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

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

2. Opposing view: Garrett Hardin’s “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.”

3. 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.”

4. 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 33:4)

5. 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 Hardin’s 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.

6. 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.

7. The harm is done through the developed world’s 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))

8. 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.

9. 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)

10. 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.

11. 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.

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

13. 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)

14. 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

15. 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 world’s 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)

16. 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)

17. Pogge’s 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 enslaved…than the year before).” (Pogge “Severe poverty as a human rights violation” in Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right 2007)

18. 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. • Pogge’s 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.

19. 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 Poor’s level of wealth back up by, reforming the global order. • Has Rich “harmed” the Poor?