4. Arguments from Harm

Okay, so today we're going to look at the last of the three kinds of argument that I distinguished in the first lecture. arguments for duties of well off people to help poor people in other countries or otherwise. Thank you. Other kinds of duties. And I distinguished three kinds of arguments in the first lecture, if you recall.

The first was what I called arguments from beneficence, which argue that we have a duty to promote the well being of poor people in other countries in some way, or to some extent, and to some extent. Second kind were arguments from distributive justice, which argue that we have duties of distributive justice towards poor people in other countries. And the third kind, which we're going to look at today, are what I called arguments from harm.

And arguments of this kind argue that we have duties arising from the fact that we have harmed or are harming poor people in other countries. And I should say that in distinguishing between these kinds I don't mean to imply that an argument can't belong to more than one of these kinds. So these are not meant to be mutually exclusive. In the discussion on arguments. from harm, and particularly in discussion of the argument from harm that we're going to be looking at today.

certain terms come up which it's important to flag up at the start and explain. And this is the distinction between what are called positive duties and negative duties. And these may not be the best terms in which to make this distinction. But the basic idea is this. A positive duty is a duty to do something. So for example, if you have a duty to help your elderly parents, that is a positive duty.

A negative duty is a duty not to do something. So for example, if you have a duty not to murder people, that's a negative duty. Obviously here positive and negative don't mean upbeat or downbeat, anything like that. It's just the difference between having a duty to do something and to not do something. Now having made this distinction, I can observe another fact.

Negative duties can give rise to positive duties. So, for example, in some situations, to fulfill your negative duty not to run over pedestrians, you may have to hit the brake. So to fulfil that duty not to run them over, you may well have a duty to do something, namely hit the brakes.

Similarly, uh if you violate certain negative duties, that may give rise to a positive duty to do something. So if you violate your negative duty not to break a promise to someone, for example, that may give rise to a positive duty to apologize to them. Now this matters for what I'm calling arguments from her.

I guess part of the reason these have attracted such attention is that The hope, anyway, is that they will have the potential to persuade people who have not granted that we have duties of beneficence or duties of distributive justice towards poor people in other countries. And the reason is this.

Those who deny that we have duties of beneficence or distributive justice to poor people in other countries often do this because arguments for such duties are often arguments for positive duties that don't arise from a prior negative duty. So if you recall the case of Singer, our duty to help people who we can help without sacrificing something nearly as important.

that doesn't arise in order to fulfill a negative duty or because we violated a negative duty, but merely because we have the capacity to do so without sacrificing something of comparable moral importance. A lot of people Who disagree with the claim that we have positive duties of those kinds, either of beneficence or distributive justice. do accept that we have negative duties to poor people in other countries. So for example, the duty not to murder them.

So too, many of them accept that we can have positive duties to poor people in other countries that arise from negative duties, in the ways that I described. So for example, if you've stolen from a poor person in another country, that gives rise to a positive duty to return their property. What arguments from harm do is attempt to argue for positive duties that well off people have towards poor people in other countries that arise from violating negative duties not to harm them.

And as I say, the hope in particular is to persuade people such as libertarians, for example, who deny that well off people have or can have positive duties to the global poor that haven't arisen from negative duties. So if they don't accept positive duties that haven't arisen from negative duties, the strategy is to try and persuade them that they have positive duties that have arisen from a violation of negative duties.

So that is the strategy, and that's why they've attracted a lot of interest.

Now the Primary, most prominent proponent of such an argument is Thomas Poggy. His book World Poverty and Human Rights, first published in two thousand two, second edition in two thousand and eight, has attracted a great deal of attention uh in that time. And his basic argument is very simple. His claim, as I say, is that we are harming poor people in other countries in a certain way, which I'll discuss in a moment. That violates our negative duty not to harm them in that way.

And this gives rise to uh positive duty, or as he prefers to call it, a positive obligation. to neutralize the effect or do our fair share towards neutralizing the effect of that harm, of contr contributing to that harm. So the hope is to persuade people who think we don't owe anything special to people in other countries, either because they don't think we owe anything any duties of distributive justice to anyone, uh or egalitarian justice anyway, to anyone.

to people who are unpersuaded by singer type arguments that in fact we have these positive duties. So the challenge for Poggy is to make the case that in fact well off people in developed countries are harming poor people in other countries. And that's what the bulk of his argument or of his argumentation is devoted to defending.

