15 ms·

Globalization is dead and no one is listening

159 points by synergy20 4y ago

ecolonsmak 4y ago
I've been reading Peter Zeihan's book , "the end of the world is just the beginning" the death of free trade being the central theme a near future where the US has abandoned policing the seas and formerly interconnected economies localize in response. Began reading it slightly sceptical of the premise but anecdotes like this above are adding up to a near term 30-50 year that might resemble a global contraction amongst trading relationships.
- MR4D 4y ago
  I highly recommend going back and reading The Accidental Superpower as well. Considering it was written a decade ago (pub. 2014) it’s amazing how correct he’s been in forecasting things. To be clear, there is a certain fuzziness in timeframes, and he mentions that, but in general, the timing he mentions is scarily accurate. One thing that I saw earlier this year was Sri Lanka. Many others will follow in various levels of degradation over the coming years.
- diego_moita 4y ago
  Reading the book too. It is a very interesting read, I highly recommend. The guy knows a lot and it has lots of interesting information. But I am not convinced. I think his approach is just too American, in particular, when it comes to China. I am not American and, sometimes, his jingoism is just too much.
  - pkaye 4y ago
    A lot of what is happening makes sense from a national security perspective. If the global supply chains get broken how much can a country continue to function. Like Germany cannot produce enough ammo because it depends on cotton from China. https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Germany-struggles-to-get-China-parts-to-replenish-ammo-stockpile https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Germany-struggl... US onshoring cotton production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdIz21P7zE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdIz21P7zE
la64710 4y ago
I think we ought to take a longer term perspective of things and acknowledge the cyclical nature of things. It is interesting and somehow I think there must be a science behind all this.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  Systems theory ? Cybernetics ? Cliodynamics ??
n0mad01 4y ago
globalization is dead long live globalization.
jandrese 4y ago
There are a lot of grumpy people who see a headline like this and say "good". From their perspective globalization is just a way for companies to export jobs to countries with looser labor standards that allow the corporations to treat them like slave labor and avoid environmental and ethical regulations in the host country while also killing off a whole job segment of honest union factory jobs that support a robust middle class.
- conorcleary 4y ago
  Ask people to explain how vehicles tires are made (from raw resource to manufacture and distro) and suddenly globalization makes sense - it's the only way toward the future. Subtext is required to discern what is good and bad about it. We need to teach students of all ages some lessons about logistics and supply chain - not only will they better understand how the world functions but that there are career and business opportunities at every node.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    There's globalization-the-way-things-are-made-now, and there's globalization-the-neoliberal-trade-policy-that's-dominated-US-politics-since-the-80s. The former's a fact, the latter's... less so, and has been pretty unpopular among voters on both "sides of the aisle" more often than not for the entire time it's been the driving force behind US trade policy (the donor and think-tank sets love it, though, is why it's persisted regardless). Trump's the only big-two-party Presidential candidate I can recall in that whole time span who ran on strongly anti-neoliberalism (so, anti-globalization, in the pop-culture, colloquial sense of globalization) messaging, which worked pretty well for him since most R voters (and a good chunk of true-swing, and actually a lot on the left though they mostly wouldn't have voted for him for other reasons) more-or-less hate neoliberalism—regardless of the movement's merits, it's unpopular.
  - adventured 4y ago
    > it's the only way toward the future The primary matter is not globalization or no globalization, it's about what balance and for which countries and industries. These things will constantly shift back and forth, the pendulum will over-swing as it does. Just because N amount of globalization makes sense, that doesn't mean the extent we have at present, and its composition, makes the most sense. And obviously that (what makes sense) will vary significantly by the national interest of a given country based on its culture and stage of development. The world is filled to the brim with competing interests and that will never change, some benefit more or less from more or less globalization.
tareqak 4y ago
> No American, or any Western media outlet for that matter, bothered to cover this speech. Only Nikkei and a handful of Taiwanese outlets wrote about it. Not even C-Span carried footage of the speech. (And C-Span carries everything!) I find this news to be extremely surprising: everyone talked about the success of having the TSMC fab open, but nobody cared to listen to what the founder and former CEO of the company had to say. The fab might as well not be owned by TSMC. update: 1 . former CEO. Thank you `astroalex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Chang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Chang .
