SouthViews No. 283, 28 February 2025
Knowledge and Global Inequality
By Dev Nathan
This paper argues that the global capitalist economy has been and is built on the monopolization of advanced technological knowledge through trade secrets and intellectual property rights protection, controlled by companies and countries of the Global North. Companies and countries in the Global South use commoditized knowledge or knowledge in the commons. In the colonial period this was largely confined to the production of agricultural commodities and now to carry out the bulk of production functions. This division of knowledge and the difference in returns to monopolized knowledge and knowledge in the commons drives global inequality. The paper points out that countries of the Global South that moved out of the middle-income trap did so by advancing from just using knowledge to also creating knowledge. Finally, it argues that there is a need to reform the system of intellectual property rights in order to promote inclusion and not exclusion.