Gwilym Blunt's recipe for Global Poverty and Resistance to Higher Living Standards

How can Global Poverty be overcome? The answer is now clear. Get young women out of involuted agriculture into factory dormitories. Create incentives for those with a high motivation to get rich to create wealth in their own communities by setting up enterprises. No complicated political or economic ideology is required. Simply mimic what has worked for others who were in a similar position. Of course, this is easier said than done because of all the 'Resistance' the unco guid international NGOs will put up. But, by accusing them of epistemic rape and farting noisily in their faces, this problem can be overcome.

Still, so as to create an environmental disaster, some may feel it is important to conserve a burgeoning Global Poverty. At the very least, some virtue signalling shite should be published by worthless academics.

Gwilym David Blunt earns money lecturing and writing about stupid shite which only people who want to earn a little money doing the same thing bother to skim through. Yet in his latest book he says he

was driven to write this book by a need to provide a contribution to the literature on transnational socio-economic justice

Surely it is stretching things too far to call dreck like this literature? This is mere clerical work of a careerist type- that too in a badly paid outpost of a virtually bankrupt Credential providing Industry.

Blunt, so far as I can judge these things, is not part of the 'global poor'. Some portion of that class- those determined not to be poor- are 'agents' and 'possess the capacity' to break inconvenient laws. It may be in the interests of the affluent to allow them to do so. It may also be in the interests of some virtue signallers to pretend to be fighting 'injustice' by appearing to side with law-breakers. Thus Blunt says his contribution to, not literature, but 'the literature' of his worthless profession, involves treating

the global poor as agents who possess the capacity to act against injustice.

In other words, the global poor can- as Trump tells us- sneak into your country and slit your throat while you sleep.

Blunt thinks it 'curious' that the global poor won't read his book.

Curiously, the audience this book is intended for will not read it. Those living in severe poverty and those engaged in resistance will probably never pick up this book. Books of academic philosophy tend to have limited print runs and, perhaps, are a little too arcane for their own good. It would be terribly gratifying if this were not the case, but one has to be realistic. So why write this book if it is never going to find its true audience? The answer is that the world’s affluent persons need a reminder that complicity with intransigent and profound injustices has consequences; that it exposes one to risks.

Yup. The Global Poor are comin' to get ya. Trump might not be re-elected. That Wall may never be built. So read on and remember to donate money to your local branch of the K.K.K or whoever else will deal with the wet-backs who are coming for you with machetes.

Blunt wears a suit and looks like a wannabe Merchant Banker.

Gleefully he tells 'the affluent' of the existential threat them impoverished darkies pose-

The slave-owning plantation class in the United States knew this. In the years leading up to the Civil War, the fear of being murdered in one’s bed by the next Nat Turner was a palpable concern. The planter class did not recognise slave rebellions as being driven by injustice, inured as they were in the mire of white supremacy, but they could at least see this threat.

What happened after the Civil War? The Whites created the Ku Klux Klan and got busy lynching Niggers and enacting Jim Crow laws and so forth.

The current transnational socio-economic system does a much better job at isolating people from the consequences of injustice. One does not have to look the sweatshop labourer in the eye when buying clothing; one does not have to look the slave who works on a Thai fishing boat in the eye when buying frozen prawns; one does not have to look the indigenous person, who has been driven off their land, in the eye to enjoy cheap beef. We are insulated. We do not need to meet their gaze, but at some point they might make us.

So, build that wall and stock up on automatic weapons and move into a gated community and make sure your Police Force shoots first and asks questions later when dealing with the sort of people whose ancestors might have picked cotton. Except, don't stop there. Include people who might have worked on a Thai fishing boat. Actually, just shoot anyone who doesn't look like Sweet Gwilym.

There is a good reason why people who favor laxer immigration laws don't talk about 'Resistance' of the Nat Turner type. It is because it paints people who want to come into the country to do the crappy jobs no one else wants as potential cut-throats and 'revolutionaries'. This means the median voter ends up picking the candidate closest to an out and out Nazi.

That is why

Resistance is rarely talked about in the literature on global socioeconomic justice.

Of course, for Nazism to triumph, you first have to show that Theists and Humanitarians and the better sort of Lawyers and Economists are all bound to end up helping the 'global poor' sneak across our border and then come for us with machetes when we are asleep in bed.

