The golden billion (Russian: золотой миллиард, tr. zolotoy milliard) theory is a conspiracy theory that a cabal of global elites are pulling strings to amass wealth for the world's richest billion people at the expense of the rest of humanity.[1][2][3] It is popular in the Russian-speaking world.[4]

The term was coined by Anatoly Tsikunov (writing as A. Kuzmich) in his articles in late 1980s and early 1990s which were assembled in 1994 in the book The Plot of World Government: Russia and the Golden Billion. The term was quickly popularized by Russian writer Sergey Kara-Murza.[5]

Details

According to Kara-Murza, the majority of all resources on the planet are consumed by the top billion people, referred to as the 'Golden Billion'. The Kara-Murza posits that if at least half of the global population began to consume resources to the same extent as the Golden Billion, resources would be too scarce.[6] This is partly based on the ideas of Thomas Malthus, in that emphasis is placed on the scarcity of natural resources. However, whereas Malthus was mostly concerned with finite global crop yields, proponents of a "golden billion" are mostly concerned with finite natural resources such as fossil fuels and metal. According to Kara-Murza, the developed countries, retain high-levels of consumption for their citizens, and endorse political, military and economic measures designed to keep the rest of the world in an industrially undeveloped state and as a raw-material appendage area for the dumping of hazardous waste and as a source of cheap labor.[7]

Counter-arguments

Available data indicates convergence of income to levels of developed countries for many developing countries.[8] Some economists point out that for the past few decades the economies of developing countries in all world's regions were in state of unconditional economic convergence.[9] [10]

In his book The Ultimate Resource, Julian Simon offers the view that scarcity of physical resources can be overcome by the human mind. For example, the argument of scarcity of oil could be overcome by some of energy development strategies, such as use of synthetic fuels.

Modern estimations indicate that mineral shortages will not become a threat for many centuries.[11][12] Resource usage trend analysis finds no imminent problems either.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Cherkaev, Xenia (May 16, 2022). "The Golden Billion: Russia, COVID, Murderous Global Elites". Anthropology and Humanism. New York City: Wiley. 47 (2): 387–393. doi:10.1111/anhu.12386. ISSN 1559-9167. PMC 9348499.
  2. ↑ Taylor, Adam (July 22, 2022). "The apocalyptic vision behind Putin's 'golden billion' argument". The Washington Post.
  3. ↑ Maynes, Charles (2022-11-21). "'Golden billion,' Putin's favorite conspiracy, explains his worldview and strategy". NPR. Retrieved 2022-11-29.
  4. ↑ "The Specter of Immigration". Russia in Global Affairs. Archived from the original on May 1, 2007. Retrieved 2008-01-14.
  5. ↑ Borenstein, Eliot (2019). Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. p. 97. ISBN 9781501735776.
  6. ↑ Кара-Мурза С. Манипуляция сознанием. М.: 2005.
  7. ↑ Кара-Мурза С. Манипуляция сознанием. М.: 2005.
  8. ↑ "Gapminder Tool of world income statistics".
  9. ↑ Patel, Dev; Sandefur, Justin; Subramanian, Arvind (February 23, 2021). "The New Era of Unconditional Convergence". Center For Global Development.
  10. ↑ Kremer, Michael; Willis, Jack; You, Yang (November 2021). "Converging to Convergence". New York City: National Bureau for Economic Research.
  11. ↑ "Mineral resource exhaustion is just a myth: study". phys.org. April 28, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
  12. ↑ Arndt, Nicholas T.; Fontboté, Lluís; Hedenquist, Jeffrey W.; Kesler, Stephen E.; Thompson, John F.H.; Wood, Dan G. (April 2017). "Future Global Mineral Resources". Geochemical Perspectives Letters. 6 (1).
  13. ↑ Pretis, Felix; Hepburn, Cameron; Pfeiffer, Alexander; Teytelboym, Alexander (May 25, 2023). "Are We Running Out of Exhaustible Resources?". ssrn.com.
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