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38 | The PhıLosorny or Eco-Porrrics The defenders of the free trade system view this differently. In their opinion, reality proves the critics of economic globalisation wrong, since in the last few decades the average difference between the performance of the rich and poor countries has decreased and, for a while now, it is exactly those who are successfully closing the gap who boast the most spectacular growth indicators.'* These data cannot be interpreted on their own, however. The fact that a significant part of investors’ money does not generate a return in the wealthy countries does not necessarily mean an increase in prosperity of the countries they have been favouring of late. The favourable growth indicators come at a terrible cost: the overburdening of nature, the drastic decline of indispensable natural facilities, poverty, hunger, untreatable public health issues, dissatisfaction that explodes into bloody civil wars, etc. But even if set all this aside, we must still see that the benefits of growth are divided extremely unequally within the individual countries, thus exacerbating social tensions.’ The whirlwind increase of the wealth of the old and new elites of the poor countries stands in sharp contrast with the impoverishment of the farming population and the catastrophic situation of the inhabitants of the big city slums that are sprouting up like weeds, where they live in their millions in previously unimaginable poverty and overcrowding. In the meantime, income and cultural differences are increasing in similar fashion in the rich countries as well, where capital is flowing out of the country, the bargaining position of employees is weakening, some of them do not have work and the social state is forced to reign in its welfare expenditures. It seems that what Susan George established with regard to international aid applies to economic globalisation in its entirety as well: the free trade world order finances the enrichment of the poor countries’ rich at the expense of the rich countries’ poor." 4 The picture would be significantly modified if from these successful countries China were omitted, where behind the economic miracle lies a civilization at least as old and of equal value to that of the West and which has as its immediate prelude the most successful and most ruthless attempt at the totalitarian organisation of the industrial state. The statistic is also improved by the atypical case of a few oil-rich Arab countries: their prosperity is due not to the dynamics of the global economy, but to a monopoly over the most important energy resource. 5 Giovanni Arrighi — Beverley Silver — Benjamin Brewer: Industrial Convergence, Globalization and the Persistence of the North — South Divide. Studies in Comparative International Development 38.1. 2003. 16 Susan George: The Debt Boomerang. Pluto Press, London, 1992.
