“Justice as Fairness.”

In his magisterial A Theory of Justice, Rawls explained how separate individuals could converge on agreed standards for what is fair for the overall distribution of rights and valued primary goods.

How do we decide what is a fair set of standards? Rawls said that we should contemplate a hypothetical contract.⁵

Rawls says we should choose two sets of basic principles, the first being Maximum Equal Liberty and second, Equal Opportunity and the “Difference Principle.” Liberty is prior. Even from a self-interested point of view, we have a stake in equal liberty for all. If, after the veil of ignorance was lifted, it turned out that we were part of a minority, we wouldn't want to be oppressed by tyranny, even by democratic majority tyranny. So we would insist on civil liberties, such as constitutional protections of free speech, religion, and assembly. For matters not protected by basic liberties we would want democratic government so that our voices would be equal. Second, we would require Equal Opportunity and the Difference Principle. That is, we would want income distributed so that (a) it was open to fair competition (no discrimination) and (b) we would all receive equal income, unless differences in income helped the people at the bottom of the social ladder improve their condition. That is, we would reward the long hard work of surgeons with an income high enough to attract enough skilled practitioners away from sunbathing because, unlike sunbathing, surgery helps those needing medical care. We all would want the “difference principle” because we, too, might turn out to be among the poorest, least able, severely ill or handicapped, after the lifting of the veil.

These highly egalitarian principles, Rawls said, apply only to domestic society. In an incomplete argument in the Theory of Justice, Rawls said that international relations should be governed by traditional international law (the legalist paradigm, no aggression, etc.) and just redistribution should be in the domain of domestic determination.⁶

One World, “One People”—Global Justice as Fairness

Despite Rawls's brief rejection of international extension in A Theory of Justice that his principles warrant global application, many argue for just such an extension of his domestic theory.⁷

Similar extensions could govern distributive principles. Indeed, Charles Beitz, Thomas Pogge and others have reasonably objected that Rawls assumes unwarrantedly that societies are self-sufficient in international relations. Instead, they argue, societies are interdependent. So like interdependent individuals, nations who trade, invest, borrow and yet are unequal must redistribute goods fairly. Moreover, they must consider that—like the endowments or talents of the hypothetical domestic original condition—national natural resources are arbitrary from a moral point of view.⁹

By analogy the world, too, needs a hypothetical social contract in order to redistribute justly the products of social interdependence. We then should distribute goods behind a veil of ignorance as if we also did not know of which country we would find ourselves a citizen. The implications are unclear. How much would the wealthy have to tax themselves to implement a global difference principle in which all incomes were distributed in such a fashion that inequalities were permitted only to the extent that they served the needs of the world's least advantaged? However indistinct in its details it might appear, such a calculus would seem to give rise to a large duty to redistribute income to the poor across the globe. It would also involve ignoring, for distributive purposes, a world of many peoples and treating the world, for economic purposes, as if it were one people.

Peter Singer in a classic article draws on different foundational assumptions, adding a utilitarian argument that we should base our distribution of goods on values that are common to all mankind, i.e., saving lives, avoiding harm. Liberal and cosmopolitan in its assumptions, it treats all humanity as ends, irrespective of state borders or class division.¹⁰

Singer, in the midst of a Bengal famine, writing in 1971 focused on the most desperate problem of international distributive justice—the plight of the starving. Of course many other disasters have come since and there are more than enough crises to spark our continuing concern. He says that charity is not a sign of generosity, but an imperative duty of justice. And this point he makes in an unforgettable analogy.

Imagine walking by a shallow pool of water and seeing a two-year-old child drowning in it. What should you do? Obviously, you should walk in and save the child. And so, just that simply, you should aid people starving in the world.¹¹

But many would object:

Singer takes up each of the objections in turn.

A stronger objection is “What if it is truly costly?” Suppose the children are swept away in a deep, raging river and rescue is a risk to your own life. Then, Singer at last acknowledges, it seems different. There is no moral obligation; instead, rescue becomes an act for heroes.

