by Jason Hickel
p. 195 ‘After all, it had the effect . . .’ Noel Maurer, The Empire Trap: The Rise and Fall of US Intervention to Protect American Property Overseas, 1893–2013 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
p. 196 ‘The judges in these hearings . . .’ White & Case and Shearman & Sterling are two of the most prominent ISDS firms.
p. 197 ‘ “When I wake up at night . . .” ’ Cited in Sebastian Perry, ‘Arbitrator and counsel: the double-hat syndrome’, Global Arbitration Review 7(2), 2012.
p. 197 ‘The highest award so far . . .’ ‘The arbitration game’, The Economist, 11 October 2014.
p. 198 ‘Alfred de Zayas, a UN . . .’ ‘Secret negotiations on trade treaties, a threat to human rights – UN expert’, United Nations Human Rights, 23 April 2015.
p. 201 ‘Sitting in their high-rise . . .’ I am indebted to Noam Chomsky for the term ‘virtual senate’, which I believe he coined in an article titled ‘The high cost of neoliberalism’ published in the New Statesman.
p. 202 ‘The Doing Business report has . . .’ World Bank, Doing Business, 2014, http://www.doingbusiness.org/~/media/GIAWB/Doing%20Business/Documents/Annual-reports/English/DB14-Full-Report.pdf.
p. 203 ‘Countries are rewarded when they . . .’ The ‘getting credit’ indicator also ranks countries based on their credit registries. The more data a country publishes about each citizen’s credit history, the higher they rank. In other words, Doing Business seeks to extend the US credit score system across the entire world: ideally, every citizen will be ranked by a number that allows banks to assess their credit ‘worthiness’. So people who end up defaulting on student loans or predatory mortgages get frozen out of the system, ruining their lives. This is a powerful way to render citizens docile and obedient to the banks.
p. 203 ‘And the “registering property” indicator . . .’ Oakland Institute, (Mis)Investment in Agriculture (Oakland, CA: The Oakland Institute, 2010).
p. 204 ‘An official review of the report . . .’ As noted in the Independent Review Panel report of the Doing Business Indicators.
p. 205 ‘As for the jobs that . . .’ ‘An 80-hour week for 5p an hour: the real price of high-street fashion’, Guardian, 8 December 2006.
Seven: Plunder in the 21st Century
p. 207 ‘In 2002, the United States . . .’ Officials in the George W. Bush administration had prior knowledge of the Venezuela coup, met with coup leaders in the weeks leading up to the action, and provided training and support to some of the individuals and organisations involved.
p. 207 ‘and in 2004 helped topple . . .’ Aristide – a priest beloved of the poor – was deposed in a coup backed by the Bush administration and by France, who were incensed by his attempts to raise the minimum wage for garment factory workers and his calls for debt cancellation and colonial reparations. Paul Farmer, ‘Who removed Aristide?’, London Review of Books, 28(6), 2004, pp. 28–31. Interestingly, when Aristide’s successor ended up raising the minimum wage anyhow, to $0.61 per hour, US companies like Levi Strauss and Hanes got the State Department involved, which forced Haiti to reverse the decision. Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives, ‘WikiLeaks Haiti: let them live on $3 a day’, The Nation, 1 June 2011. That same year, the US State Department manipulated Haiti’s elections to swing in favour of their preferred candidate. Center for Economic and Policy Research, ‘Clinton emails reveal “behind the doors actions” of private sector and US embassy in Haiti elections’, 2015.
p. 207 ‘In 2009, the elected leader . . .’ Zelaya had taken steps to impose environmental regulations on the mining industry, regulate trade and raise the minimum wage, all of which enraged the multinational companies operating there.
p. 208 ‘Honduran indigenous activist Berta Caceres . . .’ Nina Lakhani, ‘Berta Caceres cour papers show murder suspects’ links to US-trained elite troops’, Guardian, 28 February 2017.
p. 208 ‘As a result, external debt . . .’ Katie Allen, ‘World’s poorest countries rocked by commodity slump and strong dollar’, Guardian, 10 April 2016.
p. 208 ‘Structural adjustment programmes are still . . .’ Fortunately conditionality has been relaxed a bit since the 2009 G20 Summit, which raised this as an issue. But as yet there is still no non-conditional borrowing facility available to global South countries.
p. 208 ‘And sometimes creditors take even . . .’ John Nichols, ‘Just in time for the July 4 break, Congress imposes “colonialism at its worst” on Puerto Rico’, The Nation, 2 July 2016.
