 Welcome to the FeeCast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from your friends at the Foundation for Economic Education. My name is Richard Lawrence, and we are here with a fabulous panel at a very, very special episode of the FeeCast. We have Brittany Hunter, Dan Sanchez, Mary Ann March, and Megat Wade. And we are here at FeeCon 2018 at the Hyatt in downtown Atlanta where we have almost 700 people already. We're expecting more here already for our conference. And so we wanted to do something different this time. And one of the things that was the biggest hit at FeeCon 2017 was a speech, a keynote actually, that Megat, you made in front of the entire audience. And that was all about your experiences beginning businesses in Senegal and beginning businesses elsewhere. And talking about the difference between charity and business. And so I wonder if I might cue you for a moment to kind of give your pitch on why business might be a better way to improve people's lives over charity. Right. Well, I think at the very base, the best way to think of it is this notion of when people talk about give a man, it's better if you want to truly, if you want to help a man or a woman, give him or her the tools, teach her how to fish versus give a fish. And the way I look at the aid side, it's more about let's give her or him a fish where business is really about, hey, let's get people to the place where they can know how to fish so that they can take care of themselves on a more sustainable basis. And this is not a typical way that people think about helping people in need overseas. That's right. And I feel like it's not only even overseas, I see it in this country as well. But overseas it is so magnified because when you look at developed countries and some of us don't like to even use the word developed because in my mind the country is always developing, at least it should. We should always be developing. So we'll just say poor countries versus well to do countries. So in well to do countries, I think we made it, it's very clear jobs is really what keeps people into a state of dignity, taking care of themselves and their families. But in the poor countries, it is really not the same. So I really had to sit there and think for myself, why is it that in the US, in the country like the US, it's pretty clear when someone has money issues, you straight start to think about where are they getting any type of income, where are they getting it from and usually it's a job. But when it comes to other countries like ours, poor countries, and all of a sudden that whole mindset goes out of a window. So it's been very challenging for me to try and think about why is it that the same person has a business mind when it comes to the US side, but all of a sudden when it comes to the African side, no business mind. So to your question, why do you think that is? Why do you think people don't have a mindset for that? I really do think it has to do with a lot of what is being taught to most of us. And I do think there's a lot of guilt also involved, you know. Guilt over what? I think there is guilt over, and we see it in Silicon Valley a lot, you have all of these business people who are so rich. And yet when it comes to even where the leniency is in terms of policies, they're not always very pro business. And so I think guilt over may be the fact that you have some and others don't. And you don't want to feel like you're being, I don't know if you can say bad words on the show, but an S-H-O-L-E, right? I don't know. Well, pardon it. Right, that's how I say bad words. You spell the non-bad words. Exactly, exactly. And in some instances also I think the fact that capitalism has such a bad rap. So somehow I think people thinking that the way they made the money must not be so clean. So there is this attitude towards business that it's maybe not this clean stuff. So yeah, we got it, so give back. What do you mean by give back? Did you take something that you didn't own in the first place? So I think the rhetoric we have around these things are very important in terms of how the rest of us, you know, sympathize, sympathize everything. Right. English is my fourth language. I've got some issues with the TH oftentimes. Yeah, it seems that when people think of how a business person can do good, that it's like, okay, well, you make profits and then you give the profits in charity. But they don't seem to think that the business itself does good for society. That's right. And this is where, again, and I don't know if it's a byproduct of prosperity, that eventually when you get to prosperity, you start to kind of look down and take it for granted what business and jobs do in the first place. Right. I can tell you, I walk into any room and I can be a room of 5,000 people. I, you can ask everybody in the room, who here has a job? Most people raise their hands and who else here is running a company? Everybody else is raising their hands. Basically, the whole thing is tied and it doesn't matter if you're working for the government or for even for nonprofits. At the end of the day, where all of us have a job and or are running a business and first to kind of