The massive corruption common in so many developing countries would be quite impossible if Western countries did not provide convenient opportunities to ship ill-gotten funds out of the country. It wouldn't make much sense for a ruler to store in his basement large quantities of stolen cash in his own country's currency. A corrupt ruler wants to be able to keep this money safe and to be able to spend it. And for this, he needs to convert it into a Western currency and store it in a bank abroad, where it can also earn investment returns and be bequeathed to his heirs.
Thomas PoggeIf you ask yourself who is paying for pharmaceutical innovation today, the answer is that it's the more affluent populations paying for still-patented advanced medicines at the pharmacy, for comprehensive insurance coverage or for a national health system.
Thomas PoggeIt is for the poor people's sake, above all, that we urgently need more unity and better organization and need to concentrate our reform efforts in order to really to achieve reforms, one by one.
Thomas PoggeSevere poverty is getting better by some measures, but it's also becoming ever more scandalous because it is now so easily avoidable.
Thomas PoggeSocial rules are susceptible to moral analysis. This is, again, relatively familiar in the domestic case, where we now condemn slavery as unjust. And when we affirm this judgment, we're not merely saying that all those people who owned slaves were unethical people; they shouldn't have done that. We do believe this, but that's only part of the point. We also believe that the fugitive slave laws were unjust.
Thomas PoggeCountries compete in offering easy working conditions to their banks. In many jurisdictions, you can deposit money anonymously with no questions asked, even if the accepting bank knows that it derives from criminal activities.
Thomas PoggeIf the Health Impact Fund were to be instituted, a single company would be in charge of a medical product all the way from its conception to the health improvements realized by actual patients. The company would be paid for health impact, and it would have to arrange the entire pipeline in between - all the steps of invention, of clinical testing, of getting marketing approval in many different countries, of wholesalers and retailers and prescriptions and so on - in a holistically optimal way.
Thomas Pogge