On Thursday evening the widely acclaimed author Susan George presented the Ted Wheelwright Memorial Lecture at the University of Sydney, on the difference between legitimate and illegitimate authority. These are some of my scribbles.
Susan George started by reminding us that democracy is and will always be a work in progress—something you do not something you get.
The Problems with Neo-liberalism
She put into perspective the new neo-liberal model of politics, which continue to get stronger even after the last financial crash. Financial markets continue to be deregulated, more derivatives are being traded now than ever, the fortunes of those at the top are greater than 2008 and the poor are poorer.
Neo-liberalism has spread around world. It is propagated by those in power for whom it is in their own interests to spread those ideas.
Gramsci said that one cannot rule through force and oppression alone, one has to to penetrate minds. One must take a “long march through institutions”. In the last forty years, the propagators of the neo-liberal model have done just that. They started in the place where ideas are developed and disseminated—in university research—and they have spread out from there.
Large Corporations are in Power
Neo-liberals want to privatise medical and education. They take no care for small and medium business. Why? Because they are run by Trans-National Corporations (TNC).
TNC are in power. It is the TNC that are making government decisions. They are exercising their power without responsibility. It is difficult for citizens to intervene.
Is this power legitimate? In the legal sense: yes. In a valid/justifiable sense: no, I don’t think so. It seems to me that in democratic countries people and those they elect should have power to make decisions in the interests of citizens without TNCs guiding those decisions in the interests of the global corporate class.
Sectoral lobbyists, funded by major organizations, come in guise. Susan George gave an example:
The “Global Food Information Council” pose themselves as the protectors of industry. They pay scientists to create doubt, to publish in respectable journals and papers, and to create debate where there isn’t any. They create fake consumer groups, posing that citizens want freedom of choice in food, even when it’s almost poison. They use scare mongering. They work to prevent legislation that they don’t want.
Private ratings agency are paid by the security companies they are rating. The TNC take advantage of every country without contributing the tax. They try to create regulations that weaken the control of governments.
The big one for Australia is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPPA) – which will allow TNC to sue the State if they think that their “expected profits have been jeopardised”. This could cost millions or billions to tax payers. TNCs do not want limits on Co2. This is an illegitimate use of authority. It is manipulative, deceitful, and serves only a small group of people at the top of The Pyramid of power.
What do the TNC want?
It’s not a conspiracy – its just interests. The TNC can do without democracy. Facts are not enough. Their narrative is very powerful.
Susan George called it “expansionary austerity”. The government cuts budgets and increases taxes in order to essentially take from the poor and give to the rich.
Why do government’s agree to the TNC proposals? Is it because they like to be chums with those at the top? Most of all it is because the neo-liberal narrative is all consuming.
What can we do?
We need to create another story that is more powerful than theirs. We need to insist on legitimate authority, with responsibility.
Media has been manipulated but neo-liberalism has been discredited. Even the IMF says that neo-liberalism doesn’t work, admitting they “made a mistake in the math”.
The media need to understand it. Citizens need to understand it.
And the new story needs to take a “long march through the institutions” just as neo-liberalism did. It needs to evolve into a new cultural hegemony—one that is more peaceful, socially just and environmentally sustainable.
The international political-economic-social system has to see where it is heading. It is running toward a cliff. Unless we can abort!
Stuart Rees (my boss) and my lovely friend Sarah Shores at the after-party at Hermanns Bar.
Emeritus Professor Frank Stilwell, a mastermind behind more socially just and ecologically sustainable economics, legend lecturer at University of Sydney (with a Facebook fan club to show it), organiser of the Ted Wheelwright Memorial Lecture, and dear friend who I was so fortunate to have many-a lunches with while assisting his and Jake Lynch’s Political Economy of Conflict and Peace class in 2011.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of a “revolution”, and wondering why exactly one would want to “revolve” to the beginning, completely start again? What would be the point of bring down The Pyramid, only to have to build one up again?
Revolution may not be a dirty word, but it does seem kinda stupid. Capitalism and democracy have done a lot of good for society, from technological advances that enhance the lives of many, to bringing women out of the house, and empowering citizens to have a right to vote. Of course our versions of capitalism and democracy are no where near perfect. They are systems still in their teenage years. They need to grow up, reform some of their irresponsible laws, and evolve into mature systems that doesn’t ignore parts of the world suffering from poverty and environmental destruction at their hands. Sure our systems have their problems, but are they so broke that we have to throw them out completely?
