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I've been remiss in plugging Creative Capitalism -- a new project by Conor Clark and Michael Kinsley. Creative Capitalism is the public blog of a private website in which economists discuss and debate the premise of a speech Bill Gates delivered in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In the speech, Gates ruminates on the limits of private philanthropy and the need for free-market solutions to global health and development challenges. The contributions on the blog will turn into a book sometime this fall. But here's the interesting part: Clark and Kinsley (and Simon and Schuster) are not interested in publishing elusively the opinions of economists on their website. Rather, they are opening up the project to the blogosphere as a whole in the hope of soliciting contributions to their book from blog authors and blog commentators.
In a recent post, Lawrence Summers suggests a creative capitalist solution to the mortgage crisis:
Here is a really good creative capitalism idea. All Americans benefit from increases in home ownership because of the values like hard work, community, and respect for property that ownership instills. Families want desperately to own their own homes and accumulate equity. Yet it is very hard for conventional banks that borrow money over the short term to lend over the kind of 30-year horizons that best help families buy houses.Not a bad idea. One of my personal favorite examples of how the profit motive can be harnessed to meet social objective is Ebay Founder Pierre Omidyar's twist on UN Foundation Board Member and Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunis' microlending idea.How can the objective of ownership be best supported and how can the most adequate financing be assured? Voila, creative capitalism! How about chartering private companies as government sponsored enterprises with the mission of promoting home ownership affordability? Give them boards with some private representatives and some public representatives. Make clear that government stands behind their capital market innovations so they can borrow more cheaply and pass the savings on. Exempt them from the state local taxes that others pay. Give them specific objectives on affordability that they must meet. Rely on a special government regulator to assure that they balance their social responsibility with their drive to profit. Harness the profit motive to meet a social objective.
In 2005 Omidyar gave $100 million to Tufts University to invest in microlending institutions, which provide small loans to people in the developing world to start businesses or other enterprises. These loans generally are under $200 and have a rate of return higher than normal bank loans. The University gets to keep interest earned on these investments, which is used to advance university goals. This past year, Tufts announced that it would spend a portion of this money on helping pay off the student debts of graduates who decide to take low paying public service jobs (like becoming a teacher, joining the peace corps, or working at a non-profit). The initial seed money for this grant has essentially turned into a win-win-win situation.
If readers have any of your own creative capitalist ideas, send them to Conor Clark.
Comments
Hi
Here's an idea. Abolish economies, ownership, and pricetags/bills/timecards.
You DO see the pyramid scheme symbol on the back of the USA one dollar bill, right? You DO see the servitude infestation in capitalism, right? And do you see the "pay up or lose your wellbeing" Chicago mob-like felony extortion widespread within capitalism? Do you see the "join or starve" felony extortion done to the 18 year olds... by this ugly competer's church called capitalism? (Parents do a poicy reversal from share share share, to fight fight fight when the kids turn 18 and get "sharktanked". its a tradion amongst lower 2/3 of pyramid scheme, but not for those born "set for life").
See how forcing competer's religions onto 18 year olds... kills membership in the cooperator's church (Christianity/socialism)?? Do you understand that AmWay (American Way) (New World Order) got "the exclusive" on the TYPE of survival coupons (money) accepted in supply depots (stores) and leverages 18 years olds into the organization via that felony activity as well?
Do you understand how farmyard pyramids work... from your childhood?? Remember?? Upper 1/3 are "heads in the clouds" while the kids on the bottom ALWAYS GET HURT from the weight of the world's knees in their backs? Still with me? Do you see anything illegal, immoral, or just plain sick... in any of this pyramid scheme's activities?
Us American Christian socialists are still patiently awaiting the natural fall of the pyramid-o-servitude, or the busting of the free marketeers felony... by the USA Dept of Justice. Us Christians are VERY CLOSE to issuing a cease and desist order until the servitude and inequality goes away... which means it turns into a commune. Commune is a word we LOVE when used in the word "community"... but its one the caps HATE when used in the term "commune-ism". Go fig. PROGRAMMED!!
Time to level the felony pyramid scheme called capitalism. Abolish economies and ownershipism worldwide, and hurry. Economies just cause rat-racing, and rat-racing causes felony pyramiding. BUST IT, America! Look to the USA military supply/survival system... as well as the USA public library system... for socialism and morals done right. Equal, owner-less, money-less, bill-less, timecard-less, and concerned with growth of value-criteria OTHER THAN money-value. There are MANY measurement criteria of "value"... not just dollars. Try morals, efficiency, discrimination-levels, repairability, etc etc. Economies are cancerous tumors, and to cheer for their growth... is just insane. Profiting causes inflation, so if you caps LIKE inflation, and if you LIKE a terrible time in afterlife when you meet the planet's ORIGINAL OWNER before caps tried to squat it all with ownershipism, then keep it up with the felony pyramiding. I dare you. While us Christians are finally bulldozing that pyramid scheme back to level, lets make servitude and "join or starve" illegal in the USA, and lets level the architecture seen in USA courtrooms, too. Right now, USA courtrooms are church simulators or "fear chambers", by special design. Sick.
Isn't enlightenment FUN!!!???
Larry "Wingnut" Wendlandt
MaStars - Mothers Against Stuff That Ain't Right
(anti-capitalism-ists)
Bessemer MI USA
Posted by: Wingnut at July 16, 2008 10:13 PM
Hi again. By the way, something is wrong with the blog's html... regarding the center column and "archives" column. In certain browsers (like Mozilla), the archives column is overlapping some of the text in the center column.... likely due to an absolute positioning on the archives column. Such things will cause the page to not 'flow' properly, and thus it will not scale properly either. Scale = be prepared for ANY screen resolution. A window resizing (size-dragging the lower right corner of a browser window) should make the text in the center column change wordwrapping, and it doesn't. The archive column (and maybe all columns) has hard-wired widths, and is not using percentages as it should.
You need not publish this comment, but if it happens, it happens. Take care. Wingnut
Posted by: Wingnut at July 16, 2008 10:21 PM
BILL GATES and CREATIVE CAPITALISM – AN ADDENDUM
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/08/bill-gates-and-creative-capitaliism.html
There is a need for shifting consciousness.
Posted by: PacificGatePost at August 11, 2008 11:25 PM
