This article makes me happy. I hope more people read it. I hope it helps convince public and private "aid givers" that encouraging human initiative, self confidence and risk taking is a critical ingredient in lifting people out of poverty. Look in our own backyard. "Sit down money" is a cynical term coined by the very folks who receive it. It obviously sucks away some people's inherent drive to improve their lot. Greater access to capital (and encouragement to take entrepreneurial risks with it) will help generate some sadly needed "stand up money".

The author is a litte confused here.

http://www.acumenfund.org/

The acumen fund does exactly what he claims is required, and
you guessed it, Gates is one of the major funders.

The Third world needs business leaders and commentators to state and keep stating the bleeding obvious.

A full-on assault on population growth. Yes, two, one or no children.

All the capital in the world and " hand wringing " from "do gooders" will go no-where.

Ralph

The core African problem from Cairo to Cape Town is OVER POPULATION!
http://www.afrik-news.com/article18172.html
http://www.afrol.com/articles/36793

Unless African countries wake up and take action to curb it, no amount of aid or entrepreneurialism is gong to bail them out.

Kris Sayce says:
<<<But that's not the sort of thing that makes me sad.
The kind of news that saddens me is stories such as this from 2006:
“Buffett donates $37 billion to charity”>>>

Yep! it makes me sad too –real sad.
If they genuinely wanted to do something for humanity they would have been better advised to donate the money towards the advancement of science ---like the space program.

To adapt an old piece of advice:
Do not put your capital in Africa , where Mugabe’s and Idi Amin’s will nationalise , and where Gaddafi’s will tax it to fund terrorists . But store up for humanity treasures in the heavens, where Mugabe’s and Idi Amin’s can never reach , and where Gaddafi’s thinks only jinni’s dwell . For where your treasure is, there your heart will also truly follow.

Have a look at this map of world poverty... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

Basically the more red, the more poverty... But the surprise is that it is a map of FERTILITY - how many

children are being born.

You know how our government seems unable to fund hospitals, schools and roads, and this is with our population

failing to produce enough children to replace ourselves... imagine the problems of fundiong these essential

services if the population was not declining, but trippling every twenty years... no wonder they are poor. Worse

than schools and hospitals, they somehow they also need to find more farmland too!

50 years ago, perhaps we could have ended poverty. But now there are so many more poor that the problem is so

much bigger. For example, there are 60 million shanty-town dwellers in India alone, and only 20 million

Australians...

Let alone Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, New Guinea... What about Africa? Sth America? etc etc...

Why is China becomming so rich and powerfull? The one-child policy. It means they can finally afford to catch up

with the infastructire and education that nations need to get ahead and build wealth.

I don't like the 'one child policy', but Thailand and surging Iran (Think nuclear power) also have zero-

population growth due to marketing, free contraception and free choice. It's not really the feminist idea that

educating women reduces population growth (think Iran, they're not keen on educating women)...

...continued

What succeds is explaining to people that too many kids leads to poverty, and long-lasting free contraceptive

implants. Eventually compulsary education and urbanisation also drive down birthrates, because they make kids

expensive. This tends to come along at the same time as education for all, which creates the feminist myth that

only educating women decreases birthrates... it does, but that's only a small part of the picture.

On the other hand, why is the 'aging population' such a bad thing here in Australia? Surely it means we are

living longer, and isn't that a good thing?

The problem is not an 'aging' population, it is that we are suiciding... failing to produce enough kids to

replace ourselves.

Here we need to give tax reductions for kids so middle class parents can afford the kids we want. Those on welfare are pumping out kids like there is no tomorrow because of the welfare bribes to have lots of kids.

Meaning that single mums are pressured into having more kids than they can look after. And the payment incentives which ensure that few get married, as this reduces their welfare paynments.

Also making divorce fairer, because Australian men don't want to become dads... because they are afraid of

having their kids stolen by divorce lawyers.