- thephyber 4y ago
  > The fab might as well not be owned by TSMC. Something similar happened with FoxConn in Wisconsin around 2018. Lots of talk about on-shoring factories, but that one was built and sits idle (last I heard it was partially converted to office space). TSMC didn’t build US You fabs before. They are doing it now because the US government is throwing some money at a few current generation fabs to mitigate the geopolitical risk of Taiwan. The fact that TSMC owns it is almost incident for them. But this is a mistake. We should be fixing the upstream reasons why TSMC didn’t want to build these fabs in the US prior to recent large government subsidies. Making sure local governments and NIMBYs have only a small amount of veto power, making sure there is a safe disposal system for the byproducts (the original reason chip fabs left the SF Bay Area), and making sure we are training the specialties required to build and run the current and next generation fabs. And in the case of the Arizona TSMC and Intel fabs, making sure there is sufficient fresh water for the region, which is needed to supply the fans and the local economy.
  - efficax 4y ago
    No factory was built at all for foxconn in Racine county. A weird globe building was built that contains some kind of data center, although nobody knows for sure what goes on there. The whole thing was a complete boondoggle, although I don't know if anyone gained anything, it didn't even get Scott Walker re-elected. https://www.theverge.com/23030465/foxconn-lcd-factory-wisconsin-alan-yeung-trump-scott-walker-wisconn-valley-dome-decoder-interview https://www.theverge.com/23030465/foxconn-lcd-factory-wiscon... Hopefully this TSMC thing is real and not just a game around tax credits. Kind of bonkers to me to build it in the desert as the colorado river is drying up if water is so important, though.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> No American, or any Western media outlet for that matter, bothered to cover this speech. Only Nikkei and a handful of Taiwanese outlets wrote about it. There were highlights of the speech, including "Globalization is almost dead" and "Free trade is almost dead" quotes, reported in the New York Times, which is where I first read about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/technology/tsmc-chips-factory-phoenix.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/technology/tsmc-chips-fac...
miguelazo 4y ago
Perhaps the American/Western version of globalization has failed, but the Chinese version seems to just be getting started. In fact, the decoupling that the US is forcing upon China will be a boon to them in the long run, as they become even less dependent on the US and care less about sanctions on severely underserved markets with huge growth potential.
- ren_engineer 4y ago
  China ironically follows a purer form of capitalism where they pretty much keep it strictly business. They don't try to push cultural change on countries they are trading with, it's just economics and things that benefit China the most
  - oliv__ 4y ago
    "They don't try to push cultural change on countries they are trading with, it's just economics" Umm, what? https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-universities-retain-ties-chinese-schools-support-chinas-military-bu-rcna8249 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-univer... among other things...
  - dartharva 4y ago
    Can you give an example where a Western player explicitly pushed a culture change and its Chinese counterpart didn't?
    - three_seagrass 4y ago
      Apple tried but just gave in to the government surveillance.
    - miguelazo 4y ago
      Go read the USAID and NED websites— their entire premise is around realignment of target countries’ cultures in exchange for “aid”.
  - asdajksah2123 4y ago
nodesocket 4y ago
Peter Thiel has talked extensively about globalization and was ahead of the trend it seems[1]. Despite what feels like the majority of people on HN being pro-globalization, Covid and the War in Ukraine hopefully taught countries a good lesson in the power of domestic first and domestic focused production. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/03/08/thiel-globalization-is-over.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/03/08/thiel-globalization-is-o...
woeirua 4y ago
Globalization and free trade are dead because most of the promised benefits for the west failed to materialize. Yes, we got significantly cheaper goods, but one of the major promises was that free trade would liberalize the world. Instead, China has taken all the benefits and used our money to build a system of oppression that would make George Orwell blush. Globalization will live on, but only for countries who align themselves with the west.
