Sage's Path - The 'Protagonist'

To roll out structural adjustment programs across the Global South
These are programs that are basically designed to forcibly liberalize markets
And so, they privatize public assets, they cut social spending and healthcare and education, they cut tariffs and subsidies and protections, they cut protections on labor and the environment and so on
This is really where the story of poverty and inequality in the modern period comes into its own

Third worlds still bleed, "free markets" succeed
Stripping foreign homes of all that they need

Then we hand them a dire slave wage
And a new band-aid for the arm we chopped off

We've claimed, for this, the "protagonist"
Who consolidates all wealth in one place

Then misportray and manipulate
Statistics that say their poverty's waned

They beg for air, but we tell them straight back
To pick their own selves up by their own bootstraps

They work to the bone but they're going no where
While we dig them a well so we can call it square

​You know we knew that when we loaned them debt
They'd never, for once, be able to pay back
On with the lies, capitalist guise
Exploiting that which was nationalized

To neoliberate their resource, their wage, their water, & trade
Their decline, our gain

From far away, we again have the say
colonizing-this time with the bank

I can see you & I hear you as if you're near me
Although the distance is so far from me

Despite all the lies we told,
You will have the day you're owed

And all that we needlessly consumed
Will soon return to haunt us

Return to haunt us
Needlessly consume
Return to haunt us

We play the savior
While we're holding them down

Recommended Reading:
The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets by Jason Hickel

Written by:
Ryan Leemon

Publisher:
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