Written by: John Perkins, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Determining whether humanity is moving from a Death Economy toward a Life Economy is likely the most important question we now must answer.
What’s more, we need to understand how we ever got to this critical need for a turning point. Let me share my explanation.
I was chief economist at a major US consulting firm in the 1970s. Our two primary objectives were, first, to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to US companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster, and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and construction projects. And second, to bankrupt the countries receiving the loans (after they’d paid the US contractors, of course) and make the countries forever beholden to their creditors. This would make them easy targets when we needed favors — including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources. My official title hid the fact that I was an “economic hit man” (EHM).
We produced studies that projected economic growth 20 to 25 years into the future. The critical factor, in every case, was to “prove” that if the country accepted huge loans from the World Bank and its sister organizations and hired our companies to develop infrastructure projects like power girds, ports, and transportation networks, the economy would take off.
An unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that it would create large profits for the US contractors and make a handful of wealthy people in the debtor countries even wealthier — people that owned the industries and other businesses that benefitted from improved infrastructure. This would ensure the long-term financial dependence and political loyalty of governments around the world.
The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens of health, education, and other social services for decades to come was “just the cost of doing business.”
By the early part of the 21st century, a new breed of EHMs had spread around the world — to the US and other higher-income countries, as well as to lower-income nations. While the first EHM wave had been “development specialists” at a few companies like mine, the second wave included executives at thousands of multinational corporations, consulting companies, investment funds, and industry groups, as well as an army of lobbyists. They created what many economists refer to as a Death Economy. It describes a system based on maximizing short-term profits, regardless of the social and environmental costs, and that’s rapidly depleting resources and consuming and polluting itself into extinction. It causes climate change, species extinctions, income inequality, and many of other crises facing us today.
Then, around 2012 when Xi Jinping rose to power in China, a third EHM wave emerged. China’s EHMs learned from our successes and failures. They understood that the world was beginning to realize that the Death Economy had to end. They wrote into their constitution the goal of achieving an Ecological Civilization that’s based on transforming the Death Economy into a Life Economy.
A Life Economy strives to maximize long-term social and economic goals, as opposed to short-term profits. It pays people to clean up pollution, regenerate destroyed environments, recycle, and develop businesses that promote non-fossil-fuel energy and other renewable technologies.
Now, in 2023, China is beating us at our own game. Its EHMs have made China the leading investor and trading partner in countries on every continent. Its loans to lower-income countries total nearly as much as those of all other governments combined. As reported in Bloomberg, achieved China has reduced air pollution nearly as much in seven years as the US did in three decades. China also experienced average annual economic growth of almost 10 percent a year for 30 years and brought more than 700 million people out of the dire property. Despite all the repression and setbacks, China is seen by much of the world as a country that has accomplished advancements unlike no other country before.
We can justifiably criticize China for its treatment of the Uighurs, its human rights and freedom of press issues, its policies toward Hong Kong and Taiwan, and other repressive actions, but its model is attractive to lower-income countries that are struggling to pull themselves out of poverty.
Regardless, the goals of both China and US EHM strategies lead to one conclusion: If we want our grandchildren to inherit a viable world, it’s imperative that we agree to end the EHM strategy everywhere. Both countries must come together in a common goal of ending the EHM strategy and transforming the Death Economy into a Life Economy.
All living beings are threatened. While we can disagree on political, governmental, religious, and other issues, we must agree that none of those matter on a dead planet.
Could the world be moving from a Death Economy to a Life Economy?
I’ve found reason to believe that we’re beginning to do exactly that. As I speak at universities, environmental conferences, and international economic summits around the globe, I become increasingly convinced that we will defy what skeptics see as “impossible,” step back from the precipice, and head into a new era we might define as an Ecological Era.
The Death Economy represents our common enemy. People are acknowledging this and joining movements toward advancing Conscious Capitalism, Impact Investing, B Corporations, Benefit Corporations, carbon taxes, carbon offsets, renewable power sources, electric cars and mass transportation systems, recycling, and a myriad of other approaches. In particular, young people are answering the call for change as they recognize that no one survives on a dead planet.
History is full of examples of enemies that joined together to face a common enemy — France, England, Spain, and much of Europe in the 16th to 19th centuries; the United States and Germany, along with the US and Japan, after World War II and during the Cold War; and so on. History is written by those who defy probabilities and open themselves to new perceptions.
Changed perceptions generate new forms of action that then mold new realities.
Among the most important actions we can take include:
Reset perceptions. Understand that our mindsets and perceptions mold our realities.
Embrace a Life Economy. Believe that we not only can change, but we must change. The future depends on embracing lifestyles and business models that promote a Life Economy.
Inspire others to believe change is doable. Promote recognition that change is not only necessary, but is also doable. The COVID pandemic taught us that we can change, and we can learn from and embrace those changes.
Make your voice heard. Use whatever social media platform suits you to inspire people to take actions that transform the Death Economy into the Life Economy.
Support leaders who promote a Life Economy. Support politicians and businesses that commit themselves to leading us into a new Ecological Era.
John Perkins, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
John Perkins is a former chief economist who advised the World Bank, the United Nations, Fortune 500 corporations, and governments around the world. Now as a sought-after speaker and author of 11 books that have been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 70 weeks, sold over 2 million copies, and are translated into more than 35 languages, he exposes the world of international intrigue and corruption and the EHM strategy that creates global empires. His latest book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition – China’s EHM Strategy; Ways to Stop the Global Takeover, continues his revelations, describes China’s highly effective and dangerous modifications to the EHM strategy, and offers a plan for transforming a failing Death Economy into a regenerative, successful Life Economy. Learn more at johnperkins.org/economichitmanbook.
