In my opinion, the last line of your post truly captures the false reality that too many westerners find themselves embracing, that more money will buy you freedom through better vacations and an improved ability to consume luxuries to make life easier. Instead, it often ends up in more hours at the office, a compromising of our character, and sacrifice of our relationships to invest our time in our jobs. On the other end of the spectrum I don’t deny that there is a certain amount of wealth that greatly improves life and one’s freedom to live it well (when you worry every day about where the next meal or clean bucket of water will come from you are likely not able to invest in your family, community, or church very well); that’s where microfinance comes in.

Without digressing too much, I guess that I’m trying to say that these people’s time is only “less valuable” in the managerial realm, but perhaps much richer contexts outside of wealth creation. Perhaps some of this was implied in your comment about this being a capitalist sounding argument.

Mirofinance is an interesting meeting point between two worlds. No doubt, in order to function well, loan recipients will need to leave behind some of the more relaxed views of punctuality to allow local organizations to operate sustainably and provide a potentially life-changing loan to others like themselves.