It seems pyramids of power are a model that can function very well, but can also fail. The trick, it seems to me, it to maintain a pyramid of power/money/organization that works for both the parts, and the whole.
Let me use the Hobbesian analogy of a society and its leaders as a mind and body (if you look close the Leviathan’s body is made up of lots of little people):
Our minds have a certain degree of power over our body’s actions. So long as our mind and body acts in constant communication, our organism is a functioning system. If my leg wanted to be my brain, or if my brain ignored my leg, I would be in trouble. If my hands ignore our stomach and put too much, too little or the wrong type of foods in my mouth, my body gets fat, my energy decreases and my entire being suffers. A healthy “me” = a mind, body and spirit being respectful and connected with each other, and with its surroundings.
Similarly in society, good minds acting in leadership positions provides for a healthy system of people. The leader in constant communication with the people, each feeding back into each others decisions, each respecting the other. Yet if, like a psychologically damaged mind, a leader that is a psychopath or that doesn’t listen to its people is no good for anyone.
I don’t think our system is completely broken – it just needs a few of its laws reformed, evolving the system to work for humanity rather than letting the destructive aspects of it that have emerged over time force humanity to work for it. I vote for an evolution, not a revolution.
What is #OccupyWallSt? Who are the 1%? Why did it take the media so long to report on it? What do protestor’s want? Are they trying to bring down The Pyramid? Will they succeed?
I am teaching a class on the Philosophy of War and Peace in North Carolina, with a specific focus on the Arab Spring. Yet here in America I might be witnessing the greatest revolution of them all: the “OccupyWallSt” movement, and its children.
When I showed RapNews to students a few weeks ago, I had no idea that it would become prophetically true:
People have been camping out in Zuccotti Park (formerly “Liberty Plaza Park”) for almost a month, and yet the media in America only started reporting on it just over a week ago. Why?
What is “OccupyWallSt”?
OccupyWallSt (and OccupyChicago, OccupySydney, OccupySeasameSt etc) are peaceful protests against the foothold that corporations have over the state of global affairs including economic injustices, environmental destruction, providing weapons to both sides of wars, controlling the media and making politicians their puppets.
Like the Arab Spring, the demonstrations don’t have a leader. It began with 1000 people walking down the street,and 100-200 sleeping in the park. The idea was originally proposed in an Adbusters (an advertisement-free, anti-consumerist Canadian magazine), who suggested protesting against the lack of holding Wall St responsible for their actions re the global financial crisis, global poverty and their pervasive influence on democracy.
Why did the media take so long to report?
Because the media is owned by corporations, of course.
What do protestor’s want?
I will be able to answer this question much better in a couple of week’s time, after I visit Chicago and Washington DC, and even more so after Thanksgiving when I visit NYC… but for now, this is what I can gauge:
Protestors are holding signs like:
“I am a human being, not a commodity”
“I will believe corporations are people when Georgia executes one of them”
“Money for jobs & housing NOT banks & war”
“We are the 99 percent”
Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Jeff Madrick (former economics columnist for the New York Times and author of Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America) recently spoke with Wall Street about what caused the global financial crisis. On Australia’s ABC, Peter Lloyd interviews Jeff Madrick click here. Despite the mainstream media’s attempts to make out the protest is “inefffective action”[4], Madrick says that “The fact is the gut feelings of these people or the informed feelings of some of them because there are a lot of educated people there, are essentially correct. They are correct that Wall Street was the principal cause of the great recession, that greed and outrageous pay was a principal cause and that Washington has not properly dealt with it…”[5]
There is talk of the protest being the left wing response to the “Tea Party”, with one big difference. Madrick notes “These people don’t march to one drummer like the disciplined Tea Party. These people think for themselves, have independent frustrations, have independent agendas.”[5]
Who are the 1%?
According to the Washington Post the top 1 percent are those American households who “had a minimum income of $516,633 in 2010 — a figure that includes wages, government transfers and money from capital gains, dividends and other investment income.” [2] Their average wealth was $14 million in 2009 (down from a $19.2 million peak in 2007).[2]
Documentaries like Inside Job names and shames some of the 1% who were responsible for the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
The rest of us! Anyone who makes less than $516,633 a year.The 99% are the ones who paid (and are still paying) for the GFC. The 99% want to work, and there’s lots of work to be done, but there’s no money for them to pay one another because the greedy 1% have sucked it out of the system and put it in their pockets.
