Theory of Wealth Accumulation

Why is there a wealth gap between the northern countries and the southern countries? Theories such as economic liberalism, world system theory, and dependency theory, have emerged to explain the North-South Gap. A clear understanding of these distinct theories is essential to drawing the similarities and differences between how Northern and Southern countries earn their wealth. MORE?

Reiterating the previous sentence, a comprehensive understanding of economic liberalism theory is crucial. Coming from the latin root, liber, meaning free, the notion of economic liberalism was developed by Adam Smith who contended that the power of free markets was unprecedented and would be the most ideal system. He advocated for the idea of free trade in conjunction with the reduction of government controls and regulations, as this efficiency of trade, coming from greater lending and investments, would stimulate the economy, thus growing it. This concept was laissez-faire (let it be), the precursor to economic liberalism theory. Now, economic liberalism holds that free trade makes everyone richer through positive sum gains. The most common example used is a pie. From a mercantilist perspective, states would merely compete amongst one another to gain a larger slice of the pie; in contrast, liberalists argue that free trade would allow the pie to enlarge, increasing everyone’ share. How exactly does this play in reality? Essentially, liberalized economies empower investors and corporations to make enormous sums of money, including countries in the “North”, as those states would gain revenue through taxation. Likewise, while this also reduces power of governments in the “South” to shape economic policies domestically and to respond to problems when they occur, neoliberalist policies, theoretically, also empower LDCs, as salaries can be taxed on by the government for those working in corporations, providing the government with another financial stream.

The global system of regional class divisions has been seen by some IR scholars as a world-system or a capital world economy. This view is Marxist in orientation ( focusing on economic classes) and relies on a global level of analysis. In the world system, class division are regionalized. Region in the global South mostly extract raw materials.- work that use much labor and little capital and pays low wages. Industrialized regions mostly manufacture goods- work that uses more capital, requires more skilled labor and pays worker higher wages. The manufacturing regions are called the core of the world system. This constantly reinforces the dominance of the core countries

Marxist IR scholars have developed this theory to explain the lack of accumulation in the third world. It is define as a situation in which accumulation of capital cannot sustain itself internally. A dependent country must borrow capital goods; its debt payments then reduce the accumulation of surplus. Dependency is a form of international interdependence- rich regions need to loan out their money just as poor ones need to borrow it. Foreign capital invested in a third world country to extract a particular raw material in a particular place, it only leaves the the country with some jobs for few local workers. Over time, the resource depleted. Another pattern is that national controlled production, a local capitalist control the cycle of accumulation based on production. The profit goes to the local capitalist mostly and that builds up a powerful class of rich owners within the countries.

"Wealthiest" Country in the World

Personally, I think that wealthiest country is not always the richest country. Country that makes tons of money does not mean the citizens living happily. I believe that to become a wealthiest countries need to have a best living condition.

Life Expectancy
One of the quality that a countries need to have in order to be the wealthiest is the country needs to have higher life expectancy. Because higher life expectancy represent a country has good medical system which people aren't dying of sickness at a young age. We can see that Japan has the highest life expectancy, and comparing to some "money making" countries, it is much higher.

Education
Another quality that countries need to have is high mean years of schooling, in the data organiser we can see, expected years of schooling and the mean years of schooling. The closer these two numbers matches means a better education a country has. Higher education leads to better job option and companies are likely to hire and pay higher wages to higher educated workers.

Food Intake
Nutrition is one of key factor, human depends on food and get energy from it. Food also keeps human alive. From the pictures we can see that the countries that is fed well is colour grey. We see the hungriest country such as African countries is in an alarming rate.

From these resources, we see that although countries like
US has high GNI but they do not have the best life expectancy. We can see that Japan has high life expectancy and good education. There starvation rate is in a safe colour. According the the World Life Expectancy Map, the reddish colour which has higher life expectancy are located on Japan Australia, and USA is coloured in orange which is colour in orange. Although Japan does not have the highest ecological footprint, but Japan is working on to lower the rate.
I think that Japan is wealthiest country in the World.