- pishP05h 4y ago
  Meanwhile in the US we’re not allowed to care anyone else exists by putting more research and economic agency into better healthcare. We tacitly decided no one is worth keeping alive unless they coincidentally happen to be rich under a system intentionally funneling money to the top like all the rest. Why care what anyone else has to say if their existence is not something I have an obligation maintain?
- CodesInChaos 4y ago
  Even in the West you have complications, like the Schrems II decision which ruled that the US does not offer an acceptable data protection level.
- trasz2 4y ago
  - throw_m239339 4y ago
    > Also, the country with largest percentage of imprisoned people is US, not China. It’s also not China where police routinely murders random people on the streets with impunity. This is a very tough argument to make given how China has very little freedom of press, speech, association or information.
  - godelski 4y ago
    I'm not sure what people think comments like this accomplish. Americans aren't super gung ho about America. The great universal American past-time is criticizing America.
andrejguran 4y ago
The one scary effect that is not mentioned here is that globalisation and trade are pushing towards peace. Without it I am afraid we might go back to much darker times
- Izkata 4y ago
  The late 1800s was also a time of increasing globalization. It was exactly that interconnectedness that turned a local conflict into WWI.
  - AnonymousPlanet 4y ago
    Interconnectivity by trade before WW2 was very brittle, because everyone involved had to fend for their own trading routes. The pillar of today's globalisation is that big and middle powers don't have to roll their own security policy just to keep their own commerce running. The global naval hegemon has been doing that for them for decades now. The moment this goes away, we will suddenly see a whole lot of regional disputes popping up. "Safety" inspections for container ships of the competition or more blatant interference using drones. Once a precedent has been set of the US not stepping in, it can turn wild pretty fast.
- yucky 4y ago
  That depends on how you define peace. Many non-Western nations are not at all at peace with the idea of their cultures being displaced and destroyed through the cultural imperialism of the US. And our dominant economic role and continued push for globalization is widely seen as the largest factor in that. Many people in the West don't make that connection because our consumption of media is very insular. But it's been bubbling under the surface for awhile and now it's starting to boil over.
deleted 4y ago
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lizardactivist 4y ago
Thanks, USA. Globalization was only good as long as they thought they could come out on top and make everyone else dependent and obedient. We should have continued to strive for globalization, and left the USA behind to implode into its own collapsed mess. Now we're just turning our backs to China and Russia, pretend we're the "good guys" and that everything's amazing.
- trasz2 4y ago
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  The average working American sacrificed a lot in the name of striving for your 'globalization'. Your generic demonizing of these people is gross and dishonest.
  - lizardactivist 4y ago
    We often speak broadly like this, just like you speak about how Russia and China (everyone living there, apparently) are bad. It doesn't mean we're saying that every single person in that country is to blame. I say that the USA is to blame for the end of globalization, you don't, and so we have to agree to disagree.
jeffreyrogers 4y ago
Exaggerated headline. Lots of production of various goods still going to places like Mexico, India, Vietnam, etc. Semiconductors moving back to the US is mostly a reaction to China's growing power. Most trends point towards increasing globalization outside of specialized industries like semiconductors just because capital and goods are so much easier to move than people, and the developed world requires cheap labor to support its living standards.
ryanwaggoner 4y ago
Previous discussion on the referenced speech: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33902422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33902422
pishP05h 4y ago
What it means to be a global society will be redefined. Big brains who think their relative understanding is forever realizing they’re in their 50s and generational churn will mean the people who have enabled them won’t be here much longer are really melting down these days. I look forward to Gen Z and later showing as little obligation to traditions of the last 100 as the last 100 years showed to 200 years ago. Rotary phone makers, horse and buggy businesses are starting a protest they can all sign onto.
ryanwaggoner 4y ago
Ridiculous. This has the energy of "No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded!" Global trade is at record highs. Perhaps globalization will decline from here, even permanently (although I'm very skeptical) and I'm certain it'll continue to change like it always has, but declaring it "dead" makes exactly zero sense.
