Someone Just Made a Book Sale

I’ve often found that time watching the Daily Show is never time misspent. Been watching since day one of the Kilborn Era (“You’re got to watch it, it’s the Daily Show”, indeed) and hardly ever missed an episode for long. Colbert might have the more fully realized satirical art as performance but Stewart’s timing and craft are still the sharpest around. And if you don’t mind my saying so, my least favorite segment has always been the interview segment. Of course, now that the show’s found some small measure of, make no doubt, deserved success, I’m rapidly having to reassess my opinion because now that they’re a little bigger a draw they can attract better guests. People who are actually important and not just, you know, famous. When you can get a presidential candidate on your show you know thing’s are going right.











But, well, tonight’s guest just blew that memorable eskimo kiss with Kerry right out of the water. I’m going to have to break down and figure out how to do this whole video clip linking thing because it really has to be seen to be believed. But, well, let me just say that I don’t know much about the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize having only heard him speak for a few brief moments on the magic box in my room tonight but, well, from what I do know Muhammad Yunus is one of the greatest human beings currently walking around on this great, green earth. I would totally have a million of his babies at this point, I’m crushing so hard. And, honestly, I could find out that he did meth with a gay hooker in the Ganges on a raft made of dead kittens and I wouldn’t really care. You see, he’s had one of those brilliantly simple sounding ideas – give more money to poor people.

But, well, he’s got a bunch of math and charts and statistics behind him to actually convince people. It’s all down to what he calls microcredit. Basically, a bank gives a poor person money. And then waits for them to give it back. Happens all the time throughout the world, of course, but usually the bank wants a little something for their troubles – collateral. Developing world financing, basically, runs on it. But it can be hard to scrape together if you’re extremely, extremely poor. So Mr. Yunus and his bank came up with the fantastically unbelievable notion of trusting people. No collateral needed for their small loans. And you know what? Yeah, you’ve probably already guessed that most of the time, they get that loan back, and the person they lent to is a lot better off. Really, I was going to post about an agalmic economy one of these days but it appears I’ve been beaten to the punch, again, by someone stealing my ideas before I’ve had them. By about 30 years! That’s how long this concept has been out there and proving its worth! Giving away just a little bit when you have a lot and hoping for a return on the investment.

Of course, when I hear microcredit I think micropayments. Which I know because I’ve read Mr. McCloud’s wonderful works. In there he argues that artists can be fairly compensated for their work on, say, a webcomic by a bunch of people giving them just a tiny fraction of a dollar each. Again, not very innovative an idea as banks do the same with all the left over fractions of a penny from the interest you’ve earned on your savings each and every day. I mean, ever seen Office Space? So, the idea was, rightly I think, criticized and although it’s never really gone away never really took off as Mr. McCloud might have hoped, I’d like to think. People just don’t want to pay for stuff they could get for free. But Mr. McCloud was working in the context of comics, of course, and they’re tiny things that don’t cost much money already. Not unless you buy a lot of them. So maybe the problem wasn’t that he had a bad idea it was just that he was thinking too small.

Anyway, I’m just writing to say that Mr. Yunus has a novel of his own out called “Banker to the Poor” and, well, I think I just found my next book to read.