Ezra Klein in the Washington Post breaks this down further: “the bottom 60 percent earned a maximum of $59,154 in 2010, the bottom 40 percent earned a max of $33,870, while the bottom 20 percent earned just $16,961 at maximum.” [2]
What influence does money have on politics?
For a simple explanation check out the “Story of Stuff”:
My Master of Peace and Conflict Studies taught me that global politics, economics, military, society and psychology are intertwined and extremely complex. My attention has been drawn to the intersections of growing population, poverty and the ecological predicament they create: (1) For global population to stabilize we must help people at the base of the pyramid out of poverty; (2) We need six Earths to sustain 7 billion people living like Americans and Australians do; (3) Technology will only solve this problem if the people at the top invest in it.
In short, a sustainable habitat and lifestyle for humans requires the priorities of corporations need to change from the legalized goal of profitfor shareholders, to the moral goal of improving the lives ofpeople in the world today and in the future.
Let me recap a useful metaphor: The Pyramid. In Preserving The Pyramid: Why things are the way they are I proposed that things are the way they are because they have been designed this way: poverty, religion, education systems, health-related issues – all of our problems are (at least in part) designed to preserve “The Pyramid”.
Changing laws and priorities isn’t easy, particularly when The Pyramid has guardians around all its walls, protecting the wealth and power of the elites at the top.
Are protester’s trying to bring down The Pyramid?
I don’t think so. It seems to me these protesters are using non-violent conflict to demand a more mobile hierarchy of power, a global social and economic pyramid that doesn’t exploit the people it is supposed to protect. That makes them my heroes.
What can be done?
The power in The Global Pyramid today lies with the bankers and stockmarket – people with a license to print money or make money from nothing – shuffling papers, or giving letting others shuffle papers for them. If shareholders invest to make profit, then companies will continue to put profit before people and our planet. Even if shareholders personally care more about life than money, the system has become bigger than it’s parts.
Madrick gives some more specific suggestions: (1) “get over this obsession with austerity economics”; (2) “reinvest in this economy in significant ways”; (3) “we really need a different regulation scheme for Wall Street”. Unfortunately this latter suggestion, Madrick suggests, “will be very difficult to do given the power and money on Wall Street.”[5]
How can the rules that govern Wall St be updated to prioritize life and our ecosystems over monetary profit? Which laws need to be changed? How can the economy be stimulated without needing to fund both sides of wars? How can Wall Street be better regulated?
Will the #Occupy Movement succeed?
“Can I say this will end in complete victory?” Madrick asks, “No, you can never say that. But it may begin to change public opinion enough to give Congress people in Washington the courage of their own convictions. Many of them are disgusted by what’s happening and can’t get any traction for their own ideas and maybe they will begin to get the courage to come forward… The American establishment has the courage to ask one fundamental question: what is Wall Street for? Do we need a Wall Street that takes 40 per cent of American profits? No way. Let’s rethink that. But the American establishment seems anyway afraid to ask that question and we have to start asking that.”[5]
The protesters give me hope. They are turning words into action, demanding their (and our) basic human rights, they are making peace a verb.
Recently learning about the occupation of Wall Street, I thought it worthwhile to re-post my two cents on ten ways to change the world:
Legally:
1. Change corporation law – redefine “corporation” so that they are NOT treated as separate entities in their own right that can be declared bankrupt in and of themselves. Corporation law must be adjusted to hold shareholders responsible for monetary and non-monetary profits and loss.
2. Change finance / stock market laws – in implementing the above, the ST money market would probably have to go, as would trading Derivatives and Options. The stock exchange would slowdown and be based on long term investments.
3. Change banking laws for money/debt creation and collection – limit their ability to print money via debt, decrease bank’s profits, and maybe all debt cancels after 50 years, I’m not sure. Something needs to be done to regulate them though.
4. Change balance of power in the WB, WTO and IMF – give more votes to the poorer nations and create fairer trade policies
5. Create international tax laws – to crack down on tax havens.
Personally:
6. Philosophically, a self-examination of our values – what makes a life “good”? Two shifts: shift from valuing capital to valuing creativity; and shift from EGO to ECO.
