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Arab World: Searching Reason in Ruins of Insanity

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Arab World: Searching Reason in Ruins of Insanity

Mahboob A Khawaja, PhD.

Failed International Institutions are Dehumanizing Global Mankind

Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo – the hubs of ancient cultures and civilizations are targets of man-made destructive instinct. Arab leadership political incapacity is joined by complacency and result is the worst combination of tyranny and cruelty to humanity. Is it an inevitable Divine punishment to the Arab leaders for their meddling in affairs they lack imagination and power? Western warmongering and Arab authoritarianism have destroyed what took centuries to human ingenious and intellect to build for future generations. How do you reason with monstrous acts of bombing and killing the innocent people – a ‘right man’ syndrome in its worst naked form and shape? Retrieved historic diplomacy and fake persuasive dialogue is esoteric doctrine fraught with ignorance and arrogance. The civilized world sees the deliberate massacres of people and torture and destruction of the habitats through the books, media analysis and conceits and speaks boldly of peace and security, human rights, law and justice but practice gross indifference and jargons of empty elegance and meaningless futility. Daily carnage of the civilian deaths and consequential perils of bloodbath in Aleppo, Baghdad, Damascus and elsewhere across the Arab world will put to shame what is called diplomacy and peaceful negotiations for ceasefire while the resourceful nations are competing in brutal warfare. Both America and Russia are capable to recapitulate peace, not cruelty in the Arab political theater. The Arab leaders on their own have no cohesive intellectual capacity and policy for peace and normalization. The oil exporting Arab states rely on foreign masters (USA- Britain) and in the case of Bashar al-Assad (Syria) on Russia to do the political horse trading. None have the capacity to view human life as sacred and respectable. They were divided and destroyed by the transitory prosperity of petrodollar. If America and Russia were to mock intransigence and realize the value of peace and security in the region, they could win what is unthinkable for global peace and security. Peace will not happen when insanity replaces rationality in human affairs. History is repeating itself what went wrong when powerful nations shrink intellectually to become spectators rather than active peacemakers. The failure of the League of Nations allowed Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Japanese Empire to occupy the weak and poor nations and impose their logic of power paving ways for the 2nd World War. We witness the UNO in similar parables. Western military interventions and Arab authoritarianism have ruined the whole landscape of the Arab Middle East. How to reverse the anarchism of the few against many in a world determined by the powerful nations at the UN Security Council? The States occupying the nerve center of political power are not accountable for their actions to the larger segment of humanity. The failure of the global institutions ‘to protect the mankind from the scourge of wars’ is just paper-based proclamation lacking proactive imagination and force to transform it into formidable action. All wars are against the human nature. The global institutions are not responsible to the humanity which ultimately is victimized for their failure. Common masses across Europe and elsewhere suffered the dreadful consequences of the two World Wars, not the League of the Nations. Likewise, the UNO and its agencies watch the catastrophic killings and destruction happening throughout the Arabian Peninsula but do little to stop the carnage. Its reports and findings are being questioned and sometimes ridiculed by its own members of the Security Council. The Security Council produces empty jargons for time killing not commitments to peacemaking or conflict management. How strange the so called wisemen of the globe exchange claims and counter claims of ‘war crimes’ when thousands are targeted and massacred by cluster bombs in Aleppo, Baghdad, Homs and hospitals and places of warships are destroyed? They lack sense of humanity, time and history. What happened to the negotiated freedom of Palestine ending the Israeli occupation, protection of the civilians in conflict zones, rights of the refugees and displaced, and continuing Indian betrayal to the rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir to determine their own future? At large, the aspirations and trust of humanity are betrayed and scorned by the global institutions. This state of affairs reflects complete breakdown of the global systems of governance and march towards self-annihilation. We are witnessing and living in that delusional culture of human degeneration. Animosity and wars are not outgrowth of celestial bodies but essentially man-made follies throughout the history. All human acts are subject to change and reformation. What was illegal to use barrel bombs and chemical warfare are new normal in Syria and Iraq. The resulting deaths of the civilians and destruction of the Arabian habitats are deliberate and systematic. Who will rebuild what is being destroyed as a price to enhance insanity of the few authoritarian warlords? The global political affairs need new thinking, new leadership vision and men of new ideas to restore trust and rational foresight for the future of mankind.

