A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

tariff protections. And they’re spending $56 billion a year on the thing
that they said they wanted to do. And of the $56 billion, maybe only 30
gets there in cash. So … the Martian would get back into his spaceship
and say there’s really no worry about the Earth. They don’t even do what
they say they’re going to do.’ 67
It could rightly be argued that these are interesting ciphers that show
very well in which surrealistic world we live, but that eradicating poverty
or misery is more than mathematics. It is more than transfer of money,
it is in the first place about other structures and it’s far from certain that
the investment of the needed money – yearly some 80 billion or 0.15 %
of GDP of the rich countries 68 - would really change the situation in a
fundamental way. And beside it, what about sustainability? So two questions
force themselves upon us. 1. Is a high human development possible
with a low GDP per capita? 2. Can a high human development be
combined with a small ecological footprint?
For both questions, Cuba shows the answer is affirmative and I suppose
the same is true for the Indian state Kerala. 69 Cuba has a GDP per capita
that is about ten times lower than the countries of OECD, worldwide it
ranks on the 75 th place. But its Human Development Index exceeds
even that of Belgium, a country know for one of the best systems of
social security of the world. 70 The chart below is revealing. 71
67 February 24, 2004, http://www.worldbank.org.md/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/
ECAEXT/MOLDOVAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:20177096~menuPK:34475~pagePK:34370
~piPK:42770~theSitePK:302251,00.html.
68 UNDP, et. al., Implementing the 20/20 Initiative. Achieving universal access to
basic social services, September 1998, p. 20.
69 Vandepitte M., ‘15 jaar na de val van de Muur: het onbekende Kerala’, November
17, 2004, http://archive.indymedia.be/news/2004/11/90238.html.
70 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD; CIA, The World Factbook,
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html; UNDP,
Human Development Report 2010, Washington 2010, p. 143 and 146..
71 All dates stem from UNDP, Human Development Report 2010. A score of 100
means you are the best of the world and 0 the worst of the world. The scores
among them means your position relative to both. If you have for example a score
of 80%, that means that you are one fifth of the difference between the best and
the worst, apart from the best.
125