Sunday, September 27, 2009

two fun things for a better Sunday

1. Paul Hoffman's Big Think, a website of interesting talks by experts in diverse fields. I enjoyed the one below





2. fun with microlending: kiva.com! Check out all the worthy people you can lend to, and be fairly sure of getting your money back! (there's a partner reliability 1-5 star rating that allows you to choose your level of risk) join the team yay! micro-lending to be part of Greg (and my) "team."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kiva seemed mildly scam-like from the links that Greg provided. If I remember correctly, they take your money and loan it to some nice enterpreneur, etc. You get paid back but Kiva collects the interest on it as pure profit. Doesn't seem too noble, especially when there are similar 'companies' that are truly nonprofit.

Anonymous said...

I assume you know about TED (www.ted.com)?

Elizabeth Vicary said...

Why do you think Kiva collects interest? Did you read that somewhere?

ben daswani said...

kiva doesn't collect interest, but there are middlemen (between kiva and the small businesses getting the loans) which do. apparently kiva ensures that said middleman do not charge exorbitant rates.

Gurdonark said...

I like Kiva, too. I think it does a great job. I believe that the local loan-administering agencies are entitled to charge an interest rate to fund their operations, but it's not profit to kiva, and the whole process facilitates affordable micro-lending to non-traditional borrowers. This kind of micro-lending can empower people to empower themselves.

Anonymous said...

@#1--
Maybe we can determine how noble Kiva is by looking at the work they do? Just a thought.

'Scuse me, I have to go shop at my local evil profit-making supermarket now ;-)