A new word: Geopathology : Popularize it!

Geopathology (def.):

A malstructuring of international economic and political relations in an exploitative manner.

Examples include British and subsequently U.S. free-trade imperialism based on an unrealistic set of assumptions that depict raw-materials suppliers as being the main beneficiaries of trade with the leading industrial nations instead of falling into trade dependency leading in due course to monetary dependency, while debtor countries achieve mutual gains with their creditors instead of falling into debt dependency.

Of course nobody else but Michael Hudson could coin this phrase.  I like it, because it is not by definition a left-right word.  But, it is in definition a left-right word.

Michael says that he would like to popularize this term and the idea behind it.

Following is his short essay.

What does it mean to act in a sociopathic way on an international diplomatic level?

It means asymmetry. It means imposing a power relationship that makes other countries dependent and subject to pressure, ultimately military in character but applied more efficiently by purely disruptive and destructive actions to create instability. And most of all, to create international dependency systems.

That was the aim of Britain’s free-trade imperialism of the 19th century: It sought to make itself the workshop of the world, and other countries its suppliers of food and raw materials in what became the same sort of unequal exchange that it had imposed on its colonies from the 18th century down through 1945. Trade dependency, monetary dependency (national savings held in the mother country), military dependency (hosting mother-country military bases), pro-creditor laws to enforce an increasingly indebted periphery.

This free-trade imperialism was seamlessly adopted by the United States in 1945 – and used against Britain itself.

A key element in this geopathology (we need some new word for it) is academic economic theory to misrepresent free trade and capital movements as helping all parties and making them share equitably in the economic gains from trade and foreign investment instead of succumbing to increasingly deep trade dependency and debt dependency. My Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992) reviews the long evolution of free-trade theory as an enabling fiction of this geopathology. Whereas sociopathology is defined as a lack of empathy with other people, often leading to abusive relationships, geopathology is a deliberately abusive relationship to victimize other countries, e.g., through colonialism, trade and debt dependency, and outright military force and covert political meddling.

Geopathology (def.): A malstructuring of international economic and political relations in an exploitative manner. Examples include British and subsequently U.S. free-trade imperialism based on an unrealistic set of assumptions that depict raw-materials suppliers as being the main beneficiaries of trade with the leading industrial nations instead of falling into trade dependency leading in due course to monetary dependency, while debtor countries achieve mutual gains with their creditors instead of falling into debt dependency.