January 11, 2018
Dear Friends and Family,
Welcome to a new series! In addressing the issues of Globalization, I choose to first look at some of the problems that need attention, the most severe of which is poverty. I have travelled extensively in South Africa, where I viewed miles of shanty towns, and as a teenager I lived in Cuba where our maid lived in a hut with a dirt floor and no sanitation facilities, so I wasn’t shocked when I put together a summary of our global problems. But I was shocked at the magnitude.
The follow-on excerpts touch on more human rights issues, the environment, and additional problems that emerging technology might induce.
The next segment will cover Global Income Inequality in greater depth.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
Welcome to a new series! In addressing the issues of Globalization, I choose to first look at some of the problems that need attention, the most severe of which is poverty. I have travelled extensively in South Africa, where I viewed miles of shanty towns, and as a teenager I lived in Cuba where our maid lived in a hut with a dirt floor and no sanitation facilities, so I wasn’t shocked when I put together a summary of our global problems. But I was shocked at the magnitude.
- 40% of the world’s 6.5 billion people live on less than $2/day.
- 60 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the world today.
- 6.9 million children under the age of five died in 2015.
- 214 million people contracted malaria in 2015 and 2.1 million people became newly infected with HIV/AIDs.
- 946 million people are forced to practice open defecation.
- 1.1 billion people live with no electricity.
The follow-on excerpts touch on more human rights issues, the environment, and additional problems that emerging technology might induce.
The next segment will cover Global Income Inequality in greater depth.
Happy Learning,
Harley
GLOBALIZATION –SEGMENT 1
GLOBAL PROBLEMS -- EXCERPTS
INCOME INEQUALITY: The World Bank defines poverty as living on less than $2 a day, absolute or extreme poverty as living on less than $1 a day. Some 40% of the world's 6.5 billion people live in poverty (a number that is up 36% from 1981), a sixth – 877 million—live in extreme poverty (3% more than in 1981). The worst failure is Africa, where the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty has increased from 41.6% in 1981 to 46.9% in 2001.
Source: Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz (2007)
Practically all people living in a richer country are better off than all people living in a poorer country. The poorest Americans are better off than more than two-thirds of the world population. The United States is not only a rich country on average, but a country of moderate inequality compared to other countries. The span between the richest and the poorest ventile in the United States is 32 global percentiles (100 – 68). But in China, the distribution covers a much wider range, from the 3rd to the 85th percentile. Brazil with its unequal income distributions, covers practically the entire global spectrum, going from the lowest percentile to the richest.
Today's global distribution of income is such that the richest 10% of income recipients receive 56% of the global income, while the poorest 10% receive only 0.7%. The ratio between the average income of the top 10% and the bottom 10% -- is about eighty to one.
Source: The Haves and the Have Nots by Branko Milanovic. (2011)
Countries Rich in Natural Resources: It is no accident that so many resource-rich countries are far from democratic. The riches breed bad governance. Governments that come to power by grabbing resources and using force have a markedly different sense of responsibility toward their citizens and their country's resources from governments that emerge through the will of the people. In democracies, a leader stays in power by enhancing the well-being of the citizenry. In undemocratic resource-rich countries, dictators use strength and weapons to remain in power.
Foreign Aid and Corruption: There is a direct correlation between foreign aid and a lack of economic growth. Between 1970 and 1998, when aid flows to Africa were at their peak, the poverty rate actually rose from 11% to a staggering 66%. Putting such a massive funding at the disposal of African governments is just an invitation to corruption.
Source: Screwed by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann (2012)
Consequences: Large income gaps between countries are driving socially unsustainable international migration flows. Locally, high inequality among communities and individuals is associated with political instability. These national political instabilities tend to spill over to neighboring countries and even to the rest of the world.
