talking about the poor - part 2 - my promise to post my script

A response to Thomas Pogge’s book chapter

Chapter 8: Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a Global Resources Dividend

in “World Poverty and Human Rights” (Pogge, 2002)

Global Resources Dividend is a form of compensation paid by richer countries to the poorest countries. Those who consume more natural resources should compensate those who involuntarily use very little. Here is the illustration of GRD. Let’s say we charge $3 per barrel GRD on oil extraction. Because this dividend will be split among all end-users of petroleum products, the effect of the rising price is only 7 cents per gallon. The money will be disbursed to poor countries.

GRD needs to be done because the current system is unjust, hence many people are at the extreme end of poverty. Actually we can see poverty in two ways: first, we might fail in fulfilling our positive duty, which is the duty to help other people, or second, which is more stringent than the first one, we might fail in fulfilling our negative duty, by holding injustice, keep contributing to or profiting from the unjust poverty of others.

Pogge argued that seeing poverty as a violation to positive duty does not provide strong moral arguments and people choose to support the good cause that they want to help rather than put effort to help ‘strangers’ in extreme poverty. However, by showing that poverty is a violation of negative duty, there’ll be better moral conviction to solve extreme poverty problem that happens in other parts of the world. Previously, the poverty is an unjust radical inequality, which are defined as a condition where the poor’s condition are very bad both in absolute and relative terms and it’s very difficult to improve their lives, while the rich is really rich and can improve the situation of the poor without becoming poor themselves.

Nevertheless, these conditions are not enough to say that we have violated our negative duty. As an illustration, if we know that the people on Venus are very poor and do not do anything to help them, we surely violate a positive duty, but we do not violate our negative duty because we do not profit from their misfortune or contribute in maintaining their poverty. Hence, Pogge proposed 3 grounds of injustice which he believed can classify the current radical inequality as unjust and the maintenance of this unjust system as a violation of negative duty, so if we can approve these 3 approaches, we should reform the system and move towards justice (which can be done through his GRD proposal). In this presentation I will defend the first two arguments because these arguments can show that the poor’s right to access to basic needs (ie food) has strong moral foundation, just like other civil and political rights. However, I will show that the third approach has weakness which can make his whole arguments trapped in the dichotomy of liberal vs socialist or Western vs Asia sentiments, just like other debates in human rights, and defeat the whole purpose of raising moral conviction of this issue.

The first approach is there is a global system that is shaped by the rich and forced on the poor and the maintenance of this system causes the radical inequality. This radical inequality cannot be traced to extra social factors such as genetic handicaps or natural disasters. As an illustration, most people will think that the governments in the poor countries are corrupt. The fact is many of these governments are bribed by foreign investors who have more economic power. Other examples are “the  exporting hazardous waste, economic sanctions that deprive poor countries of basic resources, financing development projects that displace people, enforcing restrictive patent laws (book, medicine)” (Chong, 2010). Hence, the global economic system is so interconnected and it has benefited the rich, that’s why many people maintain this injustice system and this is a form of violation of negative duty because we keep getting profit from this unjust system.

The second approach is the disproportionate use of natural resources. Even though the poor are paid for selling their natural resources, most money go to the other rich people, the middle-men, between the richest and the poorest. High price of oil based on demand and supply made exclude the poor from the access of basic needs, such as food. The money that the poor receive is not enough to afford basic needs. Hence, what is happening now is the rich exhaust most natural resources and limit the access to these resources by letting the demand and supply decides the price. 

Anwander (2004) argued that we should differentiate “merely benefiting” from the injustice from “contributing” to the injustice because benefiting from the injustice is not always wrong. Hence, the rich who pay the normal price for the natural resources do nothing wrong because the current system is already based on demand and supply. They don’t have moral obligation because the only way not to be in the unjust situation is by paying higher, but it is impossible to be done because the price of the wealthy’s basic needs is also different. They also need to survive. However, this example also shows that as Anwander (2004) himself admitted, benefiting from injustice almost always involves some way of contributing to it. 

If we step back from these two approaches and look at the bigger picture, Pogge actually goes to the basic arguments of “claiming” the poor’s rights. As Donnelly mentioned, “when a right-holder exercises his right, he claims it and thus activates the duty-bearer obligation to respect that right”. While the first approach put the developed countries as “duty-bearers” by showing the interconnectivity in economic system, the 2^nd approach strongly puts the developed countries in the angle of violation of negative duty, by holding into the systems that always benefit them and always exclude the people at the bottom of pyramid.

The third approach is the radical inequality is the effect of a common and violent history, for example, colonization. I think this argument backlashes the previous two approaches because it contradicts the second approach. The end of these three approaches is justifying GRD proposal, a form of compensation. Based on 2^nd approach, US should pay higher compensation, but based on the third approach, it needs to pay little compensation because it ‘only’ colonizes the Philippines. The same problem will happen to many rich countries which did not colonize, eg Switzerland and Finland. 

Furthermore, this third approach neglects individuals in the colonists’ countries and the various types of colonization. While he put disclaimer that he concerns on ‘persons’, not ‘continents’, to say that even though without colonization poverty will occur, but not to the same individuals actually living in particular continents (hence, it’s not a predictable poverty caused by a systematic injustice), his third approach treat the colonists as one chunk of population. He undermines the fact that many individuals in colonists did not agree with the policy to exhaust the colonies’ resources and these individuals also proposed a compensation (eg Dutch ethical policy in Dutch Indies). He also did not take into account the different form of colonization with its indirect positive impact because the colonists leave the infrastructure and technology there. As an illustration, British colonies inherit a developed railway system and relatively a good education system. This factor is also intertwined with the state’s own cultural and geographical factors, eg both India and Singapore are British colonies, but Singapore’s strategic location makes it developed by the British as port city. Existing cast system in India makes it has different dynamic in terms of policy making and struggling against poverty, compared with Singapore, hence, radical inequality is not merely an effect of a single historical process.

Hence, there have been many complex challenges in legal approach to subsistence rights (Chong, 2010). There are also controversies over policies that would achieve freedom from poverty, such as economic growth vs redistributive policies. Some see extreme poverty as in fact a violation of human right. Furthermore, the debate has never been free from liberal vs socialist debate. Pogge’s effort in using logical arguments on morality to claim the poor’s rights makes this issue stands at the same position with other civil and political rights. Nevertheless, the third approach seems like a deliberate attack to developed countries with particular ideology, making this debate falls into other similar ideological debates. My conclusion is in looking at these approaches, we cannot deny that many historical processes must be taken into account.