Post 9/11 American led “War on Terrorism” is Fueling the Arab Conflicts

Michael Meacher (“This War on Terrorism is Bogus”, The Guardian: 9/6/2003), British MP and Environment Minister in PM Tony Blair cabinet from May 1997 to June 2003 explain that the 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) written by the neo-conservatives in September 2000 before 9/11 – it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a “worldwide command and control system”. This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis.

The ‘War on Terror’ had wide range of unspecified agendas for long time to come:

  • to occupy the Arab heartland and to offer extended strategic and political supremacy to Israel in the Middle East,
  • To distract the focus from the freedom and peaceful resolution of Palestine as an independent State and defy the global support for human rights,
  • to control and manage the oil and gas resources of the Arab Middle East,
  • to inject fear and powerful hegemonic influence of the Western culture and varied civilizations,
  • to divide and rule the Arab and Muslims people from distance powerhouses,
  • to create new markets for the dollar and to block trade-business entry of China into the exclusive American Middle East market,
  • to entice ignorant Arab population with false imagery of freedom, liberty and social justice and make the mindless rulers fearful of the US-Europe influence in their future-making,
  • To dismantle the socio-economic and political infrastructures of the Arab-Muslim world, encouraging internal strife and sectarian bloodsheds and making them subservient to the US-European military and economic subjugation.
  • And lot more piles of tyranny and insanity to come

Wake Up Arab People – You are Being Destroyed by the Turmoil and Chaos of Sectarian Wars

Many across the global intellectual hubs think that like the Al-Qaeda and the ISIL is a by-product of the US-British strategy in the Arab Middle East. Its immediate role and outgrowth is a new cult of sectarian barbarism to distract political attention from the focal issue of Palestine and solidarity of the Arab people. Its secretive aim encompasses the strategy that once oil exporting Arab puppet regimes become a liability on the Western powers, they should be subjected to domestic challenge by their own rebellious groups forging affiliation to extremism and anti- authoritarianism. All of the American-led war efforts directed against ISIL appear to be fake simplicity and are aimed at maximum destruction of humans and habitats under the aegis of “War on Terrorism.”

The global political affairs are not managed by rational people with rational thinking, doing the rational practices for the best interests of global citizenry. The 1% global elite – men of king operate the international institutions – the perverted insanity lacking basic understanding of the Human Nature and of the working of the splendid Universe in which we enjoy coherent co-existence. These global leaders are devoid of moral, intellectual and spiritual values essential to deal with human affairs. President Obama and President Putin and others resourceful to making peace would not listen to voices of reason unless challenged by a cohesive global humanity with focused mind and active agenda.

Chris Hedges – author of Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (“How to Think“, Truthdig: 7/9/2012) offers a global context to perpetual animosity and dreadful notion of hatred encouraging the few warmongers to undermine the very existence of humanity of which they are an essential part:

And here is the dilemma we face as a civilization. We march collectively toward self-annihilation. Corporate capitalism, if left unchecked, will kill us. Yet we refuse, because we cannot think and no longer listen to those who do think, to see what is about to happen to us. We have created entertaining mechanisms to obscure and silence the harsh truths, from climate change to the collapse of globalization to our enslavement to corporate power that will mean our self-destruction. If we can do nothing else we must, even as individuals nurture the private dialogue and the solitude that make thought possible. It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind.

To Rethink in Time and History for the Unity of Mankind to Resolve Conflicts

If time and history are a reference point, we the humankind stand at a critical juncture of our own complacency to have allowed ignorance, hatred, fear and animosity to destroy our lives, culture and existence. Those obsessed with invincible armies cannot solve the emerging political crises. America and Russia cannot be blamed for all the catastrophic happenings across the globe. They represent the States, not the living humanity. Men of new ideas possessing individual conscience have the most powerful weapon to challenge the few egoistic politicians in global chessboard. Political self-interest pursued by intrigues and hypocrisy will not produce global peace and harmony. All global leaders want to be seen as winners, not losers. Ironically, when self-interest overtakes global interest, they are a scum floating on the torrent of time. Intellectual and moral turmoils are the two shades of disingenuous politics at the global political theater. The informed global community deserves sincere commitment to peace and harmony, not slanderous blame of ‘war crimes’ against one another. Such rebuttals darken the prospects for workable alternatives and creative solutions in critical conflict management. The working of international institutions is at crossroads. Nobody can imagine any miracles out of the nothing, be it at the UNO-New York, Washington or Moscow. Often sadistic dummies oversee critical lifelines of global humanitarian affairs. We must regain control of our own potentials and powers; analyze our strength and weaknesses as united and organized people of the globe. We the people can change even if the leaders lack imagination of our hopes and priorities. Political gangstrism will expand into insane egoism to cause the downfall of the few as it happened to Hitler, Mussolini, Hosni Mubarak, George Bush, Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi and Bashar al-Assad in-waiting game. The earth won’t dwindle or the sky won’t fall upon us if more will go the same way as happened in recent history. All absolute political monsters understand each other. The voices of reason are loud and clear as global humanity cannot suffer the penalties of tyranny and evil-mongering. We the people of the world enjoin focused minds and imagination to articulate a new world of One Humanity, brotherhood and peaceful co-existence amongst all, free of hatred, intrigues tyranny, encroachment and animosity.

