As we continue our reasoning into the reality of poverty, this time let us take a more sociological approach:
 

The pitfalls of capitalism

The rich man from the Industrialized North was horrified when he saw a southern fisherman peacefully smoking his pipe lying on his back against his boat.

“Why didn't you go out fishing?” asked the rich man.
“Because I have fished enough for today.” answered the fisherman.
“And why don't you fish more than what you need?” insisted the rich.
“And what would I do with it?” returned the fisherman.

“You would get more money” was the answer. “In this way you could put an engine in your boat. Then you would be able to go to more deep waters and fish more. Then you would get sufficient money to by nylon nets with which you would catch more fish and get more money. Soon you would have saved enough to have two boats instead of one… and even a fleet. Then you would be rich like me.” “And what would I do after?” asked the fisherman.

“Well… you could lie down and enjoy life.” answered the rich.
“And what do you think I am doing right now?” the amused fisherman inquired.

This story is quoted in one of Anthony de Mello’s books that satirize the capitalist ideology: create a surplus of goods and in turn with a market based on the psychology of the pitfalls of human nature, create artificial needs in the people to consume them. This has led to the immoral squandering of the planet’s resources and has created in few hands, a wealth that is inversely proportional to the poverty created in the rest of the world’s population.

At present, the world population has reached six billion people. Environmental scientists say that if each one of the six billion lived at the pace of rich countries in North America and Europe, the planet could only nourish us for a couple of months before its resources would dry out completely and the seas and the atmosphere contaminated to such an extent that human life wouldn’t be sustainable on Earth. What can we conclude here? We can conclude that our way of living is both detrimental to the majority of the people that will never meet our standards of living and is harmful towards the planet that we inhabit.
 

An unfair Globalization

The latest stage of capitalism has brought economic growth at a planarian level but hasn’t involved uniformly all the habitants of the planet. Instead it has brought in mechanisms that make the rich countries richer and the poor countries poorer.

We are marching blindly towards an economic feudalism. The merge of big multinational companies with the consequent monopolization of entire sectors of the world economy supposes a threat to democracy, as too much power evades national governments ruling and is concentrated in the directives of these companies that have not been elected by the people.

Another mechanism is the dematerialization of the products. When we buy a product we pay every time less for the value of its raw material but more and more for the added value in marketing, publicity, design and trademark etc… As an example: if the price of a cup of coffee is one dollar, only 2 cents go to the coffee bean picker, 8 for the landowner, 10 for the shipping company, 10 for the importer, 10 for the wholesaler, 10 for the Processor, 10 for the Distributor and 40 cents for the Retailer.

In addition, we have the mechanism of denationalization of the products; they are not tagged anymore with “made in Canada”, or “made in the US”, etc… They are divided in components that are done in different countries. For example, Nike was paying a dollar a month to children under age in India, and selling the tennis shoes they were making in the US for 150 dollars. One wonders about the rationality of the world trade as far as ecology is concerned, when a kilogram of grapes from California is transported by airplane to Germany, it generates another kilo of carbon dioxide.
 

Genesis of terrorism

It goes without saying that this worldwide situation is the type of environment that breeds terrorism such as we have witnessed and suffered on September 11^th, 2001. Global disparity is fundamentally incompatible with global security. We must not forget that the towers that were targeted were called, “World Trade Center”. Fighting terrorism only with manpower is repeating the legend of the Dragon of the seven heads: for every head that you chop off another seven will spring up. Effective fighting against terrorism is working for justice and peace worldwide.