Page 22 - MYM 2016

Can Wealth Concentration Be Stopped?
Critics of GB always pointed out that the loans
it gave were actually wasted because the poor
don’t know how to use the money. It only adds to their debt burden. e reality turned out to be far from that. Instead of accumulating debt burden,
they accumulated large savings, now bigger than their outstanding loans. GB helped them to prove themselves to be excellent savers, proud owners of investment capital, and owners of a nancially robust nationwide bank. I have been arguing that all human beings are born with unlimited creative power. If society gives them the chance to unleash this power it will surprise everyone.
Critics argue the opposite. ey warned us not to waste our money by giving it to poor people, but rather to give it to people who could employ them in large numbers. I did not see it their way. I wanted to turn the poorest women into entrepreneurs by bring- ing out their suppressed talent of entrepreneurship. e critics seem to believe that entrepreneurship belongs only to small class of special people, and the rest are born to work for them.
If we leave nancial institutions unchanged,
Grameen Bank’s microloans allow poor women to pursue activities such as embroidery, animal husbandry and bamboo work to generate revenue for themselves and their families.
they will only keep fueling wealth concentration. To slow down the concentration of private wealth, two things need to be done. Existing nancial institu- tions have to be redesigned to make sure they cannot remain facilitating vehicles for wealth concentration. Secondly, we need to build an entirely new set of nancial institutions to deliver all nancial services to the poor. It is extremely important to provide nancial services to the poor so they can move up on their own. ese exclusive institutions should be designed as social businesses rather than allowing them to become instruments of personal pro t for the rich, which in turn would strengthen the wealth accumulation process for them.
If one wants to nd out why the wealthy become wealthier, all one has to do is to look closely at nan- cial institutions. ey are the engines that drive wealth concentration. If we wish to see change in the wealth-pyramid in favor of the poor, a new nancial system is a must. e existing system has not only created the wealth-pyramid, it is making it worse at a faster and faster rate.
22 | MINd YOUr MarkETING OCTOBEr 2016