Source: Haves and Have Nots by Branko Milanovic (2011)
MIGRATION AND DISPLACED PERSONS: In an unequal world where income differences between countries are large, and information about these income differences is widespread, migration is not a fluke accident, anomaly, or curiosity. It is simply a rational response to the large differences in the standard of living. Currently the flow of people from poor countries to rich countries is about one-twentieth of 1% of the poor world's population annually. Roughly speaking, that means that it would take two centuries for 10% of the poor world's population to relocate to the rich world. If we look at the map of the world, we can identify four such "pressure points. North Africa and Spain (divided, at the narrowest point, by 13 kilometers of the Mediterranean Sea); Mexico and the United States (sharing a common land border); Albania and Macedonia, and Greece and Italy (sharing a land border, or being, in the case of Albania and Italy, separated by about 85 kilometers of the Ionian Sea); and Indonesia and Malaysia (separated by as little as 2.8 kilometers in the Strait of Malacca). In three cases, languages are different, and so are the dominant religions. Thus, it is not cultural but rather purely economic factors that are behind migrations.
Source: Haves and Have Nots by Branko Milanovic (2011)
In sub-Saharan Africa, where the infant mortality rate is falling more rapidly than the fertility rate, a 'baby boom' on a totally unprecedented scale is on the way. Alongside rising real incomes, we may be on the cusp of witnessing an extraordinary migration of African people northwards, across the Mediterranean to Europe – in search of a better life – whether Europe is ready or not.
Source: Grave New World by Stephen D. King (2013)
Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees
The number of refugees at the end of 2014 was around 19.5 million and the number of IDP's was 38.2 million, up from 15.4 million and 27.5 million, respectively, in 2010, and representing the highest figures of displacement
Source: What's Wrong with the UN and How to Fix It by Thomas G. Weiss (2016).
HUMAN RIGHTS: One of the four principal tasks of the United Nations is to promote and encourage “respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”.
The human rights of women across the world remain at risk because women lack the same legal status as men and in some societies are even treated as property. Violence against women remains a basic issue.
Source: The United Nations and Changing World Politics by Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, Roger A. Coate, and Kelly-Kate Pease. (2017)
The frequency of state-versus-state conflict decreased relative to the upsurge in violence within states in the 1990s, for instance, when 94% of conflicts resulting in more than 1,000 deaths were civil wars. The actual number of domestic armed conflicts diminished somewhat in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In 2010 there were 21 ongoing civil wars and nine internationalized armed conflicts.
Source: What’s Wrong with the UN and How to Fix It by Thomas G. Weiss. (2016)
THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE: Economic and political power is heading east: China and India are the new economic heavyweights, while Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have living standards which, on average, are at least as good as those typically on offer in Europe. Europe, meanwhile, sits passively for the best offer to come its way: it is not sure whether its future still lies with the US or with the countries and regions to its east. Perhaps European policymakers with a sense of nostalgia gaze at Venice and Florence hoping that a new Silk Road could once again be a source of bountiful wealth. There are plenty of obstacles standing in the way of this vision – not least the Islamic world that in effect, separates much of Europe from Asia, and where through violence or otherwise, many still harbor dreams of a united caliphate. Nevertheless, countries and regions in the twenty-first century will doubtless continue to do what they have always done, whatever their religion or creed. They will follow economic opportunity. Forget the international community. The US and China are scrambling for power in the Pacific. Russia is rethinking its relationships with its many neighbors. And Europe is in danger of being stuck in no-man’s land, not sure about the on-going commitment of the world’s most successful democracy to its future, yet uneasy about falling into bed with the authoritarian regimes that lie to its east.
Source: Grave New World by Stephen D. King (2017)
THE ENVIRONMENT: A failure of environmental stability poses an even greater danger for the world in the long run. A decade ago, concern about the environment and globalization was limited mostly to environment advocacy groups and experts. Today, it is almost universal. Unless we lessen environmental damage, conserve on our use of energy and other natural resources, and attempt to slow global warming, disaster lies ahead.
While a broad scientific consensus has emerged on global warming, there is still some uncertainty. It is true that things might not be as bad as today’s doomsayers claim; on the other hand, they may prove to be far worse. This is no different from most of life; one always has to make decisions based on imperfect information. Even if we quickly reduced our emissions, the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases would be reduced only very, very slowly. This is why we need to start planning and acting now; it is far better to plan for the worst-case scenario than to wait and find that we didn’t do enough.
