Greg Hartnett

9 Steps to End Poverty

September 6th, 2007

There are more than a billion people on the planet living in poverty. I’m not talking about flipping burgers at McDonalds for minimum wage poverty. I’m talking about extreme poverty - characterized by the World Bank as living on US $1 or less per day. In today’s age of unparalleled opportunity and wealth, this is morally repugnant.

In his emotional and eloquent plea to the world’s rich, “The End of Poverty” economist Jeffrey Sachs outlines a detailed plan to end extreme poverty worldwide by the year 2025. The basic tenets follow:

Commit to Ending Poverty - The first step is commitment to the task. Oxfam and many other leaders in civil society have embraced a goal, Making Poverty History. The world as a whole needs now to embrace that goal. We have committed to halving poverty by 2015. Let us commit to ending extreme poverty by 2025.
Adopt a Plan of Action - The Millennium Development Goals are the down payment on ending poverty. They are specific, quantified, and already promised in a Global Compact of Rich and Poor. Not only should the world community recommit to these goals, but its leaders should adopt a specific global plan to meet the Millennium Development Goals of the sort outlined in chapter 15 (raising ODA to 0.7 percent of rich world GDP), and offered in detail by the UN Millennium Project.
Raise the Voice of the Poor - Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. did not wait for the rich and powerful to come to their rescue. They asserted their call to justice and made their stand in the face of official arrogance and neglect. The poor cannot wait for the rich to issue the call to justice. The G8 will never champion the end of poverty if the poor themselves are silent. It is time for the world’s democracies in the poor world - Brazil, India, Nigeria, Senega, South Africa, and dozens of others - to unite to issue the call to action. The poor are starting to find their voice, in the G3 (Brazil, India, South Africa), the G20 (a trade grouping that negotiates within the WTO, and elsewhere. The world needs to hear more.
Redeem the Role of the United States in the World - The richest and most powerful country in the world, long the leader and inspiration in democratic ideals, has become the most feared and divisive country in recent years. The self-professed quest by the United States for unchallenged supremacy and freedom of action has been a disaster, and it poses one of the greatest risks to global stability. The lack of US participation in multilateral initiatives has undermined global security and progress toward social justice and environmental protection. Its own interests have been undermined by this unilateral turn. Forged in the crucible of the Enlightenment, the United States can become a champion of Enlightened Globalization. Political action within the United States and from abroad will be needed to restore its role on the road toward global peace and justice.
Rescue the IMF and the World Bank - Our leading international financial institutions are needed to play a decisive role in ending global poverty. They have the experience and technical sophistication to play an important role. They have the internal motivation of a highly professional staff. Yet they have been badly used, indeed misused, as creditor-run agencies rather than international institutions representing all of their 182 member governments. It is time to restore the international role of these agencies so that they are no longer the handmaidens of creditor governments, but the champions of economic justice and enlightened globalization.
Strengthen the United Nations - It is no use blaming the UN for the missteps of recent years. We have gotten the UN that has been willed by the powerful countries of the world, especially the United States. Why are UN agencies less operational than they should be? Not because of UN bureaucracy, though that exists, but because the powerful countries are reluctant to cede more authority to international institutions, fearing reduction of their own freedom of maneuver. The UN specialized agencies have a core role to play in the end of poverty. It is time to empower the likes of the UN Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and many others to do the job - on the ground, country by country - that they are uniquely qualified to lead, helping the poorest of the poor to use modern science and technology to overcome the trap of poverty.
Harness Global Science - Science has been the key to development from the very start of the industrial revolution, the fulcrum by which reason is translated into technologies of social advance. As Condorcet predicted, science has empowered technological advances in food production, health, environmental management, and countless other basic sectors of production and human need. Yet science tends to follow market forces as well as to lead them. It is not surprising, I have noted repeatedly, that the rich get richer in a continuing cycle of endogenous growth, whereas the poorest of the poor are often left outside of this virtuous circle. When their needs are specific - by virtue of particular diseases, or crops, or ecological conditions - their problems are bypassed by global science. Therefore, a special effort of world science, led by global scientific research centers of governments, academia, and industry, must commit specifically to addressing the unmet challenges of the poor. Public funding, private philanthropies, and not-for-profit foundations will have to back these communities, precisely because the market forces alone will not suffice.
Promote Sustainable Development - While targeted investments in health, educatio, and infrastructure can unlock the trap of extreme poverty, the continuing environmental degradation at local, regional and planetary scales threatens the long-term sustainability of all our social gains. Ending extreme poverty can relieve many of the pressures on the environment. When impoverished households are more productive on their farms, they face less pressure to cut down neighboring forests in search of new farmland. When their children survive with high probability, they have less incentive to maintain very high fertility rates with the attendant downside of rapid population growth. Still, even as extreme poverty ends, the environmental degradation related to industrial pollution and the long-term climate change associated with massive use of fossil fuels will have to be addressed. There are ways to confront these environmental challenges without destroying prosperity (for example, by building smarter power plants that capture and dispose of their carbon emissions and by increasing use of renewable energy sources). As we invest in ending extreme poverty, we must face the ongoing challenge of investing in the global sustainability of the world’s ecosystems.
Make a Personal Commitment - In the end, however, it comes back to us, as individuals. Individuals, working in unison, form and shape societies. Social commitments are commitments of individuals. Great social forces, Robert Kennedy powerfully reminded us, are the mere accumulation of individual actions. His words are more powerful today than ever:

Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills - against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence… Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation…

It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy an daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Let the future say of our generation that we sent forth mighty currents of hope, and that we worked together to heal the world.

26 Comments »

Bluehost.com CEO Email Spam

February 7th, 2006

Over the course of the last year, we have experimented with our share of hosts. Hosting has really become a commodity, and I tend to choose the host depending upon what type of site I plan on running.

I have found Bluehost to be a fantastic solution for hosting my blogs. If you are going to use Wordpress as your blogging platform, Bluehost makes it very simple to get your blog up and running. The pricing is competitive, and the service has always proven reliable. I have a dozen or so domains hosted there, and planned on using them for additional sites in the future.

A couple of hours ago, I received the following email 4 times from Bluehost CEO, Matt Heaton:

Dear Bluehost.com Member

This is Matt Heaton with Bluehost.com. I am writing to you on a somewhat personal issue. Many users have asked me how bluehost.com came to be, and a little about my own background. I have sinced created my own blog (Hosted on bluehost of course) to discuss the genesis of bluehost and to write about some of the issues affecting the hosting industry in general.

I feel a little trepidation when it comes to writing about myself, so if you have no interest in this blog please forgive me for intruding in your inbox If you do have time though I would be interested in your thoughts regarding my blog.

The URL for my blog is:

Spammer CEO

Another issue I was hoping members of bluehost could help us with is a “Recommendation List”. I would very much like to put together a list of sites along with a positive comment about your experience with bluehost. If you feel that your experience with Bluehost has been exceptional we would appreciate a small one paragraph statement about your experience along with your domain name. We will compile this list of domains/comments and link to it from the main site (A page rank of 8 ).

Please email your comments directly to me for inclusion at matt@bluehost.com

Thanks for your time!

Matt Heaton / President-CEO / Bluehost.com

I guess Matt simply could not resist the urge to share the earth-shattering news that he had started a blog. I imagine that all the users of Bluehost received this email.

I immediately hit the blog, posted a comment, and grabbed a screenshot - and I am glad that I did, as Matt didn’t approve my comment. Nobody likes being called out on spamming.

Additionally, I was amused to see his appeal for testimonials, promising a link from his site - “A page rank of 8 “, Mr. Heaton is quick to point out. Puhleeeze…

Two cardinal rules broken here, by a CEO, nonetheless:

(1) Spamming your customer base to announce your blog. While it is nice to see more and more people and companies entering the blogosphere, you don’t need to hit your entire user base multiple times announcing it - especially when the blog is brand new. Big deal.

(2) Openly using your pagerank in an attempt to garner goodwill, and praise from your userbase. Here’s a hint: anybody that cares about your pagerank, will know your pagerank. You don’t need to hit people in the face with a brick to get their attention.

Bluehost stock price down big.

*Update - Since writing this, I have received an additional three copies of the same email. Through his spam efforts, Matt has been able accrue almost 300 comments on his initial post.

11 Comments »

Fortunate Son

July 3rd, 2005

Today, I joined countless other Americans in a July 4 staple - barbeque. While grilling my rib-eye to perfection and enjoying a Heineken (ok not so American), I dialed my iPod onto Credence Clearwater Revival. The lyrics to “Fortunate Son” struck me as appropriate, and wrap up my American experience pretty well. Thank you John Fogerty.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
ooh, they’re red, white and blue.
And when the band plays “Hail To The Chief”,
oh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,

It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no senator’s son,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no fortunate one, no,

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don’t they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman come to the door,
Lord, the house look a like a rummage sale, yes,

It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no millionaire’s son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no fortunate one, no.

Yeh, some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, how much should we give,
oh, they only answer, more, more, more, yoh,

It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no military son,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no fortunate one,

It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no fortunate one, no no no,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no fortunate son, no no no,