Nick Dearden
GlobalJusticeNow
A group of mostly rich countries used the World Economic Forum in Davos to call for negotiations on digital trade. This is ‘next big thing’ in trade talks: trying to create global rules to govern rapidly increasing online trade and accompanying flows of data (the so-called ‘oil’ of the new economy).
The massive rise in new technologies and online communications is transforming the world economy. And of course, it’s true that new technology carries with it the power to transform many people’s lives, to help our efforts to wipe out poverty, deliver healthcare and education for all, and halt environmental destruction.
But, in the wrong hands, this technology can also do precisely the opposite. What’s being dubbed the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ at Davos is energising global corporations, as they look for new ways to harness our data, cut their costs and increasingly monopolise global trade. To create a set of rules which actually gives these big tech companies – from Facebook, Amazon and Google to new platforms like Uber and AirBnB – permanent power over these new technologies, anywhere in the world, would be a disaster.
And this capture has resulted in vast wealth. The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, is now worth well over $100 billion, a fortune which increased by $24 billion last year. While the poorest half of the worlds’ population saw their wealth fall by 11% last year, Bezos is one of the global billionaires whose wealth grew 12% last year, according to Oxfam.
So technological change, grafted onto a world experiencing staggering levels of inequality, will only accelerate that inequality. We need to take action, in the way action was taken against the robber barons in America in the early twentieth century – regulating them, taxing them (and their owners), breaking them up where necessary, and investing in public development able to challenge these behemoths.
Read more
GlobalJusticeNow
A group of mostly rich countries used the World Economic Forum in Davos to call for negotiations on digital trade. This is ‘next big thing’ in trade talks: trying to create global rules to govern rapidly increasing online trade and accompanying flows of data (the so-called ‘oil’ of the new economy).
The massive rise in new technologies and online communications is transforming the world economy. And of course, it’s true that new technology carries with it the power to transform many people’s lives, to help our efforts to wipe out poverty, deliver healthcare and education for all, and halt environmental destruction.
But, in the wrong hands, this technology can also do precisely the opposite. What’s being dubbed the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ at Davos is energising global corporations, as they look for new ways to harness our data, cut their costs and increasingly monopolise global trade. To create a set of rules which actually gives these big tech companies – from Facebook, Amazon and Google to new platforms like Uber and AirBnB – permanent power over these new technologies, anywhere in the world, would be a disaster.
And this capture has resulted in vast wealth. The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, is now worth well over $100 billion, a fortune which increased by $24 billion last year. While the poorest half of the worlds’ population saw their wealth fall by 11% last year, Bezos is one of the global billionaires whose wealth grew 12% last year, according to Oxfam.
So technological change, grafted onto a world experiencing staggering levels of inequality, will only accelerate that inequality. We need to take action, in the way action was taken against the robber barons in America in the early twentieth century – regulating them, taxing them (and their owners), breaking them up where necessary, and investing in public development able to challenge these behemoths.
Read more
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