Showing posts with label socialmarketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialmarketing. Show all posts

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Fiscal Conservative In Name Only - FCINO

I gasp at Carly for California. Please, keep making shit like this so we can identify those who want to have an adult conversation and those who want to make a complete mockery of the challenges facing California and the world. Lions and tigers and bears and wolves increasing taxes! Oh, my!

Wonkette (thanks Tom) had the appropriate response, but please...that's a Kiwi film, I believe. Get the Flock Out of Here, indeed.

Mr. Krugman had some words about the impending doom of wolves earlier in the week - Fiscal Scare Tactics:
...there’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade. Consider, for example, what the latest budget proposal from the Obama administration says about interest payments on federal debt; according to the projections, a decade from now they’ll have risen to 3.5 percent of G.D.P. How scary is that? It’s about the same as interest costs under the first President Bush.

Why, then, all the hysteria? The answer is politics.

The main difference between last summer, when we were mostly (and appropriately) taking deficits in stride, and the current sense of panic is that deficit fear-mongering has become a key part of Republican political strategy, doing double duty: it damages President Obama’s image even as it cripples his policy agenda. And if the hypocrisy is breathtaking — politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next — well, what else is new?
I know, I know...he's a wolf in bears clothing, right?

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Microfranchising - Building on Good Ideas

It is certainly not new (I learned that I should have been reading Nextbillion.net more carefully three years ago... their new look is great!), but diving into the topic of MicroFranchises today, I found some new ideas.

First, the BYU Economic Self-Reliance Center "broadly define MicroFranchises as small businesses that can easily be replicated by following proven marketing and operational concepts. The overall objective of MicroFranchising is to promote economic development by developing sound business models that can be replicated by entrepreneurs at the base of the pyramid; therefore, the start-up costs of MicroFranchises will be minimal. The key principle is replication, replicating success to scale."

This led me to another article I missed in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. This article, as an online PBS report on health care solutions, focuses on CFW Shops in Kenya.

I am still thinking through my reaction to this idea. It stirs up my interest in social marketing and social enterprise. I am very attracted to the idea that, at least in the CFW Shops, franchise owners are vetted, supported and trained. It seems to address the frequent criticism of Microfiance that its loans remain too small to really have an impact that money alone doesn't make an entrepreneur. On the other hand, the challenge of quality control seems to linger. Can you really take away a franchise in Kenya if the owner cuts corners in a time of crisis? (This is discussed in the PBS video.)

One graduate of BYU has set up a blog on microfranchising and the head of the Economic Self-Reliance Center, Jason Fairbourne, has written a book on the topic (cover above) and runs the university's wiki, which explains their MicroFranchise Toolkit.

Friday, February 01, 2008

"Malaria and How to Beat It"

The debate on giving away free malaria nets (and other health interventions) continues in The Economist. Now the WHO is backing the drive to kill the notion that paying a small amount makes a greater impact.

I am a bit confused in my own logic on this one. The Economist saying give it away, while I am intuitively feeling like "free is more effective" still ignores a few key points. Maybe the simple lesson is summed up best by hwig, a commenter on the article...
Giving out free nets is fine but it should be accompanied by a strong program of education otherwise they will be misused in exactly the way described at the beginning of the article.
Is that right?

Update March 24, 2008: A few more comments on the matter from the PSD blog, which has a link to the WRI post that has commentary on the issue.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

More on mosquito economics

To subsidize or not to subsidize, isn't that always the Economist's question? It was in Money v mosquito, asking whether the Gates Foundation and World Bank should subsidize a malaria remedy to keep the price down.

(Has anyone else noticed that when you wish to blog about something, you end of finding five more things you should read?)

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

That's Random

I am a fan of the potential of randomized trials and was pleased to read an article in the 25 Oct 2007 issue of Nature called Field Trials Aim to Tackle Poverty. The Poverty Action Lab, featured in the article, is a good resource for me, but I thought the article was a bit unfair to the "debate" over handing out malaria bed nets for free or charging. (Here's the paper for those wishing to review their development economics.) They take a swipe at Population Services International, an organization I have appreciated in many contexts, mostly as they push people (me, especially) to see aid and health programs as more than just supplying the needed goods. It also requires socil marketing to help change behavior, or so I thought.

Maybe I will spend Sunday afternoon reading this and see if I was wrong all along.