We, the people of the globe possess understanding – how to change the egoistic and embittered insanity of the few hate-mongers and warlords into equilibrium of balanced relationship between Man, Life and God- given living Universe in which we reside all.

The well wishers across the globe would like to see the Arab masses to unite against the forces of authoritarianism, sectarian killings and torture of the innocents, be it in Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Tripoli, Cairo or elsewhere. Peace will prevail as a fact of life, not a fiction on screen. In his farewell address to the people of America, President D. Eisenhower (01/17/1961), made the following proactive political, intellectual and strategic priorities known to all:

“…. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years…… We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied, that those who denied the opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full…….. That the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”

(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution　with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author　of several publications including Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Germany, 2012), and forthcoming publication – One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Security, Peace and Conflict Resolution).

Socrates- What Kind Of Citizen Was He ?(Should One Obey The System Even If It Is Corrupt? )

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Interesting article by Josiah Ober on Socrates and what his death meant for a civic citizen.(f,sheikh) Conventional wisdom sees Socrates as a martyr for free speech, but he accepted his death sentence for a different cause.  

Some 2,400 years ago, in 399 BCE, Athens put Socrates on trial. The charge was impiety, and the trial took place in the People’s Court. Socrates, already 70 years old, had long been a prominent philosopher and a notorious public intellectual. Meletus, the prosecutor, alleged that Socrates had broken Athenian law by failing to observe the state gods, by introducing new gods, and by corrupting the youth.

Meletus, as prosecutor, and Socrates, as defendant, delivered timed speeches before a jury of 501 of their fellow citizens. Meletus’ prosecution speech is lost. Two versions of Socrates’ defence speech, one recorded by Plato and the other by a clever polymath named Xenophon, are preserved. A majority of jurors (about 280) voted Socrates guilty, and he was executed by hemlock poisoning.

There is no dispute about the basic facts of the trial of Socrates. It is less obvious why Athenians found Socrates guilty, and what it might mean today. People who believe in both democracy and the rule of law ought to be very interested in this trial. If the takeaway is either that democracy, as direct self-government by the people, is fatally prone to repress dissent, or that those who dissent against democracy must be regarded as oligarchic traitors, then we are left with a grim choice between democracy and intellectual freedom.

But that is the wrong way to view Socrates’ trial. Rather, the question it answers concerns civic obligation and commitment. The People’s Court convicted Socrates because he refused to accept that a norm of personal responsibility for the effects of public speech applied to his philosophical project. Socrates accepted the guilty verdict as binding, and drank thehemlock, because he acknowledged the authority of the court and the laws under which he was tried. And he did so even though he believed that the jury had made a fundamental mistake in interpreting the law.Click for full article.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-civic-drama-of-socrates-trial?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=efc57348d4-Daily_Newsletter_20_September_20169_20_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-efc57348d4-69109725

Outline Of Next Lecture, Sunday 9/25/16 “The Impact of IMF, World Bank Polices on the Underdeveloped Countries”

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The attached is the article on the Impact of “IMF and WB policies on the underdeveloped countries. To prepare this topic I researched several sources, Google NYT and other renowned economists. The consensus is not very encouraging and most are skeptics.

 

I will be addressing their mission and polices as implemented over the past several decades in the underdeveloped countries.

 

 The Impact of IMF, World Bank Polices on the Underdeveloped Countries

The World Bank and IMF both collectively known as Bretton Woods Institutions were founded  in New Hampshire USA, by the delegates of 44 countries in July 1944. The goal of the conference was to establish a frame work for economic cooperation and development that would lead to more stable and prosperous global economy.  This was central to both institutions; their work is constantly evolving in response to new economic developments and challenges.

