OK, I'm about 1/2 way thru Friedman's "The World Is Flat."  Aside from being a bit pedestrian and suffering from Thomas L.'s massive ego, its a good read, as usual.  For me, it highlights what i've been saying all along relative to globalization, that is...

1. connectivity is making the world a more competitive marketplace.

2. if firms or countries embrace global collaboration, consumers benefit from much lower prices.  in the short term, jobs can be lost but if it comes with worker retraining, it can improve standard of living.

3. we have schizophrenia as consumers (who like lower prices) and workers (whose jobs are at risk).  we also have cultural identity issues to deal with.

4. in the end, though, there isn't a choice.  unless the world shuts down globalism, you can either get on the bus (and manage the transition) or isolate yourself and lose.

I know many here are against globalization.  I wanted to post here to test what people object to in the logic above.  Or, is the debate all about the transition - how to preserve culture in the overall move toward globalization, how to ensure our workers are ready, etc.

My objection is not with globalization, but with the inefficient and short sighted government officials (particularly since the coup of 2000) who have focused their intentions on maximizing corporate profits while ignoring the needs and livelihoods of the US workers whos jobs have been co-opted by the lower wage scales of India, Pakistan, Thailand and other countries where outsourcing has become a prominent source of revenue.
While there have been a few (myself included) who have re-invented or re-directed their careers and managed to maintain or even improve their lifestyle, there are a vast majority who have been victimized by the loss of higher paying jobs in this country, being forced into sccepting lesser paying jobs with fewer or no benefits.
The fact that the ones at the helm of this disastrously erroneous course are also the ones with the most to gain (profit wise) gives me pause to consider where their motivation truly lies. Or maybe thats the key word right there. Lies.

But I digress. Answerman, for me the debate is more in the transition of preserving cultural identity and properly preparing and retraining American workers to better assimilate into a global economy. I believe our government has failed miserably in this category, failing to provide for the short term needs of the people, as well as long term retraining and development of new industry and good paying jobs. The areas showing the biggest increase in employment are the low paying service industries (you want fries with that?). And in the meantime, the minimum wage still sits at a miserable $5.15 per hour (somewhat higher in some states), so lets get real here. A forty hour per week job paying the California minimum wage of $6.25 per hour yields a gross paycheck of $250 per week. That's not going to break the poverty ceiling even with NO taxes taken out. At least not in the United States.
I am fully in favor of "One planet, one people" in theory. But as long as there is such a disparity between the wealthy and corrupt who are running things, versus the rest of the people, the problems will continue.
Ideally, a good start would be to purge corruption from our leadership. But thats a pipe dream.

And speaking of pipes, its time for me to get back to mine.
Today's lunch menu is Rib steak with steamed veggies and caesar salad, with a bowl of Humboldt herbal delight for dessert. L'Chaim.

OK, I hear ya (particularly the Humboldt part).  My question is...what would you like to see done?  My criticism of the anti-globalists has never been that I disagree with their intentions, its that I'm not exactly sure what they'd like to do to solve things.  What could our government do to prepare people?  And how can we make that salable in the context of politics.  

I don't buy into the minimum wage thing either - that's counter intuitive to the issue.  The higher the minimum wage, the greater outsourcing will come.  To me, make it the contrary - have governments support the dissolution of archaic pension and health benefits negotiated by organized labor that are killing our old school companies like GM.  That will free up money for other things and perhaps discourage them from moving overseas (a la Daimler Chrysler).  But, the unions would rather make companies spend their money supporting the old rank and file system rather than moving to a new one.

OK, I'll admit, I enjoyed a little visit to my Colorado stash before I wrote this, so please excuse if I'm babbling.

I think the best way to address globaliztion is to embrace it and address it headon - encourage other countries to grow.  There isn't any easy answer to growing investment, skills and talent in places like China, India and South America.  It's not going away - the whole globe is too interconnected.

But like the implication of EV's post below, how is this environment going to surface such pragmatic thinking?  There are so many interest groups invested in old modes of entitlement thinking.  

We need to scare the hell out of the middle class and lower middle class, to ensure they understand the competitive environment, so that we can respond. Otherwise, the most dangerous county in the world is going to become pretty trigger-happy.  That's what scares me.

Why do you think globalization won't work?  What seems to be the problem.  Its been one of the single greatest drivers of our success over the last century.  Please elaborate on the social studies you cite.  Some of the latest economic theory says that globalization narrows the gap between the "have" countries and the "have not" countries, rather than making one prevail over another.  This intersects with the "neocon" theory that global economics could mitigate tensions among nation-states.