work together. I don't see aid in any of that stuff. Right. So, yes, I do. That's that's what I'm saying. I agree with you because I know a lot of people my age love the company Tom's. Yes. That's the big thing, right? Oh, you're not a good person unless you buy Tom's shoes. So they give another pair. Now, is that actually helping? Well, Tom's shoes, very, very early on, people like me were very upset by what Tom's was proposing. The one of the first reasons why I was upset that most people, first of all, in this room may not notice right away is, you know, when they show you those pictures. For me, it started with those pictures, something was profoundly wrong with that. It's always brown and black collared feet wearing the shoes that you are donating. And it kind of sets up a hierarchy. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, this whole thing, even today, we're complaining about, yes, in the US, we have all of this racism going on. We have all of this profiling going on. But at the end of the day, we have organized a hierarchy in our brains as to what is aspirational and what is not. Black skin is not aspirational as we see it. And pictures like that contribute to that state of affairs. So for me, it was really, really wrong that once again, my collar of feet and the collar feet of brown people were being shown in such manner as well. So that was number one, you are contributing to biases that are actually going to go and harm us. You're once again contributing to black and browns equals poor, equals maybe uneducated, equals who knows what else. Just throw your extra shoes toward them. That's right. So that's number one, you're feeding these biases. And number two, really, you're telling me you're going to try to fix poverty with shoes? Explain that to me exactly. So people like me, we're not really fooled by that whole message. I'm just like, listen, Tom, the only thing you did that's innovative is finding a way to be paid to do something that churches and other nonprofit organizations have been doing forever. So number two, and number three, you say you're going to give shoes to kids who don't have access to it. What I'm seeing from you is let's take it the little village where I work, where we have our manufacturing in Senegal. 200 plus family, 200 plus little businesses that are in the shoemaking industry. Each one of them hires at least 15 people. Do the calculation. Imagine when the truck of Tom's shoes shows up, Brittany, really, the shoes you've been buying, let's go see that. The shoes come in and they're free. And by the way, they give us the crappiest version of the shoes because we don't get to have like the cute little shoes that you have in all the design. No, it's not even leftover. It's like the black ones, the ugly ones, plain and everybody in Africa knows within two weeks they're going to fall apart, just so you know by the way. So they're not even quality. They're not even quality. So they get over there. Guess what you just did? Remember there's 200 companies multiplied by 15 employees each? Each one of these people is going to go out of work. How exactly did you help me when you did that? Now, it's that many more kids from those employees that you're standing on a line to go and meet shoes when they in the first place did not need your shoes. What good have you done besides maybe making yourself feel good for a moment? Now, it seems that this kind of argument and about not wanting to breed dependency and wanting to have people to have dignity. It seems that certain philanthropists, so to speak, are really resistant to that logic. I mean, there's coercive philanthropists where they're basically trying to force other people to be generous. Or even with some philanthropists who are giving of their own pocket that it seems that it's more about them than about the recipient. That it's more sort of like a vanity thing and wanting to be the savior. Do you see that? Oh, yeah, we absolutely see that. We absolutely see that because eventually at some point you get to a place where you explain to people the economics behind things. They can see it themselves. And to me, it's a very clear way of seeing who really is in it for the issue regardless of what it's going to take and who is in it for herself or himself to look good or to feel good about themselves. And I just have been very, I have no patience for any of it. And I do think those folks are actually going to be, they have a lot coming their way because there is an entire generation of those of us who come from these countries who are no longer going to take any of their crap. You say you're in my camp, you're going to be in my camp, we're going to expose you for what you are. Sure. My God, I'm wondering, so people out there who have big hearts who want to help, if buying Tom's isn't the right way, what should those people do to help people that they care about? Well, what you do is just, it's very simple. Number one is if you love this shoe, the fancy shoes and well designed and all of that, and you're doing it supposedly to support people far away in poor countries, well there are so many cool brands. Two of them that I can give right