Today I read this article http://www.nyteknik.se/art/46902 published 060906 with the title GATES FOREVER. (Ny Teknik is "Sweden’s Larges Technical News Magazine" according to their homepage and happens to be a magazine my dad reads and refers to on an every-week basis.) Here comes a translated and a little abbreviated English version of historian Lars Ilshammar's article.
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Can the wealthiest man on earth also be the nicest? Bill Gates is systematically giving potions of his astronomical wealth, which is greater than the GNP of many countries in the world, away to different projects to fight diphtheria, tetanus, measles, TBC, polio, whooping cough, malaria and HIV and the likes. He even demands of the scientists that receive his money for research that they share their results with others instead of competing with them.

So now 'everyone' loves the geeky billionaire from Seattle that we not so long ago depicted as a greedy capitalist that made an insane amount of money making us dependent on his ill functioning software. Capitalism shows a nice face as opposed to the old face of ordinary greediness and ruthlessness - and Gates is all of a sudden an exemplary citizen.

So, what’s up? Did his bad conscious catch up with him or did he realize that he wouldn’t be able to spend it all? Or is it just an investment in a merchandize that is so expensive that it's not even available on the market. With a gigantic donation one can acquire what's not for sale - the possibility to rewrite ones own history. Anyone in doubt can compare what is written about the philanthropic ‘Saint’ Bill and what was written about greedy Gates, lord of the dark, a couple of years ago. What more, as a bonus he's making himself immortal.

The person that becomes the richest man on earth turning people in to slaves under the rule of windows is just another imperia-builder and will soon be forgotten. But the person that gives more than anyone else fighting disease and improving world health will be remembered forever, side by side with Rockefeller and Nobel.

So whatever the purpose: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has once more made a really good investment.
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My comment:

First of all I don’t know much about in what way Gates acquired his fortune - and I’m not out to judging him or anyone else. BUT, in general it seems to me that people use the system to their advantage and then when they have power/wealth they give away what they don’t need constructing a ‘nice guy’ image of themselves. Sure it’s better than staying poor, complaining about it and not trying to do anything to change the situation OR getting filthy rich and use the money to build an army and sponsor child prostitution. BUT neither would I want to say that if you can get rich without breaking the law in your country you’re automatically mister nice guy. You can still have gotten to where you are by using peoples weaknesses, which is the case in areas like prostitution, betting, alcohol, tobacco, drugs – or anywhere where you abuse you power over people and their needs to obtain what you want. It’s like if I would make someone trip and hurt themselves by spreading pebbles on the boardwalk and them come to their ‘rescue’ helping the person up and caring for its wounds. That would not make me mister nice guy now would it!

What I’m getting at is that I’m so sick of seeing people taking with one hand and giving with the other, destroying with one hand and building with the other. And in a lot of cases the first is doing more work than the other. On a small scale – people flying hither and dither across the world, consuming and consuming whatever and then scolding their, or other peoples kids, for throwing a piece of paper on the ground. On a big scale – the five permanent members of the UN Security counsel, France, Russia, China, the UK and the US, being responsible for 88% of the export of conventional weapons in the world (La Farola September 2006). I don’t want to be the pessimist here but we have to try and see things in a wider perspective, the sum of our actions. Of course we should always encourage good initiatives and intentions but not stop at that. To finish this of and get something else done today “Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.” – Albert Einstein

How come that when you learn a new word it tend to pop up wherever you look? I learnt about "flexicurity" today in class, Derecho Internacional del Trabajo, and now when I was reading DN, one of Sweden's two biggest daily newspapers, the first article I read was on how our new Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfelt is in Lahti for the ongoing EU Heads of State or Government meeting. And what is the theme for the meeting? Well flexicurity of course! How Europe is going to be able to handle the globalization and the tougher competition, combining more flexible labour market and continuously strong social security. It is a challenge and of outmost importance since we citizens do not want to give up any of our rights and security no matter how costly they are. In that case it is really in our personal interest that the standard on minimum wages, workers rights and the likes is raised around the world - we can not compete with production in countries where the workers are totally exploited, working 14h/day without any social security. So...hang on...if their wages and working conditions go up the prices of the goods and services we buy get more expensive...oh, so globalization, international competition, the opening up of markets, kind of forces us to raise their wages and working conditions otherwise we won't be able to compete with them it terms of production costs! So do we have to choose btw keeping our wages and social security + higher prices on imported goods OR lowering our wages and social security more to 'their' level but keeping the low prices. I'm sure what the EU Heads of State or Government were discussing was how to get both - that seems to be the way homo sapiens work (is it greediness or smart resource maximising...)

Oh that's all for today...I'm beat...and hungry...and it takes me 1.5h to get "home" to Paracuellos.

Ok, another week of classes, I’m slowly getting the hang of how things work around here. By the way - I just wrote my first entry in the Spanish version o Wikipedia, on meänkieli. Which is the dialect of Finish that is spoken in the region of Tornedalen in the north of Sweden where I come from. Well, whether or not Meänkieli is a dialect or a language of its own is disputable, as well is whether I’m from Tornedalen or not but Meänkilei is acknowledge as one of Sweden’s five minority languages and I was born in Tornedalen. I was never taught Meänkieli though but plan to learn it, I try to pick up a few words every summer when I’m up there.