BTW, its a little off topic, but I don't remember anything in the American dream about owning your own business.  If anything, the old days of lifetime employment by the huge company are gone - and people are far more free to start their own business.  I've even heard others on this board cite statistics that the number of self employed people is rising - as globalization and technology allow small business to act big, via telecomm, supply chaining, etc.  At the same time, home ownership is at an all-time high, and unemployment is at a very very reasonable 5%.  

To me, the dream that made my family (my grandparents came on a boat with nothing) prosperous was the ambition to succeed and a business community that encouraged and supported entrepreneurialism.

people continue to maintain a Nationlist viewpoint.

The recent failures to adopt the EU charters are one example.

Montreal and the Quebec province of Canada are another example.

As long as people have a unified view about "their" nation, the trend towrds one world/one people will falter.

What you will see is the continued corporate exploitation of underdeveloped nations with a lower living standard-which basically reinforces the whole purpose of business=generate profits.

Somone has already pointed out the schizphrenic nature of cnsumers-we want lower prices and higher wages, and the corproations hear that call.

So they offshore manufacturing and any services they can to lower costs. But you cannot have both low prices and higher wages, since wages are a cost associated with products.

It's like the whining in San Diego about higher priced visitng providers. The ladies who visit incur the additional costs of travel and hotels, but the local consumers want the prices to remain "competitive" with the local ladies who ask for less.

NOSC, not sure if you knew this, but you are invoking Karl Marx, who did suggest that the end point of capitalism was a global society.  So his solution was to slow it down to make countries self sufficient.  Along the way, that means greater nationalism.  

But tell me please, do you really believe that the array of nationalist and cultural isolationist movements across the world are positive?  Let me name those who hate the notion of globalism and cultural interchange: the religious right, the right wing militias, the neo-nazi germans, neo-facist French, and, of course, our friends at Al Quaeda.

Nationalism, and its buddy, organized religion, have caused centuries of bloody conflict.  Can't we try a new model?

-- Modified on 6/20/2005 5:03:41 PM

globalization is neither an economic, nor cultural, and not even much a class issue - anymore (since the 2000-coup/9-11-01license-to-rampage).

now it is an issue of war or peace on a global scale.

globalization is a reality (due to technology, communications, transportation, migrations, history, etc.) - it is no longer optional on anyone (that includes "leaders," wage-earners, capitaliststic colonialists, idealists, etc.)

today's u.s. "policies" and worst-practices should be viewed through the rear-view mirror - and not from anyone's nationalisic pov.

what globalization needs, and is still sorely lacking, is a universal, cosmopolitan consciousness and awareness.

unfotunately, strained times fuel radicalism, fanaticism, fascism, and, in its 21st-century incarnation: bushism a' la gwb; increased religiosity is a similar byproduct of turmoil.

it is easy to get very cynical about it; it is also easy to add more and more items to the lists of severe ailments that threaten the world-as-we-know/want/wish-it-to-be;

where are the solutions?

fixating on the 'transitional aspects' of one or another aspect of the collective, multi-fracmented "problem" really misses both the point and the forrest for the trees.

?

when he isn't busy reminding us bleeding heart liberals that we are ostriches.

That's not a cut, JB...you know your stuff.

...great job.  I know we think its a shame that cambodians make $.50 an hour making soccer balls, but in Cambodia, that's a GREAT job.  And, the more jobs like that they have, the better standard of living they will have and, the higher wages will rise.

I think you over-simplify matters but suggesting nationalism is mutually exclusive with globalization.  Yes, globalization adds to the melting pot, but even after centuries, I still can't get a decent cheesesteak in Chicago nor play 16 inch softball in philly.  The parts of our culture we love, we keep.  The parts we could do without (e.g., the inefficient, unwired, no ATM local bank), we get globally.

lol. I agree. Being against something that is inevitable is amusing at best. For the record, I'm against bad government.

That "GREAT" job argument is really ludicrous and it's actually more of a put down of other cultures. Your Pollyanic argument is comparable to that of the situation in Iraq..i.e. if we establish a stable Democracy in the middle east, other nations will go the route of democracy. If you take the politics out of the argument, it's actually an extreme form of arrogance-what business do we have judging others? While I hope that a democracy will take hold (or a standard of living will improve), I have my concerns.

The counter point to that of the Cambodian is that in the process of improving their standard of living, we are lowering ours-by taking jobs away from Americans and possibly forcing them out onto the streets, reverting to criminal activity, etc...yadda, yadda, yadda.

It really is an issue of finding balance and trying to create equitable trade without sacrificing individuality/national identity/what have you. Aside from the impact of outsourcing manufacturing and technology work from the US on employment, we also increase the imbalance of trade-which most should agree is crippling to our economy.

