Rich countries, which are often made of businesspeople, can act like businesspeople. Currently, the Group of Eight Industrialized Nations (G8) is meeting in Japan to discuss all kinds of things, including how to eradicate poverty, yet one suspects that nothing interests them so much as continuing to be the richest countries in the world. The G8 represent 65% of the gross world product. All eight nations are among the 10 richest in the world.
Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank urged nations to stop incentives for bio-fuels today, saying that bio-fuels were taking food off the table for millions of people. A World Bank report leaked three days ago exposes the fact that diverting crops to bio-fuels has caused a 75% rise in global food prices. Yet American food prices have risen only marginally; the U.S. government quotes a figure of 3%. How can this be?
Bushels of corn that used to go to other countries at $3 now go to the ethanol plant at $6. Americans do not notice, because, like a parking lot customer who parks in two spaces, rich countries take what they want first, and let everyone else cope with what they leave.
Aid to Africa has been big news at the last several G8 conferences, with commitments of money for grants and loans for agriculture, but most of the money may never actually arrive. President Bush says, "The best way to help the impoverished around the world is through trade." He seems to have forgotten that the underlying premise of trade is that each party gives something. Africa has little to give except starving children and an average lifespan of 45 years, thanks to AIDS.
Industrialized nations may want to sell genetically modified seed, chemical fertilizers, and petroleum-powered machinery to African farmers, but the Africans have no cash to spend and no gas stations at which to fill up. G8 nations seem oblivious to reality at times.
Several years ago, Japan tried to promote the growing of rice in Zambia. In a wet year, Zambia may receive 55 inches of rain. Rice needs more than 60 inches of rain to produce a crop and has very little drought tolerance. Irrigation in Zambia consists of hauling water from a well in a bucket or a jerry can. Obviously, the experiment failed.
Most farmers in Africa are subsistence farmers supporting large families on tiny plots of land. Turning Africa into a continent of factory farms like those in North America would displace millions of people. Unless the first world is willing to repeat the performance of the United States with Native Americans, that is, genocide, or near-genocide, turning Africa into the world's breadbasket is an impractical solution to world food shortages in the near term.
And then there is the bickering. President Bush resolves not to commit to reduce carbon emissions unless India and China (who are not even part of the G8) agree to do the same. Presumably, he wants to protect American business from the costs of becoming cleaner, but the scenario conjures Francisco Goya's painting of two men bludgeoning one another while standing in quicksand.
If the leaders of the richest countries in the world want to go to a posh resort to smoke cigars and pat each other on the back, no one would mind. It might be a refreshing break from their all-important work that never seems to produce results if they just told the truth about it.
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Comments: 65
gave ya a 10
They aren't talking about ending poverty. They're talking about sustaining it because it works for them.
I worry about how many Cheney's there may be among them.
Related -- One of the ways that capitalists have helped the Third World's poverty stricken folk, is to offer unsecured micro-loans for business start-ups. Sadly, too often the systems these micro-loans put folks in, is one of dependence upon a specific supplier-buyer network that is later ratcheted up. So, after promising dreams to come true, these Third World folks too often end-up put over a barrel and just switched to a new form of economic depression (working poor) where their living situations end up being barely improved at all.
But the capitalists make money and live well. That's all that really matters, isn't it?
Good Article, Ann - thanks!
The G8 was formed to keep the balance in their favor - well India and China aren't playing that game any more.
Africa, well - just have a real good look at the reality of life there and you have your answer.
After all you need to be well fed to discuss world hunger.
Anne - glad I found you again.
My thoughts are running this way: all of life is business. There is no us or them - only those who think they're separate [inferior or superior], or those who remember we're all one.
I'm believing that the G8, like all selfishness and bullying, is only a stage on the way to something better. I'm going to google now - I need to see what the percentage of feminine energy is on the G8.
Thanks for a good thought-piece.
On the G8 Finance Committee - NOT A SINGLE WOMAN.
This is totally bogus.
How in the world can anyone or anygroup make a pretense of healing starvation and poverty without consulting women of power? What's wrong with this picture????
It is the root of so much evil, Ann. I see it every day. We run our own business and do what's best for the client, even when it is not the best for ourselves. Not many take that approach. But, we're basically the kind of people who would never purposely screw somebody, whether it was of advantage to us or not. I have come across many near-sociopaths in business who actually enjoy screwing others just for the hell of it.
I think the greed in this country has reached obscene proportions, in my opinion. And the sad thing is that many of the worst "have-nots" are so brainwashed that they actually defend the "super-haves", supporting tax cuts and corporate handouts, all the while losing their own jobs and having to grovel for substinence living.
I whole-heartedly support Sheryl's last paragraph: I think the greed in this country has reached obscene proportions, in my opinion. And the sad thing is that many of the worst "have-nots" are so brainwashed that they actually defend the "super-haves", supporting tax cuts and corporate handouts, all the while losing their own jobs and having to grovel for substinence living.
