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yeah. it is rigged. globalization, from the perspective of someone in a so called advanced country, seems to generally turn into a dressed up way of arbitragin
by maximente 7y ago
yeah. it is rigged.
globalization, from the perspective of someone in a so called advanced country, seems to generally turn into a dressed up way of arbitraging less regulated (environmental, workers' rights, etc.) environments in order to increase profits. this is an easy way for capital to defeat labor's hard fought gains in e.g. minimum wage, maximum hours, benefits, "strict" environmental regulations, paying taxes, and so forth. the proof is in the pudding: US mass manufacturing isn't outsourcing to Germany, Denmark or Switzerland, because the arbitrage in differences in regulations aren't there.
capital loves globalization because it can do things like pit a bunch of desperate places against each other then simply up and move to the "winner", sort of like the Amazon HQ search but internationally. labor, you'll find, typically doesn't have quite the same mobility. it then wags "low low prices" in front of the consumers who then find it easy to ignore their now jobless brothers and sisters as they shave a couple bucks off something or other.
the first wave of globalization took goods-producing jobs and moved them into places where the calculus of (labor + environmental regulation + taxes cost savings etc. > additional overhead/compliance + logistics), then shilled the people on the meme of "lower prices" while their communities rotted away back in country.
now the boomerang is on its way back and we're realizing that the loss of revenues, environmental ruin, illnesses of despair/desperation, etc. etc. may not be quite worth the alleged cost savings we were promised.
- harryh 7y agoGlobalization might have been tough for certain classes of workers in high cost companies but it was a HUGE HUGE HUGE BOON to workers in the many parts of the rest of the world. Literally billions have been lifted out of poverty because of it. If it's rigged, it's important to remember that it's rigged in favor of those people too.
- maximente 7y ago> Literally billions have been lifted out of poverty because of it. i hear this meme a lot. can you point to statistics that indicate global poverty outside of China has materially changed in recent decades?
- harryh 7y agoThe share of global population living in extreme poverty excluding China dropped from 29% to 12% from 1981 to 2013. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/poverty-decline-without-china?time=1981..2015 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/poverty-decline-without-c... World population excluding China was about 5.8 billion in 2013 so that 17% change represents right around a billion people outside of China.
- maximente 7y agothanks, but you cited stats that reference global poverty declining (of which i'm aware); your claim was that global poverty declined because of [globalization]. where is that data? it's not hard to think about why global poverty has declined in many places. in asia, e.g. india has rural anti government policies, rice prices stabilization in indonesia/bangladesh/nepal, etc. additionally, african poverty as best i can see hasn't budged much, perhaps indicating that government intervention like the in SE asia has been bearing most of the positive anti-poverty measures. i'm still not convinced by your claim that globalization has literally lifted billions out of poverty. it may have helped, but you claim seems vastly overstated from what i'm seeing. edit: just now seeing my original question wasn't too clear, apologies for that.
- harryh 7y agoThe fact that lots and lots and lots of people in countries with fast rising GDPs work in factories that export goods to richer nations seems pretty convincing to me. You note, correctly, that Africa hasn't seen as much improvement. Guess where there hasn't been nearly as much trade driven development?
- nappy 7y agoYou're using the word "arbitrage" but you don't seem to know what it means. The simultaneous buying and selling of an asset is intrinsic to it. This is distinct from comparative advantage.