Dear Colleagues, Chetan Sharma's examples are interesting, particularly the one from Unilever. It is a variance on the same theme as the many "multilevel marketing" organizations in the US, and I presume elsewhere. Basically, for those unfamiliar with the scheme, one recruits persons to sell a product, they in turn recruit others and everyone up stream gets a piece of the commission from the sale of goods to the bottom of the pyramid. The idea, of course is one pays "retail" at the bottom and one gets goods at a discount higher up because commissions off set the cost of the goods. There are some very good versions of this, many with strong faith based communities which can rapidly propagate the scheme by networks. Of course, some of these have ended up in developing countries, such as Avon which has gone global.
These, of course, encourage consumption of products which move capital out of the community. One wonders what the Unilever scheme might be, in detail, as does one for ITC Agri-business. The question which one must ask is whether increased consumption of external goods and services is the most appropriate model, not just for developing, but for developed countries as well. Is the accumulation of "goods" the best measure, or only measure. Is trying to bring the developing world up to the consumption level of the developed world more viable than reducing the consumption pressure from the developed world and looking at a more distributive model for wealth in a global society. Perhaps the best development model is one that reduces pressure on the earth from the haves rather than spending effort and precious resources to bring the disenfranchised into the same consumptive model. This is neither a plea for a neo Marxist social model nor a "back to Mother Earth", extreme green suggestion. There are economic models which are not driven by increasing resource consumption. The World Resources Institute knows exactly what the costs to the environment are for pursuing a neo-classical model of development and may have gone astray under the illusion that making corporations "socially and environmentally responsible" will provide a path to bring the disenfranchised into the consumptive society while making the global society sustainable. Public traded corporations, in a stock market driven society have to define such a model within the current neo-classical context which may be like trying to square a circle. The efforts described above and others placed within the current corporate model may be little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Thoughts? Tom Abeles ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