- brookst 4y ago
  Absolutely this. That TSMC fab in Arizona? The lithography machines come from ASML, a company in the Netherlands. The EDA tools? Those are from Siemens, a German company. And on and on. And that's on top of our new remote-first world for information workers. You used to offshore departments or teams; now teams are as likely to be made up of people living in different countries as they are to be made up of people living in the same metro area. Some aspects of globalization are changing. That's normal. But declaring it dead is like declaring the Internet dead because it just got absorbed into all of the products we use.
MisterTea 4y ago
> In Morris Chang’s own estimation, the chips produced from TSMC Arizona may cost “at least 50% more” than the chips from TSMC Taiwan. I'd like to know why its 50% more. Labor costs? Regulations? Taxes? We aren't told and I cant read the linked WSJ article.
armatav 4y ago
Yeah - if you take it to the limit, and every small organization can produce/consume everything they could ever need in a local area; then of course globalization will approach an asymptotic “death”. This is like the “limit” of technology. If ever we got an atomic assembler going, what use would there be for that interaction from a supply/demand standpoint?
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scottmckenzie 4y ago
I would recommend reading Peter Zeihan’s books, or watching some of his interviews on You Tube, to get a fuller geopolitical view. It’s fascinating stuff.
efields 4y ago
I'm listening. I've heard this three times in the last week. But I haven't been ELI5'd what this really means for the rest of my adulthood. I only know a "Globalized World". I was in elementary school when Bill Clinton was elected and globalization (economically) started, right? So is this a reversion? Is it socially bad but economically good? Does the $1 slice become the $2 slice in a couple years? Or are we trying to say something worse?
- chrisco255 4y ago
  I don't think anyone knows to what extent this will play out over the next decade. Yes, we are more reluctant to trust outsourcing production to China, and tensions over Ukraine & Taiwan highlight this rift between NATO nations and the East. But by no means has this stopped the inflow of goods arriving from China. I think that within industries that are deemed critical to national defense, especially semiconductors, these are going to be forcibly on-shored. Whether that spills over into "less critical" imports remains to be seen. When it comes to on-shore vs off-shore production, not sure it can neatly be described as "good or bad". There are trade-offs. When we outsourced more production and manufacturing to China, our economy became more service oriented. We lost some valuable manufacturing skills in the labor force in the process and it takes time to ramp that back up. We are also saddled with far more regulatory and legal issues in the U.S. and that adds a significant burden to costs. I think as article points out, on-shoring will contribute to CPI increases. Off-shoring offset some of the inflationary fiscal (spending from govt) and monetary policies (QE) of the past few decades. Ultimately goods will cost more. At the same time, it's likely that automation technologies get boosted investment. On-shoring may induce a robotics boom to counter act some of those higher costs (since the ROI will have increased). So maybe goods will be more expensive in short to medium term, but longer term, we may end up in a better place. The more open questions are how the world grapples with a "multi-polar" world and whether that leads to kinetic war or active trade wars between U.S. & China.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  Here goes: First, let's define what is meant by "Globalization", as this word is used to mean many things. First, it does not mean trade. You will still be eating Chilean oranges. You will still have Vietnamese coworkers in your company. The history of the world is filled with trade - that's not what makes our current era of "Globalization" unique. What it means is trade imbalances. The world as it exists now has one group of nations running persistent trade deficits and another group running persistent trade surpluses. To run a trade surplus means you take the money you get by selling goods to the world, and invest it overseas. China invests $2 Trillion overseas. Saudi Arabia $1 Trillion. Russia $750 Billion. Qatar $250 Billion dollars. This creates a web of dependencies, it increases trade massively, and it also reduces the sovereignty that each nation has, as those who invest large amounts overseas are dependent on others that their assets are not seized, and those who are the recipients of such foreign investment become dependent on it to maintain their consumption levels and high asset prices (low interest rates). So in many ways, the world becomes smaller and each nation has less freedom to act independently. This is why we call it "Globalization". It refers to the globalization of investment. If the exporting nations did not invest this money overseas, what would happen is that their currencies would appreciate up to the point where their trade is balanced -- as many exports as imports. Now, what would the world look like if each nation's trade was roughly balanced. So that Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Qatar, and the US all exported about as much as they imported? It would be a very different world than the one we have now. Now how did we get to this world of persistent trade imbalances - it didn't happen by accident, it was a long term project requiring: 1) A vast international web of investor rights, so that when Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, or China park their money overseas, they can be assured it is not confiscated and that the value of their investments is maintained. 