 

The IMF mission is to promote international monetary cooperation and provide advice and technical assistance to help countries to maintain strong economics.  IMF also makes loans and help countries to design policy programs to solve balance of payments problems with sufficient financing on affordable terms.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization of 189 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.

 

The World Bank Mission is to promote long-term economic development and poverty reduction by providing technical and financial support to help countries implement specific projects such as schools and health centers, providing water and electricity, fighting disease and protecting the environment.  World Bank assistance is generally long term and funded by member countries contributions.

 

Globalization

Globalization is a process where the free flow of ideas, people, goods, services and capital leads to the integration of economics and financial institutions. IMF and World Bank institutions primary goal is to uplift underdeveloped countries out of economic stagnation and poverty.  The IMF believes that economic growth is the only way to improve living standards in developing countries and is best achieved through globalization. The mission of globalization is altruistic but in some countries the outcome is not tangible, often mired in debt.  Globalization is the free movement of goods, services and people across the world in a seamless and integrated manner.

 

 

 

Cooperation Framework

 

The IMF and World Bank work in concert with each other regularly and at many levels on several initiatives to ensure effective collaboration in areas of shared responsibilities.

 

Difference between IMF and World Bank

The process of Globalization is facilitated by three major organizations:

World Bank (WB)

World Trade Organization (WTO)

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 

Data Collection, Reliability and Quality

 

The main source of data collection  on which polices are based comes from the individual member countries, “Recognized Statistical data analysis techniques” are not effectively applied in gathering data especially in the undeveloped countries, which often resulted in faulty policies.  Also there are some other problems in collecting economic, demographic and financial data from these countries, the lack of established institutions, or so poorly organized that data is often fudged to obtain funds. The most critical problems IMF and WB are facing in the UDC lack of democratic institutions, political participation and periodical elections. These countries are governed by military generals, dictators and corrupt politician. Funds are often misappropriated and squandered in useless programs.  To some extent that was the main reason often IMF and WB polices are criticized, of lack of accountability.

The other main problem is that countries receive funds and allow IMF and WB to frame polices for them which are not conducive to their cultural patterns, traditions and socio political structure. The Western standards are often at variance with their culture. In some cases policies destroyed cottage industries by implementing or introducing new technologies that create more income disparities.  Polices designed often resulted in creating a new elite class with money concentrated in a few hands.

 

Criticism of IMF Polices

 

Lack of transparency and involvement

The IMF has been criticized for imposing policy with little or no consultation with affected countries.

 

 The IMF allows wealthy countries to dominate decision-making process.

 

IMF policies promote corporate welfare.  Members of affected countries do not participate in designing loan packages.

 

IMF Polices hurt the environment. It has least concern for environmental impacts on lending policies and environmental ministries of and groups are included in policy making.

 

IMF pushes countries to deregulate financial systems.  

 

Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty

 

Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) have been imposed to ensure debt repayment and economic restructuring. But the way it has happened has required poor countries to reduce spending on things like health, education and development, while debt repayment and other economic policies have been made the priority…

 

Economist Joseph Stieglitz has criticized the IMF in recent years. He argues it is failing to take the best policy to improve the welfare of developing countries saying the IMF “was not participating in a conspiracy, but it was reflecting the interests and ideology of the Western financial community.”      

For example, when there is an oil discovery in a certain developing country
(that owes the World Bank) and the leader of that country is not ready to
cooperate (for an easy manipulation and take over by western corporations),
it will be decided that that government or country need to quickly get rid
of, most of the time through rebellion or war. A case in point is Iraq,
Libya, Sudan, etc.

 

Jeffrey Sachs, the head of the Harvard Institute for International Development said:

“In Korea the IMF insisted that all presidential candidates immediately “endorse” an agreement which they had no part in drafting or negotiating, and no time to understand. The situation is out of hand…It defies logic to believe the small group of 1,000 economists on 19th Street in Washington should dictate the economic conditions of life to 75 developing countries with around 1.4 billion people. “Source

 

Thank you

 

Imtiaz 

9/20/2016

Equality, Liberty, Justice and Wealth–The whole world is getting richer thanks to liberal ideas forged through revolution?*****Editors

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The Formula for a Richer World? Equality, Liberty, Justice

Economic View

By DEIRDRE N. McCLOSKEY

The French Revolution was one of the events that gave rise to liberalism, which in turn improved the welfare of the masses. National Library of France

The world is rich and will become still richer. Quit worrying.

