[whiteperil] Sean: Spaing partners

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Posted by Sean:
Spaing partners
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1198848985.shtml


   Virginia Postrel [1]links to a [2]true story with the kind of happy
   ending that can literally make you cry: Afghans get a new industry
   that provides environmentally-sustainable work and brings cash into
   the economy...and affluent Americans get access to a broader array of
   fabulous beauty products!
   Anyone who writes to ask which part moved me more will be ignored.
   Of course, every story like this needs a villain to add drama and make
   our heroine's eventual triumph sweeter, and this story has a great
   one:

     The letter I received from him a few days later confirmed my
     premonition. It requested a ream of further documentation, such as
     a breakdown of the raw-materials cost of a bar of soap and our
     financial accounts from previous years. âMaybe even more
     importantly,â the letter went on,

     we need to show the real raison d'etre for all of this. It's
     because there's real demand for your products. Demand is not your
     problem, Sarah, satisfying it is. You've already established a vibe
     in the market. You're selling in Manhattan and sundry other swanky
     places. You've had plenty of free publicity in media with the
     appropriate reach to capture the attention of the chattering class
     whose hands you're washing. The wind is now behind you and you've
     an opportunity to make a significant contribution to establishing
     Afghanistan as something other than a squalid state exporting only
     smack and terror. This is what USAID wants to hear.

     Peppering this and subsequent communications were colloquialisms
     like "the first thing we've gotta make plain ..."
     I replied, providing the requested information, but also a
     statement of frustration. I was swiftly scolded for my tone:
     "unbusinesslike, unmannerly, and just plain unaesthetic."

   Ick. No one who uses gotta in a business context--who would, indeed,
   use gotta for any purpose other than transcribing soul lyrics--should
   be passing judgments on the aesthetic value of someone else's prose.
   Especially when he himself appears never to have met a cliché he
   didn't like. Guy should be sentenced to wash with Duane Reade soap
   ("Compare to Irish Spring!") for the rest of his life.
   Anyway, seriously, Sarah Chayes's piece confirms what you hear
   elsewhere about funding provided by big-guns organizations for
   entrepreneurship in developing countries--namely, that it has a way of
   vaporizing in the pipeline from the West to the target population.
   It's a very good read.

References

   1. http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/002675.html
   2. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/afghans