7 ms·

You don't even have to read between the lines with this one. Brexit is a precursor for what is about to come in the next decade; the globalism pendulum is swing

• dclowd9901 10y ago
  The people saw no benefit from globalism. Instead they saw their jobs dry up, their benefits disappear and their incomes flatline. Of course, rather than demand more from their employers or blame capitalism at all, the corporations guide them toward the demon from afar, as has always happened and as will always happen. I wonder who this round's Hitler will be...
  • yummyfajitas 10y ago
    The people saw vastly increasing incomes and life expectancy, primarily at the bottom. Also massive and unprecedented decreases in poverty. http://www.maxroser.com/economic-world-history-in-one-chart/ http://www.maxroser.com/economic-world-history-in-one-chart/ https://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/ https://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/ https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/74560291412360396 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/74560291412360396 Oh, by "people", did you mean "privileged westerners"? The "people" also saw no benefit from desegregation if you define "people" to be "white people".
    • jacobolus 10y ago
      He’s presumably talking about the folks who voted for Brexit, that is, predominantly older, less educated, native-born English (and Welsh), many of them from regions of England which have been economically stagnant or declining for several decades and where a high proportion of ambitious youngsters have left for greener pastures in London or elsewhere in Europe.
      • deleted 10y ago
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      • vkou 10y ago
        Amusingly enough, those people's futures were not auctioned off by the EU, but rather by Thatcherism.
        • ptaipale 10y ago
          And not really by Thatcherism, but by technological development, European integration and world commerce.
      • shawndumas 10y ago
        I think GP would say that those people are privileged westerners–by worldwide standards.
      • yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Declining? What good or service did those people have in the past that they don't have today?
    • danharaj 10y ago
      > The people saw vastly increasing incomes and life expectancy, primarily at the bottom. Also massive and unprecedented decreases in poverty. It's not necessarily the case that the benefits of globalism could only come with the costs of globalism. Yes, neoliberal global capitalism was better than the imperialism that came before it. That doesn't mean it doesn't have fatal shortcomings that are coming to a head.
    • StevePerkins 10y ago
      There was a time not so long ago (maybe 12 months?) in which I might have nodded my head at a comment like this. After a solid year of being told that not voting for Bernie makes me a pro-globalization racist, and being told that questioning the EU makes me an anti-globalization racist, I'm kinda burned out. I've just accepted that people on the Internet are going to call me racist no matter what. Sadly, I just don't care anymore. I mean... on a substantive level I still do, and I still hold the same left-leaning principles that I held a year ago. But I no longer feel the same wince of recoil at hearing the word "racist" anymore. The current climate is pure histrionics, and people have cried wolf enough times to leave me numb. Obviously, the commenter was referring to the "people" who live in the UK and voted yesterday. I mean... duh. Regardless of one's position on Brexit one way or the other, this retort was absurd.
      • johncolanduoni 10y ago
        > voting for Bernie makes me a pro-globalization racist I "get" the racist part (as in I get the causal structure in other people's brains that makes them come up with this, not that I agree with it), but not the pro-globalization part. Bernie Sanders was pretty vocal about his voting record on free trade (NAFTA, etc.), which he was consistently against.
        • StevePerkins 10y ago
          not voting for Bernie (Although there is no shortage of people who will say that Bernie voters were privileged and racist for their condescension toward the black vote too. The fact that you can include or omit the "not", and people don't notice, kinda underscores the point.)
          • johncolanduoni 10y ago
            Sorry, I misread! Depressingly enough people calling you racist for it remains believable.
      • airesQ 10y ago
        I've been hearing this type of complaints recently. And it is funny how it sounds like a call for political correctness. From a point of the political spectrum that usually despises it.
    • dclowd9901 10y ago
      Who voted for the referendum? I'm not justifying what happened I'm explaining what happened. I understand the benefits of globalism even if poorly educated 50+s in the UK do not. Don't need your chest puffing faux enlightenment, thanks.
  • voodoomagicman 10y ago
    Well there is this (extreme poverty to fall below 10% of the world population for the first time): https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/05/world-bank-extreme-poverty-to-fall-below-10-of-world-population-for-first-time https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/05/world-bank-e... I think globalization played a big part.
