People fucking suck sometimes

[Mike]

The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two; but inspiration will cause them to rise out of their misery. If you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become rich; prove it by getting rich yourself.

Made me think of this: World Vision Micro - Life Changing Microfinance Loans for the Poor

Here's one for the wrinkle cream pushers: http://www.worldvisionmicro.org/show/1616

It's actually a really cool system, you don't provide the loan, you help pre-fund the microfinance institution that provides the loans.

6. Once repaid, your donated loan is recycled

Once repaid to the local microfinance institution (the current repayment rate is 98.7%), your donation recycles over and over again to helping an ever-growing amount of entrepreneurs in the same country.

That's pretty awesome!

 

[ChrisS]

Made me think of this: World Vision Micro - Life Changing Microfinance Loans for the Poor

Here's one for the wrinkle cream pushers: World Vision Micro - Fund Paulina Calamian's clothing business loan for to purchase more cosmetic supplies

I read about this in Entrepreneur magazine. I don't know how much they sugar coated it, but it sounded REALLY cool.

 

[negro2k]

hmm 1 cent for movign a goat thats actualy pretty good i dont know anyone who made even 1 cent whe nthey were 8. plus they live in africa where 1 dollar will buy you a castle. thinking of moving down there and living the pimp mansion life style

 

[Grindstone]

2012 here we come

Quit outing, bro!

 

[willcosys]

+REP

A few years ago, I was recruiting call center agents for a HUGE financial company. The only thing their top brass had to do all day in their offices was play Texas Hold em online and talk to each other about baseball and Nascar. Lower down the totem pole--the middle managers, were mostly minority women who could cut diamonds with the creases of their suits. They had MBA's and spoke using a Six Sigma vocabulary. They always walked around really fast so they looked like they had some important meeting to go to.

This place was socially engineered so that everyone acted like they were in 3rd grade. Colored construction paper maps to different areas of the building. Candy and ipods for rewards. Costume contests on Halloween.

There were 60 year old men acting like children in there.

Here's the rub:

It's no fucking accident that those places are set up like elementary schools.

If you wouldn't have said "I was recruiting call center agents for a HUGE financial company" I would have asked you if we worked in the same place. The sad thing that I have found is that most places are socially engineered that way. That is the exact reason that I am busting my ass to build my business online and get away from all of that bullshit. The money doesn't hurt either.

 

[ShlomiKalfa]

in my opinion its not that people dont care about others, they choose to ignore harsh stories because there simply nothing they can do.
I believe the ones who are able to help - do so.
I mean - if your in a place where you cant support another person would you stay there watch him struggle and suffers(while you cant do anything to help) or will you try to ignore so you wont feel bad.

Its like an Ostrich, or a stork (dont know which of the 2 does it) people shove there heads into the sand to ignore problems, and thats not bad or good its just reality

 

[justo_tx]

This is going to get flamed like hell (especially here on WF)...

But, I've being doing a lot of research on the science of success, and a common theme is that you will probably not become and stay extremely successful without somehow providing real VALUE for people.

No arguments here.

Look at Bernie Madoff. Sixty five BILLION dollars...and probably living most of his life with the sinking feeling that he was living on borrowed time.

It might be a bit of a stretch comparing rebill type products to Madoff, but in the end it's the same thing. Benefiting off of someone elses misery.

If you want to read about borrowed time read "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" ([ame=http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284645653&sr=8-1]Amazon.com: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (9780393072235): Michael Lewis: Books[/ame]) about the subprime mortgage industry collapse, it's a compelling read despite the subject matter. It ties into your thoughts about the lack of value and scruples but also how profitable that can be in the short term. Lot's of WF'ers would enjoy it.

 

[christopherim]

This post reminded me of the old book "The Science of Getting Rich"

Too true. The sad thing is, if the west had done a good job at making us richer and them better off we wouldn't have thrown away our head start and left the door open for china to come in a make a few more trillion $

1 penny per goat is a pretty good deal compared to the slave labor for cocoa thats going on right now

It's more profit than some of our farmers will make this year!

The fact of the matter is the US economy is based on exploiting third world labor. Think people could buy a $6 pair of jeans at walmart if all labor was unionized and paid a living wage? No fuckin way.

I always wondered about this. Don't forget that the US did pretty well from producing stuff for the rest of the world. Probably better than they do from having other people produce stuff.

Japan the same.

I would love to ask an economist if it is really possible for the whole world to be reasonably well off.

 

[anasoto]

Speaking of Machiavelli--what I can't seem to get past is how people idolize the Scarface/50 Cent/Jay Z attitude of "yo, I hustled crack to achieve my dreams".

Totally, and utterly agree. People are proud of the dirtiest, sickest shit these days. And then they plaster it on billboards and become the role models for thousands of kids. These kids go off dealing drugs in the hope of a film deal in 5 year's time.

 

[DanGlobalizer]

I've used this site off and on for a few years now, check it out: FreeRice

Basically it's a word game vocabulary builder, but the catch is that each one you answer correctly, 10 grains of rice get donated to 3rd world countries. It's paid for by (you guessed it) banner ads on the site.

It could make you feel good while you're wasting time on the interwebz

 

[sapphirescales]

The fact of the matter is the US economy is based on exploiting third world labor. Think people could buy a $6 pair of jeans at walmart if all labor was unionized and paid a living wage? No fuckin way.

You, like everyone else, is brainwashed to believe this. The owners of those companies could very easily pay $10/hr to their employees, charge the same prices, and STILL double or triple their money. The problem is, they don't want to double or triple their money. They want the pair of jeans to cost them $0.0158 apiece so they can make 379 times what they invest into their products. They can shoot out thousands of pairs of jeans in an hour very easily....probably tens of thousands. They get the materials for practically nothing and the labor too. And you can bet your ass they're not doing other things legitimately too. They're making fake deductions and lying about how much their expenses and profit are. You can be sure of that. This is probably a bad forum to be discussion narcissism, but yeah. You can't get much worse than these companies exploiting child labor just so they can make extreme profits that they don't even need. They've already got more money than they can ever spend yet it's still not enough for them. They still need to make thousands of people suffer just so they can look at all the money they have and go "oooooooh......... ahhhhhhhhhh......"