7 ms·

Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to s

Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.

minitel 8y ago
Wait what? Are you claiming that corporations deign for some countries to become dumping grounds? I'm not sure what you mean here. The article hints at the fact that while standards of living increase for some, they decrease for others... Which is essentially the complaint that anti-globalization activists have. It's not a rising tide but a race to the bottom. Most corporations (I can't think of any counter examples, but maybe someone here will find one) are all on board with abolishing borders. It makes the most sense from the POV of a capitalistic institution since it drives down wages and increases efficiency much more than strong national borders and "nationalism" would. (Wouldn't your local tech giant like an unlimited supply of work visas to pass out like candy?) It seems to me that open borders and pro-globalization activists are mostly playing right into the wildest dreams of corporate robber barons. Who prefer the "race to the bottom" WRT labor costs that is "globalism."
vowelless 8y ago
> Nationalism feeds into that How?
- westiseast 8y ago
  I assume he means because nationalism stokes tensions between citizens while companies quietly extract value from society.
  - mistermann 8y ago
    That's true (at least where there are large nationalist and globalist groups in conflict), but it seems to me a lack of nationalism may sometimes result in suppression of the expression of self-interested sentiments, especially when globalism does not decrease overall GDP but causes large changes in the distribution of income/wealth.
  - shard972 8y ago
    Why would nationalism stoke tensions between citizens? The point of nationalism is to unite the society around the nation. It seems to me that multiculturalism if anything leads to more tensions as it seeks to add more groups that don't have as much in common as the people already there.
    - nafey 8y ago
      Contemporary history suggests nationalism is almost always a reactionary movement. Reactionary movements are by definition in reaction to some other political entity. Thus the tension.
- trhway 8y ago
  Nationalism preserves&increases the gradient/spread.
- omegaworks 8y ago
  Nationalism is a shiny, ultimately self-defeating distraction for unions. It allows politicians and union leadership to avoid the hard work of crafting and executing on real pro-labor policies to grapple with the reality of globalized capital. Instead, it pits workers against each other, factionalizes them and creates scapegoats so they never organize as a class. http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/erik-loomis-the-democrats-trade-deficit http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/erik-loomis-the-dem...
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    It competes with unions as the class of people who organize together.
internet_user 8y ago
And the worst part is not just labor arbitrage. Rules that we have defined to protect the environment in which we live, safety of the products we use, security/privacy of our data. All of that gets arbitraged away, just like offshore havens are used to hide dirty cash behind veils of various legal stuctures.
- 56chan4 8y ago
  Globalists who want the NWO will also exploit legal loopholes in different countries to further their agenda. All perfectly legal as well making them untouchable. Hacking foreign entities is the most obvious example, but it also means global companies can legally engage in corporate espionage to further consolidate their positions. Tax havens and off-shoring profits is another example many many people will be familiar with. Some CEO's are legal moral criminals in a way, but the common theme is clever people have been exploiting stupid since before the time of Christ.
leereeves 8y ago
Strong nationalism doesn't help multi-national corporations. It either prevents their operation entirely (for example, bans on imports and nationalization of assets as in Iran) or exploits them only when the government decides the country will profit more than the company (as in China).
- perfmode 8y ago
  it’s not so simple. one side effect of strong nationalism is a restriction on the flow of people. when capital can flow freely, but people can’t, multinationals gain an advantage.
  - leereeves 8y ago
    The mere existence of nations prevents the free flow of people. "Nationalism" usually means something stronger than the existence of nations, such as "the belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals".
    - perfmode 8y ago
      it is nationalist policy that restricts flow.
      - leereeves 8y ago
        All nations do that. A definition of "nationalist" that includes every nation isn't particularly useful for distinguishing the policies of nations.
        TheCoelacanth 8y ago
        All nations are at least a bit nationalistic. If they weren't at all nationalistic, they wouldn't be nations. Restrictions on the free flow of people are not a binary decision. Countries in the Schengen Area which have almost completely given up the ability restrict movement between their territory and 25 other nations are not restricting the movement of people as much as say North Korea which doesn't even let most of its own citizens travel abroad.
InfiniteBeing 8y ago
In what way? Nationalism leads to immigration restrictions and protectionism.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  All nations have immigration controls, most of them strict, and the majority of most economies - even Western economies are protected (Banking, Telecoms, Entertainment, Agriculture, Energy) and even those that might not be technically protected are de-facto protected by business or political cabals. Try and buy a major Japanese auto company and see how they handle that.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  There are shades of nationalism; I assume parent suggests multinational corps aim for a region in this spectrum - a region, in which movement is restricted, so that workers from poor country A don't migrate to richer country B, but where trade isn't restricted, so nothing stops the multinational to sell products made in A to people in B.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
I think it's the other way around. Multinationals would prefer to get rid of all nationality, ethnicity, religion, culture, political ideology etc - it stands in the way of their bottom line. Strong nations can stand up to big corps. Strong cultures make it difficult to 'define consumer behaviour' - example: in Europe, American companies have a difficult time selling some consumer products because Europeans 'have their own way' of doing things. Why do you think Starbucks doesn't have a lot of stores in Italy? Because Italians don't care for it - they do their own thing. This is kind of ugly - but there is a kind of 'culturally secular left' and a 'big / globalist business right' that actually get a long quite well - they both want to get rid of what they view as 'outdated norms'. The left wants to re-write social structure, the right wants to re-write consumption, consumerism and define our aspirations. I'm not being conspiratorial, it's not like there's a cabal of evil globalists pulling strings, it's just overall in the best interest of these groups. BigCos tend to promote policies which benefit them - not the local population. Shareholders just don't think or care that much about people or culture.
golemiprague 8y ago
In what times are you living? the 80'?, today big corporates are all democrats, rich people are democrats, the media are democrats and they all together preach for globalism. Trump won exactly because he was standing against it.
spc476 8y ago
I don't buy that. I'm old enough to remember when people (US citizens) got upset when companies moved their operations from the north (Northern US) to the South (Southeastern US) because it was cheaper (cheap labor). Yes, there was a play arbitrage with labor, but nationalism never feed into that because it was all inside one country.

Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.

minitel 8y ago

Wait what? Are you claiming that corporations deign for some countries to become dumping grounds? I'm not sure what you mean here. The article hints at the fact that while standards of living increase for some, they decrease for others... Which is essentially the complaint that anti-globalization activists have. It's not a rising tide but a race to the bottom. Most corporations (I can't think of any counter examples, but maybe someone here will find one) are all on board with abolishing borders. It makes the most sense from the POV of a capitalistic institution since it drives down wages and increases efficiency much more than strong national borders and "nationalism" would. (Wouldn't your local tech giant like an unlimited supply of work visas to pass out like candy?) It seems to me that open borders and pro-globalization activists are mostly playing right into the wildest dreams of corporate robber barons. Who prefer the "race to the bottom" WRT labor costs that is "globalism."

vowelless 8y ago

> Nationalism feeds into that How?

westiseast 8y ago
I assume he means because nationalism stokes tensions between citizens while companies quietly extract value from society.
- mistermann 8y ago
  That's true (at least where there are large nationalist and globalist groups in conflict), but it seems to me a lack of nationalism may sometimes result in suppression of the expression of self-interested sentiments, especially when globalism does not decrease overall GDP but causes large changes in the distribution of income/wealth.
- shard972 8y ago
  Why would nationalism stoke tensions between citizens? The point of nationalism is to unite the society around the nation. It seems to me that multiculturalism if anything leads to more tensions as it seeks to add more groups that don't have as much in common as the people already there.
  - nafey 8y ago
    Contemporary history suggests nationalism is almost always a reactionary movement. Reactionary movements are by definition in reaction to some other political entity. Thus the tension.
trhway 8y ago
Nationalism preserves&increases the gradient/spread.
omegaworks 8y ago
Nationalism is a shiny, ultimately self-defeating distraction for unions. It allows politicians and union leadership to avoid the hard work of crafting and executing on real pro-labor policies to grapple with the reality of globalized capital. Instead, it pits workers against each other, factionalizes them and creates scapegoats so they never organize as a class. http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/erik-loomis-the-democrats-trade-deficit http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/erik-loomis-the-dem...
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  It competes with unions as the class of people who organize together.

internet_user 8y ago

And the worst part is not just labor arbitrage. Rules that we have defined to protect the environment in which we live, safety of the products we use, security/privacy of our data. All of that gets arbitraged away, just like offshore havens are used to hide dirty cash behind veils of various legal stuctures.

