where the profit-motive is conspicuously absenst; indeed, most profitable ideas have built upon the platforms and ideas that came from here (think of Google, Facebook, satellite TV, etc.).

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Visiting a Village--Part 1

Written on 02/08 at 03:26 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: philosophy Business environment brown micro credit News

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Andy and Jill with a Grameen Bank Center Manager and Borrowers

If you talk to anyone at Grameen Bank they will tell you that the real bank can only be found by going to the villages where Grameen operates.  Grameen, after all, means rural, and in fact by law Grameen can only operate its lending programs in the villages.  It is for this reason that on our third day in Bangladesh we--Jill, me, an Australian named Mark, our translator Matin and Mark’s translator Yunus--are all crammed into a mini-van barreling down the roads that lead to Rashahi, the zone that we will be visiting. Traffic here is an eclectic mix of motorcycles, bicycle rickshaws, cars, trucks hauling absurdly large loads and comically unstable buses all chaotically weaving and swerving, honking and narrowly avoiding catastrophe. 

After 6 hours of bouncing along these roads we are happy, if not relieved, to have arrived at the Branch that will be our home for the next 10 days.  It is a two-story building--the first occupied by Grameen--with two small rooms for guests.  In order to understand where branches fit into the Grameen hierarchy, I need to take a moment to explain how the bank is organized.  For in truth, Grameen is nothing short of an organizational miracle.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that while Dr. Muhammad Yunus is praised for recognizing that the poor can be credit worthy, his real, lasting achievement is in the details of how he goes about delivering that credit to them in a cost-effective manner.

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A Story on Super Bowl Sunday

Written on 02/07 at 06:26 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: philosophy

This morning I was thinking about the fact that throughout America people today are resting, attending church and making preparations for watching the Super Bowl, while at the same time in Haiti, in Iraq, in Myanmar, and in so many unknown villages, slums and cities around the world there are people deprived of food, justice and dignity.  And it occurred to me that the great responsibility of living in a free society is to strike a balance between fully enjoying that freedom--and the comfort and security it affords--without turning a blind eye to the lack of freedom elsewhere.  How do we confront the horrors of Haiti without reducing our own hearts to rubble? Yet if we can look at these things with clarity and not turn away, then we can find sustainable, practical solutions. 

Yes, that is our task.  What follows is the story of how I came to that realization.

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Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States

Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!

My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…

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A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?

Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development.  To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…

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Tonight, the Oneness of Things

It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come.  I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…

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