Why the terrorist attacks on America? The answer: Plunder-by-trade. Though neither will acknowlede it, for 1,300 years Christians and Muslims have battled over control of the wealth-producing-process. The Christians won and defined the borders and rulers of Muslim countries throughout the Middle East and Africa. Where would America’s wealth be if Mexico controlled Texas and Oklahoma, Japan controlled California, England the Northeast, Spain the Mississippi and the rest of the country was divided into email emirates? Resource-wealthy nations are poor and resource-poor nations are wealthy because wealth appropriation increases or decreases exponentially as wage differentials increase or decrease. If one nation’s equally productive labor is paid 20% that of the nation they trade with (a 5-times differential), they retain one unit of wealth while the well-paid nation retains 25 units of wealth (25-times differential). At a 10-times wage differential the low-paid nation retains one unit of wealth while the well-paid nation retains 100 units of wealth (100-times differential). Today’ massive military build-up is for the same purpose as the raiding parties sent out from the City-States of Europe 800 years ago-to control resources and the wealth-producing-process. Terrorism will disappear if all have equal rights within the wealth-producing process. Turning half the expenditures on arms towards world development, would alleviate world poverty in 10 years and develop the world to a sustainable level in 50 years. If the developing world refuses to work those mines, cut those forests, pump that oil, drive those trucks, or load those ships, the powerful nations will have no choice except to negotiate to good faith for equality of trade. Our laws evolved from aristocratic rights. We must abandon residual-feudal exclusive title to nature’s wealth for a modern commons under democratic cooperative-capitalism. That maximization of individual rights and competition would increase economic efficiency equal to the invention of money, the printing press, and electricity. Utilizing only a part of that enormous potential efficiency is how the war-shattered Germany and Japan, the Asian tigers, and now China developed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR J.W. Smith
With a Ph.D. in political economics, J.W. smith has written broadly and lectured widely at conferences around the world. This is the second edition of his 4th book on the causes and cures of world poverty. J.W. Smith not only takes a different view from most economists his deep research pushes dense and impossible to understand neoliberal economics off the table and replaces it with sensible economics that we can all understand. As he says, “neoliberal economics makes sense only within borders of an empire. As soon as one steps out-side those borders they make no sense at all. How could it? It is designed to lay claim to the wealth of the periphery of empire?†Smith’s 20 years of deep study of economic history builds a new school of thought. Where else do you read how wealth accumulation increases of decreases exponentially with the differential in pay between equally productive labor? That evolving from plunder by raids to plunder by trade became the signature of “civilized†nations? That Adam Smith free trade was specifically designed to entrench this system of laying claim to others wealth? Or that no nation ever developed under that philosophy? The exposure of these realities provide a new foundation upon which to understand the world. That understanding of economic history leads us to smith’s explanation of how Western “democracies†evolved from feudalism and today’s property rights laws retain the essentials of those feudal exclusive rights to nature’s bounty. The concept these monopoly rights which exclude the weak from their rightful share follows naturally. Smith provides the historic foundation to understand how Western “democracies†evolved from feudalism, that property rights still retain feudal exclusive rights to nature’s bounty, and that it is these monopoly rights excluding the weak from their rightful share as the powerful continue the privatization of the commons that impoverishes so many people. Smith looked deeply under the blanket of imposed “frameworks of orientation†protecting the power structure and its stolen wealth and concluded the debris of custom and law are the barriers preventing Western societies from evolving into peaceful and far more productive societies. Smith’s explanation of how the elimination of those monopolies through expanding individual rights and competition through a modern commons increasing economic efficiency equal to the invention of money, writing, and electricity providing all with a quality life working only two to three days per week; all while protecting the earth’s resources and ecosphere, provides a ray of light on what we must do for a peaceful and prosperous world.
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