Companies don’t like to invest in people because they can’t own the outcome. If I develop something for an employer, that employer can patent/copyright/whatever the result as intellectual property that stays with the company. If I develop myself for my employer, I can take the new skills with me whenever I want to leave.

I can imagine two ways to address this problem:

1. Re-legalize indentured servitude in rich countries, so that people become effective slaves until they’ve paid off the cost of any training or other personal development.

2. Make intellectual property laws more sane (or at least less absurdly one-sided), so that investing in patents and copyright doesn’t make such a tempting alternative to human development.

Of course, considering that we don’t have enough cars, drivers or that we recently didn’t have a single working printer for more than a week, I’m afraid that the holodeck might be available sooner than my employer giving us tablets …

In conversations like this, we are on more-or-less the same page in issues of economic development, social progress, civil society change.
But I still think that we need to keep working it out. You see, I’m still stuck on how we as ICTD entities are poorly attempting to measure developmental change, can we be honest with ourselves and say that we can measure how we have contributed to the improvement of the lives of the poor?

In economic development, visible or not, there will be some people who will become poorer at the expense of others. Today I went to a talk about “crimmigration” – the possible trend of criminality through tough immigration laws around the world (especially the USA) and in the hand that business plays to secure cheap labour of the most disadvantaged. So as the Jester states, what is that delicate balance of economic development and social progress or equity for the most underserved?

Well I think we all need to talk out or try to agree on a few principles:
1) Are we attempting to see the reduction of poverty (in all its multiple dimensions?) from the use of ICTD?
2) Are we attempting to see the reduction of inequality?
3) Are we seeing lower numbers in child mortality, an improvement through healthier families, or more student graduating Grade 12 as a result of ICT usage, less environmental degradation – how are we measuring?
4) Are we able to see less lives lost?

In all this talk, let’s not miss the bigger battle and be aligned in such purposes. As Steve Song mention there is the greater effort to encourage competition to see a drive of affordable prices for all. The consumer, demand and economic development bit. But let us also support the poorest of the poor and let them decide for themselves how they wish to improve their lives. What about supporting governments that promote universal basic income or social grants direct into the hands or bank accounts of all or how to make this process more effective through ICT usage? Or thinking innovative, better ways to build decent employment for young people, so that they can choose for themselves with pride and their own earnings whether to be part of a digital society?

If you can’t get these questions to fit in the work that you do in development, might then want to rethink of your own strategy in working towards a better world.