In class yesterday we got into the discussion on what to do about the poverty in the world. Interesting class, quite a few got a bit irritated by our teachers attitude on personal responsibility. It is hard to argue that we are all responsible for our lives and must be the ones that improve our situation since we’re born into so different societies and find ourselves in conditions that differ greatly from those of other people. But the truth is that responsibility and help to take that responsibility is what makes people develop and build strength and self-esteem. That is not to say that we can blame people for the situation they are in all the time – that is another story. The more I learn about the world the less I consider subsidies and the like as something good. We have to give people a chance to take care of themselves, give them the tools to use the possibilities they have and not turn them into passive help-receiving victims.

No I have to go to class!

At last! The Internet is working again, for a while at least. Seems like the router lives it owns life, and Telefonica is the company from hell. Michele and Jodi have phoned the company several times and the answer they get is that someone can come and look at it - if Jodi and Michele pay for it! That’s absurd, as Michele puts it - This would NEVER happen in the states, they would say "yes Ma'm we're sorry about that" and send a guy over right away to fix it!

Anyhow, I got green lights from my teacher regarding changing the language of this blogg to English. It's a relieve to me since in English I can write what I want and not just what I can. Which means that in Spanish I cannot write a lot of things due to that I do not know how to put it down in words as opposed to that I can explain almost anything in English. Even though I do not claim to write perfect English - at all.

Well time to put down a few words on economy. I was reading some campaign material from Engineers without borders that was placed in the corridor at the university. Did you know that to have an internet connection in Nepal you'd have to pay 278% of the average salary and the corresponding percentage in the US is 1,2%? Well neither did I. I have of course an understanding of that to lack access to communication it is a type of poverty that makes it even harder for countries in development to catch up. We "western" countries have very many of the advantages, technology, education, advanced healthcare and so on, that helps us "develop" even more while they have cheep labor and fewer rules and less legislation, on toxic pesticides and the right to form workers unions for example (I've surely left something important out, but you get my drift). That is what they can compete with and sadly enough that means low wages, hardly any workers rights, ruined environment and workers health and so on. This is nice, I can write whatever! Since it's a blogg and not an academic essay or something that requires that I cite sources. Anyhow, the things that would help up the wages and better the working conditions for people in developing countries are the same things that makes the merchandise they sell us and the services they provide us with more expensive – which means that we couldn’t afford as much of it and that is surely considered as a lowering of our living standard (since that is often measured in quantity and not necessarily in quality).

What it all boils down to is that if what I have stated above is fairly correct the economical system that we have in the world today makes it kind of impossible, not impossible - but kind of impossible, for the have nots to catch up with us if we’re not to sacrifice if not our current living standards so at least some of our future rise in living standard to give others a better chance of catching up. Now, that’s all I have to say for today, and...oh yea – I’m on it!

Ok, como el profesor no nos explicó bien de qué trata el curso yo hice un busqueda en google, wikipeda me dió esto "Un sistema económico, es un mecanismo (institución social) que organiza la producción, distribución y consumo en el beneficio de una sociedad particular." Y además commentando a sistema económico mundial: "El carácter de organizado se refiere simplemente a la interrelación mayor o menor de los elementos (en este caso las naciones y sus principales agentes económicos) y no implica ninguna valoración de tipo moral o político."

Puede parecer muy obvio pero leí el resto de lo que me salió en wikipeda sobre sistema económico mundial y ya lo tengo mejor cuadrado en mi cabeza.

Aquí viene mi primer commentario

En la revista la Farola número 261 - comprado el día tres de octubre 2006 - leí un articulo llamado G8: expotadores globales de armas. El autor Héctor Oliva habla del comercio internacional de armas usando datos publicados por Intermón Oxfam y Amnistía Internacional. Según el artículo los ocho países más ricos del mundo invierten en la industria armamentística diez vezes más de lo que destinan a ayuda al desarollo y que los mismos países son responsables del 84% de las exportaciones mundiales de armas.

Eso junto con lo que he leído trabajando con el movimiento de comercio justo me dice que el sistema económico mundial no funciona bien, para nada. Primero no pagamos un sueldo digno a los que cultivan nuesta comida y cosen nuestra ropa en países en desarollo, luego vendimos armas a sus goviernos coruptos y a sus gerillas y al fín de todo les damos un poco de todo de nuestras ganacias como ayuda al desarollo. Para mí eso es como si yo hubiera pegado a alguien hasta que no se pudiera levantar y luego le hubiera dado una cura y algo para tomar mientras preguntando por su salud y diciendole que tiene que intentar a levantarse.

Tenemos que tener una perspectiva más amplia.

Un ex-estudiante me dicho que la asignatura Sistema económico mundial era demasiado duro, pero curiosa que soy me fuí a la clase y resulta que me parece muy interesante y que lo voy a tomar. Por eso estoy construyendo este blogg, para escribir aquí después de cada clase - como parte del aprendizaje. Me imagino que con el tiempo voy a saber mejor para qué sirve el blogg y que escribir aquí. Allí está mi primer intento.