[Stoves] Target market segments (in response to Frank)

[Nikhil Desai]

Frank:

I haven't at all given up. I never thought that the answers to poverty lay
in perpetuating low-productivity processes.

The poor have indeed been helping themselves, no thanks to present company.

Those who wanted to save trees counted a few beans and have been at it for
40 years -- as I put it, Maggis Noodles saved more trees than all "improved
woodstoves for rural poor households" combined.

For them, the poor were and are handy toys to stage morality plays and
justifying grants for peer-reviewed theories without data.

Leave alone saving trees -- the sole justification for efficiency rigmarole
-- this obsession with the poor has done nothing for their poverty either.

The reasons are simple: a) investing in equipment or behavioral change to
prevent deforestation just doesn't compute, b) instead investing in liquid
or gaseous fuel/stoves or electricity (at least for lighting) yields many
personal benefits, above all quantum savings in time and gains in
versatility even with higher operating expense, and c) there are economies
of scale in commercial cooking operations, for those that can be
discretized.

So, look around the world -- the poor don't engage in debates with the
pundit class, not because they don't have anything to teach but because
they know the pundit class has its own theories and recipes and only want
to hear what fits those preconceived notions they get paid to perpetuate.

Rather, the poor get richer, transition to "modern cooking" -- at home or
outside -- not wait for our enlightenment.

Inasmuch as we on this list are technologically savvy, all I am asking is,
consider the cooking market - and cooking fuels/stove market (a subset,
excluding food) - in its entirety and prove new products for the customer
class that is generally better willing and able to adopt modern biomass
cooking.

Who knows, the poor will start eating and drinking outside. (In some parts
of India, one telling sign of poverty is that tea is drunk outside. It is
too much of a hassle to light up a wood stove to make a cup or two of tea
at a time some 4-5 times a day).

Anil Rajvanshi is correct - the working poor are not rich enough to afford
the luxury of cooking three home meals a day.

You take "Helping the very poor in the developing world or refugee camps."
They account for some 5% of the world cooking fuel/stove market but
probably 90+% of the charity funds.

I recognize the incentives, just don't see how you will make an
aspirational product or market one which is more than $10-20 apiece.
(Improved charcoal stoves in that range have made some dent in the market,
even for the relatively poor. The "very poor" often don't even have stocks
of food.)

Best wishes, but just remember the adage about the path paved with good
intentions.

Nikhil

-- 

On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 10:57 AM, Frank Shields <franke at cruzio.com> wrote:

>
> Dear Nikhil,
>
> On Jun 15, 2017, at 7:40 AM, Nikhil Desai <ndesai at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> Frank:
>
> Did you think I would make any claim about premature death without my
> tongue firmly where it belongs?
>
> Of course it is the volatiles. The deceit of "global public health" is in
> the assumption of "equitoxicity" (with no justification other than that "we
> don't know it to be otherwise", which is a lie) and in the use of spurious
> dose-response functions.
>
> For most of the cooking market we seem to be obsessed with — poor rural
> households in the developing world --
>
> Thats what this group is all about. Helping the very poor in the
> developing world or refugee camps.
>
> it is plainly impractical to regulate “the chemical and physical structure
> of the biomass associated with a task".
>
>
> So you have given up? Then move out of the way for those that haven’t. And
> lets stop wasting money on useless ’studies’ just to be able to spend the
> money.
>
>
> Hence my suggestion to look at market segments where such regulation is
> conceivable and worthwhile — commercial food processing, crop drying, etc.
>
> And let the very poor fend for themselves. This group is for helping the
> very poor.
>
> The problem begins with us -- in that we have not defined a problem we
> have any prayer of solving.
>
> I have defined the problem. Put a circle around the problem with the 6-Box
> system. For those that think the problem un-solvable should get out of the
> way. Quite wasting money that could be used to really solve some problems.
> (or at least try).
>
> Frank
>
>
>
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