But how much risk, or cost, is less than life-threatening? Singer argues that for a pure utilitarian, it is up to the point that your own life is also at risk. This means that one should, if necessary, reduce your real income to the poverty or starvation level. Mother Theresa, thus, was doing the right thing, but are any of the rest of us? Singer then provides a more accommodating version of his ethic. He suggests that at least we should reduce our income significantly in order to offer assistance—that is, by 40 percent, 30 percent, or 20 percent. Or, at the very least, we should do something—agitate, petition, or try to persuade the government to supplement our efforts to aid the world's desperate.

Powerful as this ethic is, it leaves many questions even for the well intentioned. Does it apply to lesser inequality, or does it only hold in an emergency?¹²

One World, Two Sets of Peoples: Neo-Kantian Liberalism

One alternative to “one world” global justice—whether Beitz's global fairness or Singer's utilitarian principles of global distribution—posits two zones of world politics, one at peace and the other not. It limits distributional claims founded on liberal principles to the first zone, where claims can be justified when liberty is accorded priority.¹³

International rights, it is argued, must be founded on moral freedom and individual self-determination. This foundation sustains a “democratic peace” among liberal republics. Although states throughout history have gone to war with each other to advance both their rational national and non-rational governmental interests, liberal democratic peoples have, by and large, respected each other's sovereignty and security. This is the argument of the liberal, Neo-Kantian “democratic peace” thesis, which holds that democratic peoples do not war against each other (though they sometimes do war against non-democratic peoples). The three reasons are that first, liberal peoples are responsible to the majority of electors, who, unlike monarchs and dictators, cannot regularly displace the costs of going to war on others. If, second, those electors respect liberal principles, they will respect the rights of peoples similarly free to express their rights, and negotiate rather than fight over differences of interest. And third, respect for rights of property and the benefits of commercial exchange will reinforce these moral commitments.¹⁴

The neo-Kantians argue that one should not separate the economic from the political features of a just social order. Nonetheless, freedom is prior to wealth, just as Rawls's Maximum Equal Liberty is prior to the Difference Principle. Only if the first can be secured, should one proceed to the second.

We should recall that there are domestic exceptions to the priority principle. Rawls and others have argued that freedom and democratic self-determination can be compromised for material well-being, if the community finds itself in a state of desperation. Then the natural principle of justice should operate, determining that the basic minimum subsistence of all is the first duty of public justice.¹⁵

The enormous social inequalities between the richest one-fifth and the other four-fifths of the world that characterize the present international order might—however implausibly—suggest that the same redistributive prescription of natural justice should apply internationally.

Extended to the global scale, however, this prescription runs up against fundamental liberal constraints. The first objection is that it is not clear that an effective global, liberal polity can be formed. Differing from the Utilitarians and (apparently) other advocates of One World justice, no neo-Kantian liberal would want to join a “Scheme of Global Social Cooperation” unless it included a complete global social contract.¹⁷

Part of the problem is institutional design. Immanuel Kant, for example, regarded global sovereignty, whether liberal in aim or not, as equivalent to global tyranny due to the remoteness of the representation it would entail.¹⁸

For some liberals, therefore, the redistribution that can be justified on liberal-contractarian grounds does not stretch beyond liberal government. Modern states may already be too large for effective liberal politics; it is even harder to argue that global government can be a liberal aim. Global reformers need to be able to guarantee that a scheme of global natural justice to assist the poor will end in effective, global equal liberty. Without the prospect of moral autonomy through representative government, this form of international redistribution is not justified on liberal grounds.

A second objection reflects the residual insecurity of the contemporary order. As long as there is no guarantee of international security, indiscriminate obligations to redistribute substantial amounts of income and resources (including redistribution to potential security threats) cannot be justified.¹⁹

And, lastly, additional concerns arise at the individual level. The priority of freedom reflects the assumption that it is freedom that makes life subjectively valuable. Thus obligations incurred in the name of freedom to distribute to the destitute at home or abroad have to have a cut off that allows individuals to pursue a self-determining life. Such cutoffs could apply domestically in liberal societies. They apply a fortiori given the much greater global inequalities. They should not be forced to be “moral saints” or be subject to “moral tyranny.”²⁰

It should be stressed that these objections to the application of just redistribution should not apply to cases of assistance to the destitute, particularly when they are reachable by neutral nonpolitical agencies, such as developmental nongovernmental organizations. Nor do those three objections apply with equal force to social justice within the zone of the pacific union of liberal states. Liberal states have not formed an international commonwealth or a comprehensive scheme of social cooperation, but they do share a common project of respect for individual rights and they respect each other's sovereignty; and so the second, the security, objection to redistribution has no force.²¹