Source: Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz (2007)
PROBLEMS TECHNOLOGY MAY INDUCE
Increased Prejudice: The ability of technology to reinforce – rather than reduce – prejudice has, in many ways, come on in leaps and bounds. If you happen to be a white supremacist, you can easily find like-minded people on Facebook or Twitter and become their friends and followers. If you have anti-Semitic tendencies, you’ll find no shortage of people inhabiting the digital realm who are more than happy to share your views. If you oppose immigration in all its incarnations, you’ll find plenty of fellow travelers on the World Wide Web. If you wish to recruit for ISIS, you can reach out to inhabitants of countries all over the world. And each time you join forces with like-minded people, your own prejudices will be reinforced. You will no longer have to question your views because, however unpleasant they might be, you will always be able to find those who will happily tell you that you are right. It may be called ‘social media’ but it can all too easily support anti-social behavior. And that behavior increasingly transcends borders.
Increased Income Inequality: The increase in computational power since the 1980s means that an increasing number of tasks that once could only have been performed by human beings can now be carried out by machines, which are capable of working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To date, this is primarily true of tasks with a considerable degree of repetition – typically those in factories or involving a high volume of clerical work. Yet it also, potentially has profound implications for globalization. If repetitive tasks can easily be carried out by robot and computers, there is little point in companies heading abroad in search of cheap labor. They can instead replace their cheap foreign labor with potentially even cheaper home-based computers.
Technology may allow us to view the rest of the world more easily, but there is no guarantee that the world becomes more joined up as a result. It might, instead, end up more divided between the ‘haves’ in their gated communities and the ‘have nots’ elsewhere. The ‘have nots’ in turn, will have a powerful incentive to climb over the walls of the gated communities in a bid to grab their own share of the economic pie: in other words, technology and migration end up as two sides of the same coin.
Source: Grave New World by Stephen D. King (2007)
NEED FOR AN INTERNATIONAL BODY OR BODIES: As the peoples and states of the world become more materially and morally interconnected, the need for more effective international management increases. Terrorism, HIV/AIDS, economic crises, refugee movements, nuclear proliferation, and climate change all pose threats that are global in scope and cannot be adequately addressed by states acting individually to protect only their own citizens or territory. Source: What’s Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It by Thomas G. Weiss
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
GLOBAL PROBLEMS -- EXCERPTS
INCOME INEQUALITY: The World Bank defines poverty as living on less than $2 a day, absolute or extreme poverty as living on less than $1 a day. Some 40% of the world's 6.5 billion people live in poverty (a number that is up 36% from 1981), a sixth – 877 million—live in extreme poverty (3% more than in 1981). The worst failure is Africa, where the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty has increased from 41.6% in 1981 to 46.9% in 2001.
Source: Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz (2007)
Practically all people living in a richer country are better off than all people living in a poorer country. The poorest Americans are better off than more than two-thirds of the world population. The United States is not only a rich country on average, but a country of moderate inequality compared to other countries. The span between the richest and the poorest ventile in the United States is 32 global percentiles (100 – 68). But in China, the distribution covers a much wider range, from the 3rd to the 85th percentile. Brazil with its unequal income distributions, covers practically the entire global spectrum, going from the lowest percentile to the richest.
Today's global distribution of income is such that the richest 10% of income recipients receive 56% of the global income, while the poorest 10% receive only 0.7%. The ratio between the average income of the top 10% and the bottom 10% -- is about eighty to one.
Source: The Haves and the Have Nots by Branko Milanovic. (2011)
Countries Rich in Natural Resources: It is no accident that so many resource-rich countries are far from democratic. The riches breed bad governance. Governments that come to power by grabbing resources and using force have a markedly different sense of responsibility toward their citizens and their country's resources from governments that emerge through the will of the people. In democracies, a leader stays in power by enhancing the well-being of the citizenry. In undemocratic resource-rich countries, dictators use strength and weapons to remain in power.
Foreign Aid and Corruption: There is a direct correlation between foreign aid and a lack of economic growth. Between 1970 and 1998, when aid flows to Africa were at their peak, the poverty rate actually rose from 11% to a staggering 66%. Putting such a massive funding at the disposal of African governments is just an invitation to corruption.
