Two Myths That Keep The World Poor

Two of the great economic myths of our time allow people to deny this intimate link, and spread misconceptions about what poverty is.

First, the destruction of nature and of people’s ability to look after themselves are blamed not on industrial growth and economic colonialism, but on poor people themselves. Poverty, it is stated, causes environmental destruction. The disease is then offered as a cure: further economic growth is supposed to solve the very problems of poverty and ecological decline that it gave rise to in the first place. This is the message at the heart of Sachs’ analysis.

The second myth is an assumption that if you consume what you produce, you do not really produce, at least not economically speaking. If I grow my own food, and do not sell it, then it doesn’t contribute to GDP, and therefore does not contribute towards “growth”.

People are perceived as “poor” if they eat food they have grown rather than commercially distributed junk foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in self-built housing made from ecologically well-adapted materials like bamboo and mud rather than in cinder block or cement houses. They are seen as poor if they wear garments manufactured from handmade natural fibres rather than synthetics.

...

If we are serious about ending poverty, we have to be serious about ending the systems that create poverty by robbing the poor of their common wealth, livelihoods and incomes. Before we can make poverty history, we need to get the history of poverty right. It’s not about how much wealthy nations can give, so much as how much less they can take.

http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/28/two_myths_that_keep_the_world_poor/

http://www.stwr.org/

example:

News and Analysis

WTO Public Forum: High stakes, entrenched positions
Armed violence kills 2,000 a day worldwide
Food Aid Is Not the Best Way to Help Starving Millions
Recurrent famine in Ethiopia illustrates the failure of international food aid policies for the past 25 years. Rather than prioritising emergency response; governments should encourage production in developing countries, invest in local infrastructure, and empower small-scale farmers, says a report by Oxfam International.

Global Food Reserves: A Key Step Towards Ending Hunger
Food reserves could play an important role in a longer-term strategy to achieve universal food security if implemented as part of a new international framework for trade and agriculture, finds a study released today by Share The World's Resources.

The Great Transition: Tackling Climate Change and Inequality
Despite a historic financial collapse, politicians are adopting a ‘business-as-usual' approach to managing the economy. What is urgently needed instead is a radical, step by step transition to a green economy that delivers healthy and equitable lives, outlines a report by the New Economics Foundation.

World Food Day and the Right to Food
In the run-up to World Food Day 2009, a number of reports reveal a global food system in urgent need of reform and call for the ‘right to food’ to guide the future governance of international agriculture.

The Agribusiness Lobby Arrives in Copenhagen
Agribusiness companies are aggressively lobbying to make a range of farming activities eligible for funding at the upcoming climate talks. If successful, billions of dollars will be invested into the very approach to food production that is exacerbating the climate crisis, warns GRAIN.
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http://www.stwr.org/economic-sharing-alternatives/sharing-in-the-global-economy-an-introduction.html

Sharing in the Global Economy: An Introduction


An investigation into the common denominators behind the escalating environmental, financial and political crises, and an examination of how greater economic sharing can lead to a more sustainable world.

Sharing in The Global Economy - An Introduction
13th August 2007
Written by Adam W. Parsons
Edited by Rajesh Makwana

Unless the international community learns how to share the world’s resources, it is unlikely that we will make it beyond the 21st century. This is a bold statement, but there is a growing consensus in the new millennium that humanity is going in the wrong direction. The challenge is not only one of awareness; everywhere there are websites, newspaper commentaries, rallies and conventions about the need to transform our political, economic and social structures. Countless groups are formed in every country to raise the issues of poverty, inequality, global conflict, human injustice and environmental degradation, although campaigners have yet to reach an agreement on the underlying solutions for all these critical problems.