2) Global trust What we are seeing now is this system is unravelling. That is, foreign investment is being confiscated, global trust is eroding, and the international frameworks are not able to maintain sufficient global trust to justify parking huge sums overseas. The canary in the coal mine was the US seizure of Afghanistan's sovereign reserves, but really the increasing way that the US has been using the dollar system as a proxy for foreign policy, which undermines the usefulness of the dollar as a reserve currency for those nations that matter -- e.g. the exporting nations. The seizure of Russia's sovereign reserves was the fatal blow to this system. Now, it is clear that all these investor rights agreements are no longer being honored. And so all the exporting nations are scrambling for alternate places to park their money, many are preparing to begin a round of asset seizures and counter seizures, and are building trade systems based on specie flows, various hostage mechanisms, and limited bilateral treaties in which trade is roughly balanced. These are massive changes, and they don't get a lot of US media attention, but they are taking place in international conferences and high level diplomatic agreements all over the world right now: Saudi Arabia just signed a $40 Billion trade deal with China, it's largest deal ever, in which it will sell oil to China in exchange for Huawei coming in and building out a new telecom infrastructure in Saudi Arabia as well as constructing factories there. Note that this trade is roughly balanced, and it is occurring between net exporting nations. This is the future of trade -- something tangible for something tangible, so that nothing is exposed to being seized by a foreign government. Russia and Iran signed a $40 Billion trade deal along similar lines. At the same time, China has been structuring its capital controls so that it's impossible for Western companies to pull money out. For example, Apple has huge earnings in China, but it's stuck in China. China is preparing for the US to seize their assets and they will counterseize the Tesla factories, Apple earnings, etc. In terms of prices, what it will mean is higher prices and higher interest rates in those nations that have traditionally run trade deficits, and lower prices and lower interest rates (stocks will be worth less and cost of living will go up) in those nations that have traditionally run trade surpluses. But you will still be able to buy your Chilean orange -- there will still be trade, but it will be much more balanced, so that orange will cost more -- and your mortgage payment will be higher. A second casualty will be the anti-carbon movement, as it was depending on international investor agreements to be both the carrot and stick for mandating change. At the same time, the deficit nations will find it much harder to import the minerals and finished goods such as batteries and solar panels necessary to transition even their own energy grid.
pphysch 4y ago
Many people are conflating "unipolar USD dominance" with "economic globalization", when the former is very much a subset of the latter. The former is definitely dying (see last week in KSA). If economic globalization is genuinely suffering, it is a direct result of Washington's unilateral sanctions and trade wars. Global logistics aren't suddenly collapsing. However, there is increasingly more red tape created mainly by Washington, and this causes strain on the system.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  The problem is that there is nothing to replace the US dollar/Euro -- e.g. the western capital markets, because other nations (excluding Japan) do not want to open their capital markets to foreign investment. So if this was just a matter of switching from one reserve currency to another, then globalization would be fine. But this is a situation in which the world is realizing that the dollar/euro system is no longer fit for use, and there is nothing to replace it, which is why nations are realizing that they can no longer run these massive trade surpluses full stop. That's how you get to the end of globalization. > see last week in KSA Yes, let's look at this deal, because the KSA deal is a perfect example of the end of globalization. It's basically barter -- Saudi will send China oil and China will send Saudi Huawei gear and build factories there. People are focusing on the fact that the oil will be denominated in CNY and assume this means a massive increase in Saudi CNY holdings -- but China doesn't want other nations to start buying up CNY assets, and it has capital controls in place to prevent that. So the CNY is not replacing the dollar as a reserve currency -- that would be China's worst nightmare. Instead, we are switching to bilateral, managed, balanced trade in which each side gets something tangible under their own control and there is no residual large cross border financial flow to finance the deal. Now let's assume this is how trade will be done in the future. You want to import natural gas from me? Fine, build me a chip fab. Or a port. This is a very different world than saying "You want to import natural gas from me? Fine, I'll buy lots of your bonds and keep my money in your financial system. Do you see the difference?
