POL 1022G Week 8 March 7, 2022

Next week: COVID and the international response to the pandemic

- class canceled next Monday (march 14)
o Instead of class, read the report (about 84 pages – maybe do it during class time)
o For participation, go to OWL —> forum —> forum post (conversation) that has a few
questions —> write something about the reading (could be a few sentences, could be
longer, could be own questions)
o One Final exam question will be based on forum post
o Forum due: anytime next week

Development and Human Rights

Today
- Types of poverty
o Human security
o Human development
o Multidimensional inequality
o Inequality-adjusted inequality
- Causes
o World systems
o Capitalism
o A Martha sean
- Solutions
o Effective altruism
o Breton woods

Human security and Development

- To be secure in our lives (have security) you need:
o Safety to be assured, not be in fear of violence/losing life
o Freedom from want – have the things you need to live life (standards of living)
o Ukraine —> millions of people trying to migrate, 1/40 people currently attempting to
flee the country
 Don’t have good estimate of civilian casualties (1000-1500)
 Military deaths – estimates vary greatly
 Many people greatly unsure of their personal safety
 Russia ‘peace proposal’ – likely Ukraine will not take this deal – people in
Ukraine lack this security, as do people in poorer countries
 Unsure of where you will sleep tonight, what you will eat tonight, etc.
 Also a problem in wealthy/developed countries – e.g. homelessness
o Human development : Improving peoples political, social and economic wellbeing

Human security
- 20% of world population lives in extreme poverty
o Human security
- 780 million people in the world are illiterate
o Human security
 - 48 of pop of sub-Saharan Africa lies in extreme poverty
- Absolute poverty: lacking resources that are necessary for living (e.g. access to enough food to
get daily calories)

Human Development
- United Nations HDI (Human development Index)– rank from most developed to least developed
- Look at levels of education, sanitation coverage, jobs/employment, etc.
- Create a global ranking
o 2020 ranking
 1. Norway
 What makes countries similar – a lot are Western European countries,
 Almost all countries (except hong king) are democracies
 Ones that are not from Europe were colonized by Europe at some point
(Australia, Singapore, Canada, us, Hong Kong, etc. – all colonized by British in
particular – except for Israel and Japan)

Multidimensional poverty
- A person could be poor in one or several ways but not other ways
o Rejects notion of poor/not poor binaries
- A number of things can cause poverty
o Can apply in countries ranked highly on HDI
o Nunavut, Canada —> 80% Indigenous population
 delivery of education is difficult (no university), sub adequate living conditions,
not necessarily a hospital that can care for you, ground zero for climate change,
lack of access to drinking water, food security big issue
 Clear that there are things that lead to certain poverty there
o Reserves in Canada
 If you just looked at Canada’s reserves, it would be ranked 38 on the HDI
- UN Human development report
o Across 101 countries
o 2/3 of multidimensionally poor people live in middle-income countries
o Half of the 1.3 billion multidimensionally poor people are children underage of 18. 1/3
of children are under 10

Inequality-adjusted Human development Index

- HDI can be skewed
o They are looking at averages, not always reflective
o If there’s a country with big gap between Rich/poor then there will be a middle average,
this is not actually reflective of

Gender development index

- Gap between equality between men and women
o If women lack resources, ability to survive on their own and achieve own lives
(freedom/autonomy) – lower ranked
o Less obstacles to gender equality – higher on the scale
- Canada: 13th on Gender development Index
Broadbent Institute Video “Wealth Inequality In Canada”
- Recent study asked Canadians ideal distribution of wealth
o Total population into a representative group of 100 people
 Healthy middle class (60% of wealth), richest group
 How actually distributed
 Richest 20% own 10x the wealth of the poorest
o Sizeable middle class and poorer Canadians have some share
o Fairer distribution is wanted – Canadians understand the current system of skewed
- Reality of income inequality
o Canadians underestimate actual level of wealth inequality
o 70% of all wealth belonged to top 20%
o Bottom 10% have more debt than assets
o Half of Canadians (in the bottom) own less than 6% of the wealth
o Top 10% hold 60% of assets
o Social spending reduces significantly since the 1980s

Causes of poverty
- World systems theory and colonialism
o Two different theories but have a lot in common
o Not just exertion political control, but also about wealth and economics
 Producing raw materials to be manufactured into consumer goods
o Residential schools – socialization into western ways of being (own religion, culture, etc.
were primitive and needed to be forgotten)
o Exploitation continues today
 Poorer countries produce raw materials to be used by richer countires
o Historical pattern of colonialism continue today
 No coincidence that the top HDI countries are former colonizers
- Capitalism
o Contrasting explanation
o Most countries on HDI embraced capitalism fairly early (operating free market systems
instead of state control/Marxism)
o China Mobile – largest/dominant phone provider is state run (support from Chinese
government, lack of competition)
 Will never fail
 More efficient system is with multiple competitors
o China opened country since 1979 – now competition
 Economy has quadrupled with embrace of capitalism and competition