Global justice movements, from the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1999 to the ongoing Social Forum gatherings of grassroots activists, recognise that the international economic policies driven by privatisation and trade liberalisation – often dubbed ‘neo-liberalism’ or ‘corporate globalisation’ – are incapable of eradicating poverty and meeting the basic needs of the poorest citizens. Public consciousness of the injustices caused by uncontrolled market forces is growing at an unprecedented pace, but the challenge remains as to how to unify the various campaigns with the global public on the same platform. The question is no longer simply why the world needs to change, but what must we change and how are we going to do it?

Share the World’s Resources (STWR) believes that there is a fundamental solution. If we prioritise human needs first and restructure the global economic system accordingly, not only can we eradicate extreme poverty in an extraordinarily short amount of time, but the entire world will benefit as a result. The inexcusable track record of the richest nations in addressing these crucial issues has proven, however, that the demands for change need to be led by civil society with one peaceful and united voice based upon the same humanitarian values.

With a worldwide campaign to pressure governments and policy makers to secure the basic needs of every citizen through a system of sharing essential resources, we could be in a position to rapidly avert the greatest dangers facing the earth’s future.

..more..

If you make it your own OP, let me know, I'll K&R and Kick again and again...

K & R

...

The IMF now also hopes to play a greater role in monitoring the economic policies of all countries – high-income as well as low- and middle-income – and this is something that is more likely to materialise in the near future. But the Fund missed the two biggest asset bubbles in the world history: the US stock market bubble of the late 1990s and the more recent housing bubble, both of which caused recessions when they burst (the latter being our worst recession since the Great Depression).

Given this track record and the long, continuing history of imposing inappropriate macroeconomic policies on developing countries, should the IMF be given more power – as is currently being proposed – to help decide when governments should reverse their current expansionary policies and shift to tighter macroeconomic policies as the world economic recovers?

Macroeconomic policy is just one area where the IMF influences growth and development in low- and middle-income countries, through its loan agreements and more importantly through its role as gatekeeper for other sources of credit. It also influences policy in the areas of trade, financial liberalisation, privatisation of state-owned enterprises, the size and role of the public sector and more. Does anyone think that South Korea – which was as poor as Ghana in 1960 but now has living standards on a par with some western European countries – would have succeeded if it had been under IMF/ World Bank tutelage during these decades?

To be fair, the IMF is controlled by the governments of the rich countries, with the US Treasury department as its most important overseer. But that is exactly the problem: These governments are just beginning to acknowledge some of the failures of neoliberal policies in their own countries, although they are still quite far from reforming them.

They have not even recognised the failure of their policies in the rest of the world, despite the long-term growth and development failure in the vast majority of low- and middle-income countries. Concentrated, unaccountable power is generally bad. It's even worse when it is also misguided.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/08/imf-meeting-global-economy

These jackasses in Jamaica are returning to the IMF after 30 years of their 'shock doctrine'.

By the way I was on DU in my office and one of my co-workers fell in love with your username. :D

They call it Democracy, Bruce Cockburn

Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor

Who rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament --
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology

North South East West
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

Those few simply aim their guns at the ones who don't have them and rob their land. It has been like this since the dawn of technology.
Of course that weapons manufacturers don't go personally shoot villagers. They hire half the villagers to shoot the other half.

There IS enough for everyone if we weren't living these insane over-consuming lives.

...while their own neighbors starve. When 1% own over 90% of the wealth leaving 10% for the rst of us, then somehing is wrong with a society that allows this to happen.

Cat In Seattle

based on hydroponic engineering. These farms could be build as tall as skyscrapers or only a few stories high for smaller towns and villages. They would serve the function of growing all the food needed for the community by the community itself and droughts wouldn't dry up the crops and millions wouldn't go hungry and die from lack of food.

If they take the cost of relief aid and build vertical farms it would end hunger.



And if they did this in every town and city all food would be local and fresh all year long. And it would free up billions of acres of land to go back to it's natural state. Nature would be Nature again. Food wouldn't have to be trucked in from across the country or the world which would take hundreds of thousands of truck off the highways and CO2 emissions would plummet. One simple thing like vertical hydroponic farms with self supporting systems would also save the planet and humanity. And we have every bit of technology and knowledge to do it right now. Why it isn't being done is more puzzling than anything else they come up with

Thanks for this, OG, K&R of course

Then, "work." Next, how our concept of "money" corrupts the first two definitions.