As importantly, as Peter Singer has pointed out, these objections do not take into account the fact that thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of individuals in the contemporary world would be happy to emigrate to the existing “many peoples” of the developed world on existing, liberal terms of citizenship, fully accepting all the local, liberal norms and laws that currently hold sway. Moreover, as Singer notes, the existing international economic order could be radically improved in ways that meet many of the basic needs of the poor with even a minimal sacrifice (1 percent of income) of the wealthy—if most of the wealthy were persuaded to make this small sacrifice. Even though neither of these two measures is likely to establish a globally just economic order, each separately and both together could certainly advance the basic needs of the poor and be steps toward greater justice.²²

One World, Many Peoples: Rawls's The Law of Peoples

Even though advocates of global justice draw inspiration from Rawls's “justice as fairness” and even though Rawls himself draws on Kantian ideas, Rawls himself draws very different conclusions from both the advocates of global justice and the Neo-Kantian advocacy of discriminate international justice. He shares with the Neo-Kantians the view that the world is not an incipient single global scheme of cooperation. He shares with the advocates of global justice a reluctance to draw lines of discrimination between liberals and non-liberals.

Instead, Rawls starts at a different place—not with the global original position of all individuals but with the principles relevant to the relations among existing societies for the “international political world as we see it.”²³

Rawls claims that eight principles—those characterizing the core ideas underlying conventional international law—would be chosen:²⁵

1. Peoples are free and independent, and their freedom and independence are to be respected by other peoples.
2. Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings.
3. Peoples are equal and are parties to the agreements that bind them.
4. Peoples are to observe a duty of non-intervention.
5. Peoples have the right of self-defense but no right to instigate war for reasons other than self-defense.
6. Peoples are to honor human rights.
7. Peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions in the conduct of war.
8. Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime.

These, together with provisions for free trade and international organizations to supplement cooperation, would be selected in a second, world-level contract among “Free and Equal Peoples.”

Are these principles a realistic code of behavior for peoples? Rawls says they are. Rejecting realpolitik assumptions associated with the balance of power against power, he ascribes to the “democratic peace” the mutual security and toleration that provides a realistic political foundation for the eight principles of the Law of Peoples, among fellow liberal peoples. The more problematic issues are the duties liberal peoples have to those other peoples less advantaged (redistributive duties to the global poor) and the relations they have with non-liberal peoples (how wide is the scope of toleration?). Here Rawls rejects the arguments of both One World global redistribution and Neo-Kantian liberalism, but not altogether persuasively.

Just Distribution among Many Peoples.

Will peoples want also to adopt a “difference principle” to distribute income justly across borders? Controversially, separating his argument from the One World advocates of global justice, he says they wouldn't. This is because peoples will want to preserve their independence and self-determination.

Relieving the suffering of the poor so that they can experience health, well being and be self-determining, self-respecting effective members of their society applies everywhere. But the usual domestic arguments that favor more egalitarian distributions do not apply in an international society of peoples.

Rawls is aware that societies are interdependent in that they provide assistance to societies in need and trade with each other and invest in each other's economies.²⁶

Rawls discusses international distributive justice and his rejection of One World standards, in LP, 113–20.

But, like the Neo-Kantians, he does not find a commitment to a global social scheme of cooperation among the world's peoples. Instead, peoples have committed themselves to their own cooperative schemes. This is significant because peoples know that they may not all agree on distributive principles.²⁷

LP, 55.

Observing existing Free Peoples, Rawls notes that one sees that there are various kinds of liberal arrangements, ranging from social democratic to laissez faire societies. Many can be reasonable, given national circumstances, not just the most egalitarian.

Since they are not part of the same scheme of cooperation, the standards of effective participation will differ between societies. So, too, do the standards of what it takes to lead a life in dignity and have a reasonable chance of competing on the basis of equality of opportunity for societal and political positions.²⁸

LP, 114–15.

