Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the New York Times Bestsller (I’m not sure why I felt compelled to throw that in there) by John Perkins, has been available for some time now. I remember seeing it in hardcover and resisting the urge to purchase it after intently reading the book jacket. At the time, I simply had too many books and magazines in my “stack.” The stack hasn’t decreased in altitude, but I managed to convince myself recently to pick the book up anyway.
After reading the preface, I am very glad that I did. Here’s a great clip from the Preface:
“Today we see the results of this system run amok. Executives at our most respected companies hire people at near-slave wages to toil under inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops. Oil companies wantonly pump toxins down rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants and committing genocide among ancient cultures. The pharmaceutical industry denies life-saving medicines to millions of HIV-infected Africans. Twelve million families in our own United States worry about their next meal. The energy industry creates an Enron. The accounting industry creates an Andersen. The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30:1 in 1960 to 74:1 in 1995. The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet.
“And we wonder why terrorists attack us?
“Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.”
The above is just a small snippet of the Preface but more than enough to highly pique my interest. If anyone has read the book I would love to know your opinion.
TAGS: Perkins | Economic Hit Man | Globalization | EHM
This entry was posted on Monday, March 20th, 2006 at 11:17 am and is filed under Books and Films, Business Ethics, Business Strategy, China, Corporate Social Responsibility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 20th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Peter, I think this all goes back to the lengthy discussions we have had in the past about corporations and what they are, or actually, are not doing for the people in the world. I remember you bringing up the example of Starbucks distributing bottled water to people in poor countries. What is the point in that? Why can’t Starbucks just build a water filtration plant in that same country and help construct the infrastructure required to bring that water to the masses. I think it would make more economic sense because then we would not need to waste oil making more plastic bottles that are not easily recycled and become more waste in that same country. In most of those poorer countries, they do not have a waste management system as we do in the U.S. and just about everything, whether recyclable or not end up in the same landfill. Once again, you bring up an important topic for the future business leaders of the world to think about. I mean we could sit down and discuss this for hours and never find one perfect solution to this problem.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Thanks for the comment Paul — we’ll have to go wine tasting and have fired up conversations about life and corporate deficiencies more often!
Here’s a link to a post I made a while ago about Ethos Water, Starbuck’s charitable water effort. The wild thing that I learned later is that the process of bottling water uses 2-3 times (perhaps more — I need to dig up the actual figure) the water that actually ends up in the bottle. So any company that is attempting to sell expensive bottled water in an effort to combat the lack of water in some parts of the world, is actually contributing to the problem. It’s quite silly when you think about it.
There are other charities out there that are coming up with much better ways of dealing with the problem such as one I recently heard about called Thirst Relief International. The organization distributes low-tech water filters and other technology (they also hand out bottled water…) throughout troubled regions.
There are quite a few problems to tackle that would really help society as a whole as well as improve the lives of those (the many) who live far greater challenges then you or I have ever faced. As you point out, dialogue is a huge part of moving these problems to the forefront, though correcting them takes far more effort.