Global Humanist Shoptalk

In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. One other problem with borders is how ill-prepared they make us, as a species, to address extreme human rights violations. Genocide and civil war are routinely difficult phenomena to mediate because of our prioritization of notions of sovereignty and the integrity of a nation's borders. But does this serve a more global humanist perspective?

In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. War has routinely been a transformer of human geography, and changing borders have consistently created significant amounts of human suffering. Recognizing these facts, why then do we still place such high moral priority on their maintenance?

In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. In this episode, we're going back to those deeper histories of migration, to remind ourselves how fragile and recent so many of our ideas about human group structures really are. Yes, we've had eras of more recent recorded time where mobility was restricted, but are these necessarily the examples we want to emulate today?

REFERENCES

Dowty, Alan. Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on the Freedom of Movement. Yale University Press, 1987.

---. "The Right of Personal Self-Determination", Public Affairs Quarterly. 1989. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40435699

Graeber, David and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. 2021.

Gugliotta, Guy. "The Great Human Migration", Smithsonian Magazine. July 2008. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-human-migration-13561/#:~:text=The%20moderns%20entered%20Europe%20around,most%20of%20the%20Old%20World.

In this final miniseries for Season 2, "Migration and Mobility Rights", we reflect on the arbitrary nature of national borders, in light of humanity's much more fluid histories of movement. With climate change disaster accelerating, and amid ongoing war, we have more pressure points than ever, challenging our notion of rigid limits to where human beings can go. But are we ready for the mental reframe? Can we prioritize actual human thriving over abstract concepts that may no longer serve us well?

REFERENCES

Adams, Destinee. "Massive fire tears through a crowded Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh," NPR. March 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161248208/massive-fire-tears-through-a-crowded-rohingya-refugee-camp-in-bangladesh

AP. "25,000 Tons of Ukraine Grain Reach East Africa", VOA. 2022. https://www.voanews.com/a/tons-of-ukraine-grain-reach-east-africa-/6863518.html

"Climate Crisis Could Displace 1.2 Billion People By 2050", Earth.Org. 2020. https://earth.org/climate-crisis-could-displace-1-2-billion-people-by-2050/

Glinski, Stefanie. "In Afghanistan, a wrenching choice between drought and migration", Reuters. 2022. https://www.preventionweb.net/news/afghanistan-wrenching-choice-between-drought-and-migration

Global Peace Index 2020: Measuring Peace in a Complex World. IEP. 2020. https://www.economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GPI_2020_web.pdf

NB: Media pulled from this study for the "1.2 billion" stat. 1.2 billion might be living in untenably in 2050... but not necessarily in a position to displace themselves.

Ida, Tetsuji. "Climate refugees--the world's forgotten victims", Kyodo News. 2021. https://racetozero.unfccc.int/climate-refugees-the-worlds-forgotten-victims/

Polityuk, Pavel & Michelle Nichols. "U.N., Turkey, Ukraine press ahead with Black Sea grain deal despite Russian pullout", Reuters, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-suspends-participation-deal-ukraine-grain-exports-tass-2022-10-29/

"Sea Level Rise & Implications for Low-Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities", IPCC Special Report, 2019. https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-4-sea-level-rise-and-implications-for-low-lying-islands-coasts-and-communities/

Spring, James. "How the Other Side Lives", This American Life. 2022. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/770/my-lying-eyes/act-two-11

In this second miniseries of Season 2, "Global Finance", we're wrestling with the strangeness of living in a world that aspires to a level of global integration that our current systems can't support - and maybe don't want to. We looked at the fragility of money transfers for average citizens, the fraught history of the IMF, and the easily abused systems of microfinancing and cryptocurrency (along with the reasons we're itching for something new). In this series closer, there are no easy solutions - some promises in tech, some challenges through arbitration - but maybe it's enough just to sit with the enormity of the problem. Once we stop buying into quick fixes, we'll finally be ready to look at root causes.

REFERENCES

Adrian, Tobias. "Tobias Adrian on the Future of Finance", Fintech Forward, IMF Podcasts. 2022. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Podcasts/All-Podcasts/2022/06/08/mcm-fintech-forward-tobias-adrian

Doran, Michael and James Tanner. “Critical challenges facing the green bond market”. Baker McKenzie, in partnership with the International Financial Law Review. 2019. https://www.bakermckenzie.com/-/media/files/insight/publications/2019/09/iflr--green-bonds-%28002%29.pdf

Jefriando, Maikel and Daniel Leussink, "In Indonesia, long-term foreign bond investors keep the faith--for now", Reuters. 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/indonesia-economy-risks-idINKCN1LU10Y

OECD Codes of Liberalisation: User’s Guide", OECD. 2019. www.oecd.org/investment/codes.htm

Wahidin, Deni et al. “The impact of bond market development on economic growth before and after the global financial crisis: Evidence from developed and developing countries”, International Review of Financial Analysis (Vol 77). October 2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1057521921001952

Referenced subsection:

A full side essay exists on Better Worlds Theory, "What We Take for Granted about Global Finance", which includes a touch more explanation about the role of long-term bonds in foreign investments, along with recommendations for staying apprised of global discourse about next steps in all these difficult sub-fields. https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/what-we-take-for-granted-about-global

In this second miniseries of Season 2, "Global Finance", we're wrestling with the strangeness of living in a world that aspires to a level of global integration our current systems can't support - and maybe don't want to. The rise of cryptocurrency has many stories attached to it: some about wanting to change the world, some about exploiting the world in new ways. In this episode, we reflect on the deeper story: the fact that we're hungry for alternative financial relationships in the first place. How else can we answer that underlying need for global reform?

