Global economy must stop pandering to ‘frivolous desires of ultra-rich’, says UN expert

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www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/03/un-…

Olivier De Schutter says new economic agenda needed to tackle crises of rising inequality and ecological collapse

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260303174740/https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/03/un-de-schutter-outlines-plan-for-redistributive-global-economy

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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

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That doesn’t take an expert.

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Knowing how they teach economics? ‘expert’ in this case probably refers to ‘capital cultist’ instead

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This has been known for a long time, but nothing’s gonna change until they’ve totally wrecked everything of value. It’s the “if I can’t have it, nobody can” power trip.

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Olivier De Schutter needs to read more theory.

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Comments in World News@lemmy.world

This sound like a dream. Too good to be true. :(

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Organize! This does not need to be a dream or a utopia. Systems fall, changes are always possible. Only, the ultra rich with their frivolous desires won‘t give up their privileges and power because we ask nicely.

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Systems are actually falling right now. It’s going to be chaotic and difficult, but there is also opportunity. Destruction is an opportunity for creation. We need to work together and focus on how we can create something better.

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True. We all should join a political party

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They will destroy the entire planet before they allow their aristocracy to be toppled

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It seems to me that one planet will not be enough for them.

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Get money out of politics and hold politicians to a higher standard.

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Treat acquiring massive wealth as the mental disorder it is. 5150 all of them.

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Yeah shit like that is why the ultra rich have committed to destroying international organizations like the UN

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OK, you’re right, in a purely ethical world.

But why would the economy change its behavior on a broad scale? What practical incentives would you use to adjust it?

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OP

The French used a convincing method back in the day.

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Punitive measures might feel emotionally satisfying in the moment, but what they actually incentivize is hiding the corruption and exploitation better (avoiding getting caught, rather than avoiding the bad activity in the first place). Also, while an angry mob might have a taste for violence and actually perform it for a little while, it doesn’t last and it’s not a basis for a stable government or economy.

If you want long-term stability you have to organize a system so that it incentivizes the behaviors that you want, even more than it disincentivizes the behaviors that you don’t want.

I’m not sure what that looks like in this context, in a practical sense. But ultimately the problem is that everything in our society rewards the hoarding of wealth. This is not just a problem with capitalism - every communist or supposedly socialist society ever established also rewarded hoarding of wealth.

For things to be different, actually different, a different value system with a fundamentally different reward structure needs to be established, and it needs to be competitive long-term with the current system in order to exist alongside it and/or eventually replace it.

Like I said I don’t really know what that looks like in practice. The only example I can think of is the “gift economy” described in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars, in which the participants in every exchange always seek to give more than they get (essentially the reverse of normal behavior).

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The practical incentives are there already, but far too many people are too greedy and shortsighted to recognize them. There are long term negative consequences to prioritizing short term individual gains over long term, sustainable prosperity for all. And achieving that sustainable prosperity does not require people to replace self interest with altruism, it requires that people to adopt a more enlightened, forward looking self interest. It’s getting people to understand that overindulgence and a zero sum mentality today, without thought for the consequences tomorrow is not self interest, it’s self destruction.

If that can’t work then civilization is fucked.

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The percentage of sociopaths involved with defining a society should never be greater than zero.

Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

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They’re finally starting to get it…

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What if we sacrificed all the rich people to appease the god of CO2?

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Maybe if our system didn’t allow mere individuals to collect a net worth equivalent to small countries…? Hate the game, not the players. Billionaires should not even exist in the first place.

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I can, and will, hate both the game and the players.

The players at the top know exactly what they’re doing.

If me, a fucking nobody who reads while taking a shit, in between working all the time to pay the bills can understand what’s going on. There’s no way the richest in society, with the most leisure time and access to the world’s greatest educators etc, don’t.

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Don’t get me wrong, billionaires are definitely sociopaths. But our society, instead of giving them the treatment they deserve (institutionalisation and a therapy to develop empathy would be a good start) rewards them instead with power and influence.

I see many people cluelessly asking why it seems like billionaires are all sociopaths. That’s because society rewards it and selects for it, and that’s what we need to change first and foremost.

To borrow an image from the Scorpion and the Frog, if you’re a frog and you’re taking scorpions on your back, it’s nonsensical to hate the scorpions for stinging you, that’s in their nature. Instead, we should focus on not taking scorpions on our back, that is, not putting sociopaths in positions of power and authority.

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Scorpions make the rules. You’re not allowed to not carry them on your back.

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Without the players, there’s no game. Flip the board.

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Says some egghead, and any normal sane person on the ground-level.

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Perhaps I should first ask why you spread such absurd nonsense and where you got it from?

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