The Rules of the Global Game

Evidently, it all depends on what part you play in the game. In São Paulo the very rich crowd into the Alphaville condominium, fenced and guarded, while the poor in the neighborhood call themselves Alphavella. Someone has to cut the grass and deliver the groceries.

WWF produced its global assessment on the destruction of wild life, 52% disappeared during the 40 years from 1970 to 2010. In 2022, we are nearing two-thirds. Aquifers contamination or exhaustion is rife. The oceans are crying for help, plastic residues are everywhere, air conditioning is booming. Forests are coming down in Indonesia, taking over the first place that belonged to the Amazon region. Europe will get renewable energy, cheap meat and beautiful mahogany wood.

The Crédit Suisse and Oxfam reports show us the divide between who owns the game and who are the spectators: 62 billionaires own more wealth than the poorer half of the world population.

The Tax Justice Network showed we had some 30 trillion dollars in tax havens, for a world GDP of 73 trillion, in 2012. In 2022, The Economist estimated that the part of global corporate profits going to tax havens rose from 30% to 60% in the last two decades. The Bank for International Settlements in Basel shows us that outstanding derivatives, the speculation system on basic commodities, reached 630 trillion dollars, over six times the 2022 world GDP, generating the present fluctuations of basic economic staples, much before Ukraine. The biggest game in the planet plays around with grain, ferrous and non-ferrous minerals, and energy, in the hands of basically 16 corporations, most of them formally based in Geneva. As we know thanks to Jean Ziegler, La Suisse lave plus blanc. There is no referee in this game, we are in guarded environment. The French have an excellent definition of our times: on vit une époque formidable!

We did a thorough job in 2015: a global assessment on how to finance development in Addis Ababa, the sustainable development goals for 2030 in New York, and the compact on climate change in Paris. The challenges, solutions and costs have been clearly set down. Our global equation is simple enough to formulate: the trillions in financial speculation have to be redirected to fund social inclusion, and to promote the technological paradigm change that will allow us to save the planet. And ourselves, of course.

Money in hands of the bottom of the pyramid generates consumption, productive investment, products and jobs. Money at the top generates fabulously rich degenerates who will with buy football clubs, and in the old age remember their future and create an NGO. Just in case.

The successive COPs (the last one in Egypt) generate reports, and a momentary feeling that at last we are going to do something. But to stimulate the players, Wall Street players announce the morals of this sport: Greed is Good!  Whom are we kidding?

Money at the top generates fabulously rich degenerates who will with buy football clubs, and in the old age remember their future and create an NGO. Just in case. Thomas Piketty, Michael Hudson, Mariana Mazzucato and so many others conclusively shown how the financial snow-ball works.

A Global Fix

Many people have understood the rules of the game are rigged. When the same fabulously rich fund politics and promote legislation according to their growing needs, making speculation, tax evasion and overall instability a structural and legal process, a global fix is clearly needed. Lester Brown has put the environment figures together, and wrote Plan B, clearly showing that our present Plan A is dead. Gus Speth, Gar Alperovitz, Jeffrey Sachs and so many others are working on The Next System, implying and showing the present system has gone over its own limits.

Joseph Stiglitz and a score of economists launched An Agenda for Shared Prosperity, rejecting “the old economic models”: according to their view, “equality and economic performance constitute in reality complementary and not opposing forces”. France created its Alternatives Economiques movement, we have New Economics Foundation in the UK, students in economics in its traditional form are boycotting their studies at Harvard and other top universities. Mehr Licht!

How can we expect to have peace across the lake we call the Mediterranean if 70% of the jobs in Algeria are informal, and youth unemployment is over 40%? And what they watch on TV is the leisure and prosperity just across at Nice?

And the poor, very clearly, are fed up with this game. There remain very few isolated and ignorant peasants ready to be satisfied with their lot, whatever it is. But there is a world-wide conscience among the poor that they could have a good school for their kids, and a decent hospital for them to be born in. And besides, they see this can work on TV: in Brazil 97% of households have TV-sets, even if no decent sanitation.

How can we expect to have peace across the lake we call the Mediterranean if 70% of the jobs in Algeria are informal, and youth unemployment is over 40%? And what they watch on TV is the leisure and prosperity just across at Nice? We bombard them with ways of life that are out of their economic reach. None of this makes sense, and in a shrinking planet, it is explosive. We are condemned to live together, the world is flat, the challenges are for all of us, and the initiative must come from the better off.  And, fortunately enough, the poor are not what they were anymore. They are fed-up, and political instability is spreading. Beyond a certain level of inequality, speaking of democracy is a sham.

Can’t we have the economy, but also less inequality, less environment destruction and more quality of life? This is not an economic issue, but of social and political organization. In 2022, we reached a 100 trillion-dollar world GDP. Divided by the world population, this is equivalent to 4.600 dollars a month per four-member family. This simply means that what we presently produce in goods and services is amply enough to make sure everyone in the planet has a dignified and comfortable life. We have the resources, we have the technologies, we are drowning in statistics about every drama, and we even have the steps painted on the side-walk: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) has it all spelled out.

