Even from the outset, "We live in a new age where globalization & capitalism must harmonize with social good" - bold faced newspeak. Anybody who has ever actually done social work who couldn't help but to see this as a bleak vision of the future.
The page goes even further, listing examples of well-intentioned although ineffective, dubbed "useless", designs in a negative light, and then showing Coca-Cola of all things as as the first example of a positive product, designed for everybody.
Though most of the design sense and advice here is good from a product perspective, to propose that capitalism is the solution to the problems shown here, or rather vaguely hinted at, is to me a disturbing vision. Capitalism is in many cases the primary contributing factor to them, all this mentality proposes is to give with one hand and take away with the other - and then feel accomplished and morally cleansed by the process.
There is much more to building a better world than building consumer products. If this is the best we can do, I am saddened.
The commerci product coca cola has massive market reach.
So much so that live saving and very cheap oral rehydration salts were being put in the same cartons as coca cola as a method of delivery with specialliy designed boxes that fit between the bottles.
> NAIROBI, 2 March 2012 (IRIN) - How is it that the world's most popular fizzy drink reaches even the farthest-flung corners of the planet, yet vast numbers of children in developing countries die for lack of one of the cheapest and most effective preparations known to medical science?
The original concept has expanded the range of items being delivered (water purification tablets; vitamin A supplements) and allowing local businesses to sell these items.
Two points, one on the project you mention and one on the article..
I worked on the Colalife project in Zambia via Zoona, a mobile payments company, and it's worth understanding how distribution of the product actually evolved.
Coke has enormous distribution into the farthest reaches of rural Zambia because there is enormous demand for the product, which Coke has achieved by its excellent marketing and a smart distribution model.
The Colalife project did great, entrepreneurial work to identify an issue and get a new medical product on the market, but it quickly found that distribution didn't happen by putting the product in coke crates as intended. When demand for oral rehydration salts/zinc increased, traditional distribution mechanisms took over -- boxes of the product making their way on trucks, bicycles, etc. There are things we can learn from Coke's marketing to help design solutions to social issues, but that's not the same as the consumer product itself contributing.
The article makes a good point that caring != ability to create something that produces social impact, but seems to miss the most important part: engaging with and actually understanding your customers, regardless of who they are. Caring itself is not a problem, it's that people conflate those good intentions with understanding, and since they care that is enough to push forward with an idea.
The missing principle, which is as true for affluent as well as disadvantaged customers, is to really engage with, understand and get feedback from your target market.
You'll find it disturbing if you fundamentally distrust capitalism. It's true many social workers tend that way.
We won't settle anything in this discussion: it's fundamental to the left-right divide. One side thinks that it's vital to allocate resources fairly, and this can be done efficiently if only people would be good enough. The other side thinks that market forces are the only way we know to allocate resources efficiently, and that deviating too far from this in the name of fairness will become self-defeating due to excessive waste. Extremists on both sides make it hard to have a sensible conversation.
Most people are, however, moderates, not extremists. For some reason, the Internet mostly acts to amplify extremism, and we get this you are either left or right mentality (us politics has also been polarized as of late).
> One side thinks that it's vital to allocate resources fairly
It is actually capitalism that thinks that it is vital to allocate resources fairly. Communists, on the other hand, think that resources should be allocated _equally_ with no regard to fairness. "To each according to his need."
> this can be done efficiently if only people would be good enough.
And until people get good enough, which in reality will never happen, communists think that the use of force to take from those who have and give to those who dont is perfectly justifiable.
> The other side thinks that market forces are the only way
Nope. The other side thinks that central planing and big goverment are a source of abuse of power. A free market isnt a perfect solution, but it is the lesser of two evils. If nobody has massive power, nobody can abuse power massively. There inevitably will be some abuse in a free market, but not in the orders of magnitude of, say, North Korea, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and other central planning epic fails.
> deviating too far from this in the name of fairness
It is not done in the name of fairness, but in the name of equality. If fiarness was the goal, communism would be the side trying to not interfere and to leave everybody alone. But it is not. Communism is the side advocating maximum interventionism, of requiring (and enforcing) sacrifices for a centrally planed "greater good" etc.
> Extremists on both sides make it hard to have a sensible conversation.
In my view, the only way to solve it would be to create communist and capitalist zones, and make it legally impossible to change that economic basis of a zone. The "conversation" would then amount to fans of capitalism and communism moving to their preferred zone. Neither side would be trying to forcibly make the other side live under their economic religion.
The problem is that the left doesnt actually want to draw that border between takers and makers, because they _are_ takers trying to get total control of the makers in order to exploit their productivity.
As long as communists are able to get control of a whole state and then forcibly redistribute _other_ people's wealth, there will be a state of perpetual low-intensity warfare between the left and the right. Knowing that once you give communists a single finger, they will feel entitled to the whole hand and try to forcibly amputate it, is not in any way extremism, but knowlege of history paired with a sense of self-preservation.
What point does it make to have a conversation with people who are basically trying to legally mug you?
> What point does it make to have a conversation with people who are basically trying to legally mug you?
What point does it make to have a conversation with people running the machine that systematically impoverishes billions, to enable the lives of a thin crust of tens of millions?
(Not that I'm juvenile enough to believe such an extreme position in either direction--and yours relies on the sort of maker-taker dichotomy that I think I grew out of when I was seventeen and the bloom was off the libertarian rose--but you see how useful this sort of froth is, yeah? Then why do you do it?)
Meaning no slight to your character in general, in this conversation you are one of the extremists.
There are plenty of countries (large parts of Western Europe post-WWII) which have had predominantly left-leaning governments for 60+ years and not devolved into centrally-planned communist states. There's a genuine debate to be had about the role of governments, markets, taxation and distribution, but trying to frame it as the world threatened by the sword of communism hanging over all our heads just stakes out your position way out on one side and signals a refusal to enter any kind of debate.
> in this conversation you are one of the extremists.
It is extremism if and only if refusing to negotiate with muggers also is extremism.
> trying to frame it as the world threatened by the sword of communism
Whether the world at whole is threatened or not I dont know (people seem to survive in North Korea), but leftists like you certainly threaten my income and my freedom. If you scheme to force me to give a part of the products of my labor to you, it is the same thing as forcing me to work a part of my workday for you. In my eyes, wanting to force people to work for you against their will makes _you_ an extremist.
> signals a refusal to enter any kind of debate.
If you carefully observe, we're already debating right now. But you seem to be more preoccupied with labeling your opponents as extremist, refusing to debate, etc, than with debating itself. Refusing to play the "let's meet at the middle ground" game doesnt imply refusing to debate at all. It just means your argument (communism is good, so gimme your stuff) is too nonsensical to make me accept even parts of it as reasonable.
> your argument (communism is good, so gimme your stuff) is too nonsensical
Can you quote that argument actually made by anyone in the thread you are responding to?
> you seem to be more preoccupied with labeling your opponents
Your own post jumped immediately "distrusting capitalism", "social workers" and "allocating resources fairly" to "communism" and "muggers", so I think it's fair to say you're projecting. And it reminded me of this:
We've changed. And we've become contemptuous of the idea that we're all in this together. This is about sharing. And about, you know... when you say sharing, there is a percentage of the population, and it's the moneyed percent of our population, that hears "socialism" or "communism" or any of the other -isms they wanna put on it, but ultimately, we are all a part of the same society, and it's either gonna be a mediocre society that, you know, abuses people, or it's not.
> Can you quote that argument actually made by anyone in the thread you are responding to?
I can quote you quoting David Simon: "This is about sharing."
If "sharing" implies forcibly mugging those people who do not _want_ to share --and it of course does-- is is just an euphemism for outright communism.
I could label capitalists as muggers just as easily as you label socialists. Let's have a reasoned and honest debate instead.
Seems to me a libertarian of the Ayn Rand variety. Your splitting the world into capitalist and communist zones (as if those were the only two options!) as well as your use of the terms "makers" and "takers" are right out of Atlas Shrugged.
Can you answer me one question: Are you a real libertarian, or a royal libertarian?[1] Read the referenced article and then tell me where you stand with respect to land as private property?
The horrible design of the page itself made it damn near impossible for me to follow the message they were trying to express.
Its design is really all over the place. There's no consistency when it comes to the font sizes, capitalization, text colors, and paragraph width. The images and text are mixed in a disruptive manner. Some of the images are pointless and irrelevant, yet still take up a large chunk of the visible portion of the page.
After reading a chunk of text, it'd take far too much effort and time to search around to figure out where they were continuing. That proves to be very distracting.
I eventually gave up rather quickly. They should just offer their message as a plain article, without such a frenzied design taking away from whatever it is they're trying to say.
No shit, I have days where I look at advertisement, graphic design and marketing and can't help but subscribe to this view of Bill Hicks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
Absolutely. Coca-Cola (the drink, not necessarily the company) is a scourge and always has been. Giving access to Coke to everyone is the last thing we should want, but it is happening.
The One World Futbol the article seems to think is good costs $40 for two, and is supposed to serve the poor? How does that make sense? The truly poor make footballs (soccer balls) from garbage; will a $20 ball do anything really positive, or will it be used as a status symbol and perhaps stolen?
Another weird thing: the article praises the Casio F91-W wristwatch which is supposedly a favorite for making bomb timers. Sure it's ubiquitous but they could have picked something without such a troublesome reputation.
There is here an idea that people in the third world ought to have what people in the first world have. In some cases they might be better off without.
I think his point was that in some cases the idea is to let the product get out there and let the people themselves decide as consumers, rather than someone arrogantly deciding that they would "be better off without".
The football clearly hasn't been fully commercialised. A durable foam moulded ball is one of those ideas that's super-obvious but requires just the right material to actually be fun to kick. Surely once the right polymer and foam density have been found it can be churned out for pennies.
I have a One World Football, and I have to say that it's pretty nice. I like the weight, the bounce, and the feel, especially for headers. I would use it in a real game if I could convince anyone else, but they all think it looks too weird or is a Nerf ball or something. It's almost the the last step they need is some kind of cover to make it look like the balls you see on TV.
Even from the outset, "We live in a new age where globalization & capitalism must harmonize with social good" - bold faced newspeak. Anybody who has ever actually done social work who couldn't help but to see this as a bleak vision of the future.
The page goes even further, listing examples of well-intentioned although ineffective, dubbed "useless", designs in a negative light, and then showing Coca-Cola of all things as as the first example of a positive product, designed for everybody.
Though most of the design sense and advice here is good from a product perspective, to propose that capitalism is the solution to the problems shown here, or rather vaguely hinted at, is to me a disturbing vision. Capitalism is in many cases the primary contributing factor to them, all this mentality proposes is to give with one hand and take away with the other - and then feel accomplished and morally cleansed by the process.
There is much more to building a better world than building consumer products. If this is the best we can do, I am saddened.