The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets

have spread the idea that people must be helped, but only in market-friendly ways that do not upset fundamental power equations.

There is little room in any highly developed economy for further domestic growth. The solution for at least twenty years has been, in effect, to import growth from developing countries by using the monetization of their social and natural commons to prop up our own debt pyramid. This can take several forms: debt slavery, where a nation is forced to

systems that should enable human beings to flourish often do the exact opposite.

Much of what free trade has brought about is what gets called “the race to the bottom,” the quest for the cheapest possible wages or agricultural production, with consequent losses on countless fronts. The argument is always that such moves make industry more profitable, but it would be more accurate to say that free trade concentrates profit away