Global Poverty Part 2
Thomas Pogge and
the negative duty not to harm
• 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.”
• 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.”
• 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)
• 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.
• 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.
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))
• 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.
• 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)
• 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.
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.
How has the global order harmed the poor?
• Unfair trade rules: asymmetric market
opening, unilateral protectionist policies
•
• 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)
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
• 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)
• 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)
• 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 slaveholding 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)
• 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.
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?