Our global institutional arrangements - the basic ground rules that govern our world economy - are human-made. They … - Thomas Pogge

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It's a terrible thing wishing that it can be someone else's tragedy.

Thomas Pogge

Our global institutional arrangements - the basic ground rules that govern our world economy - are human-made. They don't exist naturally, nor are they God-given. We make these rules, those of the WTO [World Trade Organization] Treaty for instance, which fill tens of thousands of pages. These words have been strung together by human beings and are also interpreted and enforced by human beings.

Instance, Organization, Our World, Tens, Thousands, Together

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I think one big improvement would be if we somehow made it cheaper and easier for developing countries to learn from the sad experience of some of the developed countries, and also from some of the positive experiences we have of building good transportation systems, like high-speed rail.

Country, Thinking, Positive Experiences, Experiences, Think, Experience

You may know that in India now the Tata car is becoming all the rage; you can buy it for one lakh - $2000 dollars - it's very, very cheap. So India seems to be going the route that China went a few years ago and that developing countries all over the world seem to want to follow, namely, to rely on these personal vehicles, which is just an irrational way of organizing transport.

Car, Country, Irrational, Rage, Tata, Years

We have the ability now to arrange global economic institutions so that poverty declines to a fraction of what it is now.

Poverty, Economic, Decline, Arrange, Declines, Ability

It is perfectly consistent - and also true - to say that the world poverty problem today is smaller (relative to world population) than before and yet also a much graver injustice.

Graver, Population, Relative, Smaller, Today, World

A few hundred years ago, perhaps 85 or even 90 percent of humanity lived below a standard of living that today only 40 or 45 percent fail to reach. But at that earlier time only part of this poverty could have been eradicated, and this at substantial cost not only to the pleasures of the affluent, but also to their well-being and to human culture. In our time, nearly all severe poverty could be eradicated at a cost to the affluent that is truly trivial.

Years, Humanity, Today, Reach, Affluent