If those who believe that the current global order is unjust and that their proposals for reform are, at best, distant possibilities, then what is their attitude towards acts of resistance?

If they are sensible, they will say it is either a nuisance or a mischievous nuisance likely to be highly counter-productive.

This book will argue that those people who make such arguments must endorse resistance as a human right and that global poverty is sufficiently unjust to merit resistance.

This is the Nazi argument. Liberals and Church goers and Humanitarians and Lawyers and Economists and Business Owners are blind to the great danger posed by them dirty furriners wot want to slip
 across our borders and rape and kill us in our beds. Not only are they blind, they will become the willing dupes of those rapists and murderers. If we don't marginalize them, they will destroy our civilization.

We will begin by examining the state of global inequality and poverty in the world today. This shows two basic facts: despite a mild decline in global inequality, global poverty affects nearly a billion people by conservative estimates and more than half the human population by more comprehensive estimates; that a minority of the human population controls nearly all the wealth. This is used to examine the debate on transnational socio-economic justice between cosmopolitanism and its critics.

Poverty is created when poor people have babies who are more or less bound to be poor. If poor people don't have babies because they'd prefer to have cool stuff, wealth accumulates. This is not a matter for debate. A few shitheads can make a little money pretending otherwise, but- if they are as blunt as Blunt- they scarce the median voter into voting Trump, or Brexit, or whatever.

Sweet Gwilym's 'moral philosophy' is based on ex falso quodlibet- i.e. start with an arrant falsehood so as to deduce any nonsense you like.

The book will take a minimalist cosmopolitanism as its starting point by assuming, per Thomas Pogge, that there is a duty to not support unjust social institutions and that, when this duty is not met, there are positive duties to reform these institutions and compensate the victims.

Duties may be cancelled by other, superior, duties. They are not indefeasible. It may be asserted that there is a duty to do x. But, that doesn't get us very far. We need to say there is an overriding, indefeasible, duty to do x. But Gwilym isn't doing that. The result is that he talks nonsense.

Suppose I say 'Cats say miaow'. You may agree, to avoid a puerile argument. But if I say 'this animal is saying 'purrrr'. Thus it is not a cat.' you would not be convinced. The fact that a cat says meow does not mean it can't also say purr.

At the margin, we could say 'I don't have a duty to support such and such institution. It is unjust.' But this does not entail any other duty. Nor is the thing indefeasible. I may act as if I do have that duty because of some superior duty. Like a cat, the fact that is say 'meow' in one instance does not mean I can't say 'purr' in another.

Yet these remedial duties are not being met.

Because they don't exist for the same reason that an animal which says 'purr' not 'miaow' is still your own pussy cat.

The proposals of cosmopolitans and, indeed, their critics would be a large departure from the status quo.

Nonsense! The status quo features all sorts of silly proposals. No 'large departure' from stupidity occurs if some new type of stupidity is injected into an utterly stupid debate.

This introduces the problem of intransigent non-compliance.

Like a cat which says 'purr' though we had expressly stipulated that cats say 'miaow'. OMG! Why is pussy being so intransigently non-compliant?

What is to be done when people are able, but not willing, to comply with duties of justice?

If the matter is justiciable, it may be worthwhile to go to law about it. If it isn't then talk of 'duties' is merely metaphorical.

Blunt devotes the first Chapter of his book to 'the right to resistance in the twenty-first century. It argues that the right of resistance must underpin the political conception of human rights that characterises much of contemporary discourse on transnational socio-economic justice, and grounds Pogge’s account.'

This is very foolish. Justiciability, not Resistance, is what makes Rights effective. We are not living in the world of Robin Hood. This is the Twenty First Century. It is utterly foolish to pretend that 'the Global Poor' have any power of Resistance. They may, in certain jurisdictions, have Justiciable Rights which are linked to Remedies of an effective sort. But, whether those Remedies remain in place is a purely Economic matter of 'incentive compatibility'. Rights can suddenly disappear if the corresponding Obligation holder decides she is better off not supplying the requisite Remedy. That's it. That's the whole story. You can Resist as much as you like but at a certain point the nuisance you cause will be punished.