7. Women might reconsider what they find attractive qualities in men – see the attraction of a creative and caring man over a rich and selfish man. Then maybe men will change in suit.
8. Write letters to corporations telling them you won’t buy their product until they stop slave trade and ridiculously low paying 80-hour weeks in sweatshops, and treat their workers in a way they would like to be treated.
9. Public shame of the ridiculously rich – unite in an attempt to decrease the obesity of the rich, and as a consequence decrease the hunger of the poor.
10. See what we might be able to do to campaign to change the laws above.
Essentially I’m talking about setting a limit to the lifestyle of those at the verybottom and verytop to the pyramid.
There’s nothing wrong with inequality – we don’t have to earn the same amount, eat the same amount, live in the same way. But there needs to be limits, on both ends. No one in the world today should go hungry, just as greed bastards at the top shouldn’t avoid paying tax and conduct their business in unethical ways.
A smart friend told me: “if you wanna work smart and hard and eat lobster all the time, and if I wanna work little and eat noodles, then that’s cool. But we both should have food and shelter. It’s just a matter of cutting out the extremes and increasing social mobility between the classes.”
It’s about having the freedom to choose where you will be located within The Pyramid: how much power you want to have (ie how involved in politics, corporate world and media), how much and how hard you want to work, and the lifestyle that you want to live.
I will have more to say about the Wall Street situation soon…
If you are not yet familiar with “The Pyramid”, check out the post Preserving The Pyramid: Why things are the way they are. In short this blog proposes that things are the way they are because they have been designed this way: poverty, religion, education systems, health-related issues – all of our problems are (at least in part) designed to preserve power structure that I metaphorically refer to as “The Pyramid”. Click here to see full post
In 1960 it was relatively accurate to divide the world into the “First World” and “Third World”, the “rich” and the “poor”, the “developed world” and “developing world” or the Centre and Periphery.
In 1960 we were 3 billion people. The blue was the 1 billion at the top of the pyramid, dreaming of buying a car and a dishwasher. The green were the 2 billion at the bottom of the pyramid, saving for a pair of shoes and trying to feed their families.
In 50 years much has changed. 3 billion has turned into 7 billion. 4 more boxes have been added to the table.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, (the BRIC nations), are rising up. While the 1 billion blue affluent people now take planes to remote destinations for holidays, another green box of 1 billion people are buying cars, and 3 green boxes equating to 3 billion people are buying bicycles. We still have the 2 billion at the bottom looking for food, and saving for a pair of Havaianas. So an extra 4 billion in the middle mean a wider “gap” but that is filled in with a massive middle-class majority. Maybe we’d think of them as “Second World” or “semi-periphery” nations, or nations within nations seeing as the spread of income within nations also varies greatly.
So comes our familiar (and what I consider to be quite a horrifying) graph:
Now unless we want the whole world to look like the suburbs of Mumbai (no offense to my Indian friends who live there, but it really is a horribly over-populated loud dirty chaotic city), we can’t grow at this exponential rate forever…
Rosling gives a realistic picture:
Only 2 more boxes, 2 billion more people, bringing us up to a grand total of 9 billion. And I guess ideally, eventually, all those boxes are stacked on top of one another at the far right, enjoying their holidays all around the world.
Ho hum, and how is this, pray tell, going to come about?
Many, including Rosling, predict that the formula for a stabilizing population is to decrease poverty. A little family education for women and contraception availability (along with motivating men to wear it and Catholics to allow it) also helps. Apparently this is what the statistics say, loud and clear, so let’s go with it.
With poverty as it stands in 2010, with 2 billion at the bottom, by 2050 this 2 billion will be 4 – hence the 4 boxes on top of one another.
In order to stabilize population at 9 billion, these 4 billion people NEED to be out of absolute poverty – they need to be able to afford food and shoes, and be dreaming of bicycles and cars. If not by 2070 they’ll turn into 8 billion, bringing us up to 17 billion.
Following this line of thinking I see two questions that are imperative for anyone who doesn’t want to share the planet with another 16,999,999,999 people. These are:
How are we going to ensure those 4 billion are in shoes and getting on bicycles by 2050?
What can be done so that the 5 billion humans driving cars and flying planes don’t pollute the planet & exploit the non-renewables so much that all 9 billion don’t end up back at square one, scavenging off the left-overs from today’s greed?