  - pphysch 4y ago
    Yes, I see your point. There are simply different definitions of "globalization" going on here. I believe there is a meaningful distinction between "USD-d(en)ominated global finance" and economic globalization. The latter isn't going anywhere.
turnsout 4y ago
With all respect, Chang has this exactly backward. TMSC manufacturing 100% of the world's most advanced chips in Taiwan is not "globalization." If anything, it's the opposite. Globalization is about leveling the playing field, so companies can source products & services from countries across the globe. A fab in Arizona is literally advancing globalization.
- loyukfai 4y ago
  The theory of international trade is based on the principle of comparative advantages. So theoretically if Taiwan can produces chips the cheapest, including transport and other costs, they shall do just that. The decline of globalisation is due to, IMO, risk aversion of having too much of your supply chain, especially for essential and/or not easily replaceable merchandise, tied to an antagonistic or potentially antagonistic partner. In other words, some of these "other" costs have become too high to just buy certain things somewhere else and call it day.
UIUC_06 4y ago
We can now expect Tom Friedman, Joseph Stieglitz, and Paul Krugman to write new books explaining it all for their readers. Of course they will tell us how they knew it all along. The truth is that geopolitics has not gone away. The world is not "flat" but bumpy and separated by big oceans.
cesarvarela 4y ago
"X is dead" content needs a neologism if it doesn't have one already.
hayst4ck 4y ago
Globalization will never be dead. Globalization, more than anything else, means a set of rules that apply to all countries (trade, human rights, or otherwise). Globalization is a philosophical consequence of belief in the rule of law and human rights. Here is the most thought provoking piece of literature I've ever read on American philosophy (giving it the benefit of the doubt or at least painting it in the best light): https://www.amacad.org/publication/what-does-it-mean-be-american https://www.amacad.org/publication/what-does-it-mean-be-amer... In short, societies fall on a spectrum of one end being built on a set of values (are you an American because you love guns and freedom?) and the other being based on an ethnicity (are you American because your parents are American/you have a shared history with other Americans). This is the key divide between conservatives (ethnicity based) and liberals (value based). So we see the great philosophical fights of our time: isolationist/nationalist vs globalist ethnicity vs civility might makes right vs rule of law loyalty to people vs loyalty to ideas They are all share a root idea in where authority comes from. Does authority flow from people and the power structures they craft or does authority flow from philosophical reasoning. Anti globalization pragmatically follows the idea that authority flows from those with power. Globalization idealistically follows the idea that there are rules that must supersede power itself.
ambientenv 4y ago
Like many folks, I suppose, I thought I had a reasonable layman's grasp of globalization. Turns out it was mostly superficial. I'm currently reading "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" by Peter Zeihan [1] and it is enlightening. Highly recommended in helping to add (especially historical) perspective to understanding the death throes of globalization. Paired with "normalcy bias" [2], which I was vaguely aware of, and beliefs and behaviours begin to become somewhat more understandable and an opportunity to shift my worldview in an appropriate and preparatory manner begins to reveal itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_is_just_the_Beginning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_is_just_t... [2] https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/its-not-cool-to-overreact-how-normalcy https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/its-not-cool-to-overr...