A great and insightful article. Once again it shows the greed of the western nations and those who support them.
I personally don't believe for one second that W. would agree to reducing carbon emmissions even if China and India were to agree to it first. I think he is copping out and using this as an EXCUSE. And a poor one at that.
Bickering means never having to actually do anything. And I don't think it's each other's backs they're patting...Jon Stewart's "reach-around" concept comes to mind...
plus, if the G-8ers were going to help the world's poor people, they could've done so long before 2008 - well before things got this bad.
Makes me think they listen to social tinkerers who create chaos as they practice (as we now see in living color on the world stage)....population control. Two nasty words in the case of starvation but that's what they've rigged and the (class warfare) piper is tuning up now.
so sad so tragic so many are so filled with such angst, unnecessarily.
Bush has sent more money to combat AIDS to Africa than any other leader in the world.
U2 frontman Bono has welcomed US President George Bush's decision to spend more on Aids prevention in Africa and the Caribbean.
The US leader is to increase the country's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief budget by $10 billion (£6.28bn) to $15 billion (£9.43bn) over the next five years.
"If we can turn the president's bold long term vision into near term results we're excited," Bono said in a statement.
The singer says the US needs to spend $2.5bn (£1.5bn) out of this year's budget to help tackle the Aids crisis.
He said Europe must also match the US contribution.
SOURCE
Joke ?
I don't think so.
Surely you jest! China OWNS the US and India has all our jobs. We may have helped eradicate poverty in those countries, but all we did was import it to ours. How does trade help the mess the MIC has put us in?
Really? That just false. China owns about $350 billion of our borrowed money and your statement about India not even worth responding to (ALL of our jobs?).
I will refer you to this MSNBC article on national debt and where the money comes from:
Just who owns the U.S. national debt?
Can you explain that? Of course, there are some industries with trade tariffs and such, but we pretty much have a free market. I personally know many people who have come up from nothing and have done quite well.
So, I don't have any input to this discussion.
Have a nice day.
I suggest you read a book by Yale law professor Amy Chua... "World on Fire." Then extend her perspective of the growth of market-dominant minorities in developing nations into a mirror that gazes into our own so-called free market in western democracies. What you will find once you dig deep enough through all sorts of spin and euphemistic labels for demand-side controlled economics, like "trickle down," is that one of the most important features to "democracy" - the common wealth - is being dictated by very small minorities.
In American and British history, "cyclings of revolution" against such practices, which in another era was called monopoly busting and the violent workers' unions movements... and also "women's suffrage," which largely grew out of women disgusted by seeing children in the "slave" sweat shops all over the American and European landscape 100 years ago. As elected governments slowly and reluctantly began to respond with legislation to protect those who work for the market, and also to begin protecting the structure of the market itself through anti-monopoly laws and regulatory agencies, and then consumer protection... well, we had a president in 1980 who pretty much destroyed decades of an attempt to develop a "free market" in America.. with Reagan, who dis-empowered the workers and the supply side power of the consumer.
A brief glimpse of a facade of our non-free marketplace:
*1% of the titled land in the world is owned by women
*70% of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty are
women and children
*21% of the world's managers are female (less than 5% in my native Denmark, compared to apx. 40% in Norway due to legislation in 2004))
*62% of unpaid family workers are female
*67% of all illiterate adults re female
*1,440 Women die each day during childbirth
(a rate of one death every minute)
*35% of lawyers in the United States are women
but just 5% are partners in firms
*4% of girls in Chad go to school
*85 million girls worldwide are unable to attend
school, compared with 45 million boys
(Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, 2005 Annual Averages and the Monthly Labor Review, November 2005)
While I understand that a free market needs to be free of undue governmental control, more importantly, it needs to be transparent so that the demand sides of an economy cannot exert coercive, misleading and other self-serving influences. If you look at the US banking, credit card & mortgage collapse, that is an expression of a lacking of a free market. The way in which the world's single most important resource - oil - (and its nemesis, "global warming") has become a mystery of an allied multinational industry & G-8 spin also is an expression that the free marketplace is but an illusion... carried over to here and now from a streamlined and re-invented feudal system. Instead of the more easy-to-identify lords, land barons, and 19th century industrialists... we have the CEOs and major investors, who have learned from the consumers- and workers revolts of last century (including communism... look at how the Kremlin got reinvented in just 10 years with Putin)) how to informally discuss means to better feed a supply-side dominated world economy down the consumers throats without alarm bells ringing. Those who control energy, especially at the venture capital level, then can also better control the various other features to any market, including transportation and the ability to concertedly eliminate any competition.
