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Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism | 
 enlarge | Author: Muhammad Yunus
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 1285
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 296
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 1586484931
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.7
EAN: 9781586484934
ASIN: 1586484931
Publication Date: January 7, 2008
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Condition: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION.
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Product Description
In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe, bringing with them enormous potential for positive change. But traditional capitalism cannot solve problems like inequality and poverty, because it is hampered by a narrow view of human nature in which people are one-dimensional beings concerned only with profit.
In fact, human beings have many other drives and passions, including the spiritual, the social, and the altruistic. Welcome to the world of social business, where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet.
Creating a World Without Poverty tells the stories of some of the earliest examples of social businesses, including Yunus's own Grameen Bank. It reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already under way—and in the worldwide effort to eliminate poverty by unleashing the productive energy of every human being.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
Excellent primer for the emerging field of social businesses July 9, 2008
As someone in the midst of trying to make a small business run within the lines of corporate social responsibility, I've really wrestled with the inherent problems with the whole "triple-bottom-line" movement. Primarily, I've wrestled with how one chooses which of the many bottom lines as they compete over and against each other. Yunus tackles this issue head on with his idea of the "social business" that is a single-bottom-line business: the bottom line of social transformation. I particularly like that he builds his case around the remarkable example of the Grameen-Danone social business partnership in Bangladesh. Time will tell if that experiment proves sustainable, but nonetheless, it's super helpful to have something tangible to point to rather than just a series of ideas or arguments. Because Muhammad Yunus' work with the Grameen Bank has won him the right to preach without real data, it's all the more inspiring to hear his examples from the dozens of other social businesses within the Grameen family. I should mention that the last 1/3rd of the book veers into some potentially "wishful-thinking" territory, I'd nevertheless heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the field, and was glad to give it 5 stars.
"the missing piece of capitalism" May 21, 2008
"No one who cares about humanity," writes Muhammad Yunus, "is satisfied with a world in which a few hundred million people enjoy access to all the resources of the planet, while billions more struggle to survive." But that's our world. Yunus cites one study that concluded that in the year 2000, "the richest 1 percent owned 40 percent of the world's assets, and the richest 10 percent owned 85 percent. By contrast, the bottom half of the world's population owned barely 1 percent of the planet's assets."
This disparity of resource distribution is wrong in practice, says Yunus. With globalized capitalism devouring diminishing resources, it's unsustainable; it also threatens global security. But extreme poverty is wrong in principle, too, because it deprives billions of human beings of the most basic of all human rights, the right to live a decent life. For over thirty years, Muhammad Yunus has worked with remarkable creativity, perseverance and vision to rectify these stubborn inequities. Most people know him as the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Today the Grameen Bank gives collateral free micro-loans to 7 million of the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh (97% of whom are women). Since its inception they have made loans totaling $6 billion, with a repayment rate of 99%. Yunus tells this story in his autobiographical bestseller Banker to the Poor; Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty (1999, 2003).
His newest book continues the story of the many and latest permutations of the Grameen vision to eradicate poverty. This includes a stable of twenty-five Grameen replicants that specialize in everything from solar energy and internet kiosks to fish ponds, textiles, cell phone ladies, and livestock breeding. But all these are mere "stepping stones" in Yunus's fertile imagination. The focus of his newest book is what he calls "social business." While normal businesses must focus on profit-maximization, and can even be sued by shareholders if they don't, a "social business" is what Yunus calls a "non loss, non-dividend" business whose primary objective is some social benefit. A social business competes in the market place with every other business, it must cover its costs, and it reinvests profits back into the company. This is a far more radical idea than mere corporate social responsibility, which in his mind tends to window-dressing and has an inherent conflict of interest between the requirement to maximize profit and the intention to do good.
Sound crazy? Well, read this book and its extended case study of how Grameen partnered with Groupe Danone of France to create what Yunus calls "the world's very first consciously designed multinational social business," launched in 2006. This was followed by Grameen's eye care hospitals. He thus envisions in social businesses a "giant leap" forward for addressing poverty in a scalable, replicable way. "Social business," he argues, "is the missing piece of the capitalist system." They do what government, NGOs, charity, and multi-lateral organizations like the World Bank can never do. Yunus is the quintessential dreamer--his wish list for the world of 2050 has nineteen bullet points; but read this book and his previous one and you'll also see that he's the consummate doer.
