This is a painful read, from the comfort of an armchair. The worst is that I even have no idea how an individual can help in such situations.
In 1960 Pakistan had 25% the population of the US at about 2.7% the GDP per capita of the US. Today Pakistan has 60% of the population of the US at about 2.4% the GDP per capita of the US. The vast majority of developing countries have gained considerable ground on the US over that time on a per capita output basis, Pakistan has lost ground.
To bring Pakistan up to the output level per capita of China or Russia (roughly near the world average; plausibly giving them the necessary room to make considerable employment, social welfare and infrastructure improvements) - Pakistan needs to add about $1.8 trillion per year to its economic output, an economy nearly the size of Italy or Brazil. To reach the level of Croatia, their output has to climb by $2.6 trillion per year, an economy the size of France.
I don't see how the world can change anything structurally outside of Pakistan, in terms of how the world works, that will dent that enormous scale of a financial problem. Pakistan has to change dramatically internally. China and many other countries have managed that sort of prominent internal change over time, hopefully Pakistan can as well.
Take a look at astronomical land prices in the country. Then think how land prices got so high in the country so poor.
Now look who are the biggest land owners.
As it is, I don't really know what point you are trying to make.
Coincidentally many military families do make Pakistani "old money" class. Generals make for huge portion of land owners (they are even few kanals of prime rib agricultural lands in their official retirement package.) The second biggest real estate company in the country also belong the the army.
Any reform that threatens land value get instantaneously attacked by them, politicians get killed. Even when laws pass the parliament, local authorities under control of landlord class will do everything they can to sabotage their implementation though active and passive resistance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(biblical)
I'm curious, but ignorant, of the Quran's notion of riba, the prohibition on interest payments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba
More close to home, I'd like more discussion about our own debt-based economy. The emphasis on rent seeking. The "Gig Economy", where people pay for the opportunity to work, aka pay for play, franchising. All these weird MLM schemes.
Update: I forgot to mention Freedom Markets™, my pejorative for the cult of laissez faire, might makes right, I've-got-mine-screw-you, and other misanthropic notions.
The Bible or the Quran can't protect you for the human natural desire and need to make money.
You should google about islamic banks to know what happens when interest is banned. Hint: the difference is just cosmetic.
So if christians implemented a jubilee, I have no doubt it would be baked into some credit score and automatically increase all cost for people who took advantage of it - that or something else essentially similar.
The best thing that can happen to countries like Pakistan? Capitalism. Free market.
People are not stupid. They look at the neighboring countries who have more economically liberal regimes, see what they get, and vote with their feet.
India has been slowly moving away from the license raj, and turning more capitalist little by little.
Reading the wikipedia entry on capitalism was a nice refresher. I am not an economist, so interpret as you wish: These farmers are not wage laborers. So capitalism doesn't apply. (Doubly so for sharecroppers, bonded labor, slaves. Obviously.)
My suggestion is in specific response to the observation that a financial fix would be impractical. I agree. So my proposal is to leverage Pakistan's Muslim cultural heritage. Jubilee's are part of the Abrahamic tradition, spanning Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So maybe it'd find more traction where capitalism has not.
This will be priced into debts, see short term lending rates. Those who can't make money by lending won't lend, meaning the borrowers will have to either not get the money or turn to those who don't play by the legal system.
>I'm curious, but ignorant, of the Quran's notion of riba, the prohibition on interest payments.
The money from interest is instead added to the price. It has some differences (less ability to save money by paying off early), but overall the lenders still make their money.
>I'd like more discussion about our own debt-based economy.
For starters, we can look to stop the sin tax on labor. Granted, most people don't call it a sin tax, but the difference between a sin tax and a tax appears to be marketing.
Otherwise, I agree that lenders should bear more (most?) of the burdens for risky lending.
If credit shrinks, asset prices decrease so borrowers would need less money anyway. In the end it's all about who owns the capital.
Mesopotamian civilizations had to forgive debts periodically because the economy was heavily leveraged: farmers had to rent the land. A bad harvest could mean they'd have to sell their children to slavery. They were also surrounded by nomadic tribes. Social unrest would spiral out of control pretty quickly as broke people would join the nomads and turn to pillage.
That's a lesson every Abrahamic religion learned.
Yes, it's called redistributing wealth from those that have it, to those that don't. That means people that have large homes, yards, SUVs, vacations requiring flights, give them up, and pour their resources into lifting up those that don't have it. And not just money, but time and effort to educate the uneducated and impoverished, and blood to fight the oppressors.
It's not a realistic goal, hence it's "the way the world works". It does help one appreciate how lucky one is to be born in the right place at the right time.
The likelier alternative is they eschew participation in the world economy, building things from scratch themselves, doing it badly, without a rule of law, with a bad education system, with heavy state involvement that provides power to well-connected political elites, and a populist attitude which ignores the needs of capital, promoting empty slogans about economic justice instead of committing to the hard work and sacrifice associated with actually achieving it. The net result will be depressed capital formation, with an economy tilted towards state-run sectors and large companies which are friendly with the new regime. Since capital is important for productivity, the economy will continue to stagnate, though presumably it will see some improvement (it'd be hard not to at this point).
There were some show trials of kiln owners.
Believe me or not, a lot of bonded labourers are so down on the bottom that they don't even know that they can sue their usurers in the court.
"In a few years, when my son is old enough, I may have to sell one of his kidneys as well,"
It ends up being about than $40 a month, but for people living under a dollar a day, that's a huge difference.
Unfortunately there is no financial structure in place yet to deliver UBI to every citizen of the world, but it's definitely something worth thinking about.
https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/should-we-have-a-world-gove...
If everyone in the world gets $30 - warlords in Africa, and landlords or local gangsters in other impoverished nations with weak law enforcement will easily be able to extract $25/person from their locality as 'protection money'.
Now though, if those thugs at the top end up spending that money on local businesses, they're slowly boosting their economy. But they're more likely to buy smuggled German cars, thus evading local import taxes and funneling that money back into the developed nations with zero gain for the local economy.
However, what I've stated is the worst case scenario. More likely than not, that $5 left with individuals is quite a lot in most countries and may end up boosting their economy albeit at a lower scale than what was imagined.
Some level of sustainable land distribution (otherwise land lords suck all that UBI money anyway)
One could say SF is on average quite wealthy, but very broken. Even a UBI of $1000/month doesn’t do jack shit there until you solve the housing problem.
Basically people need to have good nutrition, have a roof over their head (feel secure), be autonomous and have some sort of self worth (mostly comes from doing some sort of work that creates value). All without destroying the planet (which we’re doing at an accelerated pace)
UBI doesn’t necessarily guarantee all those conditions are met.
Well it is Universal Basic Income, not National Basic Income. One of the fun discussions with UBI is seeing people discuss who should and shouldn't get it.
You are right. It is reasonable to try to do good within your immediate social circle.
You can still feel bad for situation that afflicts others AND could very well end up being part of culture in US.
Is that not worth contemplating and worth feeling bad about; if only for a little while?