The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist account exposes a parallel universe of the country's laws and how devastating benefit from it.

The map of the globe shows the world we think we know: sovereign nations that grant and restrict their citizens' rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside its neatly delineated borders, however, a parallel universe has been engineered into existence, consisting of thousands of extraterritorial zons, that operate largely autonomously, increasingly for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful. Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of the hidden globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed the commodity they had—bodies, in the form of mercenary fighters. It follows its evolution around the world, she revelals how prize-winning economists, eccentric theorists, estatesmen visionary and consultants masterminded its export it in the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers where immigrants languish in Limbo, and chill art cities Controlled by foreign governments and multinational corporations. foreign inationals jeras, even in outer space, where tiny Luxembourg aspire to mining rights on asteroids.

Mapping the hidden geography that decides who wins and who lose in this new global order- and how it might be otherwise–-The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.