p. 209 ‘In 2003, the United Nations . . .’ United Nations, United Nations Convention against Corruption, 2004, p. iii, http://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNCAC/Publications/Convention/08-50026_E.pdf.
p. 209 ‘According to the World Bank . . .’ Jim Yong Kim, ‘Anti-corruption Efforts in a Global Commitment to Act’, Speech in Washington, DC, 30 January 2013, http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2013/01/30/world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-speech-anti-corruption-center-for-strategic-and-international-studies.
p. 210 ‘By contrast, the Washington-based . . .’ Dev Kar and Devon Cartwright-Smith, Illicit Financial Flows from Africa: Hidden Resource for Development (Washington, DC: Global Financial Integrity, 2010), p. 1.
p. 210 ‘According to GFI, each year . . .’ Actually $1,090.1 billion. This figure comes from Dev Kar and Joseph Spanjers, Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2004–2013 (Washington, DC: Global Financial Integrity, 2015). Forty-five per cent of flows end up in tax havens, and 55 per cent end up in developed countries, according to GFI web page ‘Illicit Financial Flows’, www.gfintegrity.org/issue/illicit-financial-flows. The measurement of illicit financial flows is hotly debated. One scholar has disputed the GFI methodology (Volker Nitsch, ‘Trillion dollar estimate: illicit financial flows from developing countries’, Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics 227, 2012). There may be good reasons to question GFI’s large numbers, but for now the OECD’s official position is that ‘there is general consensus that illicit financial flows likely exceed aid flows and investment in volume’ (OECD, Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: Measuring OECD Responses (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2014)).
p. 210 ‘($99.3 billion in 2013)’ $99.3 billion is the figure used by Kar and Spanjers, Illicit Financial Flows, p. 15, for ODA to developing countries in 2013. Note that this is lower than the $135 billion in ODA estimated by the OECD for the same year.
p. 210 ‘And these outflows have been . . .’ Kar and Spanjers, Illicit Financial Flows, p. vii.
p. 210 ‘Between 2004 and 2013, developing . . .’ Kar and Spanjers, Illicit Financial Flows, p. vii.
p. 211 ‘In 2013, hot money accounted . . .’ Kar and Spanjers, Illicit Financial Flows, p. 10.
p. 211 ‘In 2013, trade misinvoicing accounted . . .’ Kar and Spanjers, Illicit Financial Flows, p. 10.
p. 212 ‘Because of the rapid expansion . . .’ Christian Aid, Death and Taxes: The True Toll of Tax Dodging (London: Christian Aid, 2008), p. 2. Also see World Health Organization, ‘International Corporations’, http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story057/en/.
p. 212 ‘Analysts have recorded some flagrant . . .’ Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World (London: Vintage Books, 2011).
p. 213 ‘That means another $879 billion . . .’ Raymond Baker, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), pp. 170–1.
p. 213 ‘Already the world’s poorest region . . .’ Kar and Spanjers, Illicit Financial Flows, p. 12.
p. 214 ‘In total, developing countries may . . .’ This figure includes $1.3 trillion in hot money, $6.5 trillion in reinvoicing, and $6.5 trillion in transfer mispricing during the decade 2004–2013. Kar and Spanjers, Illicit Financial Flows, p. vii.
p. 214 ‘But the WTO argued that . . .’ World Trade Organization, ‘Technical Information on Customs Valuation’, http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/cusval_e/cusval_info_e.htm. The relevant passage read
s: ‘customs valuation shall, except in specified circumstances, be based on the actual price of the goods to be valued, which is generally shown on the invoice’.
p. 215 ‘Today, at least 30 per cent . . .’ Matthew Valencia, ‘Storm survivors’, The Economist, 16 February 2013, http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21571549-offshore-financial-centres-have-taken-battering-recently-they-have-shown-remarkable.
p. 215 ‘There are three main categories . . .’ Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands.
p. 219 ‘By 2008, the IMF had . . .’ Fred Pearce, The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth (Boston: Beacon Press Books, 2012), p. 23.
p. 219 ‘The rising price of oil . . .’ Pearce, The Land Grabbers, pp. 22–3.
p. 220 ‘In other words, people who . . .’ Pearce, The Land Grabbers, p. 25. On p. 26, Pearce states: ‘In 2003, there had been $13 billion in agricultural commodity funds. But by 2008, many commentators put the figure at over $300 billion.’ Also see Frederick Kaufman, ‘The food bubble’, Harpers, July 2010.
p. 220 ‘World food prices continued to . . .’ This according to the FAO’s world food price index graph.
p. 220 ‘According to UN sources . . .’ Olivier De Schutter, cited in Pearce, The Land Grabbers, p. 24.