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  > We’re well into the social shaming stage of the pandemic. It doesn’t seem to matter how much evidence we have. People won’t adopt the simplest measures to protect themselves or anyone else. That one made me double take. Is it a commonly held view that COVID is "still happening"? In my area of the world (and in other Western areas, from talking to friends), it's seen as over basically since we got our two jabs. Based on this quote and other articles by the author (complaining about children coughing on each other or adults not wearing masks), I assumed this article was 1-2 years old. Regardles, > A disturbingly large portion of the public seems totally unmoved by stories of children dying in hospitals. If we look at the world around us, we see preventable awfulness daily. Everyone's aware that aggressive driving and speeding increase the chances of car accidents resulting in injury or death, yet most people seem to do at least one daily. Most people are aware that their clothes, watch, computer, iPhone, kettle, etc are made overseas often in awful conditions, yet they continue to shop. Most people are aware after 30 years of marketing that you can feed a child in Africa for a very small amount of money per month (yes, you can afford it), yet they elect not to. What the author calls normalcy bias, I wonder if this is simply an in-built protection to stop us breaking down on a daily basis. Either way, I'm unsure why the author is at all surprised.
hirundo 4y ago
Between breakfast and lunch I've worked with three people from India and one each from Germany, Canada, China and a half dozen around the US. That's just a normal workday in a normal dev job. Globalization is looking hale and hearty from my chair.
fleddr 4y ago
There's no such thing as de-globalization or "globalization is dead". Even in this very best case example of a factory in the US, a country large enough that it can self-sustain in some ways, it is 100% globalized. The 5 million little parts that go into the factory are sourced from all across the world. As the article suggests, education comes from Taiwan. Rare earth minerals come from Africa and China. The machine comes from ASML, which in turn sources parts from all across the world. But yes, do go ahead and slap a "Made in the USA" on it if that makes you feel better.
kkfx 4y ago
I think too many have ignored a classic logic: do your best to avoid SPOF. Globalization is the extreme evolution of works specialization, instead of being "different States in the World" anyone as autonomous / self-sufficient as possible we have reached a point of being a "single system all other the world" where States blend a bit their role and no one is anymore self-sufficient. Such model works beautifully well until it breaks. Like any hyper-centralized systems. Doing the best to being self-sufficient is expensive, slow, complex etc. BUT pay off when things goes wrong. That's the very same principles of having lifeboats&c on ships: 99% of the time they are just costly useless tools. We can spare more space and reduce costs cutting them. That's works very well until something goes wrong. That's is and that's also why the WEF corporatocracy model is equally crazy. They want the power of course, but they forget the fact that companies are not different: they tend to be all on the same line of thought. Witch means they inevitably copy one another, they are a single entity so a SPOF. WE NEED VARIETY to maximize evolution and chances to survive as a spices. That's the real missing point. That's why is terrible to see a Chinese leader with an English dress. We need to be different, very different, see each others and share, but anyone with a path.
hintymad 4y ago
> the hard-earned lessons from TSMC’s first time building a fab in America 25 years ago IIRC, one of the hard lessons was that it was expensive to operate a factory in the US. It's not even the cost of paying workers, but that the workers needed a lot of training. Or my interpretation: the American workers are simply not as efficient as the Asian counterparts. This also reminds me the story in the Obama's documentary "American Factory", in which the hourly productivity of American workers was about 1/3 (or 2/3) of the Chinese workers. So, I have a pretty pessimistic question: can American workers still be competitive even if we move manufacturing back to the US? I really really hope that Americans are as competitive as they are decades ago: they earn more than people in other countries, yet the unit cost of products were lower than those of other countries because Americans simply led in productivity.
- scrubs 4y ago
  Aside from the soap opera part --- US v. Taiwanese culture and whether a TSMC wafer in Arizona is more Taiwanese than American --- here's what all managers and engineers should want to know: will these American plants continuously improve? If the plants can be profitable and products from it can be profitable there will be a good positive feedback to attract, retain talent, and to grow the market for same. The US has let globalism probably overshoot 30% ... so yah we suck right now compared to TSMC at manufacturing 'cause we spent our time doing supply chains ordering from Taiwan. If we still suck after 10 years, then let the criticism fly. Globalism is not dead; c'mon. But it does need some straightening out. The US is finally at a place where we prefer jobs (with attendant security) over cheap prices.