Till quite recently, there was an 'availability cascade' involving 'universal rights'. Then, a financial crunch occurred. It turned out that States have sovereign immunity for cancelling any Right they no longer wish to honor. As Bentham said 'natural rights' were 'nonsense on stilts. One might as well say 'Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do the spin. Give up your job. Everybody stop working. There's absolutely no need for anyone to do anything. We have a Human Right to food, and Netflix and eco-tours of the Bahamas. Once we give up this foolish habit of working, we'll all be able to enjoy a wonderful life of leisure.

Blunt thinks that since Professors talk about 'rights', they must exist in the same way as quarks and bosons and other such high I.Q stuff.

if rights are not to be considered merely rhetorical, they must provide a remedy when they are violated, otherwise they exist merely as privileges in the gift of the powerful.

Why not say 'God' or 'Providence'? As a matter of fact, rights are created under a bond of law linking them to remedies. But if there is no incentive to deliver the remedy, the right lapses. It is 'cheap talk'.

Till quite recently, English Law resorted to the legal fiction that Rights were indeed 'the gift of the all puissant Monarch'. But, they were defeasible in a purely Economic manner. Sweet Gwyliym is guilty of 'akrebia'- he thinks rights are precise and indefeasible. The truth is 'economia' is all that has ever prevailed. At the margin, this might take the shape of 'Equity', but Equity is expensive and, any way, its gates shut long ago.

It further argues that the right of resistance is acknowledged in contemporary human rights practice by examining precedents set in the struggle against colonialism and apartheid.

Nonsense! Either Resistance was crushed or, for Economic reasons, a modus vivendi was reached. Talk of rights was merely cosmetic. The successor states to Colonialism or Apartheid seldom accorded any 'right to Resistance' to their, greatly disillusioned, subjects.

The structure of this right is then laid out by looking at the practice of
resistance to slavery.

But the structure of kidnapping and enslaving people is exactly symmetrical to this right. Indeed, through much of history, the way to escape enslavement was to have well trained slaves. The trouble was- as happened to Roman and Islamic Empires- Slave Dynasties might supplant the seed of their enlavers.

The practices of armed rebellion, absconding from slavery, and mundane resistance show that resistance is a molecular right with claim-right and liberty right elements.

But, at that time, the legal right was with the guy who kidnapped and put chains upon the slave.

In the US, three quarters of a million people had to die in a ghastly Civil War, before Slavery was abolished. However, the lot of many ex-Slaves did not appreciably improve till almost a Century later. This is surprising. African American productivity had risen substantially, more particularly where factor supply was elastic- i.e. 'rents' from discrimination had melted away- yet, as a matter of what Pareto called 'residues and derivations', Black people were subject to a costly and spiteful type of humiliation. It must be remembered that, from 1954 onward, 'Resistance' was something carried out by some Southern Whites against the Law of the Land.

This is a good reason not to valorize 'Resistance' as if it were always on the side of the angels.

Blunt, takes the opposite view-

This shows that we need to approach resistance in a way that acknowledges justice-seeking and injustice-evading practices.

The fact is we don't need to approach anything at all, save if we are paid to do so, or to acknowledge stupidity in any of its manifold forms, unless we have to teach that shite.
Ignoring shitheads is not 'Resistance'. It is Common Sense. But this is what Blunt lacks.

Chapter 2 asks whether global poverty is something that can trigger the
right to resistance.

If the cause of global poverty is oppression, then resistance to that oppression may alleviate the problem. But, global poverty is Malthusian. The only way out of it is demographic transition such that poor young women work in factories and buy shiny things rather than stay on the farm having babies like crazy. 'Resistance' to Industrialization, Urbanization, Short Run Environmental degradation caused by Power Plants and Big Dams and so forth is highly counter-productive. Howard Lim of the World Bank helped China raise hundreds of millions out of poverty. He couldn't do the same thing for India because, as he said, Indian 'public intellectuals' could make more money for themselves working with International NGOs to prevent Development based on labor intensive Manufacturing. What is the result? India was slightly ahead of China in 1990. Now, its population will outstrip that of China and most of them will be as poor as shit. Meanwhile, China is beginning to fix its environmental and distributional problems. India too is making progress but the mass of its people will experience Human Development Index improvement but at a much lower level of material comfort and with a much smaller stock of fungible assets.