Global Hunger Index 2014

World Life Expectancy Map

Happiest Country Map

World Ecological Footprint

Rapa Nui People

The international society's management of natural resources is terrible, but it is not their fault. First of all we need to look at what kind of natural resources they are trying to manage and why it is so hard to manage. What we need to look at right now is that why does international society need to manage the natural resources. Why don't they do it before. Well, it all came down to the population of the world, because right now, people are living in a low budget world which they need to have more children, so they can use them as child labour to increase the family income. Then there is that tragedy of the commons, the commons were originally use by everyone in the town which they can graze their animal FREELY but the more animal they put on that commons, the more animals that is fed well, which will increase the income of an individual. Turns out that everyone in the town want to increase their own income and since the commons is free, they exploit the commons by putting so many animals to graze that the commons can support only a little. The solution was solved by enclosure of the commons, splitting it into privately owned pieces on each of which a single owner would have an incentive to manage resources responsibly.

Ocean is also part of an important natural resources that the world should be focus on right now. International society has trouble managing the forest is because they have trouble control the amount of fish that a fisherman can catch. Ocean is consider a global commons. People exploit the ocean by over fishing, dumping toxic and nuclear waste and other garbage, and long-distance oil shipments with their recurrent spills. There is no authority exist to enforce regulation and because of that, Ocean is FREE. What the world can do now is start by solve some of the problem that are manageable which is to stop the use of drift nets. Drift nets are huge fishing nets, miles long, that scoop up everything in their path. They are very profitable but destructive to the ocean ecosystem.

History shows that Easter Island was originally an island that was full with palm tree. The Natives that lives there has ignore that trees took a long time to grow back and start to exploit the forests. Today we do not know how a deforestation can kill 16 million palm trees. Were they using on building the Moai or as a source of drinkable plant sap? Some say that the reason why the palm trees were gone is because of climate change. More importantly, the population of the Rapa Nui people is big back in the time. Due to the effect of tragedy of commons, using all the palm tree to support one family has ruin the island.

International Economic System

Speaking of US and Western power in the international economic system, their goals and methods of so call helping the LEDCs is a lie. What we see today is that poor countries stay poor and the rich countries stays rich. Let’s talk about why these poor countries are poor originally. Internally, the lack of natural resources is one part of the reason, with the lack of natural resources, the countries itself cannot produce it’s own power sources and they are not able to use the natural resources to benefit themselves. Probably the other reasons is poor governance, with poor governance, the citizens will not be able to cooperate with the government. Sometimes the governments focus on benefit him or her instead of the citizens of countries. Talking about natural resources, the geographic disadvantage is one part of important fact, the disadvantage, they may not be able to produce it’s own food and it leads to starvation within the countries. The lack of infrastructures leads to inconvenient within the countries. Sometimes it includes school and other important infrastructures.

        The MEDCs believes that free trade can help the LEDCs to develop. They MEDCs will import in higher tariff, so they would sell clothes in higher prices. The LEDCs citizens will then buy the products that are made in there countries. Speaking of advantages on products, MEDCs has technology and infrastructures that will decrease the cost for making their products and they can produce in large amount. They can sell their product cheaply in the LEDCs. LEDCs citizens will buy the products that are cheap to them, but LEDCs manufacture factory do not have technology to produce in a cheap price. If they lower their prices, the workers will not get enough amount of money to live.

        This leads to loans, if a LEDCs want to borrow money for building infrastructures and build technology in their factories. They will have to borrow the money from World Bank, but the World Bank was control by the MEDCs, if they borrow it, they are force to follow certain rules such as lowering the tariffs. This will make the MEDCs product even cheaper and the LEDCs have the money but it is not able to sell more products. Then the World Bank will ask them to pay their debts or start paying the interest. The LEDCs might took the money that is originally use for building infrastructures to pay those debt but if that is not enough, they will have to borrow more money from other countries. It turns into a cycle and the LEDCs will be more and more in debt.