He thinks there you can distinguish very broadly speaking between three main ways in which we are harming poor people in other countries. And he says these can be memorably dubbed the three P's. Privileges, protectionism and pharmaceuticals.

So the first of those Ps Privileges. Amen. Poggy thinks, first of all, that it's a striking fact about the way that Relations between states are organized, between the rules of interactions between states, laws and so forth. that we treat whoever happens to be in power in a territory as having the right to sell the natural resources of that territory. He describes this as the international resource privilege, first of the privileges.

Importantly, we recognise whoever's in power as having the right to sell the resources of the territory. Regardless of how they gained control of the country Or how much support they have. All that's needed in order for the international community and its laws and institutions to give you the legal right to sell the natural resources of the territory is for you to win the fight. For you to be the most powerful thug on the block.

Amen. So for example If whoever controls the power, controls the territory uh if that group sells the country's natural resources to someone else we recognise the sale as legally valid, and the purchaser of the resources is recognised as the legitimate owner of those resources. with all the rights, liberties and protections that ownership brings.

So Poggy says, for example, if the Saudis or Mobutu sell oil or minerals to a corporation We recognize that corporation as the legitimate owner of those resources, and we enforce their ownership rights in our courts. Now he says this is a very striking fact about the way we conduct business in the international arena. In other contexts, this would be completely unacceptable. So for example, suppose a group of thieves overpowers the guards who are guarding a warehouse.

kills them and takes control of the warehouse. Well those thieves have control over the resources in the warehouse. But we don't recognise them as the owners of those resources or having ownership rights over those resources. And in fact, anybody who buys those goods from the thieves is not recognized as having legitimate rights to them. They're in possession of stolen goods. Amen. But when the warehouse, in the analogy, is a country And the thieves are um militia or a group of warlords.

Suddenly it's okay. We do treat them as having the rights to sell whatever resources lie below the soil, and we treat whoever buys from them not as possessors of stolen goods, but as legitimate owners of those resources. Now the fact that we give whoever is in control the international resource privilege

is, Poggy thinks, one way in which we harm poor people in other countries. Because by giving the warlords or whoever happens to be in control this privilege First of all, it helps governments that harm the poor within their country to stay in power. It's an enormous source of revenue for them and helps them to stay in power. Secondly it creates enormous incentives for coups and civil wars.

So everybody, including the rival warlords, knows that whoever gets power from the existing government By whatever means. Thank you. will be able to become incredibly wealthy by then selling the country's natural resources to developed countries like us. So this creates huge incentives for what would other be otherwise be an extremely risky proposition, namely starting a civil war or attempting a coup.

The potential rewards that we give because of the international resources privilege makes this risk worth it. on many occasions for rival warlords who are thinking about starting a civil war or overthrowing the government. This is a s another way in which this privilege that we impose or grant harms the poor. creating incentives for civil wars and for coups. Furthermore, it also removes the existing government's incentives to reduce poverty, or any incentives that they might have had.

So if the government can sell the country's natural resources, then they don't need to rely on popular support to stay in power. All they need to do is pay enough people who can protect them And maintain their power. And if they don't need to rely on popular support to stay in power, they have little or no incentive to reduce poverty. of the vast majority of the people in their country who are poor.

Doesn't matter from their perspective, because they don't need their support. They've got a steady stream of res revenue which the international community, because of this international resource privilege, enables them to have. So that's one of the privileges which Poggy thinks our granting of to other governments of this kind constitutes harm, constitutes us harming poor people in other countries.

Second privilege is what he calls the international borrowing privilege, which is like the first, except that here we grant rights to whoever happens to be in power to borrow. from other countries, from international institutions, so forth. So too. Doesn't matter how they attain power, doesn't matter how much support they have or how they exercise their power. We hold them legally responsible and give them the right to borrow in that country's name.

and to amass huge debts, which we then hold that country legally responsible for paying. Even if a democratic government happens to take power, one that is responsive to the people and supported by the people We then hold that government responsible for the debts that were incurred by the previous dictatorship that had no support. Or no popular support.

