|
Jason Hickel@jasonhickel.bsky.social |
3516 followers 101 following 105 posts
Professor at ICTA-UAB and Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE • Author of THE DIVIDE and LESS IS MORE • Global inequality, political economy and ecological economics
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
The institutions that conducted this survey do not indicate they had any difficulty in accessing respondents, and do not indicate any concerns that respondents do not share their true opinions. Note that, in the same survey, in Iran only 25% of people said the country was democratic.
2 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
At every level, elected deputies appoint leaders and other posts for government at that level. So, through the election of deputies, citizens not only influence the shape of the people's congresses at each level, they also shape the government.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Citizens vote directly for deputies to serve in people's congresses that oversee towns and counties, who then vote for deputies serving at city level, who then vote for deputies at provincial level, who then vote for deputies at the National People's Congress. NPC Deputies vote for the president.
1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
"Does everyone in your country have equal rights?" 🇨🇳China: 5% said no 🇺🇸USA: 34% said no The study is published by the Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation and Germany-based Latana data tracking firm.
0 replies 0 reposts 5 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
"Does your country have free and fair elections?" 🇨🇳China: 5% said no 🇺🇸USA: 27% said no "Do people in your country have free speech?" 🇨🇳China: 18% said no 🇺🇸USA: 27% said no
1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
"Is democracy important to you?" 🇨🇳China: 92% said yes 🇺🇸USA: 77% said yes "Does your govt mainly serve the interests of a minority?" 🇨🇳China: 9% said yes 🇺🇸USA: 57% said yes
1 replies 0 reposts 4 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Which country is more democratic, China or the US? Here are some fascinating figures from the new Democracy Perception Index study: "Is your country democratic?" 🇨🇳China: 79% said yes 🇺🇸USA: 57% said yes
4 replies 4 reposts 11 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
In this new podcast we discuss these dynamics in more detail. Check it out! podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/u...
0 replies 2 reposts 8 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
If these resources and productive capacities were mobilized to meet human needs, decent living standards could be provided to the entire population of the global South. But instead they are siphoned out to support consumption and capital accumulation in the core.
1 replies 2 reposts 2 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Our results show that in 2015 the North-net appropriated the following from the South: -12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents -822 million hectares of embodied land -21 exajoules of embodied energy -188 million person-years of embodied labour These are staggering quantities...
1 replies 5 reposts 13 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
The global North continues to plunder the South, through unequal exchange in international trade. Here we calculate the scale of real value that flows from South to North each year, which worth more than $10 trillion. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
1 replies 14 reposts 29 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
We wrote a follow-up to this paper in Monthly Review, which elaborates the conclusions and discusses why capitalism cannot be relied upon to achieve development in the global South. Socialist strategies are needed. monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/c...
0 replies 4 reposts 18 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
The key question is: how is industrial capacity used? Is it used to secure decent lives for all, or to maximize capital accumulation? How are workers treated? This depends on the political system, the provisioning system, and the balance of class power.
1 replies 2 reposts 11 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
It is obvious that higher levels of welfare require higher consumption, things like vaccines, modern healthcare, refrigeration, clean-fuel stoves, transit, etc etc – goods that did not exist in the past. This is where industrialization becomes so important.
1 replies 2 reposts 9 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
I want to emphasize that this work is focused on *extreme poverty* (access to basic food, fuel, etc). A key implication of the paper is because extreme poverty is not a natural condition, it should not be used as a benchmark for progress. Extreme poverty should not exist, period.
1 replies 3 reposts 13 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Here are a few concluding thoughts on capitalism and extreme poverty, from the discussion section:
1 replies 2 reposts 12 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
The paper is open access and has fourteen graphs, which we interpret in the text. For those who want to dig into the details, there are 19 pages of appendices (!). Big credit goes to the brilliant Dylan Sullivan, and the many colleagues who contributed insights along the way.
1 replies 0 reposts 8 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
As many scholars have argued, progress comes from progressive social movements - it is not spontaneously bequeathed by capital, or the processes of capital accumulation. In the words of Thomas Sankara: we are the heirs of the world's revolutions.
1 replies 6 reposts 18 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Where did progress come from? Well, it coincided with the rise of labour movements, democracy movements, socialist movements and anti-colonial movements that fought to organize production around human needs and public provisioning, quite often against the interests of capital.
1 replies 9 reposts 22 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Fortunately, for most people life has improved considerably since then. And this brings us to our second conclusion: Where progress has occurred, it began several hundred years after capitalist integration... around 1880s in the core, and early/mid 20th c in the periphery.
1 replies 1 reposts 8 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
During the period of capitalist integration, we see increased famines in Europe (1500s-1800s); demographic collapse in the Americas; a 15% population decline in Central/East Africa (1890-1920); ∼100 million excess deaths in India (1880-1920), and so on. Massive dislocation.
1 replies 3 reposts 10 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
These results are striking, but not surprising. The global expansion of capitalism often involved dispossession, enslavement, coerced labour, genocide, colonisation, policy-induced famines, and destruction of subsistence economies. The effects are visible in the empirical record.
1 replies 2 reposts 13 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
First, we found the rise of capitalism from the 1500s onward was associated with a dramatic deterioration in human welfare (declining wages, declining heights, and an increase in premature mortality). In some cases, wages and/or heights have still not recovered.
1 replies 7 reposts 21 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
How did the rise of capitalism affect human welfare? Did it make poverty better or worse? Where did progress come from?
