The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

 
媒體好評推薦：
　　l   「揭露遍及全球的離岸金融中心、法律黑洞、自由貿易區……作者從當代避稅天堂的歷史開始談起，但研究的範疇更為宏觀……這本書的成就令人印象深刻。」——出版人週刊（Publishers Weekly）
　　l   「犀利觀察了國家和超級富豪們，如何運用金融及語義的迷宮，保障自身的財富。」——柯克斯書評（Kirkus Reviews）
 
　　一般民眾認為各國政府理當在劃定的國界內行使管轄權，清楚規範所屬公民的權利與義務。然而，權貴們卻運用特權和金錢，開闢出數以千計的特區，組成一個超越政府管轄權的平行宇宙！國家、企業和超級富豪藉這個特權黑洞，保護自身財富，同時加劇了全球的不平等。
 
　　身為資深記者的作者，從被稱為漏洞之城的日內瓦開始談起，她形容這個城市的自由港倉庫是完全不受國家監管的實體空間。在世界上的許多角落，超級富豪在顧問、律師、金融業者的協助下，以「法律駭客」的手段，蓄意連結成監管治理上的特權黑洞。本書解析離岸金融中心、自由經貿特區等當代避稅天堂的起源與發展，研究範圍涵蓋了殖民主義、資本主義、科技、傭兵、電信業、海事法、藝術收藏等，描述不公平的機制如何運作並自我保護，將一個隱身在我們所處世界之下的另一個平行宇宙，清楚呈現在讀者眼前，並剖析了由此而來日益加劇、不平等的困境。(文/博客來編譯)

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S TOP 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2024

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

＂Vivid, revelatory, and politically unpredictable...What bothers Abrahamian, in the end, isn’t the anarchic but the unfair; if capital is free, people deserve the same respect.＂ -- Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker

＂A season of unrest looms ahead, and The Hidden Globe lays out the unvarnished truth in a luminous feat of reportage.＂--Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist’s riveting account exposes a parallel universe that has become a haven for the rich and powerful.

A globe shows the world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside their borders, however, another universe has been engineered into existence. It consists of thousands of extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, and increasingly for the benefit of the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this hidden globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed their only commodity: bodies, in the form of mercenary fighters. Over time, economists, theorists, statesmen, and consultants evolved ever more sophisticated ways of exporting and exploiting statelessness, in the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers, charter cities controlled by foreign corporations, and even into outer space. By mapping this countergeography, which decides who wins and who loses in the new global order--and helping us to see how it might be otherwise--The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, the London Review of Books, and other publications. The author of The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen, she has worked as an editor at The Nation, an opinion editor at Al Jazeera America, and a reporter for Reuters. She grew up in Geneva and lives in Brooklyn.