As partial evidence of this, we can see that existing democracies survive amidst considerable poverty. India at $1720 and Senegal at $1600 are among the poorest, ranked 106 and 111 of 143 countries by gross domestic product per capita, yet both are recognized democracies.²⁹

Gross domestic product per capita as ranked by the CIA World Fact Book (1999) and democracies/”free countries” as determined by Freedom House's Freedom in World (2004).

The justice of the international distribution of resources is also not crucial, according to Rawls, because states do not need equal resources in order to establish “decent” (to be defined below), self-determining domestic institutions. Indeed, imposing the same distribution restricts the freedom of choice of poorer societies.³⁰

Macedo 2004 effectively develops and elaborates on the importance of this point. For other arguments supporting views related to Rawls's on the importance of autonomy and the political foundation of justice, see Blake 2001 and Nagel 2005.

For example, some individuals in these societies will suffer because their preference for low population growth, high savings, and material prosperity will not be realized in the society in which they find themselves born. This is a morally arbitrary result. But so would be another society's imposing its preferences on the society with high population growth, low saving, and limited material growth.

Imposed redistribution also limits the legitimate freedom of wealthier societies, who have a right to choose higher over lower savings rates or lower over higher rates of population growth (both for the sake, for example, of greater future income). Redistributing income each generation would vitiate their choices, violating their rights to self-determination.³¹

Beitz 2000, 692, replies to Rawls that not redistributing international income makes later generations in the poorer country bear the burdens of choices that their ancestors made. This difference is not readily resolved on the basis of claims to self-determination.

Beyond Liberal, to Well-Ordered Peoples.

Which peoples can participate in the society of peoples, sharing the eight principles of international order? Which peoples would be likely to choose such a set of principles and have their choices be mutually and reliably respected? Some Neo-Kantians, as noted above, would limit the set of such peoples, which Rawls calls “well-ordered”, to other liberal peoples, excluding all those that do not meet the test of representative democracy, protecting legally established individual rights. In contradistinction, Rawls argues that the set of well-ordered peoples should include not merely liberal peoples but also other well-ordered peoples that he calls “decent societies,” which include “decent hierarchical societies.”³²

There are other forms of decent people, but Rawls does not focus on them.

These decent hierarchical peoples are to enjoy all the rights of other well-ordered societies, even including the right to respect embodied in not being enticed or or pressured into adopting liberal domestic principles.³³

LP, 61.

Why would such decent hierarchical peoples respect the eight principles? In part, Rawls says that they would because being non-aggressive and respecting basic human rights are part of what it means to be a decent people. Beyond that, he adds further definition of what a decent hierarchical people is: they are not likely to have cause to be aggressive. Decent peoples respect human rights to life (including basic rights: no torture, no starvation etc.) but also freedom of thought and religion. They have a consultation hierarchy such that rulers consult interest groups, composed and represented by their own members (e.g., women by women, etc.). They recognize a right of dissent and governments duly reply, though not necessarily comply.³⁴

LP, 75.

Unfortunately, we have no assurance that semi-authoritarian governments actually do abide by the eight principles, even with regard to their relations with liberal peoples—think of Wilhemine Germany in 1914 or late Czarist Russia and the aggressive policies they pursued in the outbreak of World War One.

Why would, why should, liberal peoples respect the decent hierarchical peoples? Why, the liberal might ask, respect them if they do not treat their own people with equal respect? Partly, of course, Rawls answers that they respect many human rights, do consult, etc.—they embody key liberal principles. Under what circumstances could one justify aggressive pressure when they so closely track liberal values? The answer is sure to be just about never. But Rawls asks more: that liberal peoples freely tolerate these societies and eschew even criticizing them, even though they do not accord equal rights to their members or treat their members equally from even a political point of view.

Can Rawls appeal to the stability of the democratic peace thesis to support respect for decent hierarchicals, as he did for tolerance and peace among liberal peoples? It doesn't appear so. Liberals respect other liberal governments because those governments represent individuals who deserve respect. But that very logic of representative respect that generates tolerance for fellow liberal peoples generates suspicion of governments that systematically remove themselves from democratic accountability to the majority. If those governments will not trust their own publics, why should we trust them? The record of war and cold war between liberals and non-liberals lends support to this, ranging from the record of tension and war on the one hand between liberal France and Britain, and semi-autocratic Germany on the other, before World War I, to the cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union after World War II. Lest we assume that this is solely a product of autocratic aggression, recall the long record of liberal imperialism in Africa, America, and Asia against societies that offered insufficient protection for trade and private property.³⁵

See Doyle 1983b.