56chan4 8y ago
Globalists who want the NWO will also exploit legal loopholes in different countries to further their agenda. All perfectly legal as well making them untouchable. Hacking foreign entities is the most obvious example, but it also means global companies can legally engage in corporate espionage to further consolidate their positions. Tax havens and off-shoring profits is another example many many people will be familiar with. Some CEO's are legal moral criminals in a way, but the common theme is clever people have been exploiting stupid since before the time of Christ.

leereeves 8y ago

Strong nationalism doesn't help multi-national corporations. It either prevents their operation entirely (for example, bans on imports and nationalization of assets as in Iran) or exploits them only when the government decides the country will profit more than the company (as in China).

perfmode 8y ago
it’s not so simple. one side effect of strong nationalism is a restriction on the flow of people. when capital can flow freely, but people can’t, multinationals gain an advantage.
- leereeves 8y ago
  The mere existence of nations prevents the free flow of people. "Nationalism" usually means something stronger than the existence of nations, such as "the belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals".
  - perfmode 8y ago
    it is nationalist policy that restricts flow.
    - leereeves 8y ago
      All nations do that. A definition of "nationalist" that includes every nation isn't particularly useful for distinguishing the policies of nations.
      - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
        All nations are at least a bit nationalistic. If they weren't at all nationalistic, they wouldn't be nations. Restrictions on the free flow of people are not a binary decision. Countries in the Schengen Area which have almost completely given up the ability restrict movement between their territory and 25 other nations are not restricting the movement of people as much as say North Korea which doesn't even let most of its own citizens travel abroad.

InfiniteBeing 8y ago

In what way? Nationalism leads to immigration restrictions and protectionism.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
All nations have immigration controls, most of them strict, and the majority of most economies - even Western economies are protected (Banking, Telecoms, Entertainment, Agriculture, Energy) and even those that might not be technically protected are de-facto protected by business or political cabals. Try and buy a major Japanese auto company and see how they handle that.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
There are shades of nationalism; I assume parent suggests multinational corps aim for a region in this spectrum - a region, in which movement is restricted, so that workers from poor country A don't migrate to richer country B, but where trade isn't restricted, so nothing stops the multinational to sell products made in A to people in B.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

I think it's the other way around. Multinationals would prefer to get rid of all nationality, ethnicity, religion, culture, political ideology etc - it stands in the way of their bottom line. Strong nations can stand up to big corps. Strong cultures make it difficult to 'define consumer behaviour' - example: in Europe, American companies have a difficult time selling some consumer products because Europeans 'have their own way' of doing things. Why do you think Starbucks doesn't have a lot of stores in Italy? Because Italians don't care for it - they do their own thing. This is kind of ugly - but there is a kind of 'culturally secular left' and a 'big / globalist business right' that actually get a long quite well - they both want to get rid of what they view as 'outdated norms'. The left wants to re-write social structure, the right wants to re-write consumption, consumerism and define our aspirations. I'm not being conspiratorial, it's not like there's a cabal of evil globalists pulling strings, it's just overall in the best interest of these groups. BigCos tend to promote policies which benefit them - not the local population. Shareholders just don't think or care that much about people or culture.

golemiprague 8y ago

In what times are you living? the 80'?, today big corporates are all democrats, rich people are democrats, the media are democrats and they all together preach for globalism. Trump won exactly because he was standing against it.

spc476 8y ago

I don't buy that. I'm old enough to remember when people (US citizens) got upset when companies moved their operations from the north (Northern US) to the South (Southeastern US) because it was cheaper (cheap labor). Yes, there was a play arbitrage with labor, but nationalism never feed into that because it was all inside one country.