Risse, Mathias. "Do We Live in an Unjust World?". St. Louis, Missouri: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2003.

Risse, Mathias. Do We Live in an Unjust World?. St. Louis, Missouri: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2003.

• The world contains massive inequalities in wealth and standard of living, but the author claims that these inequalities are not a direct consequences of the current international order (1-2). This is an important point, because it implies that there is a positive duty to help the poor, but not a negative duty because there was no direct harm (3).
• The author considers two claims that the global order is unjust: Thomas Pogge's claim that the poor are being excluded without compensation from a natural resource base which should be the common inheritance of mankind, and Dr. Pogge's claim that the contemporary global order is created by the rich and imposed on the poor, despite the fact that a better and more equitable order is possible (4).
• In response to the sovereignty of nation-states, which have considerable means to determine their own fate, the author considers another claim that, "Many individuals are, without compensation, excluded from the use of a single resource base that finds itself in common ownership of all of humanity. These individuals are so excluded by their own despotic governments, and these governments can come into and remain in existence because the international order [...] allows them to do so" (5).
• The author responds by claiming that most coups and dictators are brought to power primarily by domestic factors and that international influence is minimal. Also, these dictators remain ultimately responsible for developing institutions, the international community cannot be blamed for this (25-26). I'm sure that Brazil and Argentina had nothing to do with the overthrow of Salvador Allende. The author's rejection of international influence in creating dictatorship ignores the entire history of the Cold War.
• The author further defends the division of resources or wealth between rich and poor countries instead of rich and poor persons on the basis that countries were created organically by national communities. If a national group wanted to leave it could under the law of self-determination, meaning that the state-based international order is just (27). This is just such a fucked up claim. Mainly because when have dictatorships allowed states to practice self-determination.
• The claim that the current institutional order is unjust is actually split into four distinct claims which would make such an order unjust: 1) the order is imposed by rich countries on poor countries, 2) there are alternatives to this order which are less shitty, 3) the order causes inequality, 4) the inequality cannot be tied to non-human factors. The author accepts that the institutional order is imposed and that it creates inequalities stemming from human factors (30).
• The author claims that because institutions must be developed organically and domestically, no amount of international assistance can help poorer countries. This means that, since the impetus needs to be domestic, no change in the international order will change the fortunes of poor countries (30-31).
• The claim that the global economic order causes impoverishment is necessarily counterfactual because no alternative system is in place. This means that we cannot know if poverty is caused or prevented by the contemporary order, meaning that claims of the order being unjust are unfounded (33-36).
• The claim that the exclusion of the poor from possession of the world's natural resources is unjust depends on the claim that the world's natural resources belong to humanity in general (8). Either natural resources are the common inheritance of mankind or are unowned but subject to certain justice-based restrictions on use. The latter claim is more realistic, since work is required to extract, produce, and refine resources, triggering some Lockean form of ownership (9-10).
• Many poor countries are actually resource rich, and moreover have the right to nationalize ownership of those natural resources. Poor countries are not actually prevented from accessing resources on grounds of either Lockean labour or common ownership (10-11).
• It could be claimed that wealthier countries have managed to claim better or more useful resources than poor countries, but this is generally untrue (11).
• The author specifically disregards the ecologic effects of resource extraction and use, which disproportionately harm the global poor (11). No resource is given to ignore this unequal distribution of harms.
• The author considers three reasons for national prosperity or poverty: geography and natural resources; access to globalized markets; and national economic, legal societal institutions. National institutions affect the capacity of countries to benefit from geography or engage with international markets in positive ways, showing that national institutions are ultimately the source of wealth, not geography or possession of natural resources (12-13, 17).
• Since institutions are the source of national wealth and their sources have to be domestically and organically created, there is little justification for economic assistance to poor nations with bad institutions. Development has a paternalistic assumption that Westerns can import institutions, which need to be build domestically. Aid should be preserved for cases like famine where immediate action is required (18-20). In short this view is: poor people didn't develop good institutions so that's why they are poor -- what even is colonialism? -- and that means we don't have a duty to help them, in fact we shouldn't help them so that they can sort themselves out.
• The unequal access of the world's population to resources is only unjust if resources are commonly owned and if possession of natural resources was key to creating wealth. Since natural resources are better understood according to Lockean labour and institutions are much more important than natural resources in determining wealth, the exclusion of the global poor from natural resources cannot be considered unjust or a causal reason for their poverty (14).
• Even if institutions are recognized as the source of national wealth, the actions of wealthy countries certain played a part of shaping the institutions of poorer countries. For example, the utter lack of institutions in Zaire capable of dealing the Congo Crisis was a result of shameful conduct of the Belgian colonizers (22).
• The author argues that while there certainly were distinct individuals responsible for actions like this, too much time has passed and the current Belgians are not responsible for what is happening to the current Congolese. The passage of time obviates any obligation on the part of the rich world towards the poor world for its past actions in degrading or retarding the development of institutions (23).
• The author's claim that the current global institutional order leads to both positive and negative outcomes for the poor should only apply to the international system. Whereas domestic systems of oppression have obvious villains and solutions, the inequalities of the global order do not have a clear source which could be remedied. This means that we cannot know if a better system is possible, and thus the current order is not manifestly unjust (38-39).