We have a new study that explores these questions, looking at 500 years of data. It's a troubling but also inspiring story... 🧵
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
3 replies 26 reposts 62 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
This new study finds that US Americans prefer workplace democracy (where workers own shares, are represented on boards, and elect their managers), even while recognizing this requires more responsibility. It's a core socialist policy and it's *popular*. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
0 replies 8 reposts 47 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
The obvious lesson that Germany should have learned from the horrors of the Nazi era is to stand firmly against *all* forms of fascism, ethnic cleansing and colonial expansionism.
2 replies 14 reposts 89 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
This forces a healthy discussion. Maybe we don't want to give so much energy to capital and elites. Maybe we want to scale down production of unnecessary things, and lengthen product lifespans, and cut the energy use of the rich etc. These are conversations we should be having.
2 replies 2 reposts 24 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Apologies: I meant to specify above that when renewable energy creates political conflicts in rich countries this is "good" b/c it forces society to think about trade-offs. If people don't want to too much renewable energy infrastructure, they should reconsider how much energy their economy uses.
1 replies 0 reposts 12 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
And whoever thinks that this is a "development strategy" for the global South is deceiving themselves. It's a drain of resources and productive capacity. States will do it only because they are compelled to do so by debts or other dependencies on foreign currency, which can and should be reduced.
3 replies 1 reposts 11 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Obscene but not surprising. European elites have basically found a way to do with renewable energy exactly what they have so long done with fossil fuels: capture the benefits for themselves while externalizing the consequences to others whose suffering can remain unseen.
1 replies 3 reposts 13 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
In other words, labour and energy that could be used for necessary national development in the global South is going to be consumed to support the excesses of the global North. It is obscene.
1 replies 1 reposts 18 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
What is more, this arrangement means that global South countries, many of which *do not have enough energy to provide decent living for their own citizens*, will devote their labour and materials to producing energy for rich countries *that already use far too much energy*.
4 replies 2 reposts 28 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
But of course the land use and the conflicts have not just disappeared - they've just been offshored... to places where people are too poor and disenfranchised to fight back, or where rebellions can be put down with force, and rich people in Europe don't have to think about it.
1 replies 2 reposts 31 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Here's how it works: build renewable energy infrastructure in global South countries, use the energy to produce hydrogen fuel, and then ship the fuel to Europe. Voila! Europe can maintain high energy use without having to build lots of renewable energy infrastructure domestically.
1 replies 6 reposts 20 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
But Europe's ruling classes don't want to face the consequences of their high energy use. And this is why they love the idea of green hydrogen.
1 replies 3 reposts 21 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
This creates political conflicts. Which is good. With fossil fuels, the consequences of high energy use in rich countries have long been "externalized" to future generations and to the global South, where the impacts of climate breakdown hit hardest. It allows rich countries to live an illusion.
1 replies 3 reposts 30 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
One of the powerful things about transitioning to renewable energy is that it forces rich countries to confront the consequences of their energy use. You want super-high levels of energy for mansions and SUVs? OK, but you'll have to cover lots of land with solar panels and wind turbines!
1 replies 4 reposts 30 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
We need to talk about "green hydrogen". Why are the European ruling classes so interested in it? And what's wrong with it? 🧵
2 replies 26 reposts 55 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
"As many as 40% of clothes made each year – 60bn garments – are not sold"
The capitalist system of production represents a wildly irrational waste of labour, energy and resources. www.theguardian.com/fashion/2024...
0 replies 40 reposts 78 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Remember when Israeli forces insisted they would *never* be so heinous as to destroy a hospital, and then went on to destroy the entire healthcare infrastructure of Gaza.
3 replies 30 reposts 95 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
On this day in 1961, US, British and Belgian forces assassinated Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Republic of Congo, because he sought to restore national control over the country's vast mineral reserves. Remember Lumumba.
4 replies 93 reposts 203 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Good sir, the point of this book is to explain why we are not getting sufficient investment in renewable energy *even though* it is so cheap and always getting cheaper. The reason is because capital considers fossil fuels to be more profitable.
3 replies 4 reposts 13 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
This new book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why capitalism poses such an extraordinary obstacle to real progress against climate breakdown. Don't miss it.
versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...
3 replies 11 reposts 50 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Did capitalist reforms reduce extreme poverty in China? Data published by the OECD indicates the opposite. In the 1980s, socialist China had some of the lowest rates of extreme poverty in the periphery, while the capitalist reforms caused poverty to increase. theconversation.com/chinas-capit...
1 replies 17 reposts 42 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
If you would like to be informed of new research we publish, with fresh new content delivered straight to your inbox, you can subscribe here for free: www.jasonhickel.org/subscribe
0 replies 4 reposts 10 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
The Guardian website devoted a whole front-page section to the Ukraine war with multiple articles a day for more than a year. Ukraine still has its own category on the website, alongside "Business", "Society" etc. They haven't devoted even a fraction of this reportage to Gaza.
1 replies 15 reposts 52 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
This research shows that rich countries are responsible for massive deforestation embodied in their consumption. On a per capita basis, Canada is responsible for 15x more deforestation than China, the USA is responsible for 40x more deforestation than India, etc.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
4 replies 45 reposts 72 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
Thank you to all my brilliant colleagues who contributed to or led this research, and thanks to all of you who have shared the journey with us.
Free PDFs are available here: jasonhickel.org/research
0 replies 1 reposts 6 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
15) Finally, here I report on research showing that if we want to ensure decent lives for all while also achieving the Paris Agreement goals, we need to dramatically reduce the purchasing power of the rich and share resources more fairly. www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...
1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
|
|
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel.bsky.social
[ View ] |
14) Here is a compilation of studies that assesses the extent of popular support for post-growth and post-capitalist ideas. The results: these paradigms tend to be supported by strong majorities. www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/11...
1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes