There is a happy medium somewhere in between complete globalisation and complete isolation.
The sooner we move to other sources (fusion (!), solar, wind, etc.), the better for humankind. However, companies that make money from fossil fuels don't want that, and for the past four decades they've had the political and economic cloud to slow down or even stop progress.
We have such "single points of failure" in the global economy because we have allowed market power to become highly concentrated, nationally and globally, without any checks and balances.
Replace energy with food, water, medicine, microchips, or any other commodities necessary for modern life and the point still stands.
I'd have rendered that slogan as “The more reliant we are on others with whom we have any substantive combination of: a severe trade imbalance, no framework for meaningful dialog, and conflicting major foreign policy goals -- the less resilient we are as a nation”
Same way England should not be allowed to reign over 56 states with their King?
I mean, if it goes both ways, I agree.
(4) dependence on other, potentially hostile regimes on “national security” imports/products like steel, chips, oil, energy, …
I cannot speak about the UK, but in general this isn't all that people are dissatisfied with about globalization. Very many are angry about the loss of a sense of home. If you examine the situation in purely material terms, you won't observe or measure those feelings. For others, the loss of home extends to a loss of community, which extends to a loss of self.
Educated tech people can be software engineers first and English second, while the lower classes are, in my experience, English first, and their profession second. The loss hits harder for them.
I haven't seen media discuss the identitarian dimension of globalisation. I suppose that has to do with media being populated primarily by one social class. Yet I feel that by ignoring them they have been burying nuclear waste for decades.
I don't mean to tell you whether these emotions are "abhorrent racism" or "valid", I just mean say that they are to me the elephant in the room in any discussion of globalisation.
For software engineers globalization is wonderful for many in the economy it isn’t.
Except that:
- the same rig worker will gladly buy consumer products cheaply manufactured in some developing or non-free Country thanks to globalization and will immediately stop buying them if the prices go up due to un-globalization (it's actually happening in UK, newspapers are full of articles similar to UK Shop sales slow as consumers shift spending toward essentials)
- there are billions of people who don't care about the rig worker, they care about their own families. By virtue of how the democratic process works - majority wins - and how social evolution works - survival of the fittest form of society -, the rig worker either adapts to the new environment or will go extinct.
Third option is the west goes to war against developing countries, trying to set the clock of history back and exploit them again, but this time I'm not sure the west could win.
Point is: without solidarity among workers of the same class (I don't care about them, I care about me), the rig workers of the World will be ignored because they have literally no power other than their complains.
I too don't care about 'em, why should I? if they don't care about anything else than themselves? They surely don't give a flying f*ck about me and how the globalization helped me and my family to live a better life.
This is one of those things that a bit of global socialism could make better, but the solution, according to the rig worker, is the exact opposite: close the stable door when the horse has bolted, i.e. more nationalism, tarifs, walls, which will in the end work against the rig worker, not in their favour.
p.s.: you can agree or disagree, but expecting that a small country with 80 million people should be more important than 4 billion people living in the developing World is simply delusional.
Comply or die isn't that funny when it works against you, am I right?
I’d say for the most part this guy walked the talk as far as I could tell.
My point was not to validate / invalidate his point of view but to show what the POV is for anyone who hopes to get more people on the globalization train.
It's impossible to get more people on the globalization train, because we all are on it already.
It's like saying "we should get more people on board with climate change"
It is happening, whether we like it or not, whether we agree or disagree about it.
What we should and can do, is to ask better questions.
instead of asking ourselves what is the cause of some personal condition, pat ourselves in the back and blame the foreigners (it's always the foreigners, of course) why don't we ask who left the rig workers of the story in the dust?
Was it a worker coming from the Philippines trying to have a better life for their children and great children, or was it the same corporations than now blame globalization because they are finding harder and harder to exploit developing countries that also stolen their job and have become as good as them to produce the same stuff?
How much of the wealth that Apple generated exploiting cheap Chinese labour, bowing to China just to enter their 1.5 billion people market, have come back to the US economy and actually helped the working class and our friend the rig worker (not the tech class)?
It's not globalization the problem, it's this capitalism.
