I bring this to your attention in the hope that it may help you expand your bubble. If you're serious about the segment where people publicly admit their mistakes and that they were "obviously stupid" then best of luck.
Personally, I think there are many voices critical of globalization from across the political spectrum. The problem, as I see it, is opponents of globalization have failed to articulate a clear, compelling alternative that will "deliver the goods."
[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/politics/globalization-trade-...
"If you're serious about the segment where people publicly admit their mistakes and that they were "obviously stupid" then best of luck."
Of course that's obviously satirical. CNN does not run actual news segments with that name or anything like it. I picked it that way on purpose, for that effect.
Furthermore, Trump and Bernie both ran strong campaigns on the question of globalization. As president, Trump took steps against globalization. A far cry from "politically incorrect" or something the public isn't debating. Likewise, today steps are being taken by Biden to onshore more industries, again clearly not "politically incorrect."
As far as "it's still not a popular opinion" I guess I don't know what that means. Taking my points above, it seems like we're actively debating the subject as a society with proponents on both sides. As I argued before, I think the "anti-globalization" crowd has yet to make their case convincingly. If it's just "a little less globalization, please" -- well then how is "globalization dead?"
edit: Apparently I should either stop trying to make points in the nuance or stop suggesting that news articles are managed because people think agreeing requires a tinfoil hat.
[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
Your references are also anachronistic to the narrative you’re constructing.
This reads like you've forgotten how Trump was portrayed in the mainstream.
Also you are saying its proven it is not politically correct because its talked about and Biden has taken action for onshore more industries yet that does not even jive with the definition of politically incorrect. I think you are just responded to the original poster saying its not being discussed because its politically incorrect but that statement in itself does not make sense either. Something is politically incorrect when someone does not avoid language or actions that may offend another group. Something can be politically incorrect and still be discussed to death.
Where I got the definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/politically%20inc...
As for the last part about the anti-globalization crowd has yet to make a case convincingly, the same can be said on the flip said. For example the pro globalization crowd has not made a convincingly case for why we need to use slave/child labor overseas to make Nikes and electronics. If we produced these in the US, slave/child labor is generally illegal and this would not be a problem. Another example would be the fact the pro globalization crowd has not shown a convincing case for why would should be supporting other countries that commit massive humans rights abuses. Why should we send money overseas to a country that has reeducation camps they force citizens into?
Ok, but he is in fact taking those steps, and going beyond what Trump did in the process.
It's hard to see the major legislation being passed or presidential campaigns being run and say otherwise -- I think the onus is on you or the OP to submit evidence wherein the elites or whatever shut down the conversation or react with indignation. I've provided my evidence in this thread already.
As for globalization versus not. Again, what is the alternative? Be concrete. To me, globalization is capitalism or free marketism. Put another way, it's a market based economy.
Once upon a time, people believed that planned economies were an alternative to globalism, but I'd say the jury is in and no one really believes that anymore. So, seriously, what is the alternative?
I imagine most people agree that child / slave labor are abhorrent and that we should add safety rails to globalization to address those issues. But that's still globalization.
I never once said the elites shut down discussion yet you ask me to provide evidence for a point I never made? Its pretty hard to have a real discussion when one person decides to make stuff up out of thin air. If you read my last commit I even mention the OPs claim of no discussion because its politically incorrect does not make sense with the linked definition. Would this not be me providing evidence against the point you are asking me to prove? It seems like we both agree the OPs statement is incorrect so why are you trying to force me onto the other side of the argument?
As for the solution, I do not know a good solution. I use to think globalization was the answer but not anymore. That is why I asked you to explain why you are okay with globalization causing these serious issues. Based on your last sentence it seems like you agree these are bad and we should do something about them. Yet you don't mention the fact we have had a WTO for almost 2 decades that could address them and not one single country has tried too. For example WTO on child labor: https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min99_e/englis...
In my eyes when decades have passed, its a pretty clear sign the safety rails are not wanted or going to be added by those that have the power to add them.
For example, on these pages I see plenty of debate about whether we should expand healthcare, tax the wealthy, enforce stricter environmental laws, and so forth. If the netizens of Slacker News can't reach consensus how can we expect the wide world to come together?
Personally, I try not to get swept up in all these currents. I'm just another worker ant in the colony. So I try to focus on what I can do myself and around me.
I would argue that the slow progress on human rights/labor issues coupled with the failure of globalized supply chains during covid really point towards us needing to rethink our current system. Maybe modifying the current system will be enough, I do not know. However in my eyes our current form of globalization is problematic and that needs to be addressed.
I think this is still inaccurate, "Made in the USA" was an early version of this and has been non-marginal and found supporters amongst both "elites" and "regular" people for decades, in my experience.
