In Defense of Openness

Author(s):  
Bas van der Vossen ◽  
Jason Brennan

The humane and workable solution to global poverty is freedom. We can help the poor—and help ourselves at the same time—by tearing down our walls and trade barriers. Both justice and good economic sense require that we open borders, free up international trade, and respect the economic liberties of people around the world. What global justice requires is an open world. Most books on global justice see the world’s poor as little more than mouths to be fed. Their authors see justice as a zero-sum game: some must lose so that others may win. They rely on controversial moral intuitions and outdated or mistaken economic beliefs about economic growth. Van der Vossen and Brennan present global justice as a positive-sum game: the methods that can best help the world’s poor also help everyone else. Using mainstream development economics and common-sense moral intuitions, they argue that instead of treating the world’s poor as helpless victims who must be rescued by the rich, we should remove the coercive limits that keep people poor in the first place. We should offer people the freedom to work, produce, trade, and migrate, in ways that help better themselves and others who are willing to cooperate with them. In Defense of Openness offers a new approach to global justice: we don’t need to “save” the poor. The poor will save themselves, if only we would get out of their way and let them.

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sang-Hyup Shin

Globalization is now well recognized by many as an inescapable feature of the world today. In particular, in the middle of global economic crisis globalization is one of the hot issues drawing much attention from countries around the world. There are contradictory perspectives on globalization. There are many sweeping statements that assert that economic globalization is increasing global poverty and inequality between the rich and the poor in the world. There are also many others who insist that the poverty and inequality issues have been resolved in some sense through globalization. In order to find the answer to the question, firstly the meaning of globalization was fully explained. Based on the understanding of globalization, the questions such as how globalization has contributed to reduce the economic gap between the developed and the developing countries, and to reduce the poverty by analyzing the economic growth, the number of people living below the absolute poverty line and so on were analyzed. The reasons why globalization is a good opportunity for some countries while some other countries get not something from the globalization was also discussed in this research. We found that globalization has contributed to reduce global poverty and to increase the welfare of both the developed and developing countries. However globalization has impacted different groups differently. Some have benefited enormously, while others have borne more of the costs. The developed countries could get more economic benefits from the less developed countries through globalization. This means, inequality between the rich and the poor countries still remained as a serious threat in the global economy. And even among the developing countries globalization has impacted differently. The trends toward faster growth and poverty reduction are strongest in developing economies that have integrated with the global economy most rapidly, which supports the view that integration has been a positive force for improving the lives of people in developing countries There are two main reasons for the inequality existing between the developed and developing countries. The fist one is the difference of economic size and power between the developed countries and the developing countries started to exist from the late 18th century. The second one is the differences in the management skill in taking advantage of the globalization.


2019 ◽  
pp. 95-106
Author(s):  
Tim Hayward

Some moral and political philosophers have argued that a duty of the affluent to relieve global poverty can be discharged by transferring an amount of money that is relatively small in global terms. This is to rely on an effect conceptualized in this chapter as benign leverage. The assumption that benign leverage can achieve global justice implies that current international institutional arrangements are imperfectly just, not fundamentally unjust. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the more successfully the leverage is used in order to benefit the poor, the more difficult it may become to achieve further success or even to consolidate gains already made. Given that the leverage effect depends on the existence of significant inequalities, one should consider carefully the conditions that must pertain for it to operate and how just they may in fact be.


Author(s):  
Bas van der Vossen ◽  
Jason Brennan

After describing the stunning wealth that some people in our world enjoy, the chapter contrasts two ways of thinking about the sources of such wealth and poverty. While many people believe this is the result of a maldistribution of resources, the empirical truth is that wealth results from people’s productive forces being harnessed for the common good. The chapter then contrasts two different approaches to thinking about global justice, which largely line up with these two narratives about global poverty and wealth. According to the zero-sum approach, solving global poverty must, in some way, require redistributing resources from rich to poor. According to the positive-sum approach, which the authors favor, the just solution to global poverty emulates what creates wealth: enabling people around the world to become productive, contributing to both their own welfare and that of others.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-100
Author(s):  
Bakare Adewale Muteeu