Culture and Convivality

I have always had a much wider view of culture than the “Ach! said Bach!” tradition. Having fun with others, in a way, whether building or writing something, or just fooling around. Conviviality. I spent some time in Warsaw a few years ago. Summer weekends, the parks and squares full of people, and cultural activities everywhere. In the open air, with lots of people sitting on the ground or on simple plastic chairs, a theatre troupe was playing a parody of the way we treat old people. Little money, lots of fun. A bit farther, in different parts of the Lazienki park, numerous groups were playing jazz or classic music, people sitting on the grass or on improvised seats, kids running in the whereabouts.

In Brazil, with Gilberto Gil at the ministry of culture, a new Pontos de Cultura policy was built: any group of youngsters decided to create a band can ask for support, and receive music instruments or whatever they need, and organize shows or produce online, thousands sprang up, to stimulate creativity it is enough to scratch a little, the young have it under their skin.

The policy was strongly attacked by the music industry, saying we were taking the bread out of the mouths of professional artists. They don’t want culture, they want entertainment industry, and business. The whole cultural movement was brought down by the political coup that ousted president Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and brought us ‘austerity’and far right repression. Fortunately, with Lula returning to the presidency in 2023, and in spite of the far-right fanatic attacks, hope is back.  

The entertainment carnival is there, of course, and tourists pay to sit and watch the dazzling and rich show, but the real fun is elsewhere, where the right for everyone to dance and sing has been taken back.

Can Brazilian Carnival return to what is once was? In São Paulo, in 2016, was smashing.  Completing a full cycle, street carnival and improvised unleashed creativity, after having been tamed and transformed into a disciplined and expensive show-business by the Rede Globo communication mogul, was back to the streets. People improvising hundreds of events throughout the city, a popular chaos again, as it had never ceased to be in Salvador, Recife and other poorer regions of the country.

The entertainment carnival is there, of course, and tourists pay to sit and watch the dazzling and rich show, but the real fun is elsewhere, where the right for everyone to dance and sing has been taken back. With the extremists in power, austerity, Covid and the financial drain, enthusiasm was lost. With Lula, it will certainly be back. But do we need these dramatic ups and downs?

Also booming is child obesity surgery, a tribute to consumerism. And you can buy a wrist-watch that will tell you how fast your heart is beating after you walked two blocks. And a message has already been sent to your doctor.

What is this all about? I see culture as the way we organize our lives. Family, work, sports, music, dancing, the whole set that will tell me whether my life is worth living. I read books, and have a siesta after lunch as any civilized human being should. All mammals sleep after eating, we are the only ridiculous biped that rushes off to work. Well, of course, there is this bloody GDP business. All the really pleasant things I mentioned do not raise GDP, much less my siesta hammock. They only raise our quality of life. And GDP is so important that the UK has included estimates of prostitution and drug sales so as to improve the rate of growth figures. Considering the kind of life we are building, maybe they are right.

The huge advertising industry is funded basically by a handful of corporate giants whose survival and expansion strategy is based on people becoming essentially consumers.

We need a reality shock. The wretched of the earth will not disappear, building walls and fences will not solve anything, the climate disaster will not go away unless we face our technological and energy mix, money will not flow where it should unless we regulate, people will not create a political force strong enough to support the necessary changes unless they are effectively informed on our structural challenges. Meanwhile, the World Football Cup, with Messi and Mbappe, keeps us busy on our couches. As it did, quite frankly, with the author of these lines. Sursum corda.

Drowning in Statistics

We are drowning in statistics. The World Bank suggests we should do something about The next four billion, meaning the number of human beings who have “no access to the benefits of globalization”, a quite tactful reference to the poor. We also have the billions who live on less than five dollars a day, and even the billion living on less than 1.25 dollar a day. FAO shows us in great detail where are the 850 million who suffer from hunger, Unicef counts the roughly 5 million children that die each year because of insufficient access to food or clean water. That’s about four New York towers a day, but they die in silence in poor places, and the parents are helpless.

Things are improving, certainly, but the trouble is we have 80 million more people every year – roughly the population of Egypt – and growing. A reminder will help, for no one really grasps what a billion is: when my father was born, in 1900, we were 1.5 billion, now we are 8 billion.

A Consumer Affair

I used to play football pretty well. And would go with my father to watch Corinthians play in the traditional Pacaembu stadium in São Paulo. Magic moments, life-long memories. But mostly we played ourselves, wherever and whenever we could, with real or improvised balls. This is not nostalgia for the good old days, rather a confused feeling that when sport has been reduced to watching great guys doing great things on TV, while we munch some goodies and have a beer, it is not only sport, but culture in its wider acceptance that has become a producer and consumer affair, not something that belongs to what we create ourselves.