p. 220 ‘A land purchase qualifies as . . .’ This is the definition used by the Land Matrix (www.landmatrix.org).
p. 222 ‘Early estimates from the World Bank . . .’ Pearce, The Land Grabbers, p. ix. On transparency issues, see Josie Cohen, ‘What’s in a number? Why the struggle to quantify the global land grabbing crisis is part of the problem’, Global Witness, blog post, 11 March 2014, https://www.globalwitness.org/en-gb/blog/whats-number-why-struggle-quantify-truncated/.
p. 222 ‘While the majority of the land-grabbers . . .’ ‘Land grabs: the facts’, New Internationalist, May 2013, p. 17.
p. 222 ‘Number of land grabs since 2000’ Map generated by the Land Matrix (www.landmatrix.org). Data accurate as of January 2017.
p. 222 ‘This explains why 66 per cent . . .’ This is according to the Land Matrix’s first data, in 2012. It claimed 124 million of 203 million hectares was grabbed in Africa – over 4 per cent of the continent’s total land area. Seventy per cent of the deals reported by the World Bank in 2008–9 were in Africa. Fred Nelson, ‘Who owns the Earth? A review of Fred Pearce’s The Land Grabbers’, World Policy Blog, 5 October 2012, http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2012/10/05/who-owns-earth-review-fred-pearces-land-grabbers.
p. 223 ‘And more often than not . . .’ Two-thirds of countries that are giving away land are suffering from hunger problems. ‘Land grabs: the facts’, New Internationalist, May 2013.
p. 223 ‘In Liberia, 75 per cent . . .’ ‘Land grabs: the facts’, New Internationalist, May 2013.
p. 224 ‘In Côte d’Ivoire, these deals . . .’ ‘The G8 and land grabs in Africa’, GRAIN, 11 March 2013, https://www.grain.org/article/entries/4663-the-g8-and-land-grabs-in-africa.
p. 224 ‘Land is not the only . . .’ In both land and seeds, countries are made to draw up registries that lay bare the investment opportunities that corporations can take advantage of. ‘The G8 and land grabs in Africa’, GRAIN, 11 March 2013.
p. 224 ‘In Papua New Guinea, more . . .’ Pearce, The Land Grabbers, chapter 16.
p. 224 ‘So many Cambodian peasants have . . .’ Pearce, The Land Grabbers, chapter 17.
p. 224 ‘Across South East Asia . . .’ Pearce, The Land Grabbers, chapter 18.
p. 226 ‘Examples from Ethiopia and Peru . . .’ Joseph Holden and Margarethe Pagel, ‘Transnational Land Acquisitions’, EPS PEAKS, January 2013, http://partnerplatform.org/?azrv33t9.
p. 226 ‘Even at conservative estimates . . .’ According to a study by IFPRI, cited in ‘Outsourcing’s third wave’, The Economist, 1 May 2009.
p. 228 ‘Rich industrial economies are responsible . . .’ About half of these emissions come from the United States.
p. 228 ‘Yet, according to data from . . .’ This data comes from the 2010 report of the Climate Monitor. The Monitor includes an additional category of ‘other industrialized’ countries, which accounts for the remainder.
p. 230 ‘Much of this has to do . . .’ Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘CO2 emissions are being “outsourced” by rich countries to rising economies’, Guardian, 19 January 2014.
p. 230 ‘The United States remains the . . .’ Duncan Clark, ‘Which nations are most responsible for climate change?’, Guardian, 21 April 2011.
p. 230 ‘And yet the costs of climate . . .’ ‘A bad climate for development’, The Economist, 17 September 2009.
p. 231 ‘According to The Economist . . .’ ‘A bad climate for development’, The Economist, 17 September 2009.
p. 231 ‘In Africa, the growing period . . .’ According to an IPCC study, noted in John Vidal, ‘Climate change will hit poor countries hardest, study shows’, Guardian, 27 September 2013.
p. 231 ‘By 2080, agricultural production could . . .’ ‘A bad climate for development’, The Economist, 17 September 2009.
p. 231 ‘Oxfam predicts that, as a . . .’ Oxfam, Growing Disruption: Climate Change, Food, and The Fight Against Hunger (Oxford: Oxfam Publishing, 2013).
p. 231 ‘Present estimates suggest that by . . .’ ‘A bad climate for development’, The Economist, 17 September 2009.
p. 232 ‘Meanwhile, my home country of . . .’ Climatefairshares.org.
