Globalization versus anti-globalization

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, September 18, 2025 16:02
VIEWED: 4728
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"Why We Need to Pick Up Alvin Toffler’s Torch"

Bravo, Second!! I didn't know-realize any of that.
Well, I did, looong ago in my youth, realize that technical advancement
was accelerating very much. ... But I couldn't imagine any of the
consequences, 'cept for obvious stuff like a really dangerous arms race.

I'm going to share that article.

... oooOO}{OOooo ...

I've given up looking for the meaning of life. Now all I want is a cookie.

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Quote:

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Globalization is necessary and desirable.-THUGR

Uh oh. WHY? WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"? - SIGNY

This planet needs to become one.- THUGR

Ok, I'll bite: WHY does "This planet need[s] to become one"? To prevent war? To solve global problems? To improve trade and the standard of living? What goals do you think that "becoming one" would accomplish? - SIGNY

Yes. = THUGR

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Okay, HOW will globalization accomplish this? This time, I'm not going to try to articulate your answer for you.

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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

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SECOND, I don't think it's "change" that people resent.

People in Greece aren't rioting because of "change" they're rioting because they're poor. People didn't vote for Brexit because of "change", they voted for Brexit because their economic circumstances were greatly diminished under the EU AND they had no power to change that dynamic. There are terrorists around the globe, not because Muslims resent "change" but because the Saudi Royal Family have been investing in them for DECADES as the base of their own power over petro-wealth. Laying everything at the feet of "future shock" trivializes the problems that people are experiencing, and the people themselves.

People aren't as stupid as you make them out to be.


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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

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I'm a lot short on time at this moment, so here's a sketch of my thoughts on "change".

SECOND, I think maybe that your answer is swayed by the age breakdown of the Brexit vote, generally that young people voted for the EU, older people voted to leave the EU.

You interpret this as a reaction to "change", which - IYHO- old people don't handle as well.

Let me give you a different example of "change": Climate change.

Young people are already inured to the current level of environmental degradation. Older people remember a different circumstance. If older people vote to return the environment to what it was before, and young people vote to "remain", does that mean that older people are reacting to "change" - a generic "future shock"? Or are they reacting to a worsening of circumstances? And does that mean that young people handle "change" better, or are they just stuck on the circumstance that they already know?

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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Globalization is necessary and desirable.-THUGR

Uh oh. WHY? WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"? - SIGNY

This planet needs to become one.- THUGR

Ok, I'll bite: WHY does "This planet need[s] to become one"? To prevent war? To solve global problems? To improve trade and the standard of living? What goals do you think that "becoming one" would accomplish? - SIGNY

Yes. = THUGR

Okay, HOW will globalization accomplish this? This time, I'm not going to try to articulate your answer for you.

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Again, let me sharpen my question - this time, without giving you answers.

You wrote

Quote:

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Right now I think the powers to be i.e. governments have made a mess of it.

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Maybe if you describe in detail the kind of mess they made and how they made it, you can describe how it should or could work better.

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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that they can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

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OK THUGR, you apparently feel that the world must become one, but can't describe why that should be, how it's supposed to work, or how it's to come about. I'm going to come at this from a different direction so that you can describe your better world, in your own terms:

Should everyone speak one language, or will there be many?

Should everyone use the same currency, or will there be many? Will everyone use the same bank, or will there be many, or none?

Should everyone believe in the same ethics and morals, or will there be different views of society and people?

Should everyone believe in the same religion, or will there be multiple religions, or none?

Will everyone have gun rights, like in the USA, or will guns be universally taken away?

Will there be national boundaries, or none? Should everyone belong to the same world government, will it be a direct democracy, a representative democracy, a technocracy, or some other form? Or do you foresee a federation of governments, kind of like the UN but better?

If there is a universal legal code, who enforces it? Will there be a world-wide army, kind of like a "universal police force" acting on rogue nations-states, or do you envision this "police force" acting on individuals, or no "universal police force" at all?

Are these questions apropos of what you're envisioning, or are you feeling there should be a different way?



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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that they can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

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Does anyone want to help THUGR explain how globalization can be turned into a good thing? Or is perhaps already a good thing?

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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that they can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

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While you're thinking about that ....

Heard on NPR: Former Treasury Secretary (Clinton) Larry Summers Calls For 'Responsible Nationalism'

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NPR's Robert Siegel speaks with Larry Summers, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former U.S. treasury secretary, about his op-ed in the The Washington Post regarding popular support for Brexit and Donald Trump.

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http://www.npr.org/2016/07/11/485593480/former-treasury-secretary-larr
y-summers-calls-for-responsible-nationalism


The original article

How to embrace nationalism responsibly

Quote:

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It is clear after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican presidential primaries that electorates are revolting against the relatively open economic policies that have been the norm in the United States and Britain since World War II. If further evidence is needed, one need only look to the inability of Congress to pass legislation on immigration reform and the observation that the last four candidates left standing in the U.S. presidential contest all oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Populist opposition to international integration is also on the rise in much of continental Europe and has always been the norm in much of Latin America.

The question now is: What should be the guiding principles of international economic policy? How should the case be made by those of us who believe that the vastly better performance of the global system after World War II than between World War I and World War II was largely due to more enlightened economic policies?

The mainstream approach to these questions generally starts with some combination of rational argument and inflated rhetoric about the economic consequences of international integration. Studies are produced about the jobs created by trade agreements, the benefits of immigration and the costs of restrictions on trade. In most cases, certainly including the cases for TPP and against Brexit, the overall economic merits are clear. But in this advocacy there is a kind of Gresham’s Law (the economic principle that bad money drives out good) whereby bolder claims drive out more prudent ones, causing estimates to often be exaggerated and delivered with far more confidence than is warranted. Over time, this has caught up with the advocates of integration.

While there is a strong case that the United States is better off than it would have been if the North American Free Trade Agreement had been rejected, the most extravagant predicted benefits have not materialized. And it is also fair to say that claims that China’s accession into the World Trade Organization would propel political liberalization have not been borne out. In any event, the willingness of publics to be intimidated by experts into supporting cosmopolitan outcomes appears, for the moment, to have been exhausted.

The second plank of the mainstream approach is to push for stronger policies to resist inequality, cushion economic disruptions and support the poor and middle class, then argue that if domestic policies are right, the pressure to resist globalization will be attenuated. The logic is right, and certainly measures such as the GI bill, the government’s assurance of available mortgages and the interstate highway system were part of the political package that permitted the United States to underwrite an open international system through the 1960s. But the past eight years have seen the United States at last make significant progress toward universal health insurance, expand a variety of support programs for the poor and bring unemployment below 5 percent. Even still, trade has become ever less popular. It is not that strong domestic policies are unnecessary to undergird global integration; it is that they are insufficient.

A new approach has to begin from the idea that the basic responsibility of government is to maximize the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good. Closely related to this is the idea that people want to feel that t

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