        Another real example is that in America, some states are able to produce large amount of corns that the Americans cannot even finish, which is why food in America is so cheap. The rest of the food will be sold in other countries in cheaper prices. This will hurt the farmers in those countries. The reason why American famers are able to profit from growing food is because the America pays more money to the famers to continue their business. The US famers will profit even more than what it is suppose to get. That is why the LEDCs are continuing being poor and as they aren’t developed, their population will start increasing.

Maximize the Positive, Minimize the Negative

Now days, the LEDCs countries has trouble developing through trade with MEDCs, but some times trade is the only way they could develop. Why are they still poor? Now we are trying to maximize the positive effects of trade while minimize the negative effects of trade.
There are two types of trade, Free Trade and Fair Trade. By looking at positive effects of each, it seems like a great deal. The benefits of Free Trade, due to the efficiency benefits from comparative advantage, competition, and avoiding trade barriers, producers are able to lower costs of Goods and still make profits. Through trade, the capital and technology will be influence, it became more available in developing states. Overall free trade has been shown to contribute economic growth.
Fair Trade, organized social movement that aims to create more equitable trading conditions to help disadvantaged producers in LEDCs receives great profit for the goods they produce, but the MEDCs will have to pay slightly more for goods. Benefit of Fair Trade, the producers will receive fairer prices and higher returns to pay workers. The promote of sustainable development can promote less energy intensive production and use of renewable resources. Through Fair Trade, the workers working conditions are much better due to the NGOs, NGOs manage to committed to fair labour practices to stop forced labour, and child labour. They also committed to gender equity which men and women can be paid fairly and work at the same job.

I think that in order to keep the positive effects going, is to give more power to the NGOs and on that, assign a representative of the LEDCs workers to make sure that where the money goes and make sure that people are getting the fair amount of income that they suppose to get. Have LEDCs and MEDCs each send a "middle man" to sort out the unfair and make sure each other are not absorbing all the income that suppose to be paid to the workers. Another advice is to promote environment protection, in case one farmer increases it's supply which he or she can lower the price, and that hurts other farmer that does not have much technology and resources to develop enough supply. They can also set a buying range which means each MEDCs can only buy a amount of supply, so that all LEDCs has chance to trade with the MEDCs.

Trade Regimes

Are world trade regimes based more on dominance or reciprocity? I think that both of them has equal status to the world. Although both of them has disadvantage, the dominance trade showed in the documentary "Black Gold". The citizens in Ethiopia produce coffee beans, and it is their major income. The amount they earn on coffee beans decide on the way they live their life. In the video all of them live poorly and children do not go to school. From that we can know that the deal on coffee beans are not good to them. The problem is that their coffee beans was sold in a cheap prize and the "middleman" sells them in a high prize in other countries. The citizens have to agree to the deal because they need to compete with other coffee beans farms. I found that dominance trade apply most on agriculture product. Most agriculture export countries are LEDCs, they can never live a better life because what they earn is so little. At the end of the documentary, some of the coffee farmers change their product into some types of herb that is consider drugs. They said that they are force to change their product because that is what they can earn the most from. Reciprocity trade is one of the better kinds, but it only works when two countries has positive relationships. The European countries, they all work together and they all share the same tariffs on import. The Reciprocity trade is more of a better kind which will help the developing countries develop. Like Taiwan and the USA, USA lower tariffs on imports, so that Taiwan are allow to develop well. All the main reason is to keep Taiwan from going to communism during the Cold War. Overall I think that dominance trade is the most common but not necessarily more than reciprocity. Both trade regimes plays important rules to the society and both has disadvantage that needs to be change.

UN Effectiveness

After World War 2, US and the 50 other countries form the United Nation. The purpose is to prevent from war like World War 2 happen again. The two great power during that time, USA and the Soviet Union, and Soviet Union always try to spread communism and take over Europe and the Cold War between USA and the Soviet Union formed. For example, In 1962, UN secretary general provided valuable assistance as the primary negotiator between Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also in 2005, the Human Security Report shows that the decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses since the end of Cold War. We could say that UN is doing it's job at the start of peacekeeping and peacemaking.