here is Soul Rebels. Another one is Alliberte. These are brands all the way from Ethiopia. I know you can buy them online right now, and you are supporting directly these companies doing it the way we know is sustainable and their employees. I think that's what we want to see. We want to be partners. No one wants to be a beggar. I think we've seen that forever. None of you on this stage, I think, would like to believe and realize that, oh, the food I put on my table on the table of my children comes from somebody's handouts. Sure. And don't take me wrong, by the way. If emergency strikes, you've got to stay alive. But that can, under no circumstances, be a way of life to rely on handouts. Megat, you hail from Senegal, and you have a factory or manufacturing facility in Meke, which is a village in Senegal. And we've actually profiled this, and your company Skin Is Skin, in a video part of our How We Thrive documentary series that's going to debut actually tomorrow at FECON. But then we'll put it online shortly thereafter. It's an amazing film. I don't know if anyone else has had the chance to see it quite yet, but it's a tear-jerker. And it's all about what you're talking about. It features Tom's. It talks about the criticism or critique of Tom's. Critique, yeah. It talks about lowering barriers to creating businesses and why that is a much improved way to help people in need, if you are inclined to, to think about employing them, to create jobs. It's an amazingly beautiful story, and I was just so struck by the people, the profiles in the story, the people who work at Skin Is Skin and the mayor of Meke, who also happens to be named Megat Wade. We have the same exact name. I was looking at the subtitles, or the titles, and I was thinking, is that him? So it's a beautiful piece. I mean, what's your reaction to the way in which people might sort of react to this piece? You know, you have to understand, every time I put myself out there talking about these issues, it doesn't show that I am profoundly torn. I'm torn why, because of these bias we talked about earlier. But you can't fix the issues if you don't talk about the truth. Right. So it's always hard for me to have to bring up the not-so-happy sides of this problem. And because I know that every time I do it, I may be somehow pushing the bias confirmation button in people. Yeah. So it's very important for me, if I'm going to go there, to do it, to be very careful how I do it so that I don't allow your brain to stay on its automated path of saying one plus one equals two. I don't want you to no longer think it's equals two. I want you to think of something else. So this is why the way it is done, the story is told, is very important to me. But in this movie, I think you have done it beautifully. That's what I was most worried about, because we know the facts. But the way you put it together sends a very different signal. And what I loved about the movie and how you guys treated it is the fact that everything is very clear and we're sitting on the business side of things. This is what we need. And at the same time, though, we also did not try to sugarcoat anything. And that's why, yes, it is a tear-jerker because even though it is my story, I know this story, even I, my husband, bawling, watching it. And then I sat there and asked myself, okay, does it tell, was it about pity? What was it? Do you feel like there was any of it? Because if I felt anything like that, I would have said no way or change it. Because I'm just done with that story of pity and stuff. What I just want is for people to see how crappy some things are, but it is not the people that have a problem. It is the environment and I want them to know it's about the jobs and the business environment. And I think the movie did that so well, I walked away feeling at peace with how others are going to see it. And, you know, I travel in all worlds, meaning more in conservative worlds, also in very progressive worlds, in worlds that don't define themselves into anything. And I do think when I showed it to a few friends and it's a consensus, it was fascinating to see people waking up. Remember the first question you asked, why do you think some people can't go there with a mind? But I think the movie, this movie, frankly, I feel is giving me a whole new tool and level of tackling this issue, just going straight into people's hearts. But where they don't just say that, oh my God, isn't everything terrible? But, you know, they're putting two and two together. So you guys did a really amazing job and I'm very, very grateful for the fact that, you know, Phi put its weight behind us. We absolutely can't wait for people to see it. And the other thing I would mention is not only is Skin Your Company making beauty products in Senegal, but you came to us today with that gorgeous dress. And this one is made in Senegal as well. Yes, all made in Senegal. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. Thank you. So we can't wait for the film. We're going to have to end it here. So thank you so much for the panel, for the conversation we got. And we're going to end it right here with the Phi Cast. We'll see you next time.