Source: Screwed by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann (2012)
Consequences: Large income gaps between countries are driving socially unsustainable international migration flows. Locally, high inequality among communities and individuals is associated with political instability. These national political instabilities tend to spill over to neighboring countries and even to the rest of the world.
Source: Haves and Have Nots by Branko Milanovic (2011)
MIGRATION AND DISPLACED PERSONS: In an unequal world where income differences between countries are large, and information about these income differences is widespread, migration is not a fluke accident, anomaly, or curiosity. It is simply a rational response to the large differences in the standard of living. Currently the flow of people from poor countries to rich countries is about one-twentieth of 1% of the poor world's population annually. Roughly speaking, that means that it would take two centuries for 10% of the poor world's population to relocate to the rich world. If we look at the map of the world, we can identify four such "pressure points. North Africa and Spain (divided, at the narrowest point, by 13 kilometers of the Mediterranean Sea); Mexico and the United States (sharing a common land border); Albania and Macedonia, and Greece and Italy (sharing a land border, or being, in the case of Albania and Italy, separated by about 85 kilometers of the Ionian Sea); and Indonesia and Malaysia (separated by as little as 2.8 kilometers in the Strait of Malacca). In three cases, languages are different, and so are the dominant religions. Thus, it is not cultural but rather purely economic factors that are behind migrations.
Source: Haves and Have Nots by Branko Milanovic (2011)
In sub-Saharan Africa, where the infant mortality rate is falling more rapidly than the fertility rate, a 'baby boom' on a totally unprecedented scale is on the way. Alongside rising real incomes, we may be on the cusp of witnessing an extraordinary migration of African people northwards, across the Mediterranean to Europe – in search of a better life – whether Europe is ready or not.
Source: Grave New World by Stephen D. King (2013)
Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees
The number of refugees at the end of 2014 was around 19.5 million and the number of IDP's was 38.2 million, up from 15.4 million and 27.5 million, respectively, in 2010, and representing the highest figures of displacement
Source: What's Wrong with the UN and How to Fix It by Thomas G. Weiss (2016).
HUMAN RIGHTS: One of the four principal tasks of the United Nations is to promote and encourage “respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”.
- Poverty: Poverty remains widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 40% of people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2012.
- Health: An estimated 5.9 million children under the age of 5 died in 2015, with a global under-five mortality rate of 43 per 1000 live births. In 2015, however, 2.1 million people became newly infected with HIV and an estimated 214 million people contracted malaria. Almost half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria, but sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 89% if all cases. In 2012, an estimated 889,000 people died from infectious diseases caused largely by fecal contamination of water and soil and by inadequate hand-washing facilities, and practices resulting from poor or non-existent sanitation services.
- Quality Education: In 2013, 59 million children of primary-school age were out of school; among those, 1 in 5 children had dropped out. In 2013, there were still 757 million adults unable to read and write, of whom two thirds were women.
- Clean Water and Sanitation: An estimated 663 million people in 2015 were still using unimproved sources or surface water.
- Affordable and clean energy: 1.1 billion people are without access to electricity (15%).
- Urban Dwelling: In 2014, 30% of the urban population lived in slum-like conditions.
- Population: The United Nations estimates that the world’s population numbered 7.3 billion as at mid-2015, having grown at an annual rate of 1.2% from 2010 to 2015. By 2030, the global population is expected to reach 8.5 billion and increase to 9.7 billion in 2050
- Drug Control: An estimated 5% of the adult population, or nearly 250 million people between the ages of 15 and 64, use illicit drugs at least once a year, with over 29 million people in this category classified as drug dependent.
The human rights of women across the world remain at risk because women lack the same legal status as men and in some societies are even treated as property. Violence against women remains a basic issue.
Source: The United Nations and Changing World Politics by Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, Roger A. Coate, and Kelly-Kate Pease. (2017)
The frequency of state-versus-state conflict decreased relative to the upsurge in violence within states in the 1990s, for instance, when 94% of conflicts resulting in more than 1,000 deaths were civil wars. The actual number of domestic armed conflicts diminished somewhat in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In 2010 there were 21 ongoing civil wars and nine internationalized armed conflicts.
