The Wall Street Journal recently published an article covering an interview with Bill Gates, whose views reflect those of The Neutral Development Project.

Bill Gates Issues Call
For Kinder Capitalism

Famously Competitive, Billionaire Now Urges Business to Aid the Poor

By ROBERT A. GUTH
January 24, 2008; Page A1

Free enterprise has been good to Bill Gates. But later today, the Microsoft Corp. chairman will call for a revision of capitalism.

In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a “creative capitalism” that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored.

“We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,” Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum, according to a copy of the speech seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Gates isn’t abandoning his belief in capitalism as the best economic system. But in an interview with the Journal last week at his Microsoft office in Redmond, Wash., Mr. Gates said that he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He said he has seen those failings first-hand on trips for Microsoft to places like the South African slum of Soweto, and discussed them with dozens of experts on disease and poverty. He has voraciously read about those failings in books that propose new approaches to narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

In particular, he said, he’s troubled that advances in technology, health care and education tend to help the rich and bypass the poor. “The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid,” he said. “The part that’s unsatisfactory is for the bottom third — two billion of six billion.”

Three weeks ago, on a flight home from a New Zealand vacation, Mr. Gates took out a yellow pad of paper and listed ideas about why capitalism, while so good for so many, is failing much of the world. He refined those thoughts into the speech he will give today at the annual Davos conference of world leaders in business, politics and nonprofit organizations.

Among the fixes he plans to call for: Companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor. “Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives for those who don’t fully benefit from market forces,” he plans to say.

 For the rest of the article, link to The Wall Street Journal.

Establishing this basic economic infrstructure is the first step toward ending the bloodshed in places like the Horn of Africa, and ultimately achieving sustainable peace.

In response to an a January 2008 article by The Economist, “A Very African Coup”, concerning the humanitarian crisis in Kenya, Sir Edward Clay, the British high commissioner to Kenya from 2001 to 2005, warned that the recent election-driven violence was a result of two underlying problems:

“First, there has undoubtedly been a serious breach of Kenya’s electoral law. A result arrived at illegally is itself illegal. Second, the poorest, whether in the slums of Nairobi or in the rural areas, had all too little to lose in the recent violence. Most people living in the slums are inhabitants of shanties erected at the whim of rapacious landlords, who are themselves part of the political class. Some of  these residents have now had their votes stolen as well. Kenya requires a solution that restores social harmony and cohesion. A political understanding between party leaders is necessary, but not sufficient. Without sider social harmony, life for most of Kenya’s people will become even more intolerable. The poorest attack their equally poor neighbours and set fire to the little they have in common not because they hate these targets in themselves but because they see no other adequate way to express their grievances…”

Civil unrest stems from a desperation bred by a lack of basic necessities. Throughout history hungry, unemployed groups who lack the infrastructure necessary for self sustainment have been the most likely to violently rise up against political oppression. The events in Kenya should act as a reminder that the first and most important requisite for social harmony is a fair, healthy economy.