How will we eradicate poverty?

Philosophically, this is the most interesting of the questions posed, but only partially because of the subject matter. The question is intriguing because it does not ask us if poverty will be eradicated, it supposes that this as a predetermined conclusion and wants to know how we will achieve it. It is a confined question. In addition, as we previously examined, it has some tremendous implications in the migration to the service of life. The service of war has such vast and undeniable ties to economic positions of countries, ignoring the poverty end of that scale would be imprudent.

Poverty can be defined as a adjustable window, so that alleviating the ails of poverty today simply creates new ails of poverty tomorrow. With capitalism as our global economic system, inequality is an intransigent result. However, under that sort of moving definition, poverty could never truly be eradicated, even with the replacement of capitalism. There would still be inequality, perhaps even inborn, that would provide for the basis of a wealth hierarchy. Instead of approaching poverty as an adjustable and variable scale, the nature of the question is how do we provide the necessities of life so that poverty is tolerable, or even sustainable, rather than inherently fatal? We need to advance systems to support human life, to make it possible for humanity to have the basic needs for innovation and thus advancement.

There is a hierarchy of requirements that society needs in order to evolve. The most important piece of this infrastructure is a strong and fair set of laws to not only dictate the rules of the society, but the structure of the overseeing governing body. The governing body should be democratic and representative, providing a good mixture of reasonable management and allowing a voice to all citizens. A fair legal system is absolutely required to define the boundaries that this society will abide by, but where many developing nations fail today is in enforcement. Every other community necessity is derived from this strong framework. The other societal necessities can be separated into 2 distinct groups, the tangible goods and the intangible frameworks. The tangible goods are food, clothing, and shelter. The other, less tangible, items are education and safety. This concept is nothing new and has been tackled by organizations as large as the United Nations, which estimates that, currently, this approach would require $40 billion annually to sustain.

A new solution has begun to emerge within the last 5 years. Ubiquitous computing and massive collaborative knowledge bases have opened up an extremely large wealth of first world knowledge to the third world. Organization and distribution of knowledge has been one of the most difficult problems humanity has had to continually solve. Now, it is the last mile in the global human network. One innovative solution to this problem is the One Laptop Per Child program. TheOLPC program is attempting to change the manner in which we look at education and is trying to seed poverty ridden populations with new learning tools. There are essentially 2 methods of learning, the traditional classroom approach and also a self taught, community based, student to student learning approach. OLPC is attempting to facilitate both methods.

A reversal of priorities in the necessities we laid out is now feasible. It is no longer required to build a strong infrastructure in order to facility educational change from the ground up. The advantages to this approach are numerous, and unfortunately, so are the impediments to success. The beauty of the project lies in the distributed nature of each facet. The program relied on very little formal infrastructure. Teachers are helpful, but not required. Grid power can be used if available, but the design is incredibly low powered and can be function on small solar panels or mechanical means. The machine is even designed to be read in full direct sunlight in the event that not even shelter is available. The networking connections are mesh based and incredibly long range, allowing children to connect to each other at extreme distances.

The question has been posed, do these children really need laptops? The answer is no, they do not need laptops, but yes, they do need access to education. We are impaired by our knowledge of what a laptop is capable of and what it is used for, and we live in an environment burdened with access to too much information. We need to avoid our own bias in viewing programs such as these as unnecessary first world interference into third world environments. Real progress and innovation in eradicating poverty does not come from charity. It comes from self starting local community philanthropists and entrepreneurs. Disseminating educational programs to a vast population in a decentralized manner allows us all to contribute a small amount to help create new philanthropists and new entrepreneurs. It helps us provide them with the primary essential tool in building government and business, and in developing the social programs required to support their own societies.

How will we eradicate poverty? I’m not sure that _we_ as western citizens will. The best approach for the most organic growth is to provide an incubator rich with incentives. Distributing education is the most accessible and reasonable approach currently available.