The bar is set very high for enacting the right to resistance.

Sadly, this is not true. Anyone in the Democratic portion of the Global South can set up an NGO and get a bit of International Funding to do all sorts of stupid 'Resistance'. There is always money on the table to get poor people to pursue wholly delusional Civil Disobedience Campaigns which economically devastate their own communities.

It is argued that acts that are comparable to crimes against humanity are sufficient to trigger resistance. Global poverty is often compared to the Holocaust and crimes against humanity, but this is done for rhetorical purposes rather than as a serious claim. This chapter argues that there is something to the comparison. The Holocaust analogy is not persuasive owing to the particular nature of genocide as a crime, but it holds with crimes against humanity. There is no reason based on the elements of a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, to disqualify global poverty as a crime.

But the ICC is now in bad odor. It was set up in 2002 and, in its first 15 years, after spending a billion dollars,  convicted only 4 people.
 It is likely that its jurisdiction will diminish asymptotically. The US has already withdrawn funding. African countries are quitting. It would be hilarious if it moves from going after maniacal warlords to indicting the G7.

Indeed, it is directly comparable to the crimes of slavery and apartheid as they all are characterised by extreme domination that undermines secure access to the contents of human rights.

Coz being beaten to death can have that effect.

This is sufficient to justify resistance by those living in severe poverty.

Very kind of you to say so, I'm sure.

The second part of the book examines four test cases for the right to resistance. It assesses how they contribute to dismantling unjust social institutions; how they mitigate the effects of unjust social institutions; and how they signify non-compliance and condemnation of unjust social institutions. Chapter 4 looks at the first of these, illegal immigration. It is argued that illegal socio-economic immigrants are acting in a way that is directly comparable to fugitive slaves.

Cool! So if, in pursuit of my dream of becoming the next Beyonce, I overstay my American visa, I am 'directly comparable to fugitive slaves'.

If one does not think the latter does anything wrong by absconding, then one cannot condemn the former.

One may think absconding slaves who steal in order to aid their flight do something wrong. The objection to the illegal immigrant from a low wage country may come from the poor citizen who feels her job has been 'stolen'. There may be downward pressure on real wages and upward pressure on housing costs. Demographic replacement is another fear. Bhutan, 'the happiest country in the world', got rid of a large proportion of its Nepali population to preserve its indigenous culture and traditions. Sadly, these Nepalis who were resettled in the US have a high suicide rate- probably because of the break up of families and the language and cultural barriers to assimilation.

It is not necessary to 'condemn' behavior to use your vote to ensure that it is punished. Indeed, there are many things we condemn but which we have to put up with because it is not practical to make them punishable.

This might not align with conventional ideas of resistance, but it works
effectively with the idea of infrapolitics. Illegal migration may not directly dismantle the institutions responsible for global poverty, but it does provide respite from the worst effects of poverty.

Nonsense! Legal migration does so. Illegal migration does not. Crime worsens, it does not ameliorate, poverty. To be dependent on the Criminal organization which brings you into a country and which provides you an exiguous living on the margins of society is a terrible fate. In the short run, the host country may be able to ignore, or quietly profit, from this humanitarian disaster. Medium to long term, the indigenous working class suffers and may be able to bring about political change of a type most unwelcome to what Piketty calls 'the Brahman Left'.

Moreover, depending on the framing, it provides a strong symbolic gesture, as ships of immigrants cannot be ignored. It forces the citizens of the North to look the global poor in the eyes.

That may have been true in 2016. But the working class citizens of the North looked the global poor in the eye and decided they didn't want to join them in a Malthusian race to the bottom.

Blunt's book would not have seemed so silly even 8 years ago when the European Court of Human Rights delivered the Hirsi judgment preventing 'refoulement', i.e. shipping back illegal migrants. But, it now appears, that is precisely what is happening, by a back door, right now. It remains to be seen whether the ECHR will survive, unless, of course, it sees the writing on the wall and draws in its claws.

Resistance to just or unjust laws may be allowed to prevail in the short to medium term. But, sooner or later, either those laws have to go or else the legal system is disintermediated.