Rawls suggests that it was insufficiencies in the equal protection of rights or inadequacies in the social protections that ensured fair equality of opportunity (such as unemployment or health insurance) that made liberal polities subject to manipulative elites and therefore aggressive against non-liberal polities. But the evidence for this is indeterminate. Semi-socialist Sweden and Denmark are less militarily interventionist than (more) laissez faire U.S., but in modern times the UK, France, and Italy (all with better social insurance than the U.S.) are no less interventionist.

As further evidence of a prospect for international toleration of hierarchicals,³⁶

LP, 69.

Rawls notes that in the ordinary domestic life of liberal societies, liberals do respect hierarchical institutions, such as the Catholic Church or the authority of almost all universities, which are not ruled democratically by all stakeholders, but oligarchically by presidents, trustees and faculty. But neither the Catholic Church nor a university is a fully comprehensive institution; nor are they sovereign institutions. In liberal societies most of their members have ties, livelihoods and affiliations outside those institutions and their members can leave them and join other more congenial institutions elsewhere, voluntarily. No such freedom of choice holds internationally. Individuals can leave sovereign states, but their freedom is practically constrained because they have no correlative right to enter other sovereign states.

Lastly, do they exist? Are there actually existing “decent hierarchical societies”? Rawls implies as much and, with obvious reference to the hierarchical rule and established religion that are associated with many Islamic societies, calls them “Kazanistans.”³⁷

LP, 69. Rawls notes that decent hierarchical societies are effectively ideal types or hypotheticals. There may not be any given society that exactly embodies all his criteria: “I do not argue against this contention, and indeed it may be true” (75n.).

However, just as there are few, if any, perfectly liberal democracies, so there are few, if any, perfectly decent hierarchical societies. If we take his criteria seriously but not absolutely, one can, however, identify a handful of such states (see Table A1). Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE, and maybe also Bhutan are among them. The best case can be made for Oman, with its consultative council (the Shura) and a record of domestic toleration. Qatar and Bhutan also appear to be close to meeting the Rawlsian criteria for decent hierarchies. Kuwait and Bahrain are moving beyond hierarchy to democratic governance (but with significant restrictions on who can vote). The others do not clearly meet Rawls' criteria.

Table A1: Candidates for Decent Hierarchical Societies

Although legislative institutions are weak, these states, including especially the Gulf states, benefit from small size. One recent article makes this point well:

The small size of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE offsets these weak [quasi-legislative] institutions. To varying degrees, all the Gulf ruling families and elites provide some access to their citizens by holding regular, but informal, meetings where citizens can air complaints, petition for redress of grievances, or otherwise try to influence decision-making. As one Bahraini interlocutor noted, “I don't worry too much about whether I have a vote or not—after all, I can talk to someone who talks to the ruling family simply by picking up the phone.”³⁸

Byman and Green 1999, 10.

One can wonder whether this is an elite privilege or whether everyone enjoys the same two degrees of separation from the sovereign. But another scholar makes a similar argument in regard to Oman. The Sultan of Oman makes an annual tour of the country to hear complaints and petitions from his people. At other times of the year, “if a matter is urgent, a person can wait outside the palace and stop the sultan's car.”³⁹

Riphenburg 1998, 69.

Do relations between liberal states and decent hierarchicals demonstrate respect and evidence stability? We lack systematic tests of this issue, and impressionistic evidence is contradictory. According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, after 9/11 the, “Gulf States, despite public sentiment that sympathizes with some aspects of Al Qaeda's anti-U.S. views, have been [unusually?] supportive of the U.S. military effort against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.”⁴⁰

Katzman 2003, 1.

Nonetheless, both the U.S. and the U.K. are spearheading a drive to democratize, modernize and liberalize the region. Whatever the merits of this new “Middle East Initiative,” it is not a hallmark of the non-critical respect that Rawls postulates.⁴¹

See the speech by UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw, “Partnership for Reform in the Arab World” at the Civility [sic] Programme on Middle East Reform (March 1, 2004) in http:://www.caabu.org/press/documents/straw-eu-fpc.html. National Security Adviser Condeleeza Rice described the communiqué on the Middle East Initiative as “a very strong affirmation of the need for reform and change in the Middle East, for the need for modernization in the Middle East because, in fact, you cannot have the kind of economic renaissance that needs to take place in the Middle East without doing something to enhance the creativity of (their) people.” (Cox News Service, June 8, 2004, 12:00 a.m.).