Security Council is one of the meeting in United Nation and in the meeting countries talk about preventing countries going to war and solutions to violent actions in some countries. There are five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. They are all nuclear powers. Five of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council has Veto Power. Some people criticise the existent of the Veto Power. A Veto from any of the permanent members can stop any action that the Council may take. Although if the majority of nations agrees to one resolution, the veto power can stop it.  For example, US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, despite that Israel has never been elected to the Security Council. The five permanent members of the United Nations can veto any resolution that affect it's self-interest.

Gallup released a study on the American perspective of the UN and 66% of American believe that they UN is still necessary, but only 35% of Americans feels that UN was doing a good job of solving the problems they have faced. The reason to the decline in faith in the UN because there are various incidents since 2002 that UN has not really accomplish as much as it could have. The genocide in Darfur and Syria is one of the example. In the end the UNv is a good idea, it still make contribution to the world we live in.

• Website Title: UN News Center
• Article Title: histoire, ONU, Nations Unies, Charte, chronologie
• Publisher: UN
• Date Accessed: November 02, 2014
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  • Website Title: Wikipedia
  • Publisher: Wikimedia Foundation
  • Date Accessed: November 03, 2014

  • Website Title: Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research
  • Article Title: Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research
  • Date Accessed: November 03, 2014

  • Website Title: : Is the United Nations effective?
  • Article Title: Barely Politics
  • Date Accessed: November 03, 2014

Peacebuilding

I think to build peace, "helping", "alliance" comes to my mind. What I meant was helping each other on positive circumstances. In order to help people, people usually think that they have to be powerful enough otherwise they will drag each other down and peace is no longer building, in order to accomplish, a leader for both sides that represent non-violent should step out and negotiate. For example, the peace between the government and the citizens, now this is the most often one and most of the time they deal with the issue without arms. I think that the Peace movement is a great way, without violent people can achieve more, conversation, argument, definitely better than fighting and gun shooting. During a peace movement, thing sometimes can get out of hand, which is when the citizens starts attack by throwing molotov, rocks and weapons at the government's soldiers or police. That is when they take the action of shooting and held down people. Sometimes it can get other around, the government want to get rid of the citizens, they will use non-lethal weapon, although it is not life threatening, it ruin the look and respect people toward government. A mediator is necessary, both sides talk about their stands and negotiate a way that is both win or both lose a little. That is what I think peace should be form with trust on the mediator or a leader.

In order to build peace on our next generation, education and entertainment should be PG. Right now, people find that violent games and movie interesting than movie that talks about peace, although there aren't much movie about peace. To students violent games are the easiest way to learn what is violent from, all these game about war, fighting, killing and torturing, etc. Although history are important, but history textbook talks about war, and war are rate the most violent things in the world. When children learn these stuff that had already happened, additionally war games emulate the war in the past. Is that why children these day are violent. We are living in the most peaceful time, we should let our next generation have the same which I think that remod the education information is quite critical.

When talking about violence, there are three types, direct, structural, cultural violence. We are living in the peaceful time because the world is under a government system called "Democracy". The reason why Democracy is so well used because the decision were made by the overall community. The citizens get to choose, and in order to achieve fairness and peace. "Voting" is the key to democracy, Country who use democracy tend to share the same interest and therefore they are more likely to cooperate. Direct violence, most likely to be a poor community, shanty town, hobo camp, etc. Government tax people base on their incomes, so the middle class and the rich can pay fair amount of tax that can used to benefit the poor and still keep their social status. Structural and Cultural Violence, can be racism and heterosexism, can solve by passing law that remove discrimination among race. Different groups of people will stand out and argue and try to get rid of racism. On the change of education, children can learn that racism is bad and racist is horrible. In the future, racist will start decreasing and when they do not have any advantages. The young should not hate each other, in the future you guys might become friends, colleagues, soldiers and even couples. Since we all live in the same country, why don't we focus on academic instead of thinking how to bully. We must be generous and kind to gain benefit and make peace in our country. 

Structural Violence

          Elitism, form by the understanding of realism, a theory to understand the government and society structure. The idea is to have groups or one strong countries to rule the poor ones. A strong country assumes special privileges and responsibilities to benefit the poor countries.