Someone rewrite the Capitalist Textbooks May 17, 2008
Yunus has refined the problems of the current capitalist structure by divulging common sense and promoting the new idea of a social business. Here is a book loaded with optimistic ideals for a brighter future that anyone will doubtlessly enjoy, though many may also be skeptical. One looks for meaning in life, a desire unsatisfied by the PMBs (profit-maximizing business) of today. Everyday, citizens of the developed world are bombarded with the onslaught of advertising promoting products, whereas Yunus suggests for the new social businesses to serve a similar function to public service announcements, promoting healthy lifestyles. In a world where the poor are shunned and poverty deemed an inevitable problem, nothing can be done. However, Yunus suggests that we rid society of the ills of poverty by rejecting this idea and striving towards a goal to end poverty. "Creating a World Without Poverty" is an engaging journey from front to back that serves as a beacon providing aspiring entrepreneurs with a chivalrous goal to solve the problems that too often are left for the next generation.
 Good Intensions, but not Completely Good May 6, 2008
4 out of 23 found this review helpful
I know that my review will be unpopular, especially in light of someone else who said this book deserves 100 stars. When I first read that Mr. Yunus said that our children will one day go to museums and will talk about how people used to be in poverty, I was inspired. An optimistic view like this is exactly what this world needs more of I thought. Then I started to read exactly what this Nobel Peace Prize winner is doing to make poverty disappear, and I was let down. For all who do not know, Mr. Yunus is a pioneer in giving small loans to people, especially women, and charging them interest when they repay the loans. That is it, in a nutshell. While I believe it is a noble thing to give poor people money that would not be able to go to a bank to get a loan, I can't fully accept that interest is being charged because it conflicts with a verse in the Quran (2:275) which says that interest (riba) is a sin. Riba is a loan with the condition that the borrower will return to the lender more than the quantity borrowed.
Now what the heck does Islam have to do with saving people from poverty you might ask? God does not want these people to suffer. I agree with that. But he also does not want us to solve our problems through means which are considered sinful. Mr. Yunus has not fully addressed this issue and he has merely argued that the lack of excessive interest in micro-lending is consistent with the Islamic prohibition of usury. Islam has nothing against Capitalism and it encourages free trade, but Allah has made guidelines for trade and that includes not making a profit off of money itself.
There is debate in Islam on whether excessive interest or interest in general is forbidden with the latter being the majority opinion. But Yunus says that his microcredit is moderate and not excessive at all.
It has been reported that borrowers have become swamped with debt and it has brought some communities down. The interest charged by Grameen Bank is higher compared to that of traditional banks so if a person has trouble repaying the loan in a given time, he or she will suffer financially. He mentions on his website that the Indian Prime Minister called him a messiah, yet a former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, his own country, called him corrupt. I would refer you to read "Is micro-credit a macro trap?"
He says something on p55 that I think really brings the issue of poverty to its roots. He says when men make money, they spend it on themselves and when women make money, they spend it on the whole family. In Islam, a man must take care of his family. It is his responsibly, not the woman. When I say man, I mean, Father, husband, brother, etc. If he does not fulfill his duties, then I guess we need microcredit to save the day. My point is that Islam is the answer to poverty. It is the way and it is the light. Its not just about getting money to the poor, it's about a whole system of life that is consistent with justice. There should not be one woman in Bangladesh or anywhere in the world who must work for money. They should only have the option to work. We have men, who are Muslim,that are not taking their duties seriously and everyone suffers because of that. We have enough food in the world to feed everybody and still have some left over, but we still have people suffering from hunger. It is not a lack of resources; it is a lack of justice in the distribution process. Americans throw out 200,000 tons of food that can be eaten every day. There is so much that I can say on the economic conditions that we are facing but I wont. My advice would be to verify every piece of information that you get before you accept it.
A Game Changer May 3, 2008
Dr. Yunas has taken some of the simplist elements of capitalism and coupled them in tandem with some of the higher level elements of human nature to form a framework for improving the quality of life on a massive scale. It is the improvement of one life, in one locale that builds a powerful statement of all things can change notably for the better. His ideas are translatable into action and he demonstrates the capacity to "get it done" in a remarkably simple way despite the complexity of the world as it exists today.
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