Does Technology Reduce Or Increase The Poverty Gap?

The World Bank anticipates that climate change, driven by manufacturing and technological advancement that enables it, will relegate over 100 million people in extreme poverty by the year 2030. At the same time, stories reach the headlines every day of ways technology is bringing education and economic opportunity to the most remote and poverty-stricken areas of the world. The intersection of technology and poverty is a long and involved conversation.

The fact is that technology itself does nothing for or against poverty, or wealth or success or any other outcome at all. What creates poverty or economic gain is how technology is used. Moreover, this recognition put the responsibility squarely upon the shoulders of those who create and use technology and technologically driven systems.

Setting aside the madmen who labor to create bigger and more powerful weapons, no one builds technology thinking that what they are doing will hurt anyone. People invent and design in order to have easier and less costly ways of getting things done, whether manufacturing and commerce, information disbursement or personal achievement. However, it seems that every new advancement, even with all the accompanying benefits, eventually proves to have had negative impacts somewhere along the line.

So the problem remains, technology has enormous ramifications for everyone, for good or for bad, whether or not they experience it immediately or recognize the actual causative agent.

How do we address this divide, the fact that technology tends to provide great wealth and opportunity for a few while creating poverty and limitations for others?

Communities and identifying groups mobilize and march, voting for candidates and issues that represent closing the gap. Legislation is created and passed and enforced in order to prevent and right the evils of inequality. Lawsuits are brought and tried, and monetary punishment exacted in reparation.

Some get involved themselves, getting hands-on to bring beneficial developments to those who are most impoverished, teaching recipients to better themselves. Others develop existing technology to the next level, hoping for new benefits that will over-ride harm done and not contribute more.

When it comes to addressing the issue of technology and inequality, the premier difficulty, aside from the massive complexity of it all, is the reality that people mostly do not want to share. As a rule, peoples’ instinct is to maintain ownership and serve self.

Most of the time this instinct, while it may be the first impulse, can be quickly enough over-ridden by immediate awareness of the concepts parents and society teach us, those of sharing, tithing and benevolence, being kind to those who may are less fortunate, or helping others who have need that we can address right now. Even those who are not by nature generous do part with what is theirs, even if it is prompted by nothing more than the desire to not be known as selfish.

Why do we not like to share? On the instinctual level, sharing my stuff with you means less for me. It means loss, perhaps loss of what I could do with my stuff if I keep it, loss of my stature or reputation before others if I do not take full advantage of the opportunities that go with what I possess. If you win, I will have to lose.

So we recognize the virtue of giving, and at the same time, we fear giving.

I despair at win-lose thinking. Where did this come from, this pervasive scarcity mindset that implies that sharing means less for my goals and comfort? It may seem like an immutable law of the universe, but is it? I challenge those I work and interact with, just like I challenge myself, to always find the win-win situation.

In the mergers and business transactions I facilitate, I love to think creatively and find ways that all parties can win. For example, as the solution for a bankrupt manufacturer, I may recommend an investor who can purchase a 51% interest in the business. This injection of cash will be enough to keep the company open and at profit, while the business owner still runs the business and the vendors get repaid. Who loses here?

I encourage young people to forego graduate education and traditional employment to buy and run their own business. The advanced degree is not really a requirement, because the new business owner can readily find seasoned mentorship. These young business owners can run their businesses to the benefit of their families and the families of those they employ. They can use their influence to impact their local economy and their local government. This is the ultimate taking responsibility for our part in closing the economic gap.

At the end of the conversation, it is up to the creators and users of technology to consider the impact of their contribution to the world, and self-regulate in the interests of others. Legislation and regulation will not completely prevent or reverse the inequality created by technology—or anything else that has potential to divide or bring together. The difference is what each of us chooses to do with our own resources: our time, our money, our skills, our influence. We can build a personal habit, so that time after time, choice after choice, we can stop thinking win-lose, and begin to give, expecting win-win.