          Ageism, a discrimination towards old people, basically to disdain them because of their weakness on society and old people are the target. It's almost the same as sexism and racism. 

          Heterosexism, discrimination among people who are gay, or lesbian (LGBT). Part of the reason because gay sexual activities brings diseases. "Special" names were made to describe these people. 

          Nationalism, a belief involves national identity, within one country, many groups are form to benefit the country which all groups has the right to benefit the country does not involve discrimination among race.

         Adultism, the power adults have over children, a discrimination among young people, children follows and bias towards adults and ideas, activities and attitudes

         Racism, a belief that human has differences among human, race. Different kind of people were group by race, and some race believe that they are the higher than the other. 

          In my opinion, I think that Racism is the worst and the most harmful in the history, the worse is Elitism and the bad one is Heterosexism. Racist believe that each race has ability and superior ability among others. It is the worst and the most harmful one because in history, many have died because of racism and many have died just trying to solve the problem. After Germany lost World War I, the Jewish were consider a cause of the losing war and Nazi were putting Jewish in camps and kill them in groups later on. During WWII, USA put American Japanese and immigrant that were one of the Axis group in camps because they believe that they are spy and will send information to their original countries. The civil war was fought because the South and the North has different view on Blacks. Two argument collide and the Civil War started. Elitism are worse because in the past the higher social class groups were abusing their powers over the poor ones. Making the poor people even harder to live. It is kind of like why Marxism form, people fought back and most of time, the revolution overthrown the great powers successfully, although lots of lives taken from it. Heterosexism is the bad one, people have make hate speech, law, death threats to discriminate against gay men, lesbians, bisexuals. The education taught children the heterosexism idea and causing suicide committed.

          I think that to remove these three structural violence can be a hard task, because when you kill one, the new one forms. Although a great deal amount of changes have change these three from extreme negative into slightly negative. Racist action and threat has becoming less but that does not mean people still likes them. There are still people who think their race is higher but laws were made so that people can not publicly harm someone by race no matter with language or action. My guess is that Interstate will make treaties according to this situation at hand. Individual might base on the citizens' opinion, domestic is likely to do public opinion. For Elitism, interstate level will make sure a person does not abuse power, making more alliance.  

Policy Options for NATO Using IR Paradigms

          After reading the three articles, I think these articles are interesting but to me these articles are written in a different view. I find that reading these three article give me a better understanding of President in Russia, Crimea Crisis and other facts in Russia.
          The article "Putin’s Nuclear Option", I think it is written in a constructivist thinking, the guy  Piontkovsky explain the three option that to deal with the crisis happened in Crimea. The first one is the Peace Party, which is Putin just let go of Ukraine and declare victory in it, but this way Putin will looks defeated and with this event, Putin might have to retire from this failure like the previous Soviet Premier. The second option is the War Party, which Putin declare a World War IV on the NATO, but the downside is that given that the military power that the NATO have, it is a risk to take. It will certainly hurt the economy in Russia if he goes with this option. The third option is the Nuclear Attack, it is not a massive launch, but only strikes the small city, but it will angers other country in this situation and which will lead to the all world against him situation. The Constructivists  tend to think that if U.S should get involve with this, help the NATO to stop Putin if Putin make any strong moves on Crimea. Putin should no make any strong approach to deal with this situation because the options can bring back self-destruction
          The realism may think that Russia taking Crimea is a correct move and which that U.S should stop Russia from doing it. After reading the article "Putin's Empire of the Mind", it talks about the point of view he sees of taking Crimea. After Putin came to power, he made a decision that he does not want to make the failed Soviet model of planned economy. In the article, it mention that "Russia already had immense influence on the peninsula which they already pledged $1.5 billion to support Crimea." The problem is that if they take down Crimea, they will anger the West, it is a tough decision to make whether U.S want to help one way needed to stop Russia from having too much power over the West and the other hand helping the NATO to protect Crimea. Russia's power might become the hegemony in the future.
          The realism may think that the U.S should not help the NATO to prevent Russia from taking Crimea, because if they did, the NATO would have too much power and second of all, if they did, they might just make Ukraine worst, the war might bring damage to the EU economy, poison East-West relations even further, and do further harm to Ukraine itself. The choices of doing or not doing is also at a risk.
         To the question of Do you believe a policy of containment or appeasement is a better approach vis-a-vis Russia? I think that containment or appeasement is a better approach because NATO does not have control over if Putin decide to attack a Western country, and if Russia attack, it is going to hurt itself economically and the relation with other countries. Russia should definitely go with the option of talking peace or appeasement with Ukraine, sort it out. Maybe it is good for both nations.

