Aworld of Three Zeroes

About the Author

The Author, Professor Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladesh national who has emerged as a social entrepreneur, banker, economist, and civil society leader. He has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. He is also known as “banker to the Poor”.

The journey of professor Yunus started with microcredit which was created as a result of nobel act of saving some poor people from loan sharks by just giving the money to poor. After that there is no set back. The professor have created hundreds of businesses in order to solve the problems of the poor. According Professor Yunus, ‘poverty is not created by poor people. Its imposed on them by the system.’ When he was asked in a conference in London School of Economics (LSE), from where he gets the enthusiasm to develop a business without any profit, he explains how profit makes people happy where as he gets more happiness in generating the value.

In this book, professor Yunus has elaborated his vision towards the future humanity contradicting the profit-making theory of capitalism. He describes his personal experiences, achievements towards the goal of eradication of poverty and how this good work has been adopted by many countries and people have been benefited across the globe starting from Paris to Uganda, USA to Europe and many more countries. Along with the details, he also proposes the framework for how to reverse the trend toward greater wealth concentration and retain the world unemployment free, poverty free and carbon emission free. He proposes that a third option exists between a profit-maximizing entity and a directed charity which he termed as “social business” which works toward a three-pronged people-planet-progress. Social businesses create a source of commercial advice and expertise, combined with capital, to assist ventures that help their communities.

Introduction

The book primarily discusses the issues of Poverty, Unemployment and Climate Change which are some of the fundamental challenges towards making the world a better place. Being an economist and experimental entrepreneur, he questions the status quo or the Business as usual practices of current financial ecosystem. Professor Yunus relates the fundamental cause of poverty with Capitalist mindset, Unemployment with lack of entrepreneurial culture and climate change with irresponsible economic growth propelled by non-progressive government policies. He finds willful ignorance to be a fueling factor to the sustainability issues that are linked with People & Planet.

Capitalism and its consequences

As professor states Capitalism focuses on doing business for self-interest i.e. profit making. The focus of the book is on the analysis of wealth