A democratic government, given the way things are organized, would be severely punished by our banks and governments if it refused to honor the debts of the previous governments. So this, in very similar ways, also harms the poor in other countries. So this also creates huge incentives for coups and for civil wars. because having the ability to borrow and the prospect of borrowing from other countries makes the risk worth it. So too, it enables rulers to hold power and to harm their citizens.

But also and distinctively The international borrowing privilege severely weakens the capacity of a democratic government to reform the country's system to help the poor. So if they're constantly repaying the debts that some crazy previous government amassed and we're forcing them to repay those debts because we're treating that crazy previous government as having had the right to borrow then that's money they can't spend, even if they want to, on helping the poor in their own country.

So it makes it very hard to get an effective democratic government, even if they should be so lucky as to get one in the first place. And it does a lot, of course, to prevent that from happening in the first place. So these two privileges, Poggy says. are one very, very important way in which we harm poor people in other countries. And he says what's important to recognise about this is that this takes on board the frequently repeated claim.

that poverty in poor countries is largely due to the governments of those poor countries. People often use that claim to argue that we don't have obligations towards poor people in other countries. They point to the blindingly obvious fact that they are incredibly badly governed by incredibly brutal people, and that that's what causes their poverty. Boggy says, that's true. But we enable those people and vastly strengthen their power.

to harm their people and to cause further poverty, by giving them international resource privilege and the international borrowing privilege. So that's the first of the three Ps that he distinguish distinguishes privileges.

The second is protectionism. And here Poggy is making some points that may be more familiar to you about trade barriers. So international trade rules Permit affluent countries to put up trade barriers to prevent poor people in other countries from selling their goods and services cheaply to people in those affluent countries. So for example, rules requiring repayment of tariffs or duties on goods from poor countries.

And tariffs imposed by rich countries, he reports, have been as much as four times as high as those imposed by poor countries. And this is permitted by the international trading rules that exist. He says. And he says further These rules have been imposed on poor people in poor countries by developed countries.

And he makes a few points to defend that claim, that it's not just that they've agreed to these rules and are losing out, poor people, but that developed countries have imposed these rules upon them. So one reason its rights to see these as rules imposed upon the poor people within these countries. is that, as in the previous case, we in developed countries recognise rulers as having the right to negotiate on behalf of poor citizens in their countries.

even if they weren't elected in anything like free and fair elections. So he says, consider, for example, who joined or who signed their countries up to the World Trade Organization. Robert Mugabe. Mobutu Seisise Seiko, Suharto, Burmese military dictatorship, and so on all signed up and were recognized by us as having the right to sign up. their people to the World Trade Organization.

The rules they agree to can be expected not to benefit poor people in their countries, but to benefit themselves and whoever they need the support of to remain in power within that country. So that's one reason why it's right to think of these rules, which certainly the people we treat as having the right to agree to them did agree to.

It's wise it's nevertheless right to think of these rules as having been imposed by developed countries upon the poor citizens of those countries that agree to them. But so two representatives of poor countries at these trade negotiations according to Poggy, frequently lack the know how to understand the full implications of the agreements they're signing up to.

Similarly, representatives of poor countries usually lack the bargaining power to resist any agreements that give advantages to rich countries at the expense of poor people. So in all these ways, the protectionist trade barriers that harm poor people in other countries by greatly reducing their income and greatly reducing employment in those countries because the markets internationally are effectively closed to them.

For these reasons it's right to think of those rules as having been imposed on poor people in other countries. And that's the second main way in which Poggy argues, we harm the poor in other countries. The third way.

The third of the three Ps is pharmaceuticals. So regulations on medicine. as they currently exist, harm poor people in other countries by depriving them of access. Life saving medicines. And here in particular Poggy singles out intellectual property laws that apply between countries. Most notably what's called the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights, or TRIPS for short. The TRIPS agreement.

And the basic idea of this agreement is that any benefits that are derived from pharmaceutical innovations, so you discover a new medicine The basic idea is that any benefits from that, no matter who obtains them, where in the world they obtain them. must go to the innovator, the discoverer of it. whether or not it imposes any costs on the pharmaceutical company who discovered it. for the person to benefit from it. they must be paid if any benefits received.