Not all of us are rich yet, of course. A billion or so people on the planet drag along on the equivalent of $3 a day or less. But as recently as 1800, almost everybody did.

The Great Enrichment began in 17th-century Holland. By the 18th century, it had moved to England, Scotland and the American colonies, and now it has spread to much of the rest of the world.

Economists and historians agree on its startling magnitude: By 2010, the average daily income in a wide range of countries, including Japan, the United States, Botswana and Brazil, had soared 1,000 to 3,000 percent over the levels of 1800. People moved from tents and mud huts to split-levels and city condominiums, from waterborne diseases to 80-year life spans, from ignorance to literacy.

You might think the rich have become richer and the poor even poorer. But by the standard of basic comfort in essentials, the poorest people on the planet have gained the most. In places like Ireland, Singapore, Finland and Italy, even people who are relatively poor have adequate food, education, lodging and medical care — none of which their ancestors had. Not remotely.

Inequality of financial wealth goes up and down, but over the long term it has been reduced. Financial inequality was greater in 1800 and 1900 than it is now, as even the French economist Thomas Piketty has acknowledged. By the more important standard of basic comfort in consumption, inequality within and between countries has fallen nearly continuously.

In any case, the problem is poverty, not inequality as such — not how many yachts the L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt has, but whether the average Frenchwoman has enough to eat. At the time of “Les Misérables,” she didn’t. In the last 40 years, the World Bank estimates, the proportion of the population living on an appalling $1 or $2 a day has halved. Paul Collier, an Oxford economist, urges us to help the “bottom billion” of the more than seven billion people on earth. Of course. It is our duty. But he notes that 50 years ago, four billion out of five billion people lived in such miserable conditions. In 1800, it was 95 percent of one billion.

We can improve the conditions of the working class. Raising low productivity by enabling human creativity is what has mainly worked. By contrast, taking from the rich and giving to the poor helps only a little — and anyway expropriation is a one-time trick. Enrichment from market-tested betterment will go on and on and, over the next century or so, will bring comfort in essentials to virtually everyone on the planet, and more to an expanding middle class.

Look at the astonishing improvements in China since 1978 and in India since 1991. Between them, the countries are home to about four out of every 10 humans. Even in the United States, real wages have continued to grow — if slowly — in recent decades, contrary to what you might have heard. Donald Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University, and others who have looked beyond the superficial have shown that real wages are continuing to rise, thanks largely to major improvements in the quality of goods and services, and to nonwage benefits. Real purchasing power is double what it was in the fondly remembered 1950s — when many American children went to bed hungry.

What, then, caused this Great Enrichment?

Not exploitation of the poor, not investment, not existing institutions, but a mere idea, which the philosopher and economist Adam Smith called “the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.” In a word, it was liberalism, in the free-market European sense. Give masses of ordinary people equality before the law and equality of social dignity, and leave them alone, and it turns out that they become extraordinarily creative and energetic.

The liberal idea was spawned by some happy accidents in northwestern Europe from 1517 to 1789 — namely, the four R’s: the Reformation, the Dutch Revolt, the revolutions of England and France, and the proliferation of reading. The four R’s liberated ordinary people, among them the venturing bourgeoisie. The Bourgeois Deal is, briefly, this: In the first act, let me try this or that improvement. I’ll keep the profit, thank you very much, though in the second act those pesky competitors will erode it by entering and disrupting (as Uber has done to the taxi industry). By the third act, after my betterments have spread, they will make you rich.

And they did.

You may object that ideas are a dime a dozen and that to make them fruitful we must start with adequate physical and human capital and good institutions. It’s a popular idea at the World Bank, but a mistaken one. True, we eventually need capital and institutions to embody the ideas, such as a marble building with central heating and cooling to house the Supreme Court. But the intermediate and dependent causes like capital and institutions have not been the root cause.

The root cause of enrichment was and is the liberal idea, spawning the university, the railway, the high-rise, the internet and, most important, our liberties. What original accumulation of capital inflamed the minds of William Lloyd Garrison and Sojourner Truth? What institutions, except the recent liberal ones of university education and uncensored

The Formula for a Richer World? Equality, Liberty, Justice

Economic View

By DEIRDRE N. McCLOSKEY

The French Revolution was one of the events that gave rise to liberalism, which in turn improved the welfare of the masses. National Library of France

The world is rich and will become still richer. Quit worrying.