• Do you believe a policy of containment or appeasement is a better approach vis-a-vis Russia?

Articles Review

           After reading two author's article, I have to say that both made important points and truth that I have never heard of, and it shock me how truthfully these two arguments' ideas brought to me. Tom Engelhardt's "Whatever Happened to Imperialism?" mention that what is imperialism and the outcomes of it. Imperialism is about a country using it's power on other country or gaining power by diplomacy or military onto other countries. Now days, economic has become the source of a power. In Sean Starrs's "America Didn't Decline. It Went Global", talks about how countries gain power by increase their economic. One example that I like is that when Japanese GDP was rising, they gain what is call the economic power. Many exports that benefit their own which more firms in Japan and China also has strong economic power, and it is got plenty of firms within the country, but most of them were not important ones, so does country who has strong economic has strong power? Yes, I do agree that now days if a country has strong economic power, which will be a important to the rest of the country. High income gives customers to buy in which exports on other countries. It is going to brought up economic for other countries.

          So Will the international system in the 21st Century be unipolar or multipolar? I guess in the future, it will be multipolar because some countries' economic are in a rising rate, but in that case if there are more rich people, the competition between thus will be a task, which we will face collective goods problem. Who is going to sacrifice to help others? In unipolar, the country itself will have to take big responsibility which may also harm itself.

The Greatest Problem in the World: Over Population

Ken Wu
Grade 11
International Relations
2014/08/28

People Mountain People Sea

          In 2014, World's population has gone above 7 billion people and we, the human, thinking that overpopulation can be a positive thing. Overpopulation does somehow make some benefit to this world. People said that, overpopulation creates more urbanization, which brought a great change in the growth of the economy. Famous American author "Mark Twain", he quotes "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first". As the world's population starts rising, and these people will follow the animal traits: To Survive. Human is a selfish and greedy animal, we demand more than what we need, we tried to fight for our benefit against another human beings, but all we did is just to survive. This Worlds now is facing several serious problems because of overpopulation, and if we don't make some actions, the world will eventually drain out by us.

          Human beings are for this reason that this world is corrupted, the advances in technology, the creation of better medical treatment. All these are the law breaker that violated the faith of the human being by extending people's life. The advance of medical system has declined the death rate dramatically, but as this going on, there will still be and more people in this world. The other reason is when a family is struggling under poverty, they would give birth to a large family, so the infant's mortality would increase. In some of the developed countries, people have immigrated to these developed countries in order to survive and get wealthy. That will cause the overcrowded in some of the places. This will link to the depletion of natural resources, this world can only produce a limited amount of water and food, but the people's need would never be enough. Even though people have tried to increase the amount of water and food, but these native resources were needed in order to take this action. The overuse of coal, oil and natural gas, these problem is running out, when we rely on them. The decrease of the resources will increase the price of these energy, which brings us the high cost of living. Everything's price is increased except your income. In the future, when people are running out of energy, people will go into an energy war, conflicts, argument forms because people fight to survive. 

• The scientific study funded by NASA has found that civilization could be facing collapse within the next few decades.
• One of the CNN report, title read "This planet comes with limits", "the population will increase by 9.6 billion by 2050, that's two more Chinas"
• Titled read "Overpopulation could be people, planet problem", it mentioned "India on the path to become the most populous country.","Overpopulation will tax water supplies worldwide". "Largest population growths occurring in developing nations."