They also slide towards another fallacy at the end - the one we saw a lot during Covid, of "changing your mind as new data arrives means you originally acted in, or are acting now in, bad faith." What's stupid is to assume that anything this complex is "obviously" a black and white must-do or must-not-do, versus something that will get adjusted over time.
Completely organic self-thought based on logic is counter to information from official sources.
The official source says your specific example is a conspiracy flavour of the month.
6 months pass and the information now matches your own.
Everyone knew, it just wasn't a big deal. A big nothing burger!
It is so tiresome.
Arguably it is politically in vogue in the US to be against absolute globalization.
For example, the EV tax credits in the IRA are exclusively for US assembled vehicles.
This caused a great deal of upset among foreign carmakers who don't have significant assembly operations in the US. The IRA went even further in requiring the key component of the EV, the battery, to have it's materials sourced in US free trade partners.
Vehicle manufacturing is among the most politically visible and sensitive of industries.
The consensus across the right, left, and center is towards rebuilding domestic industrial capacity in strategic industries.
The quiet consensus of those taking action, yes, absolutely. That's part of my point. The adjustments are being made all over the place.
Those who have banked a lot on talking up globalization for the past 20-30 years will get there too. It will just be a slow process of very gradually tweaking their position a little bit every year at the maximum speed they can get away with while making it look like it's just little tweaks and they were never at any point actually wrong.
There was also never 100% globalization; tariffs never went to zero, etc. But a lot of that would still fall under the class of quiet actions under the hood, while the loud rhetoric was all about free trade. I've actually interacted with plenty of people on HN over the years who didn't realize that tariffs were in fact a thing, always had been, and were engaged in by all countries in the world to at least some extent, depending on their local needs. The rhetoric was "free trade! free trade! free trade!", but the reality has always been more complex.
Where would you rather be and what is your improvement on the “system”? Sorry to pose questions at you but I see so many strange comments on the internet that sound like “red-pilled” nonsense. If you have a good personal value proposition to society and aren’t completely entropic, life is good. If you aren’t, it’s hard. That’s been modern western life for a while now and it’s not bad. Could it be better and is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But living in parallel red pill reality is an absolutely unhelpful endeavor.
I’m reminded of the Oracle at Delphi. “Know who you are” which means know your place in society (father, son, farmer, king etc and your responsibilities) and “everything in moderation”.
Red pillers ignore that ancient wisdom and live in and obsess over an alternate almost completely fabricated virtual reality of no real value. Hanging out with suspicious and cynical strangers on the internet who share deep distrust of reality is depressing and isolating. After-all, you use the real system to have a life and so does everyone else. Might as well face that fact and truly engage with flesh and blood in the meat space rather than whatever or whoever is on red pill virtual land.
Some examples (I could write indefinitely):
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/ponzi-hospitals-and-count... (section "Bank Error In Our Favor" is particularly offensive, to me)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War (this sort of thing (which is fairly common) is offensive to me, as is our culture's complacency towards it)
How it is (in part) perpetuated, in my estimation:
- I’m sure whatever the system is it isn’t perfect. But here I am using the “system” and living my life. [rationalization]
- I see so many strange comments on the internet that sound like “red-pilled” nonsense. [training-based heuristic pattern matching to ~bad/dumb/wrong]
- Could it be better and is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But living in parallel red pill reality is an absolutely unhelpful endeavor. [training-based heuristic pattern matching to ~bad/dumb/wrong + cultural normalization of hallucination of reality (in this case: the future)]
- After-all, you use the real system to have a life and so does everyone else. Might as well face that fact and truly engage with flesh and blood in the meat space rather than whatever or whoever is on red pill virtual land. [Stay within the Overton Window of ideas and behaviors one has been trained on]
> Where would you rather be and what is your improvement on the “system”?
a) How about something like "The contents of the tin (upon substantial, fine-grained inspection) matches what's on the label"?
b) we shall see, maybe
> If you have a good personal value proposition to society and aren’t completely entropic, life is good. If you aren’t, it’s hard.
Simplistically, and largely only in theory (as I don't doubt you'd agree with if we were to dig into the nitty gritty details, which we won't as that is contrary to well-established cultural norms, at least).
> That’s been modern western life for a while now and it’s not bad.
Not bad for a subset, of Westerners....but we are only a minority slice of the whole.
> I’m reminded of the Oracle at Delphi. “Know who you are” which means know your place in society (father, son, farmer, king etc and your responsibilities) and “everything in moderation”.
I will decide my place in society, despite where society [has been trained to] believe I "should" fit in, and behave. I like the "Oracle at Delphi" idea though, perhaps there's some unharvested utility there.