Hm, tough questions, did I hear someone mention mining the moon and moving to Mars?
Even in Europe I seem to be drawn to South American cultures. Some hippies from Bolivia and Venezuela, as well as the Canary Islands, were selling jewelry on the street. Before long we were playing music, drinking beer, and joining the hippies and a crazy American family on an adventure to the anarchist town of Christiania.
Part of me is drawn to the idea of anarchy. Not anarchy that lets people steal, vandalize other’s property, murder, or do whatever they want to do. But I am attracted to the idea that a society can operate outside The Pyramid, and without building a new pyramid of money and power from within.
Christiania is an area of Copenhagen just a short walk from the centre of the city. It started out as a group of squatters who, after 30 years of squatting, had official claim over the land. From humble beginnings it has grown into a town that operates outside of the laws of Denmark.
The police turn a blind eye to the marijuana stalls and whatever else goes on beyond their walls.
Heading back to our hostel I wondered what is better: hierarchy or anarchy? Which is more inclined to bring about peace?
Is there a greater possibility of peace with a hierarchy or with anarchy? I guess it depends on your definition of peace…
Which brings about less violence? Which brings about greater freedom? Which empowers its individuals? Which gives them a greater sense of purpose? Which brings about more creative and less destructive consequences of conflict?
Some food for thought over the months to come…
Photo:
Christiania has some laws, including NO PHOTOS INSIDE. This photo was taken of our new Canary Island friend Moses at the entrance to Christiania, before I knew their law…
Following my rants on the problems with our current corporatist version of capitalism, Annie Lennox does a much better job at summing up what’s wrong with our current “democracy”, and how it came to be that way:
The programming code in these entities we call “corporations” needs to change. Corporations are not people, and they shouldn’t have any of the freedoms or rights that people have.
We need rules and definitions that work for us, for ALL of us, not just the 1000 greedy bastards at the pyramid’s top.
Corporations should be defined as entities that work for humanity, not the other way around.
The big question is how??? Even if all of us wanted to change the rules of the game, if we all agreed it was time to reprogram these out-of-control machines, what could we do about it?
Has the game overpowered the players? Is that even possible?
People created the rules. People obey the rules. And people can change the rules.
There ain’t no game without the players, and there ain’t no global capitalism without humans.
We need a system that works for the people, and is governed by the people. Isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be about?
I am assisting the teaching of a master’s subject called The Political Economy of Conflict and Peace, at the University of Sydney this semester. My first presentation was yesterday and in the lead up to it I drowned myself in the political economic papers and books I wrote or read over the last couple of years. And searching YouTube for parts of documentaries that I have found useful in the past. This entry has become a bit of a dumping ground for me to refer and share again at later times… maybe you’ll find some of this random collection of thoughts and clips useful too…
The global economy today:
What does today’s global stage look like? I.e. What is the shape of today’s political/economical/social pyramid: tall or flat? What do people’s lives look like at the extremes?
How do the different stories, of individuals, groups and nations, told from different perspectives, from realist to liberal to marxist and all those in between, help us understand the dynamics of key actors and their sets?
Three basic theories based on three key actors:
Realism – analyses the world as states acting on their self-interests
Liberalism – analyses the world as individuals acting on rational self-interests
Marxism – analyses the world as classes acting on their rational self-interests
In The Structural Theory of Imperialism (a World Systems Theory), Johan Galtung describes a Conveyor Belt between the periphery of the Periphery (pP) pumping resources through to the periphery of the Core (pC) – this is clear to anyone who travels to places like South America, who grow the best coffee beans, sell them to the “north” for cheap and buy them back in the form of the horrible Nescafe Instant, which is all that is generally on offer to the citizens. Crazy! Same goes for all cash crops from cocoa to cotton, which prevent these people from growing food for themselves, causes slavery and human trafficking,
Demystifying Economics – Jim Stanford explains how the Booms and Bust are a necessary part of the system, and why it is the people at the very top of the pyramid who are bailed out, while the people with mortgages and jobs are the ones that have to pay.
