English: Global climate change 2000-2009 and 1950-1980/ Русский: Изменение средних температур за периоды 2000-2009 и 1950-1980. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Why is it not surprising that all of the global problems only have global solutions? Terrorism is a big problem, but compared to Climate Change, it is a small problem. Poverty is someone else' problem, except it is not. Disease is Ebola. You don't want that.
On Climate Change, there are points of no return. Nature does not hold back. It does not care. It does not care about intelligent life. Or unintelligent life. The threat is very real. The time pressure is very real.
After gays, it is guns. That next big liberal goal, to move from insane gun proliferation to sane gun control. On gay marriage they were the party of stupid. On guns, they are the party of insane. That is on the domestic front. On the global front, a 90% reduction in the US defense budget over a 10 year period will just make it an exercise in reallocation of resources. It does not have to be painful economically.
Rule of law within nations, rule of law between nations.
Khmer Anti-Poverty Party (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have been an Independent since. Not much of that either. Political volunteering is past tense.
I don't see me ever running for public office, ever! The issues that really get me - like global poverty - are global. And some of the best ways I could make an impact might be all digital.
I am a tech entrepreneur who would like to do good. I am a global citizen, a proud Indian.
Scale out the Google/Facebook drone initiative to blanket the planet with internet access, effective immediately. Cost $25 billion.
Design a $25 smartphone and flood the Arab countries (and subsequently rest of the world) with them. The dollar a day crowd gets the phone for free. Distribute shared solar chargers alongside. Cost $25 Billion.
Use Bitcoin technology (zero cost for money transfers) and mPaisa technology (bank account on your phone, you get money on your phone, you pay back on your phone) to radically expand microfinance globally. The goal is to not generate any profit, just to keep the fund intact. Cost: $50 Billion. Anyone with a phone with internet access can borrow upto $100 per year as long as they keep up with their monthly payments. If they miss three monthly payments in a row, they don't get to borrow any more for the following two years, after which they can choose to get back in the swing. You need a phone, and you need to send in an image of your fingerprint to a central database, and your picture perhaps. There is an app for that. A credit rating agency is instantly being set up. This program comes from the air. There is nothing between the dollar a day crowd and the internet. The interest rate on the loan is 5% per year. This is to make room for the fact that 5% of the borrowers will default. You can only get $100 per year for now. The next Warren Buffet should add another $50 billion to this. This would be the magic bullet of curing poverty.
The best way to fight ISIS (population: 20,000) is to show to them and to the two billion Muslims and everyone else how small and irrelevant they are. They don't speak for two billion people. This political challenge is primary. The military threat, though very real, is secondary.
Image via WikipediaTo me it feels like Bill Clinton makes fun of the United Nations every year. Just when the UN is having its most important week of the year, Bill Clinton goes ahead and hosts his conference and goes on to raise more money for his foundation than is the UN's annual budget. Here is a retired white guy. I mean.
The guy should have restructured the World Bank and the IMF when he was president so as to let the Global South have a greater sense of ownership with those global institutions.
All member governments need to give 1% of their GDP equivalent to the UN like citizens pay taxes in democracies.
Like Al Pacino say in a mafia movie, "I will give you money, but not power."
The US continued to not pay the UN what the US owed to the UN in obligations - taxes, if you will - when Bill Clinton was president.
No less than a Nobel Prize winning black woman called Bill Clinton "America's first black president" to honor this white guy from the South who has taken pains throughout his life to go out of his way to try and suggest maybe his heart is alright. Image by Getty Images via @daylifeHe is not like the white guys who stood in MLK's path every way they could.
His heart might be clean, but he did not exactly lead the efforts for structural changes at the global level that might have sped up the process of global poverty elimination.
A few billion dollars raised by the Clinton Foundation or a few tens of billions of dollars raised by the Gates Foundation will, at the end of the day, will not be the decisive blow to global poverty.
Poverty will not be eliminated because some white guys retired. Poverty will be eliminated because many people decided to make careers out of the cause. And perhaps the fundraising efforts send a clear message it is the private sector that will play the decisive role in poverty elimination. There are many for profit ways.
Image via WikipediaPolio could be cured. Poverty can be eliminated. And it can happen faster than many people imagine.
