# why are $100 laptop type initiatives coming from American do-gooders and not Chinese businessmen?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-100-laptop-type-initiatives-coming-from-american-do-gooders-and-not-chinese-businessmen/568740>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [January 24, 2011, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-100-laptop-type-initiatives-coming-from-american-do-gooders-and-not-chinese-businessmen/568740 "2011-01-24T03:58:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-100-laptop-type-initiatives-coming-from-american-do-gooders-and-not-chinese-businessmen/568740/21 "2011-01-25T14:20:58Z")

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In all these debates I can’t help but thinking they’d go better if you debated the actual Sven, not the Imaginary Extrapolated Sven that only exists in your head.

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**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-100-laptop-type-initiatives-coming-from-american-do-gooders-and-not-chinese-businessmen/568740/22 "2011-01-25T14:58:14Z")

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> [@wmfellows](#):
>
> Creating a market by classic market development (find the price point that can be met re physical production, market to that price point - create the demand - sell via most efficient private channels) is the path, just like the condoms experience.

Important difference between condoms and computers, though: Condoms are easy to produce very, very cheaply. So cheaply that even if women have limited control over their finances, there’s a good shot they can purchase condoms themselves.

A $100 laptop isn’t like that. $100 is a _big_ chunk of wealth - if women were buying these machines through the free marketplace, that would require extended saving. That’s precisely the sort of activity that becomes very difficult when men control the purse, and can dip into the laptop fund for a pint or six. Hence the advantage of running these programs through government, rather than the marketplace directly, if you’re going to do them at all.

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**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-100-laptop-type-initiatives-coming-from-american-do-gooders-and-not-chinese-businessmen/568740/23 "2011-01-25T23:31:31Z")

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> [@Mr.Excellent](#):
>
> Important difference between condoms and computers, though: Condoms are easy to produce very, very cheaply.

Well yes, they’re a consumable good, not a capital good.

Well aware of that.

> [@](#):
>
> So cheaply that even if women have limited control over their finances, there’s a good shot they can purchase condoms themselves.

And yet for a decade or more the Development approach was that women, not having control over money, couldn’t buy them. Turned out to be utterly wrong.

> [@](#):
>
> A $100 laptop isn’t like that. $100 is a _big_ chunk of wealth - if women were buying these machines through the free marketplace, that would require extended saving.

Yes, and/or credit.

Rather like phones.

And yet phones are penetrating (via innovative solutions).

> [@](#):
>
> That’s precisely the sort of activity that becomes very difficult when men control the purse, and can dip into the laptop fund for a pint or six.

Any large value good sale in SSA to low income is very difficult, At the same time payment schemes, shared buying and other innovative solutions have worked better than state driven welfare schemes. The state in Africa generally being divided into the grossly incompetent and the grossly rapacious.

> [@](#):
>
> Hence the advantage of running these programs through government, rather than the marketplace directly, if you’re going to do them at all.

Hence the Magic State Solution where one abstracts away from the question of actual state capacity or the sustainability if any such scheme. The whole line of argument hinges on the bald assertion of women’s incompetence. Fractional savings, lay-away and laptop as business schemes all present themselves.

And of course willfully ignores the track record of current business innovation in Africa that has leap frogged ahead of state run (whether local state or DFID or USAID or GTZ or whomwever) development schemes (where the vampire state lets it).

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