Problems with the anti-Globalist position

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There are absolutely negative forms of globalisation, such as multinationals colluding or pressuring governments, bureaucratic and undemocratic political unions. However there are also many forms of it that people take for granted which are good. Trade between individuals in countries is a form of globalisation. Use of the skills and labour is another.

Opponents often:
a. claim not to want but are currently benefiting from many forms of it.
b. misunderstand the economics of labour and industrial revolutions and attribute a Globalist conspiracy to their jobs being stolen away.

I will use myself as an example: In order to make a more secure living and become more efficient, I will have to delegate some work. I would not be able to take on permanent staff in my country due to cost, this is not an option right now. However I might be in a position to hire foreigner in their own country. I would like to do so as free agents. I can pay them decently based on the average standard of living in their country, in a strong currency for them. I will hire appropriately based on merit, and they will be providing services as a contractor. I will make use of some of their skills, but also give them skills and experience. This also benefits both my country's economy and theirs.

Many business in the west simply wouldn't have got of the ground if they couldn't have got good an services from individual and companies in other countries.

Industrial decline is inevitable. It has more to do with rising standards and expectations of living. Even China's industrial heartland is starting to decline as the Chinese become wealthier. It is just a long ways to go. This mean that adaption is key.

I could very easily see foreign labour as a threat to me, and some respects it is in this industry. However it is also something that can benefit if I'm smart about it. Then I later may employ locals as well.

I would most likely hire in India, due to language and reputation in my industry, and well as political situation. Granted there is still issues with corruption/fraud, but I am experienced enough to weed that out and take protective measures especially with hiring the right individuals who understand how business is done here. In fact I'm more worried about the low level corruption and crime in Eastern Europe, and would less likely hire there (but wouldn't rule it out).

Yes there are thing we can do locally better, but there are also many thing we can't or wouldn't be an option for that business plan.

This is giving choice to consumers. It is delivering goods that consumers never would have obtained otherwise , adding value to properties owner never would have been able to develop otherwise, and lowered barrier to entry to business who benefit from equipment/machinery/services that are fully or part produced abroad.

There is an argument over my responsibilities, but the populist argument ATM is more that local jobs are being taken away by foreign labour. This doesn't always add up, nor are the common solutions to this going to reverse it. Also closing the hatches isn't goign improve standards of living.

There was a guest on Newsnight, and he said something like "these globalist banks promoting cheap foreign slave labour, and stealing jobs from hard working Americans". I'm no fan of banks, but this is ridiculous. Banks are not a big employers on the grand scheme of things, and have slimmed down their workforce in recent years. They also tend to pay their workers well, often many times too well. It is not not banks that are causing the decline in jobs, it is the economics of labour and production costs and what companies choose or are able to produce with what labour. Banks are a whole other issue, they can go under and take someone life savings with little recourse. However some are so big they aren't allowed to fail, this becuase on the one hand they play by their own rules, but another they have a level of protection beyond what ordinary firms could obtain so are propped up. This is becuase in many countries there is too few of them, there is a lack of genuine competition. They also aren't necessarily the best form of finance for businesses.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 22 Dec 2016, 7:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Also the anti-Globalist rhetoric also makes some right wing people sound surprisingly socialist. After all this was an original argument made by the Labour movement in my country.

It works both ways. Old school Tories were protectionist. A major factor in the Irish Famine, as food was not allowed to be imported due to the corn laws. Liberals (in the classical sense), were behind the push to repeal those laws. Robert Peel adopted their policies, which was the start of New Tory.

Those are good points, it isn't progressive to use protectionist policies on companies; it only treats the symptoms, not the problems. I think the best solution for people out of work and with no useful skill to offer the industry is re-eduction and experience. The problem most people I know have with education is that living costs money and most people can't earn any while in school, or during an internship.

anti-Globalist is too much of a vague term. It is used to describe people with realistic concerns along with wing-nut conspiracy nonsense. I don't see tariffs as a solution, but I think the issue of trade dismantling trade unions and pushing unskilled (and even some skilled) wages down is real. I think the only solution is global though, ironically. There needs to be a stronger global labor union movement to bring the standard of living up in those countries currently trailing behind. There is a big problem in global inequality. There also needs to be a bigger willingness to train skilled laborers in specialized tasks. Governments may need to play a role in this.

I feel like we should re-learned the lessons which we learned when we were an isolationist nation in the 1930s.

We, as isolationists, were oblivious to the Nazi menace---and we paid for it with World War II.

It seems like the effects of de-industrialization are easy to dismiss as "natural" if you are privileged enough in life not to be directly affected. I think it's morally wrong to just pretend there isn't a problem at all when there's an underclass struggling to survive.

"Naturalistic" or self-righting laissez faire economic is BS, and this coming from a trade liberal and social libertarian. It is not that different from Gia Earth Theory fanciful stuff. Economics is as natrual as anything is. It is also man made, however that doesn't mean we fully understand its effects, as it is not one actor controlling it.

However it is not dismissive to say that the tendency of industrialised nations is decline in industry over time. This is just common sense. This isn't about privilege, it about the reality of the economics. I'm nor passing moral judgment, nor does it have anything to do with my status.

These nations will have to become more specialised in what they produce, have resources that there is a demand for, or develop new technologies.

There are things there is a demand for which will never pay well such as childcare.

The reality is the ultimate currency is energy and natrual resources. Countries with small populations which have natrual resources have the potential to be wealthy, and this is largely luck of the draw but still can be ruined by leadership and corruption. On the other hand in individuals could cheaply produce their own energy this would complete change economics as we know it.

