I don’t give money to beggars; I think it just gives them the incentive to keep begging instead of truly changing their lives.

I may be heartless in this, but you never know where the money is truly going. Is it for food, for shelter, or is it for drugs and alcohol?

Instead of giving your money to beggars why not give the money directly to charities? Here you can think that the money is going to your cause and really making a difference.

Reading this article I found myself agreeing that too often we don’t know where our money is going to with charities and we see glitzy balls but what is really reaching the public? I know that there are some charities who do this already but I really feel that with the internet there is no reason why charities can’t completely divulge their financial information. Revenues, expenses, where the money actually gets deployed. Heck add to this an independent study showing that the money was fairly being distributed on the ground level and you would have confidence in the charity and be willing to give more!

If all charities did open up their books would we be having a fiasco like current one over the spending of British MP’s? Maybe someone in the free press wants to look into this!

So my last post I talked about the corruption that occurs here in Nigeria; who would I be if I only complained and didn’t offer any solutions!

To start with I think it is important to point out that most people are self interested and respond to the incentives created by the environment around them. For the politicians here in Nigeria their current incentives are to be corrupt. The risk of punishment is so small and the rewards are so great it makes sense (selfish sense) for them to take as much as they can for themselves.

So looking at it from the point of view as what we in the first world can do the first thing would be to help the citizens of Nigeria create a situation where the incentives of their politicians are to do good! As I said before the IMF and World Bank are giving billions in debt funding and subsidies to Nigeria that are not getting to the people. Instead it is the leaders that are taking the money. If the money is not going to those who need it then why give it. So as harsh as this sounds stop giving any money to Nigeria from the outside world.

To take things a step further I think that we should put sanctions on doing business with Nigeria. So much bribe money goes along with contracts being tendered here and none of the benefit gets to the people. Why should we tolerate the support of the corrupt?

If we stop giving the people at the top the ability to take massive amounts of bribe money from the outside world then maybe they will recognize that it is in their best interest to grow their country so that they can make more money that way. I keep wondering why they have not figured out that you could make this into an amazing economic power here and then they could put more money in their own back pocket since there would be so much more to go around. Of course you only make it into an economic power by having the common individual become economically independent like we have in the US or Canada.

So the first step would be some tough love!

The second step comes with my three wishes for Nigeria.

One: That they find their own Gandhi. Someone who can lead them through a peaceful revolution.

Two: That they have clear, transparent and free elections. This way it is truly the voice of the people that is heard. Let the people have control over their own future. They could bring in the UN to help them with this and give the UN the power to annul the elections if they are not carried out in a fair and orderly manner.

Three: That they have freedom of press. Even with the internets small penetration here you could still get massive amounts of information about government performance out to the people.

Inform the people of the truth of things and give them the ability to make their own changes. This way you will only stay in power if you do what is best for the people.

If there were good elections and free press then I would be all for supporting the governments that they elect and removing all sanctions. If the government does not get the money to the people the press would be able to report on it and in the next election the government would be kicked out of office.

Too radical? Don’t think I am right? Tell me some other ways?

Some people need to put a lot of thought and energy into what they prepare when they are speaking and others seem to be able to make it up on the spot. Bill Clinton was one of those people who seemed to be at his best when he left his notes behind and just engaged his audience. This was one of the things he was famous for as president and he did not disappoint.

Another place that I was truly impressed with was how he really took his time to think before he answered his questions. At times being slow to respond can come across as a lack of intelligence, but Bill was able to pull it off with an air of well thought out knowledge. And once his thoughts were gathered there was never any humming or hawing, never any filler words, just clear thought out answers.

The message was something I think we could all use; how to balance social responsibility in a capitalist world. As a huge proponent for free trade and globalization he never strayed from his beliefs, but instead he gave arguments for how corporations could be profitable while providing benefit to the largest number of people as possible. A great example of this was taking the model for supplying Aids drugs in Africa and changing it from a high margin low volume product to a low margin high volume product and take advantage of economies of scale to be able to make money while servicing more people at a lower price.

It was a great reinforcement for the idea that if we are going to have a great future then we need to be focusing more on the future as citizens, countries and corporations.

So I am off to see William Jefferson Clinton, or as I like to call him ‘Billy J’, speak on Thursday. Now the build up for this has been great for me. You see through out the last seven years one of my critiques of George Bush has been his limited ability to public speak. This of course is supposed to be one of Clintons’ strengths. So I wonder, are my expectations too high?

‘Clinton’s public speeches describe the challenge of globalization, emphasize our growing interdependence, and point the way toward a common future based on shared goals and values.’ It is interesting to hear of a former president of the United States, which is attacked for its foreign policy and exploitation of people abroad, talk about how we all have to look out for each other. Maybe the message is getting across to our southern brothers or maybe he can only talk about it now that he is no longer in office?

Hopefully it will be a great speech with an inspiring message…

So I am reading Thomas Friedman’s the World is Flat trying to catch up to the new world that we live in. The more I read the more I feel it is important to be an entrepreneur going into the future. Let’s see if I can explain myself:

Back in university I was taught that if you offer higher wages you would get more people trying to get the job. So your supply of labour would increase as the wage increases. Of course if you were the employer you would be willing to employ more at lower prices and less at higher prices.

So what is happening with globalization is that for many jobs there has been a huge increase in the number of people willing to work at all prices. This benefits the employers as they are able to find relatively cheap labour a lot easier.

One thing that is often overlooked is that in the process of going to a global economy new jobs and industries are created on a world scale that increases the demand for labour. Unfortunately this increase isn’t enough to offset the massive increase in labour supply.

This still leaves people in North America fearing for their jobs and wondering what will happen in the future as they compete with people from India, China and Eastern Europe for employment. Luckily there is still one way to work that isn’t going out of style, and will always be around into the future: being a part of the innovation.

It actually doesn’t matter if you are the employer or the employee, if you are part of the innovation process you will always have a place going forward into the future.

On a basic level economies are made up of capital, labour, and innovation or technology. The capital will go to where ever it can find the best returns in a free market system. The labour will be farmed out to whoever is willing to do it the cheapest. The people who are involved in the innovation will be the ones who will be involved and working in the economy no matter how flat the world gets.

How does this affect the employer/employee relationship? Well the worst thing that can happen to you as an employee is that you become standardized labour; someone that can be replaced somewhere else. This is harder to do if you are an engineer or on the creative side of the business process. If you are the entrepreneur it is your job to make sure your company is never stagnant, always innovating, and you get to ensure that you are never standardized.

Who wants to be normal? Carve out your niche by leading the innovation and employing others to do the standard things for you!