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7

One

The Development Delusion

3
terms
5
notes

mentions Rostow's The Stages of Economic Growth (published 1960) which he advertised as a 'non-communist manifesto' and which was eagerly eaten up by the West, since it absolved them of responsibility for the growing North-South divide. it wasn't quite so accepted by the developing world, who (inspired by Marxist and postcolonial thought) were turning to protectionist/redistributionist policies instead--the same policies that Western nations themselves used at some point

Hickel, J. (2017). One. In Hickel, J. The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions. William Heinemann, pp. 7-32

10

[...] As Britain and France were withdrawing from their colonies, they needed a new way of explaining the gross inequality that persisted between themselves and the people they had ruled for so long. The story of development--that the nations of the world were simply at different positions along the Great Arrow of Progress--offered a convenient alibi. It allowed them to disavow responsibility for the misery of the colonies, and it was more palatable than the explicit racial theories they had relied on in the past. What is more, it allowed them to shift their role in the eyes of the world: graciously relinquishing imperial power, they would turn to aiding their fellow man.

on development as a clever cover story

—p.10 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago

[...] As Britain and France were withdrawing from their colonies, they needed a new way of explaining the gross inequality that persisted between themselves and the people they had ruled for so long. The story of development--that the nations of the world were simply at different positions along the Great Arrow of Progress--offered a convenient alibi. It allowed them to disavow responsibility for the misery of the colonies, and it was more palatable than the explicit racial theories they had relied on in the past. What is more, it allowed them to shift their role in the eyes of the world: graciously relinquishing imperial power, they would turn to aiding their fellow man.

on development as a clever cover story

—p.10 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago
13

Anthropologists tell us that when the structure of a core myth begins to change, everything else about society changes around it, and fresh new possibilities open up that weren't even thinkable before. When myths fall apart, revolutions happen.

I absolutely love the last sentence

—p.13 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago

Anthropologists tell us that when the structure of a core myth begins to change, everything else about society changes around it, and fresh new possibilities open up that weren't even thinkable before. When myths fall apart, revolutions happen.

I absolutely love the last sentence

—p.13 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago

a term for the loans provided by the IMF and the World Bank to countries that experienced economic crises, which come with strings attached: privatisation and deregulation, mainly (the conditions are also known as the Washington Consensus)

22

Leveraging debt, they imposed 'structural adjustment programs' that reversed all the economic reforms that global South countries had painstakingly enacted.

—p.22 by Jason Hickel
notable
6 years, 4 months ago

Leveraging debt, they imposed 'structural adjustment programs' that reversed all the economic reforms that global South countries had painstakingly enacted.

—p.22 by Jason Hickel
notable
6 years, 4 months ago

the 8th round of multilateral trade negotiations (MTN) conducted within the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), spanning from 1986 to 1994 and embracing 123 countries as "contracting parties"; led to the formation of the WTO (starting Jan 1 1995) from the ashes of the GATT

23

Today, power imbalances like these, enshrined in the Uruguay Round of the WTO, are estimated to cost poor countries around $700 billion each year in lost export revenues.

on US/EU being allowed to subsidise agriculture while poorer countries can't (because market size determines leverage in negotiations)

—p.23 by Jason Hickel
uncertain
6 years, 4 months ago

Today, power imbalances like these, enshrined in the Uruguay Round of the WTO, are estimated to cost poor countries around $700 billion each year in lost export revenues.

on US/EU being allowed to subsidise agriculture while poorer countries can't (because market size determines leverage in negotiations)

—p.23 by Jason Hickel
uncertain
6 years, 4 months ago
25

[...] It's not that the $128 billion in aid disbursements doesn't exist--it does. But if we broaden our view and look at it in context, we see that it is vastly outstripped by the financial resources that flow in the opposite direction. [...]

