[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the vagaries of neoliberalism, corporate greed, capital flight and corruption and their perverse effects on HR. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Note: You can easily translate the Readers to many languages, Use the app deepl.com and it is done instantaneously. It takes seconds to download the app into your computer or phone and translations are of high quality.

1. As Adam Smith recognized in the 18th century, capitalism is not a self-sufficient system, because there is a natural tendency toward monopoly. However, since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (not less Milton Friedman*) ushered-in the era of deregulation and globalization, market penetration and concentration has become the norm –and, not just in high-profile sectors such as in e-commerce and in the social media, but pervasively. Our entire market economy has given ample evidence of its lack of resilience and of a disregard of human rights (HR). We essentially ‘build cars without spare tires’: the market will simply shave a few dollars off the price to tempt consumers without much concern for present or future human requirements.** (J. Stiglitz)

*: The profession of fortune-telling is the business of astrologers and economists, and it is not possible today to establish who is less wrong. (Louis Casado).

**: Mind you, a fair price is different from a market price; it is no mystery that market prices are not fair, nor do they pretend to be, they are nothing more than prices imposed by those who have more money. (Primera Piedra)

2. Capitalism is in its corporate (neoliberal) phase reaching a planetary scale. It explains the phenomenon of globalization and the HR and other crises of modern civilization. We are thus faced with the option that, for the first time, confronts the ‘globalizing madness’ coming from popular ‘islands of hope’ that are manifesting themselves in an aggressive and stormy sea in many places in the world. (Victor Toledo)

Efficiency, a drive for success and for ego are what neoliberalism is rooted-in

-Let’s say that it is the sense of ethics and social responsibility linked to HR that is thus discarded. (Luis Weinstein).

3. Public interest civil society should not automatically feel good about the fact that a company or corporation –in a hurried burst of social responsibility— has a person with ‘human rights’ written in their title. Unfortunately, this often means that a position was created for compliance or reputational management purposes, to deal discreetly with HR issues, or engage (read: manage) civil society relations. By contrast, companies that take HR seriously embed the topic across functions and departments, working towards including HR within the company’s ethos. (Andres Zaragoza)

4. Are we all aware?

  • That over recent decades, most workers have lost bargaining power with globalization’s deregulation, outsourcing and labor-saving technologies. Hence, labor shares of national income have declined in most countries since the 1980s.
  • That capital flight from the global South is immense: greater than the yearly official development assistance (ODA) inflows. Vast private fortunes have been made and illicitly transferred abroad. Such fortunes leaving the country are insulated from political pressures to provide public goods, including services, let alone to accelerate social progress. When elites are challenged for this, they opt for repression.
  • That the resources extraction industry has been a key source in capital flight.
  • That it is trade-related financial transactions of all sorts that enable corruption and capital flight.
  • That corrupt partnerships –connecting domestic elites with foreign businesses— have been crucial to such corrupt arrangements.
  • That exports are underreported with massive under-invoicing.
  • That oil, coffee or cocoa or rents perceived from other commodities enrich these ‘triumphant’ regimes since exports mainly benefit the small elite of cronies around the president.
  • That, in short: Institutional environments, mechanisms and enablers facilitate capital flight, tax evasion and wealth accumulation offshore. With often complex, varied and changing facilitation, capital flight has shifted massive elite wealth abroad aggravating social deprivations and perpetuating HR violations. Suffice it to say, curbing capital flight is crucial for financing sustainable development and for fulfilling people’s economic rights. (Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Sundaram)

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com

All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com 

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