Not all of us are rich yet, of course. A billion or so people on the planet drag along on the equivalent of $3 a day or less. But as recently as 1800, almost everybody did.

The Great Enrichment began in 17th-century Holland. By the 18th century, it had moved to England, Scotland and the American colonies, and now it has spread to much of the rest of the world.

Economists and historians agree on its startling magnitude: By 2010, the average daily income in a wide range of countries, including Japan, the United States, Botswana and Brazil, had soared 1,000 to 3,000 percent over the levels of 1800. People moved from tents and mud huts to split-levels and city condominiums, from waterborne diseases to 80-year life spans, from ignorance to literacy.

You might think the rich have become richer and the poor even poorer. But by the standard of basic comfort in essentials, the poorest people on the planet have gained the most. In places like Ireland, Singapore, Finland and Italy, even people who are relatively poor have adequate food, education, lodging and medical care — none of which their ancestors had. Not remotely.

Inequality of financial wealth goes up and down, but over the long term it has been reduced. Financial inequality was greater in 1800 and 1900 than it is now, as even the French economist Thomas Piketty has acknowledged. By the more important standard of basic comfort in consumption, inequality within and between countries has fallen nearly continuously.

In any case, the problem is poverty, not inequality as such — not how many yachts the L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt has, but whether the average Frenchwoman has enough to eat. At the time of “Les Misérables,” she didn’t. In the last 40 years, the World Bank estimates, the proportion of the population living on an appalling $1 or $2 a day has halved. Paul Collier, an Oxford economist, urges us to help the “bottom billion” of the more than seven billion people on earth. Of course. It is our duty. But he notes that 50 years ago, four billion out of five billion people lived in such miserable conditions. In 1800, it was 95 percent of one billion.

We can improve the conditions of the working class. Raising low productivity by enabling human creativity is what has mainly worked. By contrast, taking from the rich and giving to the poor helps only a little — and anyway expropriation is a one-time trick. Enrichment from market-tested betterment will go on and on and, over the next century or so, will bring comfort in essentials to virtually everyone on the planet, and more to an expanding middle class.

Look at the astonishing improvements in China since 1978 and in India since 1991. Between them, the countries are home to about four out of every 10 humans. Even in the United States, real wages have continued to grow — if slowly — in recent decades, contrary to what you might have heard. Donald Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University, and others who have looked beyond the superficial have shown that real wages are continuing to rise, thanks largely to major improvements in the quality of goods and services, and to nonwage benefits. Real purchasing power is double what it was in the fondly remembered 1950s — when many American children went to bed hungry.

What, then, caused this Great Enrichment?

Not exploitation of the poor, not investment, not existing institutions, but a mere idea, which the philosopher and economist Adam Smith called “the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.” In a word, it was liberalism, in the free-market European sense. Give masses of ordinary people equality before the law and equality of social dignity, and leave them alone, and it turns out that they become extraordinarily creative and energetic.

The liberal idea was spawned by some happy accidents in northwestern Europe from 1517 to 1789 — namely, the four R’s: the Reformation, the Dutch Revolt, the revolutions of England and France, and the proliferation of reading. The four R’s liberated ordinary people, among them the venturing bourgeoisie. The Bourgeois Deal is, briefly, this: In the first act, let me try this or that improvement. I’ll keep the profit, thank you very much, though in the second act those pesky competitors will erode it by entering and disrupting (as Uber has done to the taxi industry). By the third act, after my betterments have spread, they will make you rich.

And they did.

You may object that ideas are a dime a dozen and that to make them fruitful we must start with adequate physical and human capital and good institutions. It’s a popular idea at the World Bank, but a mistaken one. True, we eventually need capital and institutions to embody the ideas, such as a marble building with central heating and cooling to house the Supreme Court. But the intermediate and dependent causes like capital and institutions have not been the root cause.

The root cause of enrichment was and is the liberal idea, spawning the university, the railway, the high-rise, the internet and, most important, our liberties. What original accumulation of capital inflamed the minds of William Lloyd Garrison and Sojourner Truth? What institutions, except the recent liberal ones of university education and uncensored