Source: What’s Wrong with the UN and How to Fix It by Thomas G. Weiss. (2016)
THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE: Economic and political power is heading east: China and India are the new economic heavyweights, while Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have living standards which, on average, are at least as good as those typically on offer in Europe. Europe, meanwhile, sits passively for the best offer to come its way: it is not sure whether its future still lies with the US or with the countries and regions to its east. Perhaps European policymakers with a sense of nostalgia gaze at Venice and Florence hoping that a new Silk Road could once again be a source of bountiful wealth. There are plenty of obstacles standing in the way of this vision – not least the Islamic world that in effect, separates much of Europe from Asia, and where through violence or otherwise, many still harbor dreams of a united caliphate. Nevertheless, countries and regions in the twenty-first century will doubtless continue to do what they have always done, whatever their religion or creed. They will follow economic opportunity. Forget the international community. The US and China are scrambling for power in the Pacific. Russia is rethinking its relationships with its many neighbors. And Europe is in danger of being stuck in no-man’s land, not sure about the on-going commitment of the world’s most successful democracy to its future, yet uneasy about falling into bed with the authoritarian regimes that lie to its east.
Source: Grave New World by Stephen D. King (2017)
THE ENVIRONMENT: A failure of environmental stability poses an even greater danger for the world in the long run. A decade ago, concern about the environment and globalization was limited mostly to environment advocacy groups and experts. Today, it is almost universal. Unless we lessen environmental damage, conserve on our use of energy and other natural resources, and attempt to slow global warming, disaster lies ahead.
While a broad scientific consensus has emerged on global warming, there is still some uncertainty. It is true that things might not be as bad as today’s doomsayers claim; on the other hand, they may prove to be far worse. This is no different from most of life; one always has to make decisions based on imperfect information. Even if we quickly reduced our emissions, the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases would be reduced only very, very slowly. This is why we need to start planning and acting now; it is far better to plan for the worst-case scenario than to wait and find that we didn’t do enough.
Source: Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz (2007)
PROBLEMS TECHNOLOGY MAY INDUCE
Increased Prejudice: The ability of technology to reinforce – rather than reduce – prejudice has, in many ways, come on in leaps and bounds. If you happen to be a white supremacist, you can easily find like-minded people on Facebook or Twitter and become their friends and followers. If you have anti-Semitic tendencies, you’ll find no shortage of people inhabiting the digital realm who are more than happy to share your views. If you oppose immigration in all its incarnations, you’ll find plenty of fellow travelers on the World Wide Web. If you wish to recruit for ISIS, you can reach out to inhabitants of countries all over the world. And each time you join forces with like-minded people, your own prejudices will be reinforced. You will no longer have to question your views because, however unpleasant they might be, you will always be able to find those who will happily tell you that you are right. It may be called ‘social media’ but it can all too easily support anti-social behavior. And that behavior increasingly transcends borders.
Increased Income Inequality: The increase in computational power since the 1980s means that an increasing number of tasks that once could only have been performed by human beings can now be carried out by machines, which are capable of working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To date, this is primarily true of tasks with a considerable degree of repetition – typically those in factories or involving a high volume of clerical work. Yet it also, potentially has profound implications for globalization. If repetitive tasks can easily be carried out by robot and computers, there is little point in companies heading abroad in search of cheap labor. They can instead replace their cheap foreign labor with potentially even cheaper home-based computers.
Technology may allow us to view the rest of the world more easily, but there is no guarantee that the world becomes more joined up as a result. It might, instead, end up more divided between the ‘haves’ in their gated communities and the ‘have nots’ elsewhere. The ‘have nots’ in turn, will have a powerful incentive to climb over the walls of the gated communities in a bid to grab their own share of the economic pie: in other words, technology and migration end up as two sides of the same coin.
Source: Grave New World by Stephen D. King (2007)
NEED FOR AN INTERNATIONAL BODY OR BODIES: As the peoples and states of the world become more materially and morally interconnected, the need for more effective international management increases. Terrorism, HIV/AIDS, economic crises, refugee movements, nuclear proliferation, and climate change all pose threats that are global in scope and cannot be adequately addressed by states acting individually to protect only their own citizens or territory. Source: What’s Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It by Thomas G. Weiss
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| glo_1l_global_problems_--_segment_1.pdf |