• themartorana 10y ago
  Relax. Britain was EU minus the Euro and the schengen. They gave up pure sovereignty without buying into the true core of the EU, which boils down to economics. I get it. If the UK didn't buy into the Euro (and retained fiat currency) and didn't buy into the schengen, what exactly were they getting from EU membership minus encroachment on sovereignty? Edit: since joining the EU, Britain has known nothing but austerity. Whether or not that had anything to do with EU membership, you can see how it was blamed, yes?
  • v1tyaz 10y ago
    Access to the European single market and a large supply of skilled labour.
    • themartorana 10y ago
      Existing trade agreements covered exports and remote labor has always been on the table.
      • johncolanduoni 10y ago
        Maybe this is getting blown up by the media, but I've seen a lot of tech people in the UK on HN and elsewhere looking (sometimes desperately) for other opportunities. Even if future agreements don't make it harder for them to remain and work in the UK on paper, it may still cause a lot of skilled labor to leave the UK purely due to perception. That's assuming that it remains just as easy to do so, which seems unlikely given immigration was part of what was driving the leave vote. Even if it is still easier in absolute terms for someone in the EU to work in the UK than the US, the lowered differential could have pretty negative effects on the market for high-demand jobs.
      • izacus 10y ago
        Really? Because I explicitly remember that running a company and dealing with other European countries has been hell of paperwork, lawyers, different standards and protectionism which made running a company that sold goods or software across Europe extremely complicated before entry of the coutry into EU in 2004. Just the standardization of financial (global VAT system, unified taxes, etc.) and regulatory (if an item is legal in one EU country then it's legal in another) has brought so much more commerce, jobs and startups that I doubt people in this topic born after EU can even fanthom.
• mc32 10y ago
  Globalization was one of those things that overall has brought good to the world [See China, India]. With it, there was necessary move towards equilibrium. Poor countries got richer and rich countries didn't grow as much. It brings wealth to global businesses [Apple, Toyota, Siemens, etc.] But brought with it stagnant wages in developed nations [EU, US, JP, etc.] but wage growth in CN, IN, BR, ZA, etc. Then you had the anti-WTO anti-globalization movement who sympathized with third world countries [because 'exploitation'] and were anti-big business and pro blue collar workers in developed nations --but how were those countries going to develop without globalization? And of course, anti-globalization also meant more nativism and non-westernization of developing countries... yet they were mostly pro immigration to developed nations [which goes against the don't dilute culture attitude for developing nations] Schizophrenic.
  • pdonis 10y ago
    Economic globalization, which has indeed brought good to the world overall, is not the same thing as political unification, which has not. We don't need to have everyone in the world belong to a single country in order to reap the benefits of globalized specialization and trade. Political unification just means that people have less and less voice in how they are governed. The EU's rules are written by unaccountable bureaucrats; I'm not at all surprised that Britain voted to exit from that.
    • PeCaN 10y ago
      I agree. To pick a low-hanging fruit, the EU's internet legislation can only have come from bureaucrats completely detached from reality.
      • ptaipale 10y ago
        Which legislation do you mean? (Genuine question. I can see some examples, such as the completely idiotic requirement that forces web sites to have those exceedingly irritating pop-ups for consent to have cookies. Whoever wrote that law clearly didn't understand how web sites work, socially.)
• deleted 10y ago
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• snowwrestler 10y ago
  Globalism can't swing back full force because it was driven primarily by advances in technology that are not going to go away. The Internet is not going to disappear. Airplanes and ships and telephone lines and satellites are not going to disappear. From the human perspective, the world has shrunk permanently. What we are seeing now is the backlash to that from an aging generation. I don't mean to be dismissive; their fears are real and legitimate from their perspective. But that perspective won't last forever. The vote pattern in Brexit was clear--young people, who have only ever known a small world, voted for the EU. The next decade or two will be volatile (what decade isn't, really?). But globalism is here to stay. It's far more real than national boundaries, BTW. This globe is humanity's only home, and it's up to us now to manage it. At some point we will grow as a species into accepting that.
• kmiroslav 10y ago
  Too soon to tell. Sure, a few countries will try to follow suit and try to leave the EU but imagine a future when, in a couple of years, Britain's economy has dropped below #10, unemployment is at an all time low, the deficit has ballooned, etc... What do you think EU members will think by then? They will certainly want to stick around. The bottom line is that the current decision was made by voters who are swayed by immigration and talking points from crafty politicians but who have little understanding of how global economy works. Let's see what the situation is in 2018.