The way I see this one there are financially well-off countries such as you have in the west and then there are still plenty of countries where people are living primarily in agrarian fashion without electricity, running water, etc.. By and large what the global economy seems to be doing is slowly backfilling these areas right now from the most powerful countries, such as China and India, and working its way downward.

By that I think a lot of what's happening right now is temporary. True, the west will be financially uncomfortable for a while as its work gets outrourced around the world, but I do think there also may be something to the outlook that the more the rest of the world does better financially the fewer hotbeds you'll have for barbarism and also the fewer people you'll have with more than two or three children per couple.

What I don't like is the idea that, as this work trickles out, western countries still treat the labor market as a survival of the fittest when increasingly the otherwise fit get thrown out as well. I'm not sure what we can do other than perhaps trying to get a lot smarter about how we do HR and how broad a system we have for utilizing and finding our best talent. Seems like almost everywhere you have a person unemployed here, a job opening there, and the ways we match the two are still pretty antiquated.

But what is the cause of this decline? Part of it might be improvements in automation. I'm still guessing a lot of it is due to movement of production to less developed countries where there is cheap labor though. It stands to reason that the process will eventually have to reverse when people in those countries begin to demand comparable pay. Things have to be made somewhere after all. Industry can never disappear completely. Most of it just moves somewhere else.

The funny thing though is there is still plenty of unemployment even in the countries that have more industry. It seems people who do work are forced to work longer hours for less pay, while those that don't are mostly left to either be taken care of by others or simply rot in horrible conditions. I can see the incentive of employers doing this. Having desperate people keeps wages down. I just don't know how many centuries it will take for this model of capitalism to change, or if it will even happen without government interventions or mass organization of labor in the developing world. At this point it doesn't seems as though the leaders of these countries really care, as long as they are collecting more money in taxes than they would as leaders of primitive agrarian societies that are being replaced with industry.


I don't know that this is really taking the long view though. Countries that are "losers" can become more competitive, but in the end competition is just a zero-sum game. For every winner there is also a loser. The global economy has to deal with the fact that not everyone is capable of advanced or specialized degrees. Having more education can temporarily fill in the holes, but I just don't see it as "the solution". I don't think someone has to be a radical Marxist to see that there are structural issues with global capitalism. With the never-ending push for cheaper products and greater efficiency, there HAS to be a losing end. I'm not saying we should halt technology to "save jobs". I'm just saying the entire system will have to change in some way. Nobody wants a global authoritarian government, but there will have to be policies like heavy taxation on the wealthy to support universal income. Otherwise I just don't see a sustainable solution. I don't think we are in the 19th century mode anymore. I don't think the world can simply outgrow structural problems in the economy.

Anti globalism is anti free-trade...

I think what has really driven development in terms of standard of living in most places on earth is not simply "wealth". It is the advancement of technology and the ability to implement it. When people say capitalism has lifted people out of poverty, what they really mean is the way capitalism organized the implementation of technology raised the level of comfort people can live in. In the developed world, for the most part we already have all the infrastructure to meet basic needs. I don't see how continued technological advancement is going to eliminate poverty. In the developed world, poverty is an issue of resource distribution via income, not lack of infrastructure as it is in parts of the developing world. In the US, everyone has access to electricity and running water. Being able to pay for it can be a problem. Hell, just being able to pay for shelter can be a problem for many people. My main argument is just because technology helps poverty in the developing world, doesn't mean it helps poverty in the developed world. Poverty in the developed world is structural. It is there by design when we have a system of "winners and losers".

In Flint Michigan the running water has a funny color and taste.

The technology was there to fix the problem. It wasn't even an expensive fix. All that was needed was an additive to reduce the acidity of the water. It seems the problem wasn't deemed worthy of fixing because they people effected were seen as inferior.

Apparently its BRICS investment these days that's helping the developing world, China's activity in Africa most notably. When we say that technology can help the developing world though we have to be careful to specify which technologies. Clearly anything that gives energy to agricultural areas, even if it's just the commercial areas of a town, is an improvement over no electricity. Similarly any improvement in agricultural technique and movements of goods to market will help.

I can't remember if this was on the TED global population special or not but there seemed to be a similar conversation about farmers in Africa being able to significantly boost their productivity just by being able to obtain bicycles to move their produce to market. I think if we're going to be donating things to charity to help developing countries it should be the most practical things, technologies that we may not use in the west today much (outside of in this case perhaps recreation) but which are still a significant improvement over nothing.

A few major benefits to stabilizing developing societies 1) The run to the bottom with respect to manufacturing won't be quite as severe or long-lived, 2) groups like Al Qaeda and Boko Haram will have fewer places in Africa and Asia to run to and will be increasingly hemmed into the middle-east and from there, hopefully, find no society welcoming their activity - everyone will have gained too much and cherish what they have too much to throw it away for ideologies.

I'm not sure if you were countering my point or agreeing with me.

What I'm saying is countries with natrual resources, if they are able to able obtain them either through own technology, or through contractual arrangements, they have the potential to be wealthy especially if they have low populations.

City states like Singapore are obvious exceptions, as they little to no natrual resources (including lack of water), also have a small population. However both their strategic trade location, have allowed them to produce good and provide financial services, as well as act as a regional tax haven.

When Singapore was expelled from Malaysia, it had very little going for it and was still recovering from Japanese invasion, yet it has gone on to have the 3rd highest GDP.

One thing I don't hear politicians talk about much is the experience required to work in advanced manufacturing, there's a layer of critical thinking you just can't get from a classroom or a lab.