Beyond Capitalism (Sumblog 6)

Last week in class we talked about Beyond Capitalism which I thought was kind of interesting. In dealing with beyond capitalism we talked about Rodrik's three sources of tension and Robinson's four concerns. Rodrik talked about how unequal trade is a huge source of tension, and an example of that is the video we watched on Zambia and its copper mines. He also talked about conflicts with domestic norms like child labor laws. Finally he mentioned that globalization has made it hard for governments to provide social institutions.

Robinson focused on over-accumulation, the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, state legitimacy (such as Wal-Mart hurting small business), and sustainability (taking from a country until they run out).

All of these concerns and conflicts really make this an easy concept to understand. It also show the negative effects of capitalism which I think are important to look at in today's society. People of power take things form the less privileged without a care in the world about them! People like that are the ones that need to learn about the negative effects they are causing with their greed for money, power and success. 

I really liked this video so I put it in my blog. It puts things into perspective and really shows us how unequal the worlds wealth really is. How can some people have so little while we have so much? How is it that some people in third world countries would kill for a bottle of clean water and yet we have swimming pools just to relax in? But would you give up some of your wealth and luxury to help out the underprivileged? That is the real question we need to ask ourselves.

Glencore Holding Back Africa (Sumblog 5)

The video about Glencore and Africa that we watched in class really got me thinking about the people of Zambia and how Glencore has affected them. In the video it showed how Zambia had a lot of copper and Glencore wanted to make money off of them. Glencore pretty much took over the copper mining operations in Zambia and received most of the profit from the copper that Zambia was mining on their land. When Glencore took over they started to do things that harmed the people of that community in Zambia. They polluted their water sources with chemicals from the factory, thus making the Zambia natives very sick. The people of Zambia needed Glencore to survive so Glencore could take advantage of them however they wanted to.

Glencore ultimately was using the people of Zambia to make a huge profit off of them. They would reap the benefits of the hard manual labor the people of Zambia did. Glencore held back the country of Zambia from being modern and independent. They did not care about them but only cared about the money that people were making from them. The CEO of Glencore was also going to go away for a very long time for tax fraud until President Bill Clinton in his last few weeks as president, gave him a pardon from all of his crimes. The Glencore company had so much power that leaders of other countries and CEOs of other big businesses were contacting President Clinton and telling him to give a Pardon to Glencore's CEO.

I think this is ridiculous. How can someone not care at all about those people that were giving you such a huge profit. Glencore had not morals at the time and did not give a second look when the people of Zambia were becoming sick and dying because of the pollution. Big businesses need to stop taking advantage of other people like the people of Zambia. 

This is a great video that shows how Glencore not only has effected Zambia but also many other places in the world.