The problem, as I stated, is finding balance. You can maintain national soveriegnty, yet still participate in a global economy. The one concept of glabalism that I stand firm in my conviction as bad is the one world-one people viewpoint. Until we see a greater integration of cultures, which includes ALL aspects of tolerance within society, you cannot move into the one world design.

In one of your other posts, you made mention of the evils of the religious right and ultra-conservativism. That post shows your intolerance of viewpoints that differ from yours. Recent past posts that equate conservatives with Nazi's, the constant bashing of the current admin, the attacks on liberals like Dean, etc. are all intolerant and silly.

When the FCC ripped Howard Stern a new one, my opinion was that it was a stupid, intolerant reaction to something that was inconsequential-you don't like Stern, change the bloody station....sheesh.

I find the viewpoints of Limbaugh to be etnertaining, but I am not a "dittohead" (although I know others who are). Similarly, I find Michael Savage to be an insufferbly arrogant, pompous bag of methane-so I don't listen.

The one common factor I notice from BOTH sides (and I EMPHASIZE BOTH SIDES) is an inability to listen to the meesenger and SEPERATE the message from the personality. Most of the posters here despise Coulter and O'Reilly-but do you actually listen to what they're trying to say? Yes, they go overoard, adn people too often get carried away, but they make interesting observations. Observations that should be considered with a certain degree of skepticism, but not discounted because "Ann Coulter is a skank" and "Bill O'Reilly is a hypocrite". Again, that's just intolerance and hypocrisy on the part of those who claim to be "liberal" (a good definition from dictionary.com includes: adj 1: showing or characterized by broad-mindedness).

Ulitmately, it comes down to the fact you're dealing with people, and people are not really predictable.

Thomas Friedman's "Globalization" and "Flat Earth Society" is based on the writings of David Ricardo over 150 years ago.  It is often called "Ricardian Socialism".  It was the rationale for reforming the United Kingdom's Corn Laws.  And while lower food prices made British industry more efficient, they also made Britain extremely vulnerable to unrestricted submarine warfare in WWI and WWII.

The petroleum industry was one of the first industries in the world that became "globalized".  The UK's conversion from coal to oil made it dependent on Persian oil.  Worse, the discovery of extremely cheap crude in Saudi Arabia led to the world economy becoming dependent upon oil from the Persian Gulf.  This has not made the world a safer place.  If I had to choose between agricultural subsidies in the US and EU for biodiesel and continued dependency on oil despotisms, I'd choose agricultural subsidies.

So, now since free democracies are held hostage by their dependency on oil despotisms, we are now told that exporting our manufacturing base to China is good for America, presumably because entangling China with trade will make them like us more, just like those Saudis who were celebrating the September 11 attacks.

"Free trade" actually stifles technological innovation.  It is cheaper to pay a pittance to a starving woman from the Third World than it is to invest in the kind of robotics that has increased productivity in the coal and automobile industries.

"Free trade" makes us half-slave, half-free.  Are we really free when we buy goods produced by prison labor in China?  Or are we becoming the beneficiaries of the enslavement of others?  This is not an academic question, as it was asked concerning the atrocities of Congo Free State one century ago.  Although Congo Free State's charter was based on "free trade", it in fact created monopolies (especially in rubber) that enslaved the population of Congo.  It took a Liverpool accountant to discover the atrocities when he noticed that guns and bullets were sent to Congo and rubber was leaving Congo -- statistical proof of enslavement.  That was the age of the severed hands, as hands were systematically severed from natives who could not meet their quota of rubber.  But the "globalization" of the economy back then meant that every consumer of cheap rubber became a beneficiary of Belgian atrocities in Congo.

And that's not including problems associated with the rise of market dominant minorities, documented in Amy Chua's "World on Fire".

Protectionism can exist for excellent moral reasons, ones that Mr. Friedman doesn't seem to notice.  And to paraphrase Alexander Hamilton, war is at least as likely to result from disputes between trading partners as peace would be from the rational self interest of the merchant class.  It seems to me that Thomas Friedman's medication for the globalization hangover is more and more of his Flat Earth Vodka.


-- Modified on 6/21/2005 7:21:47 PM

Interesting series of posts, and it makes me think of the issue in a slightly different context.  My son is a history student and last night we were discussing the rise and fall of empire.  In that context I speculated on globalization being perhaps a catalyst for the decline of the US role as current superpower.  This may not take place within our lifetimes (then again, as a student I was informed by a history teacher that the decline of the Soviet empire and the unification of Germany was unlikely to take place in our lifetimes - how things can quickly and radically alter).

We were discussing this in the context of issues like outsourcing, the transfer of key manufacturing to third world countries, the seeming unconcern by corporate conglomerates for anything other than the greatest profit.  