REFERENCES

Bains, Parma. "Regulating the Crypto Ecosystem: The Case of Stablecoins and Arrangements", FinTech Notes, IMF. 2022. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fintech-notes/Issues/2022/09/26/Regulating-the-Crypto-Ecosystem-The-Case-of-Stablecoins-and-Arrangements-523724

Clark, M L. "The crypto crisis fallout in El Salvador", OnlySky. 2022. https://onlysky.media/mclark/the-crypto-crisis-fallout-in-el-salvador/

---. "FTX to file for bankruptcy, CEO of crypto giant steps down", OnlySky. 2022. https://onlysky.media/mclark/ftx-to-file-for-bankruptcy-ceo-of-crypto-giant-steps-down/

Fuje, Habtamu et al. "Africa’s Growing Crypto Market Needs Better Regulations", IMF Blog, Fintech. 2022. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/11/22/africas-growing-crypto-market-needs-better-regulations

Kharpal, Arjun. "IMF head says stablecoins not backed by assets are a ‘pyramid,’ hinting at UST debacle that crashed markets", CNBC. 2022. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/23/imf-head-says-stablecoins-not-backed-by-assets-are-a-pyramid-hinting-at-ust.html

Mandeng, Ousmène Jacques. "Stable coins’ rise has echoes of Bretton Woods", Financial Times. 2021. https://www.ft.com/content/4bb77dd2-ad49-4f26-990a-cf6513b54057

Martin, Eric. "IMF urges El Salvador to Strip Bitcoins Legal Tender Status", Al Jazeera. 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/25/imf-urges-el-salvador-to-strip-bitcoins-legal-tender-status

Nugent, Ciara. "Why El Salvador’s Bukele Is Doubling Down on Bitcoin Despite the Crypto Crash", Times Magazine. 2022. https://time.com/6236899/el-salvador-bukele-bitcoin-crash/

Wheatley, Jonathan and Adrienne Klasa. "Cryptocurrencies: developing countries provide fertile ground", Financial Times. 2021. https://www.ft.com/content/1ea829ed-5dde-4f6e-be11-99392bdc0788

In this second miniseries of Season 2, "Global Finance", we're wrestling with the strangeness of living in a world that aspires to a level of global integration our current systems can't support - and maybe don't want to. In this episode, I reflect on a time when I was beguiled by the feel-good story of microfinancing. Nothing is ever that simple, sadly, when it comes to the easily gamified world of global finance.

NB: There is an error in the script, corrected in the show notes and transcript. Andhra Pradesh is a key location in Poverty Capital, which was written by Ananya Roy.

REFERENCES

Bateman, Milford. "The Rise and Fall of Muhammad Yunus and the Microcredit Model", International Development Series Working Paper. 2014. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272241825_The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Muhammad_Yunus_and_the_Microcredit_Model

Bernards, Nick. A Critical History of Poverty Finance: Colonial Roots and Neoliberal Failures. Pluto Press, 2022. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745344829/a-critical-history-of-poverty-finance/

Donovan, Kevin P. "Microfinance's Imagined Utopia", Boston Review. 2023. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/microfinances-imagined-utopia/

Donovan, Kevin P. and Emma Park. "Perpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah", Boston Review. 2019. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/perpetual-debt-silicon-savannah/

Meyerowitz, Joanne. A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit, 2021

Nelson, Eshe. Nobel winner Muhammad Yunus wants two financial systems—one for the rich and one for the poor", Quartz. 2018. https://qz.com/1430076/nobel-winner-muhammad-yunus-wants-two-financial-systems-one-for-the-rich-and-one-for-the-poor

Roy, Ananya. Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development. Routledge Press, 2010. https://www.routledge.com/Poverty-Capital-Microfinance-and-the-Making-of-Development/Roy/p/book/9780415876735

Yunus, Muhammad. A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions. PublicAffairs. 2017. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/muhammad-yunus/a-world-of-three-zeros/9781610397582/

In this second miniseries of Season 2, "Global Finance", we're wrestling with the strangeness of living in a world that aspires to a level of global integration our current systems can't support - and maybe don't want to. The IMF and World Bank are complex forces in the world today. Located in and funded by countries that caused a great deal of financial inequality in the first place, is their austerity-driven approach to loan programs truly what many struggling nations need to break from cycles of poverty?

REFERENCES

Easterly, William. "The Effect of International Monetary Fund and World Bank Programs on Poverty", World Bank/IMF External Documents, 2000. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/staffp/2000/00-00/e.pdf

---. The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Penguin Press, 2006.

Elliott, Larry. "The World Bank and the IMF won't admit their policies are the problem", The Guardian. 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/09/the-world-bank-and-the-imf-wont-admit-their-policies-are-the-problem

Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History. 1992.

"IMF Report: 2018 Review of Program Design and Conditionality", International Monetary Find. 2019. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Policy-Papers/Issues/2019/05/20/2018-Review-of-Program-Design-and-Conditionality-46910

Masters, Jonathan et al. "The IMF: The World’s Controversial Financial Firefighter", Council on Foreign Relations. 2021. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/imf-worlds-controversial-financial-firefighter

Martin, Eric. "IMF urges El Salvador to strip Bitcoin’s legal tender status", Al Jazeera. 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/25/imf-urges-el-salvador-to-strip-bitcoins-legal-tender-status

Smith, Robert and Zoe Chace. "The Dollar At The Center Of The World", NPR Planet Money. 2014. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/331743569

Stubbs, Thomas et al. "How to evaluate the effects of IMF conditionality", The Review of International Organizations. 2018. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11558-018-9332-5