In short, evidence for a stable scheme of respect between liberal peoples and decent hierarchicals—a scheme that would significantly expand the society of well-ordered peoples—is weak. Decent hierarchicals do not appear to include the major non-liberal powers of the current world order, such as China, which does not regularly tolerate free speech, assembly, dissent or religion. Nor would they likely include other non-liberal states, such as Myanmar or Cuba, that are current objects of contention with the liberal world.⁴²

Rawls discusses none of these states. Whether they would fit as outlaw states depends for him on either or both their human rights records and tendencies toward aggression.

Decent hierarchicals do exist, but they are few in number. They are small and lack population, and there does not seem to have emerged any special sense of solidarity or respect between them and liberal peoples that would separate the decent hierarchicals from the relations that would characterize the foreign policies that shape international politics between liberals and nonliberals in general.

Outlaw States and Burdened Societies.

Outside the society of well-ordered states, Rawls postulates that there lie outlaw states and burdened societies. Outlaw states are states that do not respect the eight principles and do regularly violate human rights. As such, they do not merit respectful toleration by liberal peoples and, under extreme circumstances, may be justifiably intervened against in order to prevent or stop genocide or other extreme abuses of human rights.⁴³

LP, 81. Benevolent dictatorships, a fifth category of state, do not merit the respect accorded to decent hierarchical societies (because they do not embody consultation hierarchies, etc.) but since they do not violate basic rights and are not aggressive, they too have a right of self-defense and should not be aggressed against (LP, 92).

While well-ordered peoples will want to take prudent measures of defense against such outlaw societies, this does not mean that well-ordered peoples may treat them as objects for acquisition or exploitation. “Reasonable”, not merely rational, standards that include measures to eventually bring outlaw societies within the society of well-ordered peoples should govern policy. These standards can include criticism of the human rights violations of these outlaw regimes and other forms of more material pressure, including denial of membership in international institutions and “the firm denial of economic and other assistance.”⁴⁴

LP, 93.

Wars fought between well-ordered and outlaw states must, unlike so many wars in the past, be fought according to the standard laws of wars, providing due protection for noncombatants.

Burdened societies raise very different issues. They are not expansive or aggressive, but they lack the institutions and political culture, the material resources, and the physical and human capital needed to be well ordered. Well-ordered peoples have a duty of assistance to help burdened societies become well-ordered. This does not mean wealthy or equal. Rawls has previously argued that wealth (beyond a low minimum) is not required to become well ordered. Nor are extensive resources needed (so that they need not be distributed according to cosmopolitan, one world, standards of fair use). Culture and institutions, Rawls argues, are much more important in determining a well-ordered society than are natural resources. (Here he follows Amartya Sen's arguments about the importance of human rights as a means of securing the welfare of the least advantaged.) Advice, much more than money, may be useful to assist societies to appreciate the importance of protecting the interests of the least advantaged, for example, women (p. 110).⁴⁵

LP, 110.

In short, the aim is to assist all societies in becoming self-determining well-ordered (at least decent) participants in the society of peoples—nothing beyond this, Rawls argues, is needed or justified.

Despite his arguments against cosmopolitan duties of international economic distribution, it would be wrong to see his work as a brief for global capitalism, or present political and economic inequalities. The duties of assistance that he posits would be radical in their present implications. Preventing starvation and ending gross abuses of human rights presupposes that the wealthy and powerful states will fulfill large commitments to humanitarian assistance and international intervention. Assisting burdened peoples and those subject to outlaw states is for Rawls a true obligation. If it is limited by assistance until “decency” is achieved, that does not mean that achieving a decent society is any less ambitious a target in the current world where, for example, 250 million mostly rural sub-Saharan Africans live on less than a dollar a day, subject to climate and other agricultural vagaries that make famine an ever-present threat and their daily living precarious in the extreme.⁴⁶

For a discussion of realistic remedial measures, see the UN Millenium Project 2005.