Jason Hickel's book 'The Divide' - A Review.
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Jason Hickel's book 'The Divide' - A Review.
A brilliant analysis of global inequality, though it suffers from the imbalance of most books of this type: it spends 250 pages setting out in detail how big and intractable the problems are, then just 50 sketchy pages on possible solutions.
It falls into 4 parts. The first is a detailed deconstruction of how western governments, their international agencies like the World Bank, and their supine media, have created the impression through statistical sleight-of-hand that international aid has been relieving poverty and hunger, when in fact the flow of wealth has been massively in favour of the West, and the truth is that poverty and hunger have been getting worse in most of the 'third world'.
Most blatant of all, they claim successes for capitalism and western aid that in fact have been entirely due to the very real development miracle in... communist China. Take China and its close neighbours out of the statistics, and almost everything has been going backwards fast.
The second part is a summary narrative of the true history of colonialism, revealing the enormous scale of wealth taken by the West from the rest of the world since 1500, and how indeed the West has not only plundered it, but actively prevented the non-white world from developing itself.
The third part describes how the violent exploitation of slavery and colonialism has changed form - into financial instruments and unfair trading terms - but not effect: massive transfers of wealth out of most of the world into the West.
The short final part offers Hickel's solutions. It is largely an appeal to governments to co-operate to better regulate multinational corporations, trade, debt and tax, and to democratise the international bodies for this co-operation: the UN, WTO, etc... All well and good - but Hickel neither deals with the question of how such progressive co-operation can be brought about, nor the structural problem of the publicly-traded share company model - even though this problem, which makes big business investor-driven and therefore largely indifferent to negative impacts on people and planet, is essentially the same as the indifference of 'investors' extracting interest payments from already impoverished people.
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Jason Hickel's book 'The Divide' - A Review.
A brilliant analysis of global inequality, though it suffers from the imbalance of most books of this type: it spends 250 pages setting out in detail how big and intractable the problems are, then just 50 sketchy pages on possible solutions.
It falls into 4 parts. The first is a detailed deconstruction of how western governments, their international agencies like the World Bank, and their supine media, have created the impression through statistical sleight-of-hand that international aid has been relieving poverty and hunger, when in fact the flow of wealth has been massively in favour of the West, and the truth is that poverty and hunger have been getting worse in most of the 'third world'.
Most blatant of all, they claim successes for capitalism and western aid that in fact have been entirely due to the very real development miracle in... communist China. Take China and its close neighbours out of the statistics, and almost everything has been going backwards fast.
The second part is a summary narrative of the true history of colonialism, revealing the enormous scale of wealth taken by the West from the rest of the world since 1500, and how indeed the West has not only plundered it, but actively prevented the non-white world from developing itself.
The third part describes how the violent exploitation of slavery and colonialism has changed form - into financial instruments and unfair trading terms - but not effect: massive transfers of wealth out of most of the world into the West.
The short final part offers Hickel's solutions. It is largely an appeal to governments to co-operate to better regulate multinational corporations, trade, debt and tax, and to democratise the international bodies for this co-operation: the UN, WTO, etc... All well and good - but Hickel neither deals with the question of how such progressive co-operation can be brought about, nor the structural problem of the publicly-traded share company model - even though this problem, which makes big business investor-driven and therefore largely indifferent to negative impacts on people and planet, is essentially the same as the indifference of 'investors' extracting interest payments from already impoverished people.
Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
Colonialism in Latin America was responsible for 70 million deaths. In India, 30 million people starved to death under British rule. Average living standards in India and China, which had been the same as British before colonialism, collapsed, as did their share of world GDP, which fell from 65% to 10%, while Europe's share tripled.
The capitalist story - that it raised the world out of poverty - is the opposite of the truth. Outside rare natural disasters, mass poverty was unknown before capitalism, but common after.
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Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
Colonialism in Latin America was responsible for 70 million deaths. In India, 30 million people starved to death under British rule. Average living standards in India and China, which had been the same as British before colonialism, collapsed, as did their share of world GDP, which fell from 65% to 10%, while Europe's share tripled.
The capitalist story - that it raised the world out of poverty - is the opposite of the truth. Outside rare natural disasters, mass poverty was unknown before capitalism, but common after.
Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
Capitalism proposes to eradicate poverty through economic growth. In fact, to eradicate poverty by this means, global GDP would have to increase to 175 times its current level. This would entail such massive destruction of the natural world that it would actually make poverty immeasurably worse.
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Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
Capitalism proposes to eradicate poverty through economic growth. In fact, to eradicate poverty by this means, global GDP would have to increase to 175 times its current level. This would entail such massive destruction of the natural world that it would actually make poverty immeasurably worse.
Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
While 30 million people starved to death in British India, UK companies increased profitable food exports from India. Over the worst years of famine, 1877-78, British companies exported a record 6.4 million tons of Indian wheat to Europe. Between 1875 and 1900 forced Indian grain exports increased from 3 million tons to 10 million tons every year.
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Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
While 30 million people starved to death in British India, UK companies increased profitable food exports from India. Over the worst years of famine, 1877-78, British companies exported a record 6.4 million tons of Indian wheat to Europe. Between 1875 and 1900 forced Indian grain exports increased from 3 million tons to 10 million tons every year.
Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
The impact of neoliberalism on western economies has been disastrous - but on 'developing countries' it has been far worse. After making modest gains during the 'Trente Glorieuses' - as the French call the 30 or so progressive years after the war - from the 1980s, incomes in sub-Saharan Africa fell by 0.7% per year.
As a direct result of the adoption by the World Bank, etc, of neoliberal 'structural adjustment' investment conditions, the GDP of the average African country fell by 10%, and the number of Africans living in extreme poverty doubled.
-
Jason Hickel's book 'The Divide' - A Review.
A brilliant analysis of global inequality, though it suffers from the imbalance of most books of this type: it spends 250 pages setting out in detail how big and intractable the problems are, then just 50 sketchy pages on possible solutions.
It falls into 4 parts. The first is a detailed deconstruction of how western governments, their international agencies like the World Bank, and their supine media, have created the impression through statistical sleight-of-hand that international aid has been relieving poverty and hunger, when in fact the flow of wealth has been massively in favour of the West, and the truth is that poverty and hunger have been getting worse in most of the 'third world'.
Most blatant of all, they claim successes for capitalism and western aid that in fact have been entirely due to the very real development miracle in... communist China. Take China and its close neighbours out of the statistics, and almost everything has been going backwards fast.
The second part is a summary narrative of the true history of colonialism, revealing the enormous scale of wealth taken by the West from the rest of the world since 1500, and how indeed the West has not only plundered it, but actively prevented the non-white world from developing itself.
The third part describes how the violent exploitation of slavery and colonialism has changed form - into financial instruments and unfair trading terms - but not effect: massive transfers of wealth out of most of the world into the West.
The short final part offers Hickel's solutions. It is largely an appeal to governments to co-operate to better regulate multinational corporations, trade, debt and tax, and to democratise the international bodies for this co-operation: the UN, WTO, etc... All well and good - but Hickel neither deals with the question of how such progressive co-operation can be brought about, nor the structural problem of the publicly-traded share company model - even though this problem, which makes big business investor-driven and therefore largely indifferent to negative impacts on people and planet, is essentially the same as the indifference of 'investors' extracting interest payments from already impoverished people.
-
Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
The impact of neoliberalism on western economies has been disastrous - but on 'developing countries' it has been far worse. After making modest gains during the 'Trente Glorieuses' - as the French call the 30 or so progressive years after the war - from the 1980s, incomes in sub-Saharan Africa fell by 0.7% per year.
As a direct result of the adoption by the World Bank, etc, of neoliberal 'structural adjustment' investment conditions, the GDP of the average African country fell by 10%, and the number of Africans living in extreme poverty doubled.
Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
Neoliberal policies from the 1980s have been the cure worse than the disease. They were Intended to reduce debt, but have vastly increased it. External debt stood at 25% of national incomes in the global South in 1980, but increased to 38% in 1990, then to 39% in 2000.
The debt grew from $100 billion to over $1.5 trillion - of which only $400 billion was actually borrowed - all the rest is just rolled-up interest.
There is no way these sums can ever be repaid. They are, in fact, simply rents extracted by the wealthy from the poor.
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Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
Neoliberal policies from the 1980s have been the cure worse than the disease. They were Intended to reduce debt, but have vastly increased it. External debt stood at 25% of national incomes in the global South in 1980, but increased to 38% in 1990, then to 39% in 2000.
The debt grew from $100 billion to over $1.5 trillion - of which only $400 billion was actually borrowed - all the rest is just rolled-up interest.
There is no way these sums can ever be repaid. They are, in fact, simply rents extracted by the wealthy from the poor.
Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
Big Pharma tries to justify its 'intellectual property' rents - including denying life-saving medicines to poor people - as necessary to fund its medical research. In fact, 84% of medical research is paid for with public money, and only 12% by the industry - which spends far more on advertising than on research - and in some years, more on share buy-backs, an artificial means of raising shareholder value, than on research.
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Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
Big Pharma tries to justify its 'intellectual property' rents - including denying life-saving medicines to poor people - as necessary to fund its medical research. In fact, 84% of medical research is paid for with public money, and only 12% by the industry - which spends far more on advertising than on research - and in some years, more on share buy-backs, an artificial means of raising shareholder value, than on research.
Random Facts from Jason Hckel's book 'The Divde'...
We rightly blame the sort of 'cowboy capitalism' we see in America for the system's worse abuses, but in fact the organising tax haven capital of the world is the City of London. The human population of the British Virgin islands is 25,000 people - but they have 850,000 registered companies.
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Jason Hickel's book 'The Divide' - A Review.
A brilliant analysis of global inequality, though it suffers from the imbalance of most books of this type: it spends 250 pages setting out in detail how big and intractable the problems are, then just 50 sketchy pages on possible solutions.
It falls into 4 parts. The first is a detailed deconstruction of how western governments, their international agencies like the World Bank, and their supine media, have created the impression through statistical sleight-of-hand that international aid has been relieving poverty and hunger, when in fact the flow of wealth has been massively in favour of the West, and the truth is that poverty and hunger have been getting worse in most of the 'third world'.
Most blatant of all, they claim successes for capitalism and western aid that in fact have been entirely due to the very real development miracle in... communist China. Take China and its close neighbours out of the statistics, and almost everything has been going backwards fast.
The second part is a summary narrative of the true history of colonialism, revealing the enormous scale of wealth taken by the West from the rest of the world since 1500, and how indeed the West has not only plundered it, but actively prevented the non-white world from developing itself.
The third part describes how the violent exploitation of slavery and colonialism has changed form - into financial instruments and unfair trading terms - but not effect: massive transfers of wealth out of most of the world into the West.
The short final part offers Hickel's solutions. It is largely an appeal to governments to co-operate to better regulate multinational corporations, trade, debt and tax, and to democratise the international bodies for this co-operation: the UN, WTO, etc... All well and good - but Hickel neither deals with the question of how such progressive co-operation can be brought about, nor the structural problem of the publicly-traded share company model - even though this problem, which makes big business investor-driven and therefore largely indifferent to negative impacts on people and planet, is essentially the same as the indifference of 'investors' extracting interest payments from already impoverished people.
@GeofCox Other authors have written similar books in the distant past, when the insatiable appetite of the super-rich and western consumerism were harming people in impoverished countries but had not yet seriously affected the daily living standards of middle-class families in wealthier democratic countries. Now it feels like wealth inequality has reached an inflection point that, in the absence of big economic restructuring, will bring serious social unrest to formerly comfortable parts of the world. And I don’t see any evidence that billionaires are becoming more empathetic and open to big economic changes. Buckle up.
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@GeofCox Other authors have written similar books in the distant past, when the insatiable appetite of the super-rich and western consumerism were harming people in impoverished countries but had not yet seriously affected the daily living standards of middle-class families in wealthier democratic countries. Now it feels like wealth inequality has reached an inflection point that, in the absence of big economic restructuring, will bring serious social unrest to formerly comfortable parts of the world. And I don’t see any evidence that billionaires are becoming more empathetic and open to big economic changes. Buckle up.
Agreed - and the other factor of course is consumerism hitting the wall of climate-ecological breakdown, radicalising new groups like scientists, academics, teachers and young people.
But bear in mind that it's not just the billionaires. Vast sums of money that middle-income people have tied up in savings, pensions, etc, end up in funds they know little about, controlled by fund managers that, in many cases, have a legal duty to maximise returns regardless of other negative impacts. It's systematic.
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