Hayward, Tim. "On the Nature of Our Debt to the Global Poor". Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol.39, No.1 (2008): 1-19.

Hayward, Tim. "On the Nature of Our Debt to the Global Poor". Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol.39, No.1 (2008): 1-19.

• Thomas Pogge has organized his arguments in favour of global redistribution of wealth to the extreme poor as a negative duty to not perpetuate an exploitative global system, meaning that not engaging in this redistribution is immoral. These arguments are much more powerful than positive duties, making the distinction and claim a target of criticism (1).
• Partially, this distinction between positive and negative duties is so important because libertarian philosophers are majorily butthurt about any obligation to do stuff. Therefore, if relieving poverty is a negative duty where inaction would be harming others, they are required to act; if it is only a positive duty than they can ignore it (3).
• Henry Shue argues that criticizes the lack of distinction between positive duties and negative duties in Dr. Pogge's conception. While Dr. Pogge conceptualizes relieve of poverty as a negative duty -- one to avoid doing harm by perpetuating an exploitative system -- performance of this negative duty requires taking action, making it simultaneously a positive and negative duty and rendering the distinction murky (2-3).
• The nature of this responsibility as a negative duty at all is questionable, as Dr. Pogge does not actually call for people to separate themselves from the contemporary exploitative global order, but instead to compensate individuals for these exploitative effects with money. This is a strikingly positive duty, even if it meant to replace an essentially impossible negative duty: that of entirely separate oneself from the global economic system (3-5).
• Dr. Pogge provides a number of reasons why the rich should compensate the poor, including the ability to pay, and a previous common history through which the bear responsibility for creating the conditions of contemporary extreme poverty (6).
• The ability to pay as a reason for the rich, as opposed to other groups, to end the evil of extreme poverty is insufficient to establish anything more than a general and positive duty to assist, not a negative duty (6).
• The author basically complains that Dr. Pogge does not use his second argument as the sole reason for why redistribution is justified, but instead continues to use it in combination with the first. Therefore, Dr. Pogge is technically wrong if you were going to be a bitch about it because he doesn't 'fully embrace' the argument (6-7).
• The author believes that whether institutional reform is complimentary to or an alternative to compensation for the exploitative economic order is unclear. This is a problem because it is an important distinction (9-10).
• The combination of a moral duty to end poverty and a moral duty to reform the current economic system so that it is no longer exploitative is troublesome, because these are very different responsibilities. The first duty is positive and can be accomplished without the later, whereas the later is negative and can exist once the former has been completed. Combinding them makes it unclear when one's responsibility for reform ends (11).
• Some critiques of Dr. Pogge have targetted his claim that development is tied with access to natural resources by arguing that institutions, governments, and other factors have greater effect on wealth. While this may be true, it does not actually diminish the role of natural resources, which remain a necessary component for development (12-13).
• The author proposes that the cost imposed by the rich upon the poor through their disproportionate control of natural resource wealth be framed not in money but in an ecological debt expressed in the by-products of past resource use: money and pollution. Giving everyone equal resources would ignore the fact that consumption is unsustainable, so instead the world needs to adopt a finite 'ecological space' for each individual which can despoil as they please (14).
• With this change in perspective, the wealthy are liable not just because they created the exploitative economic system historically, but because they continue to use it to take a disproportionate amount of resources. The acculated 'ecological debt' owed by these wealthy countries for past misuse should constitute the reparations to the global poor (14-15).
• "The basic negative duty is not to take more than one's share of ecological space, since doing so harms the poor and also future generations" (18).
• This conception of ecological debt and ecological space is also defendable from libertarians because it is based on a conception of the world in Lockean terms, where property-ownership and usage is only limited by others' rights of access. Since the world has limited resources, these property rights are limited, and reparations to the poor must be paid for past violations of their property rights to adequate natural resources (16-17).
• This conception support the solutions and conclusions of Dr. Pogge's arguments, but the author argues that it is also more defensible from critiques, especially libertarian critiques, and should therefore be adopted as an alternative justification (17).
• The emphasis on environmental practices allows blame and responsibility for compensation to be assigned to individual countries, persons, or firms rather than the general category of rich and powerful countries recommended in Dr. Pogge's original theory (17).