Global Poverty Part 2

1

• Global Poverty Part 2
• Thomas Pogge and
• the negative duty not to harm

2

• Opposing view Garrett Hardins Lifeboat Ethics
  the Case Against Helping the Poor (in Psychology
  Today Sept 1974)
• Garrett Hardin (1915 2003)
• (ecologist at UC Santa Barbara)
• We should be cautious in regard to the ideas of
  misguided idealists to justify suicidal policies
  for sharing our resources through uncontrolled
  immigration and foreign aid.

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• Reason 1 Our earth is like a lifeboat with only
  a limited carrying capacity.
• 50 of us are sitting in a lifeboat with a
  carrying capacity of 60 people. There are 100 of
  poor people out there about to drown.
• If we take everybody in, the boat swamps,
  everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete
  catastrophe.

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• Problem of poverty cannot be solved simply by
  money transfer.
• E.g. One cannot simply work on AIDS, but must
  build and maintain an appropriate medica
  infrestructure, and one cannot improve education
  simply by building a few school houses, but must
  invest in an appropriate educational
  infrestructure (Mathia Risse How does the
  global order harm the poor? Philosophy and
  Public Affairs Fall 2005 334)

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• Reason 2 Poverty alleviation is
  counterproductive.
• The more we save today, the more poverty deaths
  will there be tomorrow due to the much higher
  birth rates in the poor societies.
• To what extent are Hardins arguments sound?
• The global population growth has been accompanied
  by a tremendous growth in food production
  technologies. (Real food prices has dropped for
  more than 30 between 1985 2000)
• Birth rates drop significantly once poverty is
  reduced and women have better access to
  employment opportunities and information on
  contraception.

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• Does our moral relationship with the poor solely
  consists in a strong duty to help?
• Thomas Pogge(Department of Political Science,
  Columbia University) NO!
• Positive duty to help VS negative duty not to
  harm
• Negative duties generally more stringent, holding
  the interests of the affected parties constant.

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• The harm is done through the developed worlds
  imposing upon the poor world a global
  institutional order which foreseeably and
  avoidably perpetuates massive poverty.
• We are harming the poor we are active
  participants in the largest, though not the
  gravest, crime against humanity ever committed.
  Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were vastly more
  evil than our political leaders, but in terms of
  killing and harming people they never came
  anywhere near causing 18 million deaths a year.
  (Pogge Real World Justice Journal of Ethics
  2005 (9))

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• What is the global institutional order?
• Political states system
• Economic Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank,
  IMF, GATT/WTO), G8/G20, international treaties
  and conventions governing trade, investment,
  loans, capital flow etc.

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• First argument Harm defined by reference to the
  Lockean baseline
• Lockean standard of legitimacy institutional
  order is legitimate only if it could have been
  voluntarily consented to by people in the S of N.
• Consent would be given only if those in the worst
  position under an institutional order are at
  least as well off as they would be in S of N.
  (ref. Lockean proviso)

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• Could the existing global order have been
  consented to by people in S of N?
• No. However one may want to imagine a state of
  nature among human beings on this planet, one
  could not realistically conceive it as producing
  an enduring poverty death toll of 18 million
  annually. Only a thoroughly organized state of
  civilization can sustain horrendous suffering on
  such a massive scale. (Pogge Real World
  Justice Journal of Ethics 2005 (9) p. 40)
• Hence, the poor have been harmed by the global
  order.

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• Second argument harming the poor by imposing
  upon them an unjust global order
• Justice requires a domestic economic order to
  ensure its citizens basic rights are satisfied
  to the greatest possible extent.
• Under the current global order there exists
  massive poverty and sufferings.
• There exists alternative global institutional
  design under which such massive poverty would not
  persist.
• Hence the global order is unjust.

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• How has the global order harmed the poor?
• Unfair trade rules asymmetric market opening,
  unilateral protectionist policies

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• Textile quotas and tariffs Every job saved in
  the First world through such measures comes at a
  cost of 35 jobs lost in the Third World.
• (Nick Stern, Former World Bank Chief Economist,
  Cutting agricultural subsidies
  www.globalvision.org/library/6/309)

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• International resource privilege any
  government recognized by the international
  community to be legitimate acquires the legal
  power to sell out his countries resources
• Any regime which exercises effective control over
  a territory will be recognized by the
  international community as being legitimate,
  regardless of its moral credentials.
• Effect Corrupt rulers can use the revenue
  generated by selling its countries resources to
  cement and perpetuate its rule.
• Dutch-disease

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• Possible defense of the global
• 1) The global order has benefited, not harmed,
  the poor.
• The gains (of globalization) are not, or not
  only, the profits of Western and Third World
  corporations but productive employment and high
  incomes for the worlds poor. In terms of
  relieving want, globalization is the difference
  between South Korea and North Korea (The case
  for globalization The Economist Sept 23rd 2000)

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• Evidence Share of global population living on
  less than 1 a day fell from 42 in 1950 to 17
  in 1992.
• Between 1960 to 2000, longevity in developing
  world has risen from 44 to 64.
• By any standard development indicator, the human
  race has never been better off, and it has never
  been better armed with technological prowess,
  medical knowledge, and intellectual tools to
  fight poverty. (Mathia Risse How does the
  global order harm the poor? Philosophy and
  Public Affairs Fall 2005 33, 4 p.370)

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• Pogges response
• It is the absolute number but not percentages
  that matter morally.
• Absolute number of people in severe poverty 750
  million in 1820 to 1200 million in 1998.
• Consider the analogous charges that
  slave-holding societies harmed and violated the
  human rights of those they enslaved These
  charges can certainly not be defeated by showing
  that the rate of victimization declined (with
  fewer people being enslavedthan the year
  before). (Pogge Severe poverty as a human
  rights violation in Freedom from Poverty as a
  Human Right 2007)

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• Second possible defense of the global order
  causes of poverty lie within the poor countries.
• Evidence some formerly poor countries have made
  marvelous progress in poverty reduction, e.g.
  HK, South Korea, Singapore.
• Pogges response i) Some poor countries can
  prosper under the existing global order does not
  imply all have a decent chance to.
• ii) Domestic policies are not immune from the
  influence of global factors. E.g. Only in 1999
  the OECD passed the Convention on Combating
  Bribery of Foreign Officials in International
  Business Transactions.

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• One of the possible challenges
• Does Pogge overstretch the meaning of harm?
• World of only two countries, Rich and Poor.
• The domestic and global orders are just.
• Then Poor pursues unsound economic policies,
  leading to poverty in Poor.
• Rich can bring Poors level of wealth back up by,
  reforming the global order.
• Has Rich harmed the Poor?