I used to believe I understood how the world works. We vote, we can demand action from those in power. We can complain about what they do – or fail to do. No idea did I have of the international legal structures built exclusively to prevent autonomy and governance from countries. Jason Hickel devotes a chapter to this topic in the Divide: this book is entirely on it, with research carried out in 25 countries. The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes from The World Bank (a very secretly system) is an international legal arrangement that allows corporations to sue governments for anything that meses, actually or potentially, with their gains, from laws protecting workers to those limiting environmental impacts. This system completely cripples what governments can do. It was actively created as a legal structure to ensure corporations could always have access to cheap labor and to raw materials. And no surprise, the poorer the country, the harder it is for it to defend itself. One example, today, Honduras is being sued for one third of its GDP by an American corporation. Also, check this interview in Planet Critical about this book: https://podcasts.apple.com/mx/podcast/planet-critical/id1545009586?i=1000633440050