Simms shows that on our current trajectory it would take 15 planets’ worth of earth’s biocapacity to reduce poverty to a state where the poorest receive $3 per day. In other words ‘we will have made Earth uninhabitable long before poverty is eradicated.’[1]
Did you know that half of all world trade currently passes through tax havens? Apparently they ‘allow rich people and corporations to stash trillions in assets that could provide governments with at least $250 billion a yearin tax revenues.’[2]
“At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world.These two groups have changed the world but not in the way either intended. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. Together they created today’s nightmare vision of an organised terror network. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. The rise of the politics of fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neo-conservative movement that dominates Washington. Both these men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together. The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay. But in an age of growing disillusion with politics, the neo-conservatives turned to fear in order to pursue their vision.”
This three part documentary traces the rise of Neo-Conservativism in the U.S., with “disillusioned liberals” like Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz looking to Leo Strauss’s political thinking to come together with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Neo-conservatives come to power under the Reagan administration, using fear to unite the citizens (and unite with the radical Islamists) in a war against the Soviet Union. It traces this alongside the radical Islamist movement back to Sayyid Qutb’s visit to the U.S. to learn about their education systems but sees the “corruption of morals and virtues in western society through individualism” and returns to Egypt to and starts the movement. Qutb is executed in 1966 and one of his followers, a–Zawahiri, later becomes the mentor to Osama bin Laden. Then of course, the two radical groups then face each other head on in the “War on Terror”.
A much shorter and funnier version of the above: Pirates and Emperors
The Eagle and the Condor (the meeting of the Mind and the Heart, of Masculine and Feminine, of the knowledge and wisdom of our world, from Western individualism, to Eastern collectivism, to Indigenous connection to the land)
1. Change corporation law – redefine “corporation” so that they are NOT treated as separate entities in their own right that can be declared bankrupt in and of themselves. Corporation law must be adjusted to hold shareholders responsible for monetary and non-monetary profits and loss.
2. Change finance / stock market laws – in implementing the above, the ST money market would probably have to go, as would trading Derivatives and Options. The stock exchange would slowdown and be based on long term investments.
3. Change banking laws for money/debt creation and collection – limit their ability to print money via debt, decrease bank’s profits, and maybe all debt cancels after 50 years, I’m not sure. Something needs to be done to regulate them though.
4. Change balance of power in the WB, WTO and IMF – give more votes to the poorer nations and create fairer trade policies
5. Create international tax laws – to crack down on tax havens.
Personally:
6. Philosophically, a self-examination of our values – what makes a life “good”? Two shifts: shift from valuing capital to valuing creativity; and shift from EGO to ECO.
7. Women might reconsider what they find attractive qualities in men – see the attraction of a creative and caring man over a rich and selfish man. Then maybe men will change in suit.
8. Write letters to corporations telling them you won’t buy their product until they stop slave trade and ridiculously low paying 80-hour weeks in sweatshops, and treat their workers in a way they would like to be treated.
9. Public shame of the ridiculously rich – unite in an attempt to decrease the obesity of the rich, and as a consequence decrease the hunger of the poor.
10. See what we might be able to do to campaign to change the laws above.
Essentially I’m talking about setting a limit to the lifestyle of those at the very bottom and very top to the pyramid. There’s nothing wrong with inequity. As my friend said, “if you wanna work smart and hard and eat lobster all the time, and if I wanna work little and eat noodles, then that’s cool. But we both should have food and shelter. It’s just a matter of cutting out the extremes and increasing social mobility between the classes.”
[1] Andrew Simms, ‘Trickle-Down Myth’, New Scientist (18 Oct 2008). p. 49. Andrew Simms is the policy director of the New Economics Foundation in London. In this article Simms steps through the mathematics to show the system is designed such that for the poor to get ‘slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer’. This means it would take ‘around $166 worth of global growth to generate $1 extra for people living on below $1 a day’.
[2] Susan George, ‘We Must Think Big’, New Scientist (18 Oct 2008). p. 51.
Even in Europe I seem to be drawn to South American cultures. Some hippies from Bolivia and Venezuela, as well as the Canary Islands, were selling jewelry on the street. Before long we were playing music, drinking beer, and joining the hippies and a crazy American family on an adventure to the anarchist town of Christiania.
I am assisting the teaching of a master’s subject called The Political Economy of Conflict and Peace, at the University of Sydney this semester. My first presentation was yesterday and in the lead up to it I drowned myself in the political economic papers and books I wrote or read over the last couple of years. And searching YouTube for parts of documentaries that I have found useful in the past. This entry has become a bit of a dumping ground for me to refer and share again at later times… maybe you’ll find some of this random collection of thoughts and clips useful too…
