Does MicroFinancing Work?

Microfinancing gets the cash flow going

Here’s some reading material when I have time to get to it. Esther Duflo, a French academic has tackled the question of how to help build a financially independent country up from poverty without the result being theft, political dictatorship and usury abuse. Here’s a starting point from wikipedia.

I’ve been reading Fordlandiawhich deals with a similar philanthropic approach to business. Ford was a philosopher entrepreneur who thought that the financially independent employee was good for the company and hated the low wages that didn’t offer people the options to buy his products. His mistakes in the Amazon, where he went to build rubber plantations are instructive to us today when our globalized economy is shifting into new locals and upsetting a previous economy. In a nutshell, the story traces the transition from agrarianism to industrialism. One can look at the story as instructive about how to do it wrongly. But how do we do it right?

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