Participation: which theory sounds more correct

- Colonialism as the cause for HDI rankings
o Colonizers directly benefited from the work of colonized people
o Countries like China – not accurate representation of Marxism, a lot of corruption
- World systems theory
o E.g. fast fashion —> people in poor countries paid pennies (not a living wage) to make
clothing
- Is capitalism a colonial construct?
Relativism (post colonialism)
1. ‘Developed’ and ‘developing’ derive from western understandings
2. The history of relations between the global north and the global south is one of conflict
a. History of relations between Western Europe and North America is one with conflict
of the rest of the world (global south)
3. The west defines itself as better, or superior, than the rest of the world
a. E.g. schooling – something often included in rankings is years of formalized
education
b. Other countries might educate children in a different (non western) way
i. E.g. experiential learning, living/working alongside parents
- The things we consider to be human rights are things that are ‘western’

Ranking of happiness
- Perhaps measuring development should not be through wealth, food, etc. but rather through
global happieness
- Measure development with whether or not people feel content in/with their lives
- UN sustainable development
o World Happiness Report
o Happiest countries are also ones ranked relatively high on HDI
 Except for Costa Rica and Czech Republic

Amartya Sen
- Critic of this
o Indian economist
- Democracy as a universal value
o Things that are western cultural ideals (democracy) are things valued in cultures around
the world
o These values are universal, and arguments against are just used by violators
o Use relativism as a cover to justify abuse of human rights
- Development as freedom
o Cuba lacks development – but does very well in universal literacy, measuring
development by literacy Cuba would be more developed
o Can’t rely on any one measure
o Development is based on freedom then
 Freedom of opportunity, or freedom to achieve the life you would like to
achieve
o Development is not just about basic income

Relativism vs Amartya sen

- Amartya sen – human rights are not relative
o Relativism also has something to contribute because measurements of development on
purely GDP is incomplete
- Both concepts have good ideas
o Human rights based off of western ideals, but these are labelled this way to cover
abuses of human rights
- Can’t ignore of colonialism as an important dynamic
- Development not about basic income, it’s the ability to live the life you want
 o Income can be part of this, but alone income is not development
o E.g. want to live ‘Canadian/North American’ lifestyle then income important, but if goal
is the ;jungle;
- The west defines itself as superior but its not necessarily unique to the west

The Solution
- Effective altruism (peter singer) argues the idea that we are morally obligated to do the most
that we can do to help those in need around the world
o Have $50 and want to buy a new shirt, peter singer would say this is immoral – should
donate to those in need
- Toby Ord (a philosopher) realized that he could cure 80,000 people of blindness over the course
of his career by giving excess earnings to charity ($30000)
- Goal is to have people give 10% of their lifetime earnings to help fight global poverty
o Sacrifice a bit to charity
- One solution – give more to charity

Solution 2
- Breton woods system responds to the issue of global. Poverty
- Set up by victors of ww2
- Consists of IMF, WB, WTO
o Wto attempts to create level playing field for international trade

Solution 3
- micro lending
- Various institutions, Grameen bank in Bangladesh,
o Loans are literally $5-$10 (generally have some interest)
o Loans money almnost exclusively to women
- Vendors would give weavers raw materials (the weavers would make the basket and give it back
– getting a small payment)
o If these people can just get a small amount of money($5 to buy materials themselves,
they could cut out the middle men forever)
- Mohammed units

Solution 4
- Social businesses
o Seeking to solve problem rather than profit
o Operate similar to non profits (but they do make a small profit)
o Profit is intended to reinvest in business
o Grameen Danone – produces a weening yogurt product for infants in Bangladesh and
operates as non profit
 Babies were being transitioned from mothers milk to food like rice – caused
problems amongst children
 Yogurt that was specifically intended as a transitional food for children

Pros/cons

Grameen
 - Cons
o Works for entrepreneurs
o Only women
o Might not work everyday
o Could lead to debts
- Pros
o Recont of success
o Comes with support
o Locally focused

Effective altruism
- Cons
o Unrealistic
o What if you only make an income that is only enough to provide for yourself/survive
(unable to donate in monetary means – maybe volunteering, etc.)
o Greed – a lot of people who can afford to donate probably wont
o Private
o Dependency
- Pros
o Flexibility
o Control

Social Business
- Cons
o Unrealistic
o Promotes corruption
- Pros
o Case specific

Breton woods system

- Cons
o Structural re-adjustment
- Pros
o Loan structure (low interest)

2020 HDI
- Looks specifically at covid and the Anthropocene
- Anthropocene: concept that we are entering the era where we can see
- Pandemic
o More countries went down in covid than they went up (for the HDI)
o Overall decline
- New ranking of countries
o A lot of similarities to the rankings that already existed
o Countries at the bottom of the list —> a lot of African countries
o Countries hat don’t participate —> North Korea (would be ranked really low)
o Middle of the pack (60s-70s) —> mixed geographically, we see Eastern European
countries, asiancountroies, Middle East, etc.
Conclusion
- Overall, the wealth or livelihood of the world has increased over the last 2 centuries
- Percentage of the world that lives in absolute/extreme poverty has been declining over time
o Downward trend
o Today about 52% of people live in poverty (relative to where it was in 1820, it was
arpound 90%)