ZenHabits.com has posted this video as one approach to solving world poverty.  It's very well-done - it inspires, evokes an emotional response and helps show you the way to feeling really good about yourself and the world...  And it's unfortunately very flawed.

There's an old story of a couple of fish swimming through the water past an older fish who says, "howdy boys, how's the water?"  They politely say hello and keep moving on.  After a couple of minutes go by, one says to the other, "what's water?"  In our case (those of us whom are targeted by this video), the water is economic freedom.

If all it took to solve world poverty was money and education, it would have been eradicated eons ago.  Over the past 50 years, over two trillion dollars of aid has effectively been poured into a black hole with the result of many countries being worse off then before. 

I applaud the sentiment behind these kinds of efforts - and the videos are awesome bundles of eye candy and emotion - but think twice before you buy in...  I wish I could figure out how to make videos and marketing campaigns selling economic freedom that were this compelling...  maybe we'd actually make a dent in world poverty...  Can anyone help me?

Comments

[Rob Wurth]

Nice post. Though I think the video would be the easy part. Convincing government/planners that they don't always know what is best for everyone? There's the hard part.