A Conversation with Thomas Pogge

This article was published on the Carnegie Council's Online Blog and Global Ethics Network in January: http://www.globalethicsnetwork.org/profiles/blogs/a-conversation-with-thomas-pogge

Yale University Professor Thomas Pogge spoke at Carnegie Council on January 19, and I summarize here his talk on why Ethics Matters in international relations:

Today's international and economic system is founded on the principle of "profit maximization at any cost," argues Pogge, and our challenge is to change this attitude. Pogge reflected on his education under the guidance of political philosopher and universal justice advocate John Rawls, and on how seemingly abstract theories of justice can, and should be, applied to international and social politics.
Pogge is renowned for his bold comparisons of today's population in the developed world with the German population of 1930s Nazi Germany. Like the latter, we are, according to Pogge, part of a huge organism that allows for terrible atrocities to happen to our fellow humans. Statistics show that one-third of all deaths today are premature due to poverty, and yet we do not actively seek any solution to this problem in our system.

Drawing on this comparison, Pogge explained that he was compelled to develop Rawls's theory of justice and apply it practically to society. Rawls argues that there are two principles of justice that must be met within society and that all rational human beings would agree to the principles if put under a "veil of ignorance"—that is, without awareness of their position in society. The first principle is that "each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others," and this is where Pogge builds on Rawls's work.

While Rawls argued that it was up to economists and politicians to satisfy this principle, Pogge argues that there must be clear instructions and guidance in order to change the system. His work with the Health Impact Fund is an example. Talking to Carnegie Council, Pogge explained that during research into the pharmaceutical industry he saw that the industry was driven by profit margins and competitive pricing rather than by aiding those in need of drugs. Pogge's proposal is to replace the incentive system of patents with a government-sponsored scheme of rewarding those companies that provide beneficial drugs to the most people, at the lowest prices and with the greatest health impact. This would be a way of providing social guidance that satisfies Rawls's first principle of justice.

While Pogge has chosen to focus on the pharmaceutical industry, he told the Council that his work could be applied to all areas of the international system, and that the system itself needs to address the question of incentives. When asked whether he was optimistic about the future, he responded by saying we need to design an economic system that meets the basic requirements of everyone, and that the way to do it is through education, which will take a long time to filter through the culture. The crisis we face today, however, offers a real opportunity to reevaluate and restructure our governance.

The century between 18 and 21.

I am 21. I am a politics student. I work in New York. And I am failing miserably to live up to my 18 year old selfs expectations. Sadly, I am not the only one.

Without meaning to sound too jaded about life, I am after all only 21, I have learnt that the expectations of an 18 year old are heady, ambitious ones and the realities one faces on entering your twenties limp along in comparison. Being a teenager is miraculous, painful, liberating, and very often drunken. Being in your twenties is really no different, and yet it is.

At 18 I felt I could rule the world and have government officials working for me by the time I graduated at 22. Friends and colleagues felt the same and together we entered the world thinking we were made of cast iron and nothing could stop our future plans. At 21 I have two years at university under my belt and have lived in both Berlin and New York, two of the most engaging cities in the Western world, and unfortunately, have realised I am not so much made of cast iron as of the aluminium of a coca - cola can - easily dented and easily crushed. This is all sounding very self - satisfying and so I will get to my point.

The years between 18 and 21 are the most altering. At 18 we are still relatively naive to the world yet at 21 we begin to realise that we are not who we thought we were and life is not how we thought it would be. At 21 we start to make important decisions that will affect the rest of our lives and more often than not, those decisions are a far cry from the decisions we think we would have made when we were 18. This all seems quite obvious, and yet it's not. Depression in people between the ages of 20 and 25 has risen over the last decade as many face the disappointment of life failing to live up to expectations. Television shows seduce us with high flying professionals, glamourous couples and dazzling lifestyles which all build up our expectations of how we should be and when life fails to match - we don't quite understand why.

Turning 21 is more than just being able to drink in the US or being one year older than 20, it is a step away from our expectations and a step towards the realities we all face in life. Who hasn't had that thought "oh god, I thought I'd have done so much more by now!"? 21 is when you really start to look at life and see that your 18 old self was maybe slightly overambitious and that life doesn't always go the way you planned.

That might seem like a very simple realisation to someone in their 30's, but having just turned 21, let me tell you - it's a pretty big thing.