Productivity, as far as our current economic system is concerned, is basically a measure of profitability. Productive labor is that which results in a profit.

Producing your own consumables, not allowing them in the 'market', inhibits someone else from gaining from your labor. It makes them (and you) worthless. But capitalism is really good at forcing it's way all over the globe for the benefit of the few. Because the money is the power, no amount of regulation can counter that...it just grows and grows...And 'growth' is seen as good, regardless of its effects on people's quality of life.

It's the difference between working for a living or working for a wage.

:thumbsup:

our economic models without going through the same history. "Teach them high tech methods and they will thrive" but it has never worked. We in the US forget a lot - like the fact that all nations do not start with the natural resources we did. My family was poor all their life but my father and mother gave us a beautiful home life and most of the time we were not hungry. Some of us got educations but the others are doing just as well. The key is to learn to be content with what you have - for the basics.

These articles made me think about Kunstler's book "Made by Hand". In it he describes the lifestyle after the oil is gone. I am old enough to remember the days when much was still made by hand even if we had plenty of oil. The lifestyle he depicts in his book actually made me pine for the good old days - simple, local, community based and natural. In my thinking many of this worlds poor know more about life than we do with all our goodies.

To be honest with you, I have never heard the argument that poverty is blamed for environmental destruction. It makes no sense. Who exactly has made these claims?

If, by poverty, you mean, non-industrialized peoples, I should remind you that in all of our time on earth, up until the industrial age, all peoples lived in self-sustaining economies and there was no pollution. It wasn't even really a concept.

I do, however agree with the rest of your thesis.

Should we be like Star Trek and set some arbitrary point in evolution before which we will not fully associate with other humans?

I noticed in a documentary on a primitive Amazon tribe that they had a couple of items which were beyond their ability to manufacture but which they apparently found useful. Should outsiders have refused to give, trade, or sell these people technology they are incapable of producing or reproducing?

When Africa comes down with something awful, should we withhold medical technology because it only helps them overpopulate? How about when Africa starves?

Personally, I'd say yes to all of the above. I think we have fucked up the world by giving medicine to people who have no birth control. By giving antibiotics to people who have no plumbing. By giving food to people nature would naturally starve out of the loop because the #10 bus passed them by long ago. But, I am fortunate enough to have been born into the really cool people who invented all the cool stuff and who pretty much want for nothing. So it's not like I'm completely objective.

And it is in the Ten Comandments...."Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy"
The law of the Sabbath is this....every seven days man has a day of rest...every seven years the land has a rest...and every 7x7 years or the 50th year, all debt is forgiven and the land is returned to it's original owner.
This law that was instituted by Moses prevents poverty from effecting more than one generation as well as insuring that the land itself has a rest and maintains it's fertility.
That commandment has nothing to do with going to church on sunday.

nt

there was an industrialization. Whole peoples were wiped out by starvation or vanished due to a changing environment. People lived short brutish live then as well as now.

in part. It varied. However nowhere in the article is that being discussed. But perhaps you needed to get that off your chest.

it's all pretend shit, as in let's pretend that we can eradicate poverty and environmental degradation if we simply eradicate capitalism and industrialization. it's just shallow shit. Sure I agree that industrialized nations should stop their plundering and abuse of so called third world countries, but even if that happened tomorrow, genius, that wouldn't be the end of poverty. There are fucking 7 billion people on the planet. environmental degradation comes with that fact.

The, uh, "shallowness" of Vandana Shiva as professed by cali or the profundities (lol) of Cali as professed by Cali. So difficult to discern.

:thumbsup:

with Vandana Shiva?

And checking the library now for some of her books. thanks!