Reflections

Regarding an indiscriminate commercial opening

There is a great hypocrisy in the discourse of developed countries; they preach ideas that have no relation with the policies they historically applied or with their current policies. The multilateral system of commerce is unbalanced. Countries that dominate the G-20 debate on international commerce expect that developing countries apply policies of indiscriminate opening of their economies while they preserve instruments to promote their industries. There are divergent positions, such as those of India, South Africa, Argentina, and in a lesser degree Brazil, who defend the need for the multilateral system of commerce to provide developing countries with the necessary room for maneuver to carry forward the development of their industries. In a world dominated by global value chains where multinational corporations are the ones that decide the location of activities around the world, if there is no State policy that promotes the insertion of chain links with higher added value (knowledge, technology, and innovation), the danger is that countries remain trapped in chain links of low added value.

Augusto Costa

 

Regarding shameless or sophisticated briberies

In sophisticated economies such as the United States’, shameless bribery has been widely replaced by political campaign contributions, and possibly the reward is not just the signature of a contract for the construction of a highway at higher prices than the market’s but a change in economic policy, whose derivations result in much larger costs for the entire society.

Joseph Sitglitz,

 

Regarding the different type of priorities

With the money used to “save” banks there would be 600 years of a world without famine.

Manfred Max-Neef