Top > DaveNet archive > 1999 > To Give Or Not To Give? > To give, or not to give
| 1. | As this new Internet economy develops, markets are recognizing a fundamental gap between the cost structure of molecular (i.e. brick and mortar) businesses and digital businesses, with the advantage going to digital businesses. |
| 2. | The stock market has placed huge valuations on this potential differential. Amazon, for example, is valued at 200 times potential revenues in the year 2000, which is an enormous vote of confidence in the leverage these new margins represent. Similar valuations go for Yahoo, eBay, and countless others. It's new money. |
| 3. | So far, all the new money is going to the capitalists. Fair enough. They took the risk, they won the reward. And yet here is an entirely new opportunity for charity, enabled by the very technology that is creating all this wealth. These new margins can be, in part, directed to charity in ways never imagined before the power of the Internet. |
| 4. | And we can realize not just the power of technology, but the power of technology to do good. We can build in a payback from this new technology through the cause motivations of the marketplace, rather than depending on the philanthropic benevolence of the wealthy. That is the issue that faces us when we consider these new margins: To give, or not to give. |
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