[...] in 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a little over $2 trillion, including all aid, investment and income from abroad. But more than twice that amount, some $5 trillion, flowed out of them in the same year. [...] If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $26.5 trillion--that's how much money has been drained out of the global South over the past few decades. To get a sense of the scale of this, $26.5 trillion is roughly the GDP of the United States and Western Europe combined.

  • debt payments: $200 billion/year or $4.2 trillion since 1980
  • foreigners repatriating profits (from foreign corporations, or ownership of stocks/bonds): $500 billion/year
  • capital flight (misinvoicing and tax evasion strategies, mainly): $23.6 trillion since 1980 ($875 billion/year due to trade misinvoicing)
—p.25 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago

[...] It's not that the $128 billion in aid disbursements doesn't exist--it does. But if we broaden our view and look at it in context, we see that it is vastly outstripped by the financial resources that flow in the opposite direction. [...]

[...] in 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a little over $2 trillion, including all aid, investment and income from abroad. But more than twice that amount, some $5 trillion, flowed out of them in the same year. [...] If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $26.5 trillion--that's how much money has been drained out of the global South over the past few decades. To get a sense of the scale of this, $26.5 trillion is roughly the GDP of the United States and Western Europe combined.

  • debt payments: $200 billion/year or $4.2 trillion since 1980
  • foreigners repatriating profits (from foreign corporations, or ownership of stocks/bonds): $500 billion/year
  • capital flight (misinvoicing and tax evasion strategies, mainly): $23.6 trillion since 1980 ($875 billion/year due to trade misinvoicing)
—p.25 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago

a concept within Marxist economics referring to unequal labour values; can be applied historically to the origins of international wage differentials. proponents of concept: Samir Amin; John Roemer; Immanuel Wallerstein; Ernest Mandel

28

there is a yawning gap between the 'real value' of the labour and goods that poor countries sell and the prices they are actually paid for them. This is what economists call 'unequal exchange'.

—p.28 by Jason Hickel
notable
6 years, 4 months ago

there is a yawning gap between the 'real value' of the labour and goods that poor countries sell and the prices they are actually paid for them. This is what economists call 'unequal exchange'.

—p.28 by Jason Hickel
notable
6 years, 4 months ago
29

[...] the discourse of aid distracts us from seeing the bigger picture. It hides the patterns of extraction that are actively causing the impoverishment of the global South today and actively impeding meaningful development. The charity paradigm obscures the real issues at stake: it makes it seem as though the West is 'developing' the global South, when in reality the opposite is true. Rich countries aren't developing poor countries; poor countries are effectively developing rich countries--and they have been since the late 15th century. So it's not only that the aid narrative misunderstands what really causes poverty, it's that it actually gets it backwards. Just as in Truman's time, aid serves as a kind of propaganda that makes the takers seem like givers, and conceals how the global economy actually works.

—p.29 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago

[...] the discourse of aid distracts us from seeing the bigger picture. It hides the patterns of extraction that are actively causing the impoverishment of the global South today and actively impeding meaningful development. The charity paradigm obscures the real issues at stake: it makes it seem as though the West is 'developing' the global South, when in reality the opposite is true. Rich countries aren't developing poor countries; poor countries are effectively developing rich countries--and they have been since the late 15th century. So it's not only that the aid narrative misunderstands what really causes poverty, it's that it actually gets it backwards. Just as in Truman's time, aid serves as a kind of propaganda that makes the takers seem like givers, and conceals how the global economy actually works.

—p.29 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago
32

[...] Poor countries don't need our aid; they need us to stop impoverishing them. Until we target the structural drivers of global poverty--the underlying architecture of wealth extraction and accumulation--development efforts will continue to fail, decade after decade. [...]

—p.32 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago

[...] Poor countries don't need our aid; they need us to stop impoverishing them. Until we target the structural drivers of global poverty--the underlying architecture of wealth extraction and accumulation--development efforts will continue to fail, decade after decade. [...]

—p.32 by Jason Hickel 6 years, 4 months ago