Life and Debt

I am actually waiting for this movie to become available on VHS. It would tie in perfectly with what I teach in my political economy class.

The movie clearly explains how rich countries can dominate poorer ones. It also causes one to re-think capitalism, competition and the "invisible hand."

This documentary perfectly captures the largely-ignored downside to globalization and the subsequent domination of the world economy by the U.S. and Western Europe. Namely, that undeveloped and developing countries continue to get poorer at the expense of the rich. This documentary presents the human side for discussions about the impact of multinational corporations on human rights abuses, price fixing in order to drive local competition into failure, environmental destruction as the result of World Bank-mandated "structural adjustments," etc. This is a must see for anyone who thinks that globalization is the only way for developing countries to compete with the rest of the world, and for anyone wanting to know the reasons behind all of those protests.

This is a really tragic and shattering film. I saw it a few days ago in New York at a lower East side cinema. It is a very honest and yet artistically distinguished portrait of the demise of a Caribbean nation - Jamaica. Interspersed with the cold, hard facts of how the international community has loaned the country money at predatory interest rates, and then dumped products on Jamaica's undeveloped markets, thus destroying native industries, are scenes of tourists enjoying Jamaica's bounties, oblivious to the nature of the natives' distress.

The woman who made this film narrates it herself, and she wrote a book on the subject before she made this film. So her credentials for knowledge about the subject are very strong. She employs a few cinematic flourishes, such as the blurred-edge-of-screen effect when she shows poor Jamaicans digging about in a garbage dump. The soundtrack is replete with great reggae songs, including the potent and topical title track.

Basically, this film is more important in its 90 minutes than about a hundred typically vapid Hollywood productions stacked back to back. This film teaches you something about the world - about the exploitation of the weak, about the myth of the "helping" nature of the IMF and the World Bank, and about the everyday lives of desperately poor third world people. All proponents of "globalization" should see this film, and then be required to defend their views to the people who have been victimized by globalization's cruel and relentless march. Similarly, everyone who works for the major media in the US should see this, and should be ashamed of themselves for defending the policies that have contributed to the downfall of a proud and beautiful people such as those of Jamaica. And silence is the major defense employed on behalf of such policies.

This film, though somewhat simplistic and emotional (for obvious reasons), does an excellent job of conveying to a broad audience some of the negative effects of globalization on a small, developing economy like that of Jamaica. One often hears critiques of international capitalism and the lending policies of the IMF and World Bank, but in most cases the criticism lacks pertinent examples of the direct impacts of globalization, or fails to make an effective case for why we should care. This film manages to do both, by providing relevant facts (increases in national debt over time, predatory interest rates tied to 'development' loans from the World Bank, critical industries undercut by international competition, etc.), and illustrating the ground-level effects on Jamaican citizens both visually and through numerous informative interviews. The film is interspersed with scenes of oblivious American tourists enjoying their vacations at expensive Jamaican resorts safely isolated from the surrounding poverty, to highlight the developed world's ignorance about the plight of Jamaica and similar underdeveloped countries.

As a precondition for aid, the IMF and World Bank usually require that developing countries drop any significant barriers to trade. When the doors are opened to international trade, lower-priced goods from abroad undercut local goods, and eliminate the market for any industry that cannot compete with the mass production that larger economies are capable of. While opening barrier-free worldwide markets for goods and services benefits the large economies already in a position to compete on such a scale, the sudden and forced introduction of 'free' trade to underdeveloped economies often disrupts domestic industries, which are given no opportunity to transition. While the consumer market is suddenly flooded with relatively cheaper goods (cheap enough to undercut the local competition, not to benefit consumers in any way), globalization fails to provide domestic producers with the inputs and capital (fertilizer, machinery, etc.) necessary to compete with producers abroad. As a result, the economy is robbed of its traditional sources of income and capacity for self-sufficiency, instead becoming reliant on weak foreign aid and tourism as national poverty continues to increase.

For anyone who wonders "why they hate us," watch this documentary and the mystery will be solved. It thoroughly documents how the US, the WTO, and the IMF have systematically destroyed every aspect of Jamaican economic opportunity and culture.

The US didn't abolish slavery in the 19th century; they simply outsourced it. Take a look inside the Kingston Free Zone and you'll see the slaves still at work. Visit a Jamaican banana plantation and learn about how the economy of a sovereign nation was subjugated in the name of "free trade."

In short, fellow fat Americans, pull your heads out of your globalizing butts and watch this film, and then try -- for just a moment, at least -- to put yourself on the other side of the coin. Imagine how you would feel about a foreign agency that took away your livelihood, that treated you like chattel, that demanded you stop making a living so that a transnational corporation could capture the last 5% of a market share.

Wouldn't you hate them, too?