In pursuit of a capitalist world configuration, the causal phenomenon of globalization spread its cultural values in the built international system, as evidenced by the dichotomy between the rich North and the poor South. This era of cultural globalization is predominantly characterized by social inequality, economic inequality and instability, political instability, social injustice, and environmental change. Consequently, the world is empirically infected by divergent global inequalities among nations and people, as evidenced by the numerous problems plaguing humanity. This article seeks to understand Islam from the viewpoint of technological determinism in attempt to offset these diverging global inequalities for its “sociopolitical economy”1existence, as well as the stabilization of the interconnected world. Based upon the unifying view of microIslamics, the meaning of Islam and its globalizing perspectives are deciphered on a built micro-religious platform. Finally, the world is rebuilt via the Open World Peace (OWP) paradigm, from which the fluidity of open globalization is derived as a future causal phenomenon for seamlessly bridging (or contracting) the gaps between the rich-rich, rich-poor, poor-rich and poor-poor nations and people based on common civilization fronts.


2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimuli Kasara ◽  
Pavithra Suryanarayan
Keyword(s):  
The Poor ◽  

2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 647-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
GAIL WILSON

This paper discusses the material aspects of globalisation and the effects of the movements of trade, capital and people around the world on older men and women. While some older people have benefited, most notably where pensions and health care are well developed, the majority of older men and women are among the poor who have not. Free trade, economic restructuring, the globalisation of finance, and the surge in migration, have in most parts of the world tended to produce harmful consequences for older people. These developments have been overseen, and sometimes dictated, by inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) such as the International Monetary Foundation (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), while other IGOs with less power have been limited to anti-ageist exhortation. Globalisation transfers resources from the poor to the rich within and between countries. It therefore increases social problems while simultaneously diminishing the freedom and capacity of countries to make social policy. Nonetheless, the effects of globalisation, and particularly its financial dimensions, on a nation's capacity for making social policy can be exaggerated. Political will can combat international economic orthodoxy, but the evident cases are the exception rather than the rule.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207
Author(s):  
AN Ras Try Astuti ◽  
Andi Faisal

Capitalism as an economic system that is implemented by most countries in the world today, in fact it gave birth to injustice and social inequalityare increasingly out of control. Social and economic inequalities are felt both between countries (developed and developing countries) as well as insociety itself (the rich minority and the poor majority). The condition is born from the practice of departing from faulty assumptions about the man. In capitalism the individual to own property released uncontrollably, causing a social imbalance. On the other hand, Islam never given a state model that guarantees fair distribution of ownership for all members of society, ie at the time of the Prophet Muhammad established the Islamic government in Medina. In Islam, the private ownership of property was also recognized but not absolute like capitalism. Islam also recognizes the forms of joint ownership for the benefit of society and acknowledges the ownership of the state that aims to create a balance and social justice.


Author(s):  
Stephen Mutula

The debate about whether the digital divide between Africa and the developed world is narrowing or widening has intensified over the last five years. Some believe that access to technology is positively correlated to economic development and wealth creation, however, since the dawn of the last century, the gap between the rich and the poor within and between developed and developing countries has continued to grow. The protagonists in this debate do not seem to appreciate the notion that the digital divide is not about a single technology, and is driven by a complex set of factors that exist beyond wires. This paper attempts to deconstruct the concept of the digital divide beyond access to PCs, telephones, Internet, cable TV, etc… The authors argue that the phenomenon as currently conceived is misleading and flawed, and so are the indices for its measurement. Suggestions that a new model for mapping the phenomenon is made in order to bridge the divide between developed and developing countries. In deconstructing the digital divide, the authors use the Declaration of Principles of the World Summit on Information Society and the indices used to measure e-readiness, information society, digital opportunity, and e-government.


Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 7-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Stalson

Something remarkable and of historic importance took place in New York during the first two weeks of September, 1975. At a Special Session of the United Nations the poor countries of the world, who have 70 per cent of its people and 30 per cent of its income, demanded that the rich, countries make some major changes in the international system. And the rich countries, including the United States, responded in new ways. Most reporters failed to notice how remarkable the events were, but the evidence is there.


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