The point is: corporations have to start giving back to the people in the form of very high taxes, that's the solution to the issues (some of them are real) of the globalization. Privatize the profits and socialize the costs is not a good idea, we see it, we all agree that it's not working, paradoxically it's been worse in richer countries, because social programs are shit there, they have always relied on having a lot more money to spend than the others. Still we avoid to give the right name to the problem. We have to even if in many Countries they prefer to die than talk about social welfare state, but it's a red pill, blue pill, situation.
But if we don't and corps wanna keep looking for workers everywhere in the World, we also have to let people do the same, in the opposite direction.
Tertium non datur.
Because tertium means we try'n'stop them and they will come anyway, but this time without asking.
I feel a heavy sense of pity and remorse for anyone so demoralised and deracinated that they have a greater connection to "tech" than to blood and soil. That's such an empty, nihilistic existence. What's even the point?
Another commenter points out that the worker must actually love globalism because of widgets from China. Who cares? I would give up every bit of cheap plastic junk in a heartbeat if it meant my great grandchildren will have a homeland to live in peace and prosperity among their own. How on earth can anyone put a price on that, nevermind such a low one?
that's exactly what globalization did for billions of people once oppressed by colonialists Countries, such as the UK.
You could stop buying cheap plastic, but you'll never get the empire back.
Because people want their great grandchildren to have a homeland to live in peace
But you can have a poorer Country as in richer than 90% of the World, but not as rich as in the past when they exploited the poorest Countries for their own advantage, and call it homeland. You can be sure nobody wants it, you can keep it.
You also seem to believe that the point of it all is just lower prices, but the actual reality is that UK doesn't even have enough people to operate their own homeland's hospitals. [1]
You should blame your own political choices, not globalization.
[1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/-nhs-nurses-recruited-overs...
Those hospitals are understaffed because of extraordinary levels of foreign immigration (globalism); extremely high rates of reproduction among foreigners in Britain, many of whom add a disproportionate burden to the system (globalism ); an indigenous population displaced and demoralised in their own ancestral homeland, with record numbers of young people opting out of education and employment (globalism); indigenous Brits discriminated against in admissions and applications due to policies favouring foreigners in pursuit of diversity (globalism); plummeting birth rates among indigenous Brits due to a prevailing sense of existential insecurity, financial insecurity, loss of community, unsure future for their children, anti-natal and anti-nationalist propaganda (globalism); a top-heavy indigenous population courtesy of the former point, burdening the healthcare system; etc.
It's little wonder there is such resentment towards globalism and diversity among ethnic Europeans worldwide. Blaming the English for the problems imposed on them will only fuel this fire.
Billions of people do.
Don't confuse what you don't like with what nobody likes.
You had the freedom to vote, you voted, you elected people from your Country to govern your own Country, can't blame anyone else.
> Those hospitals are understaffed because of extraordinary levels of foreign immigration (globalism);
citation needed
> extremely high rates of reproduction among foreigners in Britain, many of whom add a disproportionate burden to the system (globalism );
citation needed, again.
But it's the opposite.
extremely low birth rates in the west are sinking the economy.
Come to visit my country where there are 18 million retired people on a population of 60 million and very low birth rates.
Besides, Ukraine has one of the lowest birth rates we know of, didn't help them much, did it?
Anyway, you had your Brexit, didn't you?
So, now that it's only you "indigenous" things are improving over there, right? It worked, am I right?
> an indigenous population displaced and demoralised in their own ancestral homeland,
You mean when you colonized other countries and brought them to your country to be slaves?
Ever heard of the windrush generation?
> indigenous Brits discriminated against in admissions and applications due to policies favouring foreigners in pursuit of diversity (globalism);
citation needed, again
> plummeting birth rates among indigenous Brits due to a prevailing sense of existential insecurity
citation needed (at this point do you understand that your motivations reek of bullshit, do you?)
UK has a birth rate of 1.7, in Hungary where there are virtually no immigrants, birth rate is 1.5.
Can you guess China's birth rate?
It's 1.7, exactly like UK.
I think something does not add up in your theory.
BTW, birth rates in the west are all very similar, but the economic outcomes of the single Countries are vastly different. For many reasons. One of them is that my Country cannot rely on former colonies to hire nurses and pay them less than the average "indigenous brits", as you call them.
Because we have no former colonies to exploit and the few we acquired during fascism, we left them be, because it's wrong to treat people like that.