Now this basic idea has been implemented, put into practice by these laws by giving innovators, so pharmaceutical companies, uh monopoly pricing powers on the drugs that they develop. And making it illegal for others to produce the same drugs by different processes. Again, at least without paying. the pharmaceutical company that developed it. Sapagi gives the example of India, in which there were many companies that made generic versions of drugs. had been developed by others.

They made the same drugs but by different processes. That's illegal under this international agreement. even if you discover a new process for making the same drug, you're not allowed to profit from that drug without At least getting permission. the company that discovered the drug, even if they didn't discover the process. that you employ.

So this giving of monopoly powers to the discoverer of the drug Poggy again reports has the effect of greatly increasing the price of medicines, sometimes by a factor of ten to thirty. And as well, it removes the kind of competition that there had been before between providers of versions of the same drug. which had driven prices down. And as a result quite foreseeably, drives prices up and deprives people of access to life saving medicine.

So those are the three main ways in which, according to Poggy we harm poor people in other countries. And as they say, I haven't verified any of Poggy's statistics. I'm just reporting. Hear what he says because What he says is a key key component to his argument. Um but he gives references in his book if you're interested in chasing them up.

Now you might think this is enough to show that we harm poor people in other countries. But Poggy defends the idea that we should think of the rules that make these uh this suffering possible or exacerbated is actually a case of harm. So what he stresses here These are cases in which what he calls the institutional order or the global order, so the rules and arrangements that I've just described. foreseeably cause massive and avoidable deficits in the human rights of the poor.

So by helping the most notorious human rights abusers would be an obvious example. empowering dictators and warlords. which foreseeably causes massive and avoidable. Deficits in human rights. So his claim is that if an institutional order or arrangement causes foreseeably massive and avoidable deficits in human rights. Then it is not designed so that human rights are fulfilled under it so far as is reasonably possible.

And he thinks that's a necessary condition of an institutional setup or arrangement being just. So it's controversial, as you'll now know. what it takes for an institutional setup or an institution to be just Poggy's claim is merely this. One thing that's necessary Is that it be designed so that basic human rights are fulfilled under it so far as is reasonably possible. If they aren't, then it is unjust to at least some of the people whose human rights are not fulfilled under it.

And the claim is that if an institutional order is unjust two people. At least in this way, then it harms those people. So it's on that basis that he tries to establish that this is a case of the first time. But he also wants to distribute responsibility to citizens of affluent countries, or at least, as I think he puts it at one point, well off and competent citizens. uh adults, citizens of affluent countries.

So it's not just problematic that governments impose and enforce the kinds of regulations I've just described. Poggy argues that citizens of affluent countries actively cooperate in imposing these harmful institutions. So he says, for example, we contribute to the economies of countries that impose these economic arrangements. We give political consent to governments that impose it. And we pay taxes to governments that impose it.

And it's for those reasons he says that we actively cooperate in imposing this harmful institutional order. So it's on that basis that he claims that we governments and citizens of developed countries We harm the poor in other countries by actively cooperating in imposing an institutional order that harms them. So that as I say was the part of the argument that gets the bulk of the argumentation. Or at least that I'm going to discuss anyway.

The next claim then is what do we do about it? Or what are our duties, rather. So the next claim is then that if we are harming the poor in other countries by actively cooperating in imposing institutional structures that harm them, Then he claims we have a duty to do either one of two things. So he said you could fulfil your negative duty not to harm poor people in other countries. by no longer actively cooperating in imposing this institutional order.

That would do it. But he doesn't think that's a realistic option for most of us. Because remember, for him actively cooperating in imposing such an order Is something we do because we contribute to the economies of countries that impose it, pay taxes to their governments, and so forth. It's not a realistic option to opt out of all of that, to emigrate from your country to a poor country, for example, become a hermit, things like that.

More realistically, is the other way in which we can fulfil our duty not to harm people, poor people in other countries, he thinks. that we can do our fair share to protect the victims of this institutional order or to support reforms, change the institutional order. And if you remember a couple of weeks ago when we discussed Liam Murphy, we discussed fair share of views of distributing responsibilities and Poggy is advocating a version of that.

