Fair Trade Needs Support

We are going to get outspent by the Japanese "DOS" system ("Destroy On Site"), and the Anti-Gray Market alliance. We are hoping to set up a leveraged compromise, where refurbished product retained value is kept but "punted deep" into markets where it will develop future buyers without cannabalizing sales. This would involve a partnership with OEMs, the United Nations, and projects similar to Las Chicas Bravas in rural Mexico.

HP is investing in some kind of electronics recycling infrastructure in South Africa and India. I hope that "can't beat em, join em" approach works wicked better than the approach in 2002... with $6M you could finance, and control, a heck of a lot of capacity, creating sustainable jobs in the developing world.

It could result in the same savings to the US government that South Korea dropping out of USAID created, when the people there bootstrapped and reverse-engineered themselves into an OECD developed nation, home of Samsung, Hyundai, and others. I hope I will live to see a Cameroonian Mbumba-Kia or similar. I'm only 47, if it happens as quickly as it happened in Singapore, Taiwan, Korea and Guangdong, I have a really good chance.

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