p. 233 ‘If we want to have . . .’ Carbon Countdown, Carbon Budget 2016 Update, Carbon Brief, www.carbonbrief.org.
p. 233 ‘At our current rate of . . .’ ‘The sky’s the limit: why the Paris Climate Goals require a managed decline of fossil fuel production’, OilChange, September 2016.
p. 233 ‘And yet instead of reducing . . .’ ‘Global Carbon Emissions’, Co2Now.org, http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Now/global-carbon-emissions.html.
p. 233 ‘Governments are still subsidising . . .’ Damian Carrington, ‘Fossil fuels subsidized by $10 million a minute, says IMF’, Guardian, 18 May 2015.
p. 234 ‘According to a 2012 report . . .’ World Bank, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided, Working paper 74455 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012).
p. 234 ‘According to the Intergovernmental Panel . . .’ NASA, ‘The consequences of climate change’, http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/.
p. 235 ‘Problems like this, which have . . .’ International Energy Agency, ‘Scenarios and Projections’, http://www.iea.org/publications/scenariosandprojections/.
p. 236 ‘As Naomi Klein puts it . . .’ Naomi Kleim, This Changes Everything (London: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 21.
Eight: From Charity to Justice
p. 241 ‘ “People find themselves surrounded . . .” ’ From Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891. Slightly paraphrased for clarity.
p. 243 ‘Starbucks has given charity . . .’ For example, in 2012 the Starbucks Foundation gave a $500,000 grant to Project Concern International to assist a water and sanitation programme in the Sidama Zone of southern Ethiopia. But according to an Oxfam report in 2005, Starbucks’s trading practices cost Ethiopian growers about $90 million per year. Starbucks prevented efforts by the Ethiopian government to trademark three of its local coffee beans, which would have allowed Ethiopian growers to claim a greater share of profits on international sales.
p. 243 ‘Coca-Cola gives a bit of charity . . .’ ‘Coca-Cola accused of funding Columbian death squad’, TeleSUR, 1 September 2016.
p. 245 ‘By implying that debtors have . . .’ This moral framing around debt is a complete inversion of what every ancient philosophical tradition proclaims: that usury is the sin, not indebtedness.
p. 245 ‘This sounds like a lot . . .’ NEF, Debt Relief as if Justice Mattered (London: New Economics Foundation, 2008).
p. 245 ‘Another recent report finds that . . .’ Save the World’s Resources, Financing the Global Sharing Economy (London: Share the World’s Resources, 2012), p. 145.
p.
249 ‘Instead of requiring across-the-board . . .’ Joseph Stiglitz has made interesting proposals for reforming this imbalance.
p. 252 ‘For countries where wages are . . .’ See Thomas Palley, ‘A global minimum wage system’, Financial Times, 18 July 2011. Also see Jason Hickel, ‘It’s time for a global minimum wage’, Al Jazeera English, 10 June 2013.
p. 253 ‘There is no evidence that . . .’ The evidence suggests that raising the minimum wage has no negative effect on employment. See John Schmitt, Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment? (Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2013). See also International Labour Organization, Global Wage Report 2008/9: Minimum Wages and Collective Bargaining (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2008).
p. 253 ‘In fact, you could raise . . .’ Robert Pollin et al., ‘Global apparel production and sweatshop labour: can raising retail prices finance living wages?’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 28(2), 2002, pp. 153–71.
p. 253 ‘It might sound like a . . .’ See ‘C131 Minimum Wage Fixing Convention’, 1970.
p. 254 ‘This could be done by . . .’ Like the Brussels Definition of Value, which was abolished by the WTO.
p. 254 ‘Requiring global financial transparency would . . .’ The United States, Britain and the European Parliament are already taking steps in this direction. In the US, the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act eliminates anonymous shell companies by making beneficial ownership information available to law enforcement agencies. States can use this Act to require that this information be made publicly available.
p. 255 ‘The weight of evidence suggests . . .’ Frances Moore Lappé, Jennifer Clapp, Molly Anderson, Richard Lockwood, Thomas Forster, Danielle Nierenberg, Harriet Friedmann, Thomas Pogge, Dominique Caouette, Wayne Roberts et al., ‘Framing Hunger: A Response to the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012’, June 2013, http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/pubs/rp/framinghunger.pdf; Frances Moore Lappé, Jennifer Clapp, Molly Anderson, Richard Lockwood, Thomas Forster, Danielle Nierenberg, Harriet Friedmann, Thomas Pogge, Dominique Caouette, Wayne Roberts et al., ‘How we count Hunger Matters’, Ethics & International Affairs 27(3), 2013, pp. 251–259.