So if you do your fair share of effort to protect the victims of this institutional order or to support reforms to it, then you have fulfilled your negative duty not to harm them. And in his view, uh which I think he presents somewhat tentatively, But what he says is that he believes that our fair share is to make as much effort as would suffice to eradicate the harms if others in a similar position followed suit. So very similar to Murphy's view, as a matter of fact.

doing what if everybody did it, or at least everybody in your position did it. would eradicate the harms. Or at least putting as much effort in as if everybody put that effort in would eradicate the harms. So that is his claim. Now somewhat unusually, uh Poggy also offers very detailed proposals for reforming the institutions that I've just described.

Uh one of them, which I'll just mention briefly, is what he calls a global resources dividend. So the idea of this is that states would be required to pay a small part of the value of any natural resources that they decide to use or to sell. as a dividend to make it possible for poor people. To defend and realize their basic interests. And this is only if the governments do decide to use their natural resources.

or profit from them. A small part of that value, he argues, should go for the benefit of the global poor. So that's one reform to the harmful institutions or a way of protecting the victims of the harmful institutions. That he suggests? In recent years he's done most work on what he calls the Health Impact Fund. to address that third harm that I mentioned concerning pharmaceutical regulations, regulations on medicines.

And in conjunction with a team of researchers and an economist by the name of Aidan Hollis. He's presented a number of proposals for this, and the basic idea is this. that developing new medicines, making them safe and effective, so forth, is extremely expensive and extremely risky as well. There's no always a high chance that you're gonna fail a lot if you're a pharmaceutical company trying to develop a new medicine.

Now the TRIPS agreement and the kind of intellectual property laws that are described, part of the rationale behind them is to make it worth taking on these risks. So giving Innovators Monopoly for I think standardly twenty years. on what they manage to discover and bring to market. is one way of making it worth taking on the risks of trying to discover a new medicine. If that's the prize, monopoly power over your discovery The idea is that'll make it worth the risk.

However, he says, we could propose an alternative way of making it worth their while to take these risks involved in research and development of medicines. And which gives the poor much greater access to essential medicines than they currently have. So his thought is this. So you could have another regime which the companies could opt for.

under which other pharmaceutical manufacturers would be permitted to produce essential medicines without getting permission from or giving payments to the developer of it. So removing that feature of the trips arrangement. But, and this is the important bit. to reward the developer of it, the person company, rather, who discovered it. to reward the developer based on how great an impact their discovery has on reducing disease worldwide.

If the reward is significant enough it would make it worth the risk of trying to develop essential medicines. In the first place And it would make it more profitable. for a company to opt for this rather than for a monopoly right over their discovery. Amen. There's a lot of benefits, he says, from rewarding companies out of this health impact fund based on the impact it has on reducing disease worldwide.

So one thing is it would give them a huge incentive to treat diseases that afflict a lot of people. So notoriously diseases that afflict poor people are underfunded, under researched, massively. But If companies were rewarded in proportion to how much of the global burden of disease that they reduce, they'd have a huge incentive to try and find cures for those diseases or treatments for those diseases.

Furthermore, it would give them a huge incentive to get the medicines to those people. Because the thought is no matter how they get cured, or how they get the medicine, the discoverer of the medicine gets rewarded. So they that not only would agree to permit people to manufacture generic versions of the same drug, but would have reason to help them do that and distribute it. and to ensure that the people who took it understood how it was supposed to be taken. So on and so forth.

So if you provide a great incentive for major pharmaceutical companies to compete, to discover cures to these widespread diseases and to ensure that they have an impact on the disease around the world. That's as great as possible. then you'd have reformed the problematic features of the current rules in a very, very beneficial way. Now Poggy even suggests that firms could be given the option of either getting rewarded from the Health Impact Fund or getting a traditional monopoly.

The thought is that if the fund were big enough and appropriately designed, it would be more profitable for them to go for the Health Impact Fund option. than for the monopoly patent. And the idea is to get governments to contribute to this And to commit themselves to give investors confidence by a specific and enforceable international treaty.

So that's a sketch of one of the reforms that he thinks, if it were undertaken, would fulfil our negative duty not to harm poor people in other countries. There's a million other questions of course about the implementation of it and how it would work. so forth, uh which I can't get into here, given a reference to the website for the Health Impact Fund, if you're interested in looking at that further.

