Quote

One citizen, or a few, may be powerless if all the rest are determined to benefit from the imposition of unjust supranational rules. But this excuse cannot work for large numbers. Just imagine 10 million US citizens saying in unison: I am just one powerless citizen. There is nothing I can do to change my government's policies!

Thomas Pogge

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Pogge
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: August 13
Philosopher
Hamburg
Freie und Hansestadt
Thomas Winfried Menko Pogge
Thomas W. Pogge
Nothing
Numbers
Determined
Unison
Work
Millions
Million
Imposition
Saying
Rules
Powerless
Imagine
Benefits
Unjust
Cannot
Large
Policies
Change
Citizens
Citizen
Government
Policy
Benefit
May
Rest
Excuse
Supranational

More quotes by Thomas Pogge

Image
Given the total income and wealth available in the world today, we could easily overcome poverty, which would require raising the share of the bottom half from three to roughly five percent. Unfortunately, the trend is going in the opposite direction.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Because present procedures by design favor the affluent, the poor are being increasingly marginalized. And because the poor are so marginalized, they can exert little influence on institutional design decisions. We need to break out of this vicious spiral and create momentum in the opposite direction.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Some of the developing-country governments and populations are tired of having things rammed down their throats, but we're not yet at the stage we want to get to, namely where the developing countries join forces with one another on behalf of creative alternative ideas about how to take things forward.
Thomas Pogge
Image
For the present system to work, poor people must be excluded from the innovation, because if they could get access at an affordable price, then affluent people would find ways to buy it cheaply as well - and then the innovator would be poorly rewarded and introductions of new medicines would decline.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Income inequality matters more on a day-to-day basis. Wealth matters more for political influence.
Thomas Pogge
Image
What we should do is require or at least permit innovators to license their green innovations free of charge in exchange for public payments based on the impact this innovation has on the environment - emissions averted or something of this sort.
Thomas Pogge
Image
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.
Thomas Pogge
Image
It is for the poor people's sake, above all, that we urgently need more unity and better organization and need to concentrate our reform efforts in order to really to achieve reforms, one by one.
Thomas Pogge
Image
You can get an ice-cold Coke for around fifty cents in most developing countries, not just in the major population centers, but at the most remote and surprising places. The logistical challenges to resupplying all these outlets are enormous - and yet, the entire system works with incredible efficiency as is confirmed by the price of the product.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Our Supreme Court has lifted the practice of buying legislation to the level of a constitutional principle by repeatedly protecting corporate spending for and against political candidates, as well as promises and threats of such spending to bribe and blackmail such candidates, by appeal to the free-speech clause of the First Amendment.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Large multinational corporations, often acting through their industry lobbies, exert a powerful influence on the formulation of domestic rules and on their application - but their influence on supranational institutional design is even larger because it faces practically no opposition there.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Governments and their hired negotiators are designing the supranational rules and pressing for their adoption and for compliance - and the US government first and foremost. These governments are elected by us, funded by us, acting on our behalf, sensitive to our will, and so, we are not mere bystanders observing the injustice.
Thomas Pogge
Image
America is run by the rich and powerful in their own interest. To an extent that I think is hard to exaggerate, the intellectuals - academics, journalists and so on - are bought off. And that's a big change that happened in the United States in the last 30 or 40 years.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Large companies are very good at solving extremely complex problems in a globally optimal way.
Thomas Pogge
Image
It seems far-fetched, even preposterous, to blame the global economic order for the persistence of severe poverty in countries that are ruled by obvious thugs and crooks.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Severe poverty is getting better by some measures, but it's also becoming ever more scandalous because it is now so easily avoidable.
Thomas Pogge
Image
We have the ability now to arrange global economic institutions so that poverty declines to a fraction of what it is now.
Thomas Pogge
Image
Ordinary people like you and me can achieve very little on their own. We need to build support. Even if you are a thought leader and have some good ideas on how to make the world better, and even if you write five or ten books - that won't have much effect unless you have people who are willing to support your ideas.
Thomas Pogge
Image
To make a proper moral appraisal of the prevalence of severe poverty today, we should focus not on comparisons with times past, when the global average income was much lower, but on a comparison with what would be possible in our time, given the current global average income and level of technological and administrative development.
Thomas Pogge
Image
We live in a world where economic positions - income and wealth - are very unevenly distributed, and this leads to the widespread persistence of poverty.
Thomas Pogge