Self-help gurus and billionaires and other blowhards think people are poor because they have a poverty mentality....
Tag: distribution
Getting Into Social Debt–And Getting Out
In Silicon Valley, companies discuss and worry about their “technical debt.” That’s the friction caused by the accumulation of bad design choices, expedient compromises, avoided decisions, and postponed work....
Our Brains Are Wired To Be Social
When I say in this blog that we are social creatures, I’m being quite literal. Our brains are physically wired to be social. Each one of us has an interpersonal neurobiology that responds to the world around us....
Using AI to Map Better Distribution of Social Goods
The effectiveness of social goods often comes down to distribution. Can you put social goods in the hand of the people who need and want them? This is a huge challenge in the informal settlements in the world’s urban areas. A team of university researchers, government agencies, and software companies are showing how AI...
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The Evolutionary Benefit of Fairness
As shown in my previous post on fairness featuring video about Capuchin monkeys who were paid unequally, fairness is innate. But what is the evolutionary benefit of fairness? Brian Hayden, professor emeritus of archaeology at Simon Frazer University in British Columbia, Canada, has an interesting theory. It revolves around scarcity and the distribution of...
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Estonia Runs On Digital Government
I visited Estonia in the mid-1990s. Back then, I said it would be fascinating to return in 20 years and see what changed....
Designing Elections
We have elections all over the place: within companies, nonprofits, homeowner’s associations, kid’s sports league. Civic elections are a social good. As with all social goods, marketing principles apply to elections....
Urban Trees–And The Rest Of Nature–Are Critical Public Infrastructure
Urbanization continues, but urban can’t mean completely paved and mechanized. For protection, sustainability, and happiness, we must align our cities with the natural systems where we build. We need to be consciously designing, funding, and distributing nature in our cities. Urban trees, and nature more broadly, need to be treated as critical infrastructure for...
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Case Study in Nonprofit Healthcare: Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative
For social goods like health care, the buyer and the end consumer are often two different parties. In much of health care, an insurance company or a government agency is the buyer, while the individual patient is the end consumer. At least in the United States, for-profit medicine companies exploit this split. They charge...
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Distributing Help to the Homeless
How do you deliver help to homeless people with no fixed address and little to no money? ...