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it seems that globalization is intrinsically at odds with nationalism and will inevitably tend towards the decline of certain nations at the expense of others.  Globalization works all right - it's just that as things stand the US may not, in the end be one of the ultimate beneficiaries.

This, btw, is the reason why European countries like the UK should and must embrace the EU.  Without aligning ourselves wholeheartedly to the European cause, we'll be lost.  Well, maybe we are already, but that's another story.

Aphra

-- Modified on 6/21/2005 1:15:19 AM

The lofty goals of globalism are right in line with the far left in a "socialist utopia".  It will never happen.  The far left and the far right adopt very similar means to accomplish their ends.  
    The global economy and the spread of capitalism is a very good thing in the long run, tarriffs, trade wars, and potentially shooting wars in the aftermath of an economic crisis are all the darkside of globalization and the spread of a free market.  As much as the rise of China, Indonesia, and India in the world economy has hurt US manufacturing, it has made those surviving companies very lean and efficient.  That is healthy in the long run.  As costs from overseas competitors inevitably  rise, it will mean that the US will bring some of that business back.

I generally agree with alot of what you said and I think perhaps you've misconstrued a little of what i said.  I respect the religious right, the liberal left, etc. - until the point where they insult the other side.  Actually, my biggest criticism of the left is that they characterize the right as ignorant, selfish etc.  Understanding is paramount to tolerance.

Howver, I couldn't disagree more regarding your point about third world jobs.  In my reading and travel internationally, I find agrarian rural economies desperately seeking better paying manufacturing jobs.  I don't consider it condescending that Indians find working for 25% of American wages to be a sought after job - its a proven fact!  These companies that "exploit" Indian programmers are some of the best paying firms in India.

I think I agree with NOSC that some of the effects of globalism are nebulous at best - but the train is leaving the station and the Europeans have shown that resisting change is a recipe for failure (see: France, Southern Italy).  I'm all for moderation, but that leaves a huge question: how and where?

I'm writing a report on it at the end of the summer.

Globalization is now inevitable.  In the long run it will probably be good-- if we survive in the long run.  Right now, it looks good.  But there are going to be some traumas in the short term.  One that I foresee is a bursting of the housing bubble worldwide.  Another is a plague out of Asia, the avian flu being a good candidate now.   Wreckage of farming or ecosystems from introduced species is another one (the Asian mite wiping out whole honeybee populations in the US.)  A third one is the fall of US economic dominance.  China and India are set to do to us what we did to Britain in the 19th-20th century.  The worst challenges, however, are bound to be the unanticipated ones.

There's no way to stop globalization.  There seems to be little options for moderating it.  I've realized, however, that if human beings are going to ever move into space and colonize other worlds, they do need to evolve a different social system.  Globalization might be that necessary step.

I read an article in Network World recently and several larger IT organizations have admitted that outsourcing solutions is not working as well as they had expected. As a result some of the work is being brought back to the United States.

Dell started the trend not that long ago. They sent all of their support (call center stuff) to India. But several "major" clients complained about the quality of the support that the companies threatened to terminate all business relationships with Dell unless they had corporate support located in the US. Dell caved in and re-established a corporate call center in Texas.

Similar issue have also arisen with othe countries. In technology, we expect the "think outside the box" mentality, however, Asia and India have not grasped that concept as yet. As a consequence, you can get a cheaper labor force, but the higher level work has to be repeated several times to reach the optimal solution. Companies are finding that the dollars saved are not real dollars when you calculate in lost goodwill and poor quality.

The US will continue to lead with creativity, but we have lost the competitive capabilities in manufacturing.

the loss of US based ownership of corporations (a company in China is trying to purchase Maytag, a large portion of Hawaii was owned by Japanese companies, etc.) and the former Eastern Block nations.

The average American owns lots of foreign stock.  Why can't they own ours.  As long as the right jobs are domiciled here and our capital markets embrace our entrepreneurs, I'm not sure its bad that US companies have foreign ownership as long as foreign companies also have US ownership.

Consider Mexico.

It's illegal for a non-citizen to "own" land in Mexico. Thus, all non-Mexican citizens who "purchase" Mexican land purchase through fronts.

The Mexican government could very easily confiscate all holdings and that would be the end of US "ownership" of anything in Mexico.

Similar situations have evolved in other countries with US companies. Normally US corporate ownership and investement overseas is a partnership/joint venture arrangement, not an outright purchase.

On the domestic side, do some financial investigation into the real ownership of US banks. Consider how the economy would fare if these "US" banks decided to tighten fiscal policies.

Yeah, but it's always an option.  Ie., you can make money ripping people off, and somebody's always gonna try.