This is a mail I posted in the billanthropy discussion space
http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/1657/
hosted by the Omidyars where the Idealist movement raised the question of whether the Omidyars phillanthropy is achieving what it intends

Catch 22 of Empowerment Economics (aka Global Social Entrepreneurship)

Last week I was in London discussing the leading models of empowerment economics that are now being openly discussed in that this city because of Sir Nicholas Stern. Good sir Nick is the chief economist of HM Treasury who alerted the world to climate crisis having breached that tipping point of needing 1% of national economies invested in opposite ways to petroleum economics if we are to save 20%. At that exponential rate of degradation, we have the same exponentials drowning maths http://worldeconomist.net as that of Gore which indicates that by 2015 give or take a year we will have reached a state of irreversibility, absent of empowerment interventions in the next 5 years.

Just like microcredit empowered personal banking, we now know we need to map empowerment of micro clean energy systems if the climate is not to be destabilised, and accidentally while I was in London and Oxford I came across what will turn out to be the microcredit of education. My favourite http://worldcitizen.tv topic to explore as my first job was in computer assisted learning back in 1973, and I still have not seen one modern day elearning institution practise what we truly found out about human and computer learning interfaces back then when research was pure experimentation and no vetsed interest polluted the exploration of truth

All of the above has a kind of relevance to this thread because the cultural revolutions of all truth empowerment economics models ultimately rise up and hit a glass ceiling. At this level they have to confront conflicts with top down government and the professional advisers over the years who become both the top's rulers and advisers. I can well understand that the Omidyar's as the number 1 Iranian phillanthropic flow for good around these here united states do not feel comfy with leading this particular intervention. I am forced to posit this hastily as a clue to this threaf due to the fact that all virtual community threads lack open space but omidyian ones more than most in letting just one heckler rip up the law of 2 feet.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR WHILE BUSHES BURN
Actually what interests me as a humble mathematician/mapmaker more that the catch 22 the omidyars find themselves in the Iranian-American peacestaking of http://billanthropy.blogspot.com/ is how empowerment economic maps can be planted in bannking (microcredit), climate, learning and the other 7 crises that can end the sustainability of us all http://worldcitizen.tv ; if anyone's got a thread going where they would like a post on what clues empowerment (people-rising) economics might introduce to their context debate, plase say where the thread (or citizen meeting) is.

DEEP DISAPPOINTMENT WITH FALSIFIYING DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
When it comes to bubbling up of disappointment, mine is not with the omidyars but the deep lack of freedom and happiness that meetings have had for most of Bush's reign- until Americans chnage their electoral system I guess I find more to celebrate in the courage of the Dixie Chicks than anything that reigns down from the White House.