Readers of these pieces will be familiar with Thomas Piketty the French economist who a few years ago wrote Capital in the Twenty First Century and whose impact is reflected in our emphasis upon inequality. He has now written a kind of sequel Capital and Ideology which some say will do for politics what the Capital book did for economics. The 1200 page book which was just published in France will be available in English next March but Piketty has already given interviews and spoken of his new ideas. He says he wanted to redress what he perceived as a weakness in Capital where he only dealt with the West. In this one he deals with the whole world. In the first part of the book he makes clear how the idea of property including slave ownership had political and ideological ramifications. The second part addresses recipes for how he sees the problems that lay behind the inequalities we have today. Some are quite radical, he asks for example that we give up on the idea of property as being essentially sacred, an idea upon which capitalism and modern economies are built. He also suggests that wealth could be borrowed, in other words we could own it temporarily for certain periods of time. He also suggests that all young people be given an inheritance before they start their adult life not after, in certain ways hoping to level the playing field. One headline I saw said Piketty wanted to do away with billionaires leading me to believe that in today’s US some of these ideas are already talked about. Whether they’re radical or not, whether they can actually be implemented or not may not be the crux of this book’s importance. It may be that like the other one it forces us to grapple with issues crucial to social justice.
Category: Poverty
“Blood” Crystals
Crystals are now part of a billion dollar industry. They are in demand by many New Age followers and others who believe in their power, usually healing power. But most of the crystals commercially available to us come from one of the world’s poorest countries, Madagascar, which is rich in several of those which are in demand. The miners, without whom those crystals would not end up in the hands or homes of those who believe in them, live in dire and abject poverty. A writer for The Guardian shadowed them for a period of time to have a better understanding of not only how much they are exploited, but also of the harsh conditions they end up having no choice to live under. And a picture of this situation would be remiss in not mentioning that child labor is part of this system. One way to encapsulate the problem would be to say that a piece of quartz which may well sell for say a $1000 was perhaps bought for something like at most $10. The beneficiaries of this difference are the big corporations which act as middlemen. And according to the Guardian’s expose there is little evidence that the corporations making up the industry are willing to make changes. We know about blood diamonds, we know about the exploitation of many in several industries, we ought to know about the exploitation behind our use of crystals. The consumers who buy and use crystals, certainly those I know, think of themselves as conscious, as people with integrity who believe in human rights. They may now be faced with a reality as to whether their values are real or merely given lip service and also with a decision along with the rest of us—to continue and be blind to the consequences of these facts, or to take action that will work toward ending the exploitation and the dire poverty of the miners.
Slave Labor and Supply Chains
The UN describes modern slavery as the condition of people whose work “is performed involuntarily and under the menace of penalty.” Modern slaves can be forced to work through threats of violence, through withholding of identification, through threats to family members, and also through subtler means like financial pressure or limiting movements. All told according to a recent report by the Walk Free Initiative, in 2018 there were 40.3 million people living in these conditions, mainly women. When Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981, as the last stronghold it made slavery illegal throughout the world. One problem is how difficult it is to track down the offenses. It is part of countries with shady human rights certainly, but it is everywhere, including the US. Of these 40 plus million there are at least 16 who are part of the supply chain, meaning the people who work on the things we buy. Even if slave conditions are outlawed within manufacturing, it is difficult to enforce, to make sure products are entirely made by slave free labor. The fashion and the tech industries are two of the worst culprits. With fashion for example, we want cheap clothes, and cheap clothes can only come with cheap labor. Some businesses are onboard, yet because products can have many parts which come from many different countries it is often difficult to know if slave working conditions were involved. Another aspect of the tragedy is that so many of those who are forced to work and/or live under these conditions are not aware they are being exploited. There are no easy answers, but one hope lies in education: Educating people about their rights, and promoting human rights education among vulnerable populations such as those of migrant workers or those likely to be in underage marriages.
If and when we can, let’s contribute to that education.
Population Growth and Family Planning
When Paul Ehrlich published his The Population Bomb in 1968 it made a huge difference in our awareness of the harm over population could do. We’ve since forgotten how crucial this issue is, and now climate change is a powerful reminder along with an annual report from the UN Population Division. More people means the need for food production, one of the very thing affected by climate change. And the areas where population growth is slated to be the highest, will be those areas more affected. Niger, Pakistan and Nigeria are on the list. Besides more food more population means more schools, more health care, something difficult for poor countries. So people migrate. And we’ve seen what that creates, not only on the US border but on other continents as well. Family planning used to be on the agenda of many, but political agendas as well as religious groups have attacked it. It is now 1% (one) of overseas development aid although according to the founders of OASIS (Organizing to Advance Solutions in the Sahel) as well as several UN agencies family planning is the most cost effective form of foreign aid. They say family planning is an investment and they suggest increasing it to 2%. The difference it would make in terms of population growth would be enormous and enough they believe to keep us from a catastrophe. In 1968, the population was 3.8 billion and grew at about 2% this meant that every year there was 60 million more birth than death. Today our population is 7.7 billion although population growth is only 1% there are 80 million more births than death every year—that is the equivalent of adding a country such as Germany every year. We shall be 9.7 billion by 2050 and 15.6 billion by 2099.
Population control is even more of a time bomb now than it was in Ehrlich’s time. Voluntary family planning can and will make a huge difference, and we need to remind our decision makers that it needs to be on the foreign aid agenda.