Like, for example, what your German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Kings and Queens later renamed Windsor to hide the fact that they are German, not English, together with their relative Lepold I of Belgium did to Africa.
> It's little wonder there is such resentment towards globalism and diversity among ethnic Europeans worldwide
We agree on this.
It's no wonder, when western people had to actually compete they found out that they are not as good as they thought, without their armies protecting them they were just average.
Unfortunately for you, your dream of being a pure blooded race having ancestral rights over the promise land have been shuttered by reality.
You can deal with it or keep crying in the corner, blaming some poor folks brought by force to your country.
Are these "indigenous brits" just a bunch of whiny spoiled brats that can't take their faith in their own hands, without external help?
This sentence attributed to Luiss CK sums it
"Of course foreigners steal your job, but maybe, if someone without contacts, money, or speaking the language steals your job, maybe, you're shit."
~ Louis C. K..
Rubbish. The rest of your post is just as bad.
If we have to go to war than so be it. People will always argue and there will always be consequences of these arguments.
How many big anti-monopoly moves were actually done in the last 20 years compared to pre-Reagan or pre-Thatcher times?
EDIT: Also (4) I’m pretty sure almost every “very regulated” economy in the world has more inequality as a consequence of globalization. It’s really hard to imagine a practical globalization that doesn’t create concentrated wealth and poverty.
>"If we have to go to war than so be it."
The more I look at these two statements the more I think that someone would benefit from having their head examined.
Bush & cheney did enormously more damage to the US than Trump. Not that I liked Trump at all.
So if your country doing fine and all "shit is together" it is ok to start a war? What is fucking wrong with people.
Global trade isn't the same as globalization. You can trade fine with others without relying on them. So your discussion about lifing people from poverty should include how specifically interdependence between countries as opposed to improvements in technology amd trade relations has resulted in poverty reduction.
We don't have to look far, because of globalization, a potential conflict between taiwan and china is the current biggest threat to global peace. TSMC is building factories in the US and India as well as apple trying to get out of China specifically to avoid global interdependence. TSMC plans to supply US demands by US fabs. But apple will face the same issue in other countries if or when conditions become hostile.
We don't live in a world where every country is working together for the progression of mankind. Each country looks out for itself. This means banning US tech companies from operating in Countries like China but allowing them to outsource labor there. Anyone from the rustbelt or former industrial towns in the US will tell you the impact of outsourcing labor (greedy business finding a way to to pay people less).
Another consideration is the impact of automation and how cheap labor is needed less and less so why not make stuff locally?
It isn't just poverty that reduced but the wealth of the few top rich businesses increased by many orders of magnitude because they got around tax and labor laws thanks to globalization.
My argument is you can still have free trade and innovation without giving up your sovreignity as a nation or looking the other way on tax and labor laws or undermining local labor unions.
People who believe in globalism should’ve taken your advice thirty years ago — but after destroying families for two generations, they’re going to fall on the managerial class like feral animals seeking blood.
The managerial class in the West will be executed for betraying their nations — and we’re past any way to stop that.
Why is it people only give your wise managerial quips after disasters, but never proactively?
In other countries doing the providing. It didn't do as well for the ones doing the dependency ones - except in transfering welth and competence outside, and to a small minority people on the inside getting mega-rich from this outsourcing, and a quite larger but still small minority of people benefitting from related jobs.
Hence the "hollowing out of the middle class in the US", with the majority of the middle class and working class getting the short end of the stick, and a much smaller part of it and the upper middle class improving their lot.
(And the overall impact of this process softened or hidden entirely for a good while through cheap money published and going around as credit and QE)
As with all slogans, it ignores important details that contradict it.
Over the past four decades, our current global economic system, promoting economic integration and interdependence between countries, has lifted billions out of poverty.[a][b] Billions. No sensible discussion of globalization can ignore that.
The current backlash is not against globalization per se, but against:
* greater concentration of economic power (e.g., more markets dominated by global mega corporations),
* greater concentration of political and military power in authoritarian regimes who play by different rules (e.g., China), and
* greater concentration of income and wealth (e.g., the hollowing out of the middle class in the US).
We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater!
--
[a] https://ourworldindata.org/poverty
[b] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief