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The steam has gone out of globalisation
- gamblor956 8y agoGood. Globalization was always about enriching the people at the top, using the excuse of benefiting the poorest. But that thin veneer no longer hides the truth: globalization destroys both developing economies and the middle class of developed economies.
- FiveSquared 8y agoTrue, but at least, it still increase the global poor’s money. Which I think makes it worth it. See China.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- yzrh 8y agoI want things to improve for myself and the rest of lower/middle class people in my country, I don't give two shits about the Chinese.
- nos4A2 8y agoWhy so selfish? We are one species.
- code_duck 8y agoBecause benefits to people far away that you never have and never will directly observe seem abstract compared to the needy at home, which higher economic classes already ignore plenty.
- stmfreak 8y agoWe are individuals, not a blob of goo. Self preservation and acquisition of personal wealth are some of the fundamental drivers that have ultimately benefited our species.
- claudiawerner 8y agoConsidering us as individuals is to an extent an ideological way to view the world. On the contrary, what you said can be said about cooperation and sharing too. See Kropotkin's Mutual Aid.
- nos4A2 8y agoSure, but the borders of a nation seem more arbitrary than a species as a grouping.
- yzrh 8y agoIf the borders of nations seem arbitrary to you then take a history book and they'll be explained accurately.
- jddj 8y agoHuh, I thought it was well-known that many borders were drawn arbitrarily. India / Pakistan is one example. Lots of middle Africa. Basically anywhere where colonialism played a major role and there wasn't an ocean or giant mountain range to make it more obvious exactly where to 'draw the line' (usually fairly literally).
- dang 8y agoSubstanceless nasty comments are way below the quality bar for HN. We've banned this account.
- sxg 8y agoThat seems like an oversimplified and overly polarized view. What about reductions in global shipping costs and opportunity for smaller businesses to serve a much larger market? Both of those provide benefits for those in the middle and bottom. In the last few decades, many developing countries have grown and benefited from globalization. Globalization is a passive and inevitable process resulting from the constant pressure on businesses to grow and serve more and more people. Ascribing a moral charge to the whole idea of globalization obscures what it actually is and how it came about.
- lazyjones 8y ago> What about reductions in global shipping costs and opportunity for smaller businesses to serve a much larger market? These smaller businesses are the „top 1%“. And the reductions in shipping costs have had a huge negative impact on the environment (i.e. all of us) and actual small local producers. In these developing countries you mention, it‘s also the „1%“ who benefited. The rest are working in cobalt mines etc. ...
- SamReidHughes 8y agoWhich countries are you talking about, and how has their median income changed over the past two decades?
- briandear 8y agoAnd yet globalization has led to the biggest decline in absolute poverty in history.
- sparkie 8y agoCapitalism has, not globalization. There are still places trying socialism, and learning it doesn't raise people out of poverty, but creates more of it.
- microdrum 8y agoLots of Chinese apparatchiks on here. Let me say it again so that I can be nicely downvoted: Communism is the problem. It needs to end.
- twblalock 8y ago> Lots of Chinese apparatchiks on here. It's possible for people to disagree with you without being employed by the Chinese government.
- sparkie 8y agoYes, but it's also well-known that wumao exist. If you assume that communism is a stupid idea (which you should), then you probably assume that people posting pro-communist ideas (or dismissing pro-capitalist ideas), must either be stupid, or wumao. Most Chinese people think Communism is a stupid idea too.
- zozbot123 8y agoMany Western folks do support communism unfortunately. The people who are actually within living memory of a communist state know better (and yes this includes the Chinese - the "socialism with Chinese characteristics" of today is something different which expressly disclaims the idea of communism being directly achievable via central planning alone). It's not stupidity, it's wishful thinking. To be sure, a very foolish sort of wishful thinking, which betrays deep ignorance about how the real world works -- but one that's often nonetheless found in association with skin-deep intellectualism and faux-"smarts".
- EGreg 8y agoI don’t think so. I think automation and competition destroys it. You’re just competing with producers around the whole world + the shipping costs. The internet shows this - where “shipping costs” are nearly zero.
- benj111 8y agoAre you making reference to shipping costs from China? If so those prices were set before china developed, and as they stand at the moment are a subsidy from developed countries to China. These artificially low prices don't apply to industrial quantities of good though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
- dantheman 8y agoReally? During globalization we've had the fastest and greatest reduction of poverty on earth. Seems like a benefit to the poorest to me.
- dpwm 8y ago> During globalization we've had the fastest and greatest reduction of poverty on earth. Really? I've seen this claimed but I've never seen it substantiated.
- distant_hat 8y agoHuge numbers moved out of grinding poverty in China and India. Its not even debatable.
- claudiawerner 8y agoTrue. I'm very anti-capitalist but no modern anti-capitalist disagrees that capitalism has (and must, to work) given people what Marx called double freedom.
- andrenth 8y agoWhy do you remain anti-capitalist if you understand that?
- claudiawerner 8y agoBecause I view capitalism (or, strictly speaking, capital) as authoritarian (mandating human energy be expended to its ends, working in tandem with welfare states towards administered living), exploitative (the labour produced by wage labourers in aggregate is less than the aggregate profit created due to their labour) and allowing only an ever-shrinking space for genuine human expression (it degrades art by forcing it to be marketable and commodified). I'm not alone in this; even pro-capitalists agree that a relationship can be exploitative even if both parties benefit in some way - they just disagree that capitalism is the cause of such a relationship which we can see the world over. I think the argument for capitalism improving peoples' lives by measurable degree is a valid one, but it is only as valid as the argument that feudalism (for instance) improved the lives of those without any sustenance or access to land at all. I think we have the capability to do better than pursuit of profit.
- SamReidHughes 8y agoWhich developing economies are being destroyed?
- halbritt 8y agoThe article disagrees with your assertion: Some 1.2bn people have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 1990
- benj111 8y agoDo you have evidence that globalisation and inequality are linked? The global poor are better off, as well as the top x%. The losers seem to be the developed world's middle/lower class. If you look at recent history, the rich have tended to do well during relatively quiet times but less so during turbulent times (like wars), so I'm not sure its a good idea to hope for a situation where the rich don't do well.
- jdpedrie 8y agoGlobalization in the manner it has happened has lately struck me as akin to drinking from a firehose. While it's led to an increased standard of living (in the form of wages in the third world and lowered prices in the first), the speed at which it happened caused displacement far faster than the cultures could adapt. If your industry disappears over 30 years, it's easy enough to stop hiring new people and draw down as the old retire. If it dies in five years, the dislocation is immense and it becomes nearly impossible to cope. The same problem of rapid change plays itself out in the developing world in different forms; rapid urbanization, pollution, dislocation from traditional ways of life. If, as the article suggests, globalization has indeed slowed, perhaps the breathing space that slowdown provides will in the long run be a good thing. Deal with the problems we've created before doubling down on the instigating issue.
- rossdavidh 8y agoI have often thought that globalization has often been a means of sending 1st World volumes of manufacturing into places with 3rd World environmental, health, and safety laws. It took us time to build up our EHS standards to their current level, and our volume of manufacturing took time to build up also. If all demand were satisfied in countries with equivalent levels of EHS to the target market, the amount of pollution, etc. would plummet quite a bit just from that alone.
- rossdavidh 8y agoOr, just maybe, there is an optimum amount of globalization, somewhere in between total isolationism and complete outsourcing, and the world overshot, so we're backing it up, just a bit.
- benj111 8y agoSounds reasonable. What's the difference between global trade and domestic trade though? Seems to me that differing standards are the problem, rather than globalisation per se?
- rossdavidh 8y agoCertainly it seems plausible that trade between the U.S.A. and Mexico might be problematic in a way that trade between the U.S.A. and Canada is not. But there is another issue with international trade. What restrains the urge of the top 100 corporate elite to pay their labor as little as possible, and get laws (e.g. anti-union, no minimum wage, etc.) passed accordingly, is that each of those 100 wants the other 99 to pay THEIR employees well, because the employees of the other 99 are his customers. He doesn't want to pay his own employees well, but he will collude with the other 98 to make sure each of the others pays their employees well enough they can buy his car/suit/food/appliance/etc. But what if he can have the employees in another country, pay them pennies, and have his customers in this country? Or, if he's on the poor country side of things, what if he can just find rich customers in another country? Now he has no reason to worry about insuring that his peers' employees are paid well. They're no longer his customers. But wait, how will there still be wealthy customers in his country? There won't. But, no problem, we can loan them the money to buy my stuff. It works until it doesn't. But if your employees and your customers are drawn from the same pool, then your exploitative greed is checked by all your greedy peers' exploitative greed. This is why Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie were both in favor of higher wages for factory workers; it wasn't because they were nice guys. But, more recently, the manufacturing happens elsewhere. This removes one of the only checks on the power of wealthy elites to apply the screws to their employees (legally or otherwise).
- vertline3 8y agoWell, to be honest, I only could see part of the story and then it asked for me to subscribe. But anyway, I don't have anything else to add.
- dang 8y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments here.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- microdrum 8y agoElsewhere on HN: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-davos-meeting-solar-gcl-idUSKCN1PI2OQ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-davos-meeting-solar-gcl-i... Chinese ripped off U.S.-based solar, went crazy, drove margins to 0%, overproduced, dumped in U.S., reduced U.S. profit incentive in solar development, and are now going to restrict supply to try to get prices up. Meantime, we've had less serious R&D investment in solar than we would have had otherwise. So, no, globalization doesn't always work especially when one of the other majors is a state-directed Communist country.
- jotm 8y agoHeh, Amazon
- microdrum 8y agoWhat do you mean?
- soared 8y agoSounds like 90% a political issue and 10% causes by globalization. Slightly adjust a tariff and the above situation is impossible but globalization can still occur. I’d be curious to find if there are international dumping laws or something similar. I’m on mobile, but I know the us has them.