Said gist appears to be that a tiny fraction of the aid needed by poverty-stricken countries actually gets to them and that globalization is the culprit. Corporations seem to be getting all the money while the poor folks get none and the UN believes that things have to change to curb the dying of millions every year. At least, that's what I got from the article.
The UN plan, which could take years or even decades to put into motion would essentially force countries to plan ahead for catastrophes like the 2004 tsunami or Katrina.
Here are a few clips from the article that I can make the most sense from:
Inge Kaul, a special adviser at the UNDP, said: "The way we run our economies today is vastly expensive and inefficient because we don't manage risk well and we don't prevent crises." She downplayed concerns over up-front costs and interest payments for the new-fangled financial devices. "The gains in terms of development would outweigh those costs. Money is wasted because we dribble aid, and the costs of not solving the problems are much, much higher than what we would have to pay for getting the financial markets to lend the money."
The UNDP is determined to ensure globalisation, which has generated vast wealth for multinational companies, benefits the poorest in society.
...
Professor Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank and a staunch critic of the way globalisation harms the poor, said: "Globalisation has meant the closer integration of countries, and that in turn has meant a greater need for collective action.
"One of the most important areas of failure is the environment. Without government intervention, firms and households have no incentive to limit their pollution." He said a global public finance system would force countries to acknowledge the external damage their policies had, "the most important being global climate change".
...
But, the proposal is unlikely to get support from some green groups who believe that action to curb consumption, rather than market incentives, are the way to reduce carbon emissions.
Andrew Simms, director of the New Economics Foundation, said it left unanswered questions over how these markets would be managed and how the benefits and costs would be distributed. "We have nothing against markets so it would be missing the point to get into a pro- or anti-market stance. The point is how you distribute the benefits."
He said the Nineties, the zenith decade for globalisation, had seen just 60 cents out of every $100 worth of growth reach the poorest in society, compared with the $2.20 in the Eighties.
He said a pollution trading regime had the potential to deliver "enormous" benefits to poor countries, but said the UN report failed to show a detailed plan.
There's more to the article, but I think that last paragraph says it all--perhaps it's not the article that I find fault with but the plan, itself. However, you get the idea of what the UN is trying to do here.
On the surface this seems like a great idea. However, if you take into consideration human greed and those same governments the plan is critical about, the possibility for abuse of this plan or even the outright ease at which it would be to sabotage the plan, you'll see that it's ultimately not a good idea.
Sure, forcing governments to be fiscally responsible as well as humanitarily responsible (aka making them do their jobs) is a great idea in theory. The thing is that if this plan were to be put into motion, it would effectively function as a world government--telling countries what to do and how to do it. Even with safeguards and checks and balances put into place, there is no guarantee (as we have seen here in the US) that those safeguards and checks and balances wouldn't be ignored entirely and the powers of such a world government abused by greedy, power-hungry men (again, as we have seen here in the US).
Of course, the "system" that is already in place keeps the powers that be around the world happy, so this UN plan has about a donut's chance of not being eaten at Oprah's house of actually being implemented, let alone succeeding, so I suppose I shouldn't be worried. If it was implemented you know it's because corporations and governments have already started planning to take advantage of the idea of an golbally-powerful ruling body.
What is my solution? Decentralized government--break existing governments into smaller, US-state-sized "mini-countries" whose smaller populations would be easier to support efficiently. These mini-states would then work together to make sure everyone gets what they need--not what they want--no more greed in ThePete World. Though I know it would still exist. The key would be in making the mini-governments capable of doing very little without the consensus of multiple leaders--like 10 or 15 taking up the role of what would have been a president or prime minister. This way, there would be no single
The Founding Fathers designed the US Federal Government so that little could be done quickly and huge drastic changes would take even longer. Alas, this system has broken down thanks to the party system and the belief of the executive branch that it is more powerful than it is.
Never give one person the power to control so much and he could push for more power for years and he'd still never be as powerful as Bush has become.
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