For those of you who cannot keep up with our blog whose posts move faster than the Nasdaq ticker, I wrote an article about the potential benefits and drawbacks of poverty or favela tourism and while it seems a little brave new worldish, it can have its benefits for the very poorest people in the world. There is a controversy over the practice in Thailand, but from a strictly libertarian perspective, exposing the rich to the discomfort of poverty can be a cause for philanthropy as it should be . I appreciate the criticisms of the Europeans, but would like to ask them to ask their businessmen and governments, just as I ask American business people and the government-frequently- what have you done to help the poor in this country or Thailand, or Bolivia, or Latin America, or the former Soviet Union lately? Taste of poverty for the rich: Thai hotel stirs controversy over lavish feast By Jocelyn Gecker ASSOCIATED PRESS 7:47 a.m. April 5, 2008 BANGKOK, Thailand – A Bangkok luxury hotel trea...

Poverty is not the normal place you would expect to find the well to do. But today thanks largely to a socially minded young man named Marcelo Armstrong who took a few tourists into Rocinha , Rio de Janeiro's largest favela , or shantytown, you find people from all walks of life slumming it. From rap music in the United States, to the development of favela tourism or barrio tourism in Latin America and Asia one finds that being poor, while it has innumerable hardships, is becoming cool. Of course while one must be excessively poor to get a visit from Bono or Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt, the middle class can now revel in their relative affluence, despite their growing minority status. Favela tourism is often called by its critics an form of exploitative practice ; but is it? Many times shanty tourism brings much needed money into the barrio and into the life of the people who need it the most: the poor. When entrepreneurial minded, poverty stricken people become self-taught...