> Red pillers ignore that ancient wisdom and live in and obsess over an alternate almost completely fabricated virtual reality of no real value. Hanging out with suspicious and cynical strangers on the internet who share deep distrust of reality is depressing and isolating.
Know what's interesting about this: you don't actually know who red-pillers are, or what they are or believe. And you do not know you do not know, because of culture (which is composed of many things, most of them sub-perceptual, and many of them downright taboo).
Possibly relevant:
You and I are peasants in the last western empire, you have to deal with that reality. Not everything is a fraud. Simply go to the grocery store and look around. Do you know how each of those products is produced from field, processed, packaged, and shipped? Do that for ICE and EV vehicles and anything else you want.
Also I absolutely know who red-pillers are and it’s trivially easy to identify them. I couldn’t “white pill” you here.
Did you understand the video?
Is there a list of specific people here, who have aggrieved you so? Who are you even talking about?
They will need it for the next war that will be required to get us out of the coming recession.
This will result in higher prices short-term, but will likely result in more globalization and supply-chain resilience in the longer term.
But on the flip side, demanding that everything be sourced from within your "own" economy (however you'd even define such a thing) is going to be stupid on roughly the same time frame too. Any self-contained economy is going to have a hard time competing with one using a larger base.
We went too far in one direction. It doesn't take a very deep knowledge of history to expect we will overcompensate too far in the other direction. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
It's the rest of the world that has benefited from globalization, from the raising the standard of living in Asia to getting cheap goods to Euorpe, but things can and will change.
Some Washington cynic once said, "Never believe anything until it's been officially denied."
Also apropos: "Watch what they do, not what they say."
They may bring chip manufacturing back to USA, but all the flags, hats and freedom merch for Fourth of July will still be produced in China and that is never changing no matter how hard you try. People don’t like paying more money and that is not going away.
dead != wrong
I would also argue that it isn't dead but it is in a decline because of some disturbing moves toward nationalism and fascism all over the world over the last five years
An intriguing view. How you square it with the real world I do not know.
How you square that with a real world in which some of the most influential people and publications in international policy in recent years in many countries have focused on attacking trade deals, demanding withdrawal from supranational organizations and implying that entire systems are rigged in favour of specific rival countries, I do not know.
True. It's been collapsing since at least 2015. The political upheavals in the US and the UK were backlashes against globalization. Since then, both countries have moved way from the late 20th century global vision that developed in the post WW2 era.
For a while, in the US, there was the narrative that this was purely about Trump, but Biden is walking in the same direction re trade. It's a big change that will endure across many administrations.
That's because it is terrible take. For one, globalization completely dissolved the threat of nuclear war. Also, globalization is the only reason why the economy hasn't stagnated. Our biggest economic successes operate in globalist spaces (tech and finance), but the biggest failures operate in heavily protectionist spaces (healthcare, construction, and the auto industry prior to rise of foreign subsidiaries).
Were we better off with the economy growing but the blue-collar jobs disappearing? That's at least debatable.
That's simply untrue. Europe outsourced its natural gas needs to Russia in an attempt to strengthen ties (ostensibly to avoid nuclear war, among other things). Despite that, no one would be surprised if 2023 had at least one nuclear warhead detonated at some point.
I would. I would be incredibly surprised.
Europe also outsourced the security of the entire continent to the United States.
This is an interesting assertion to make given the very strong argument that can be made that we are closer to nuclear war right now than any time in human history.
This is not a good take at all. It shows a very static view of the world, as if globalization (or anything) is either eternally right or eternally wrong.
Horses are dead as a means of local transportation. Does that mean our elites were grotesquely wrong about the value of horses... in the 1800's?
The gold standard is dead... does that mean our elites were grotesquely wrong through most of history?
I find it very productive to look at the positions of various large entities and measure them against "what's the fastest these entities can change their official position without ever having to actually admit they were wrong". When you find a government agency or large company moving at that speed on some topic, it is advantageous for you as an individual to look at where they are going, and take appropriate actions without waiting for the official authority to finally get to the more justifiable position. It can be decades for one of these entities to get to a new position at this speed.
But there's plenty of actions being taken. This is merely a high profile one. Lots of little adjustments by lots of companies that add up to a lot. All the economies of the world are adjusting to the new realities.
[1]: By which I mean, the mainstream media, TV, large magazines, etc. I'm not too worried that I'm going to be hammered on the subculture of HN for this statement. Someone may disagree, but I don't expect anyone to try to shame me over this or something. But don't hold your breath for CNN or someone like that to air a one-hour special on Why Globalization Was A Big Mistake And Everyone Advocating For It Was Obviously Stupid.