Book TV, again

It's time for the second installment of C-Span 2 Saturday Nights. Tonight John Perkins gave a talk about his new book "The Secret History of the American Empire". Some of you may remember Perkins from his first book, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", where he discusses his career convincing foreign governments to comply with the interests of the US, as represented by the World Bank and the IMF. This book goes into a little more depth about the machinations of the US corporate interests, using economic coercion to create an empire rather than overt military might.

First the corporations identify a country with interests worth exploiting. Then the World Bank issues a huge loan to the country for the purpose of development. Except that money never gets to the country, but is diverted to the engineering firms and contractors that build up the infrastructure, and to the few rich government and corporate officials in the country who actually benefit from the "development" projects by colluding with the foreigners against their own people's interests. Eventually, an economic hit man like himself would walk into the government offices in this country and demand cheap resources or a vote in the UN or troops in Iraq since they will never be able to meet the terms of the loan.

If that fails to ensure compliance, the jackals will move in to remove/assassinate that leader, installing one more favorable to the US. He said that because of his own personal failings as an economic hit man, the actual hit men moved against the leaders of Panama and Ecuador and killed them. If the jackals fail to implement US policy in that country, then the military stands ready to bring force to bear.

This supports previous accounts of similar tactics used by bankers and lawyers to coerce foreign governments in developing countries, and correlates nicely with theories of economic imperialism advanced elsewhere.

In the second book, he focused much more on how to change this economic system into something more equitable to the whole world. He dealt with four fundamental questions that we need to ask to determine if we can bring change to a system. First, is there a problem worth trying to change, and what does the change need to be? Second, are we willing to take the risks necessary to implement the change? Third, is there reasonable hope of success in trying to make these changes? Fourth, what can we as individuals hope to do to implement the new system?

Perkins gives a very inspirational speech about change, but one that I feel is somewhat too optimistic. He apparently still has great faith in the ability of humans to get off their lazy stupid asses to help people, even if it won't directly help them immediately. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that Americans seem largely to have lost any capacity for empathy. There are notable examples of compassionate people, of course, but they are the exception. Hell hath no fury like an American separated from reality TV.

But he does try to approach the issue in two ways. He uses the moral argument that, since we as individual citizens have rights and subsequent responsibilities as Americans and as humans, then corporations should be held to the same standard. They have been given rights as corporate persons, but without any of the requisite responsibility incumbent on any effective member of a society. By holding corporations to a new standard of business practice, we can impose on them a new policy, not one of maximizing profit to the shareholders, but one of maximizing benefit to the community. We can convince them to do this, the argument goes, because they already want to go down the responsible path, they just don't know how.

The other approach he takes in convincing people to work for this new version of corporate society is by noting the very real threat posed to the future of humans by the utter failure of the US model of government and economy. He says the US model has already failed, not might fail, or will fail soon, but has already failed, both in fulfilling its purpose and in providing an example to others. If we cannot change our consumption habits, we cannot export our model of society to other nations like China and India. I have seen estimates that, if the current level of US consumption were applied globally, the planet could sustain something on the order of 2 billion people. China has 3-4 times our population and is only now approaching our level of pollution. If consumption trends do not abate soon, the environmental and social order we exist in now will be threatened and ultimately collapse. We have to change because there is no other choice.

I prefer the first argument because it approaches the issue from a social justice perspective that acknowledges the fundamental humanity of everyone, and reminds us that we cannot hope for a better world for our children without rightfully hoping for the same better world for all children. We have the capacity to change the world into a more peaceful place with less poverty and destruction, so we have a moral imperative to do so. I think the second argument will be more effective generally because large groups of people respond better to being made afraid of something, more so if the threat is existential rather than peripheral, if the threat is something that will happen to everyone rather than something that might happen to someone else.