What has happened in western politics since land- and agricultural-based feudalism shifted to the barons in the cities with the advent of the Industrial Revolution has been one revolutionary cycle after the other, based on the classic J-curve of social discontent. When "democracies" first dawned on Europe (including the formation of the USA) in response to this J-curve, only wealthy land-owners - those who shaped the politics of "supply-and-demand"- could participate in such democracies. Bit by bit into the 20th century, various groups, including an entire gender - half the "democratic population" - women got the right to participate to an extent in democracy. But in all wester democracies except Norway, women A major function of any government is to protect the common wealth interests of a nation. That trust is an illusion, which can be seen expressed by how little confidence is shown to the legislative branch, so infected it is by special interests with virtually limitless capital resources to further their agendas of controlling the marketplace.
Simple examples of how we do not have a "free market" would be going to your doctor and being given a prescription because of the kickback to the doctor from the pharmaceuticals. And how often have you gone into a WalMart, and bought something cheap you had not intended on buying.
All, this is a bit oversimplified for the purpose of a comment posting, and some may suggest I am attempting to describe a perfect market in a microeconomy.
A "free market" implies that the demand side (the consumers) of the market is not manipulated by the supply side... or any other "hidden" interests.
The US Government personnel who compiled this report haven't been to the grocery lately.
creating your own definitions and the like....
radical stuff
The G in the G8 must stand for Greedy 8 ... These nations "Leaders" are the visual puppets we are all meant to keep our eyes on while the people that are really their masters, the ones who have contributed to their being put into their offices, hide in anonymity behind (above) them pulling their strings with the immense wealth they have accumulated through their multinational corporate controlling investments ...
The entire "free world" is the result of these folks and we are shown the examples of the vast difference between the impoverished world and our largess every minute of every day ... as we are endlessly brainwashed about how good we have it because of "our industriousness" compared to the "lazy others" ... all of that coming across the western media which is owned and editorially controlled for that very effect by those who "own everything" involved with the G8 ...
We the people are a part of that and complicit in turning our minds away from the nasty truth of it all ... the worst of the lot are the few really dumb apologists for them and it all as has been exemplified in a couple commenters here who speak like that every chance they get ... we ALL know who they are and the only "good" outcome of it is example they set of need to better educate their types so they can "grow up" and eventually see the light ...
Thank God for the Internet as it is about the only place the bulk of us can get truth any more ... but give the G8 what they want and they will regulate that option out of it also.
This is a very sick world that needs more than anything else, more truth.
Let's for a moment free the "soul" from anyone's local religious and sociopolitical relativity.
Now, it may not make a whole lot of logical sense to a European when a Cherokee sends forth a prayer to the spirit of the white-tailed deer along with the arrow he has sent into its chest. Equally, it may not make scientific sense when a traditional Navajo clan performs rituals that includes returning to the harsh environment of the US southwest symbolic bits of their sustaining corn. It certainly threatened the economic agendas of the Europeans attempting to exploit the resources of the Pacific northwest when the fledging Canadian and US colonial governments tried banning the Nootka practice of wealth redistribution called a Potlatch. In a Potlatch, the wealthy in the local society often gave away some of their most prized possessions, either into a community pool or into a ritual fire, as a way to reduce the local stress of extremes in wealth accumulation. In the cultures that evolved out of the Vedic creations stories, including Buddhism, the common way in which one greets another holds this old wisdom: "Namaste!" Which is an informal expression of "namaskar,"and means, "The divine in me respects the divine in you." The placing of the right palm to the left into a prayer pose in these every-day, unconscious greetings symbolizes the integration of one's divine nature with the more obvious physical nature, a nature which can be empirically studied. If we go back to the more pagan or mystical roots and influences of Christianity, we find the exact same expression. It is these bits of a symbolic universe that helps preserve a memory of how interconnected anyone's activity is within an ecosystem The economic policies that are entrenched in the G-8 is but another expression of an old attempt to subjugate nature, the classic "devil (egocentric) archetype." At some point in the evolution of the human brain to adapt and survive socially, we met up with the classic issue of either identifying with the ego formation of that brain or the underlying nature of consciousness.
Any social institution - be it religious, scientific or even economic & political – that inculcates this deeper understanding and respect for behavioral patterns that are in harmony with the underlying ecology of nature will naturally pay unfathomable dividends. But since these "dividends" cannot by their very nature "belong" to anyone in particular but to the whole of the temporary natural system that wrought it, this of course threatens the narcissistic point inherent in the economic policies of the G-8.
This echoes also with Socrates' philosophy on economics. He stated that wealth does not produce goodness but that it is goodness which brings about wealth, even in how one's nation accumulates wealth and vitality. Socrates further suggested that goodness consists of caring for one's soul. If one cared for one's soul, one would be intuitively unable to act against the flowing laws of nature. The wealth from investments based on that understanding - which includes what climatology is beginning to teach us and a history of war that has yet to teach us anything - won't crash like FaniMae and FreddiMac
Well said Bent, America is the result of the greatness of the goodness of it's Souls ... something we will easily and surely lose with the types of leadership and attitudes held by those without Soul awareness.