What matters?

A sense of injustice
For many years, ever since I was little, I believed that tackling global poverty must be the most urgent and the most worthwhile cause to pursue. In my view, those of us that are privileged, we the lucky ones born in developed countries, have a social and moral responsibility to help, where we can. For a long time I thought this strong feeling is purely due to compassion, however, as I grew older I began to realise that it actually has more to do with a sense of injustice, a feeling of unfairness in our world today that is at play. 

Traditional charity does not seem to work

I realised at a young age that traditional charity does not seem to work. I remember asking my mother how much I had to donate so that a beggar would not have to beg anymore; my mother's answer was a simple one "don't be silly, the beggar will just spend it all". The Chinese have a saying that "better help those in urgent need than help the poor", the rationale being that giving to the poor does not solve the underlying problems or help eradicate poverty in any way.


Social Enterprise
Then one day I came across a brilliant solution that seems to be a better way to tackle global poverty - Patient Capitalism. People need opportunities and dignity rather than just simple unsustainable charity. By supporting sustainable local businesses to meet local needs and solving local problems (utilities, water, food, medical care...etc), it provide people with jobs and means to improve and transform their community; businesses that aims to be financially sustainable and emphasis on social returns rather than pure profits. I started to support organizations such as the Acumen fund which is just inspirational in this area of work.

This seems to be the way to go, given that our society today is based on market capitalism.

Planet Earth

Then recently, a new idea was presented to me which made me wonder. It is called The Venus Project. Although I am often put off by the speakers in those kind of videos where the speakers are often cynical in nature (which may be a necessity for them to question the current system in the first place) and very often overly sarcastic, but never the less, I think their is something in what they are trying to say.

Basically, a market economic model that is driven by growth is not sustainable given that we have limited resources on Earth. Growth requires consumption and growing consumption indefinitely is unsustainable. The current model actually end up encouraging waste, as the most economic way of producing goods is often not the most sustainable or environmentally friendly way.  A lot of the growth in wealth, population...etc are due to the rapid advance in technology driven by the use of oil, rather than our financial or political system. Going back to what Malthus was telling us (see blog page on the Malthusian Trap), with diminishing resources, we will not survive unless we be smart about how we use our resources and come up with the science and technology that will solve the problems.

Hence my dilemma, "what matters?"
I have no doubt that based on the market system, creating sustainable businesses and provide jobs that solve real problems is the way to go for tackling poverty. However, not enough is being done to create a sustainable business ecosystem economising our global resources.
But should we continue with this free market economic model? As the grim presenters point out in the documentary, at it stands, the free market model is rather wasteful and far from economic. Are we ready and is it necessary to change this model completely as suggested by the Venus Project?

The debt creating aspect of our financial system is obviously creating problems, can the current free market model function without this debt aspect? After all, the free market model takes into account what people want, and if everybody, you and me, would only buy things that are enduring, efficient, locally sourced, environmentally friendly, have a low carbon footprint...etc then there will be no wasteful companies? It is very well to blame it on the free market model, but it is us the people that is actually at work.


So, to be honest, I have this feeling that there may be a much simpler working solution. Or put it another way, a system based on supply and demand may be quite capable of evolving towards the society being described in the documentaries, if one day our minds and values evolve to the stage where we learn to demand things sensibly. As a friend of mine often says "what do you need all that shxx for?".