Uh so now I'm going to briefly consider a few objections to Poggy's views that have been raised. So one objection is provided by David Miller, who argues this. Poggy says domestic factors within a country. do contribute to poverty. But that they're made worse by international factors, like the institutional order, economic arrangements, so forth. But he says it doesn't follow from the fact domestic factors would produce less harm if international factors were different.

that the rich countries who impose those international institutions can be held responsible for the harms produced by the actually produced by the domestic factories. Dat is een beetje een mouthful. To make this concrete, he gives an example of engineers designing a roundabout. Thank you. So some engineers design a roundabout And a reckless driver causes a collision there. And suppose it's also true that the driver would not have caused the collision.

if the engineers had built traffic lights instead of a roundabout. Now Miller says this by itself doesn't make the engineers responsible for the harm caused by the car crash. By itself the fact that they could have Produce traffic lights, build traffic lights which would have produced less harm, does not make them partly responsible for the harm caused by the reckless driver.

What matters is whether they designed a roundabout that drivers of normal competence, paying due care and attention, and so forth, can navigate safely. Certainly, he says, they might have chosen traffic lights instead of a roundabout. and reduce the accident level still further. But this would have caused significantly more congestion and frustration among drivers. In light of these facts, their decision was reasonable.

So, in this analogy, the engineers are the rich countries that impose the international institutions. The roundabout is the institutions that actually exist. The reckless driver, the domestic factors in the poor country. And the traffic lights are the arrangements that could exist. So what matters if this analogy is right is not whether less harm could have been caused by some other arrangement. What matters for whether rich countries are responsible?

But whether the arrangement that exists provides reasonable opportunities, as Miller puts it, for societies to lift themselves out of poverty. and does not place obstacles in their path that are quite difficult to overcome, requiring extraordinary economic performance on the part of a developing society. In addressing that crucial question, whether the actual economic order is like that Uh it's not clear I mean the implication seems to be it's not clear that it's not like that.

So he gives the example of Ghana and Malaysia. So he points out that Ghana and Malaysia were equally poor countries when they gained their independence from Britain in nineteen fifty seven. But now, or at least when Miller was writing. Average incomes in Malaysia uh at over three thousand dollars per head are ten times greater than those in Ghana.

Miller asks Why should we think that the institutions and policies that explain Malaysia's success have at the same time contributed to keeping the Ghanaians poor? Why not think instead that if Ghana had followed Malaysia's example, or perhaps a somewhat different model appropriate to the circumstances, its people would now be comfortably above the poverty threshold, as Malaysia's are.

So the thought being that If the arrangements were such that Malaysia could succeed It's at least not clear that we shouldn't attribute responsibility for Ghana's failure to succeed as well to the country rather than the institutions on the international scale.

Now I think this criticism Sort of misses some of Poggy's points. Part of Poggy's point is that the arrangements as they exist now in the international arena One of Poggy's points anyway, is that they enable rulers to harm poor people and in fact give them incentives to do things like civil wars and coups that harm poor people. So to use the analogy, it's a bit like the engineers had designed a roundabout that provides incentives for reckless drive. And foreseeably does that.

You can easily predict that that's what's going to happen. And if some engineers did that, I don't know how they'd do it, but if they did it, it does seem to make sense to hold them responsible for the harm caused. I think that's at least one reason why this analogy uh isn't appropriate. I see we're running out of time. The very last point I'd like to make. Uh is this. I'm not sure that Poggy says enough to establish that we are actively cooperating in imposing harmful institutions.

So he talks about contributing to the national economy. as something that implicates us in active cooperation in imposing harmful global institutions. I'm not clear how that works. Um Amen. Part of the reason I'm not clear is that contributing to either the national or the global economy seems to be plainly different from supporting the rules of that economy. Or indeed from cooperating to impose those rules.

So, if economic transactions are governed by certain rules or constrained by certain rules, and you engage in economic transactions in accordance with the rules, I don't see how that makes you support those rules or cooperate to impose them. Another thing he says is about giving political consent to governments that harm poor people through these institutional arrangements. I think he needs to say more about what political consent is.

It's not clear that all forms of political consent to a government, such as treating them as legitimate uh implicate us in the harms that it causes I think probably his strongest case is taxation. that by paying taxes to governments that enforce harmful rules and impose harmful rules citizens do enable them to enforce and impose those rules. Thanks very much.