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Of course, tribalism is the primary motivator here, but I think there are a couple other economic and moral arguments to be made against unbridled globalism. F
by beisner 10y ago
Of course, tribalism is the primary motivator here, but I think there are a couple other economic and moral arguments to be made against unbridled globalism.
From an economic perspective, much of international economic growth is based on confidence rather than rational analysis of economic situations. Credit markets underpin everything we do, and we have seen what happens when a lack of confidence undermines an entire global credit system (e.g. It causes a global economic crisis). A steady outflow of jobs from a currently wealthy country could potentially undermine consumer confidence in that country, which would in turn decrease consume spending and the tolerance for risk in that country, which could prompt a credit shrink in the short- to medium-term, meaning that in aggregate, everyone might be worse off. Now, in the long-term, things would generally even out, but it stands to reason that achieving that globalization without such a rock to confidence in wealthy countries (perhaps in a slower or government-assisted way) immediate negative effects might be mitigated and the ride might be smoother for everyone.
On the moral side of things, one could make the argument that it's morally inconsistent to allow manufacturing and services to move to countries where labor laws and political/societal conditions are sufficiently transgressive in the eyes of the public. This is kind of a tricky idea to pick apart and is a bit fuzzy but I'll try to give an example. Consider a company that makes shoes in a country with strong labor protections for children and low corruption in government. If that company were to move operations to a country where children are regularly exploited to drive down manufacturing costs (and the company makes use of this cultural/societal condition), a resident of the former country could make a strong moral case that this company should not be allowed to continue selling its goods in that country, because the supply chain is tainted. This is a very common situation (Nestle, for instance, is notorious for these kinds of ethical violations). Once again, in the long term increased industrial economic activity in a region will generally cause it to become wealthier and improve labor protections, but in the short- to medium-term it is not unreasonable to oppose the transfer of manufacturing and service operations to places where workers are not entitled to rights that people in a wealthier/more-protected country might consider fundamental. This is unlikely to be the case for offshoring IT jobs to Bangalore (although one could potentially find gripes with systemic corruption in India), but is more common in textile-exporting countries in South-East Asia.
I'm right there with you in thinking that one human being is no more entitled to a job than another just by the section of ground he happened to be born on, but we live in a complicated world that is in a suboptimal configuration, and unbridled globalization might not be the most effective way to achieve more equity universally.