  - hintymad 4y ago
    Yeah. If the US manufacturing can't become competitive in a global market, then whether globalism is dead will not matter: there was no globalism 100 years ago, yet the US economy arose while Britain's declined, simply because the US could build better, cheaper, and faster. Allyn Young didn't believe that the finance center would move from Britain to the US because Britain was appeared so powerful 100 years ago, well, the rest was history.
tim333 4y ago
Globalization as in trade and interaction bringing people together has been going on a long time, maybe a couple of thousand years with the original silk road and boats trading around the med. There's a bit of a blip at the moment especially with regard to Russia and China going a bit warlike on us but I think the long term trend is intact.
amai 4y ago
Globalization that included trade with authoritarian regimes is dead, because Putin showed that these regimes don‘t behave rational. Globalization between democratic countries is thriving. E.g. CETA between Canada and the EU will soon be active.

159 points by synergy20 4y ago

I've been reading Peter Zeihan's book , "the end of the world is just the beginning" the death of free trade being the central theme a near future where the US has abandoned policing the seas and formerly interconnected economies localize in response. Began reading it slightly sceptical of the premise but anecdotes like this above are adding up to a near term 30-50 year that might resemble a global contraction amongst trading relationships.

MR4D 4y ago
I highly recommend going back and reading The Accidental Superpower as well. Considering it was written a decade ago (pub. 2014) it’s amazing how correct he’s been in forecasting things. To be clear, there is a certain fuzziness in timeframes, and he mentions that, but in general, the timing he mentions is scarily accurate. One thing that I saw earlier this year was Sri Lanka. Many others will follow in various levels of degradation over the coming years.
diego_moita 4y ago
Reading the book too. It is a very interesting read, I highly recommend. The guy knows a lot and it has lots of interesting information. But I am not convinced. I think his approach is just too American, in particular, when it comes to China. I am not American and, sometimes, his jingoism is just too much.
- pkaye 4y ago
  A lot of what is happening makes sense from a national security perspective. If the global supply chains get broken how much can a country continue to function. Like Germany cannot produce enough ammo because it depends on cotton from China. https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Germany-struggles-to-get-China-parts-to-replenish-ammo-stockpile https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Germany-struggl... US onshoring cotton production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdIz21P7zE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdIz21P7zE

la64710 4y ago

I think we ought to take a longer term perspective of things and acknowledge the cyclical nature of things. It is interesting and somehow I think there must be a science behind all this.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
Systems theory ? Cybernetics ? Cliodynamics ??

n0mad01 4y ago

globalization is dead long live globalization.

jandrese 4y ago

There are a lot of grumpy people who see a headline like this and say "good". From their perspective globalization is just a way for companies to export jobs to countries with looser labor standards that allow the corporations to treat them like slave labor and avoid environmental and ethical regulations in the host country while also killing off a whole job segment of honest union factory jobs that support a robust middle class.

conorcleary 4y ago
Ask people to explain how vehicles tires are made (from raw resource to manufacture and distro) and suddenly globalization makes sense - it's the only way toward the future. Subtext is required to discern what is good and bad about it. We need to teach students of all ages some lessons about logistics and supply chain - not only will they better understand how the world functions but that there are career and business opportunities at every node.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  There's globalization-the-way-things-are-made-now, and there's globalization-the-neoliberal-trade-policy-that's-dominated-US-politics-since-the-80s. The former's a fact, the latter's... less so, and has been pretty unpopular among voters on both "sides of the aisle" more often than not for the entire time it's been the driving force behind US trade policy (the donor and think-tank sets love it, though, is why it's persisted regardless). Trump's the only big-two-party Presidential candidate I can recall in that whole time span who ran on strongly anti-neoliberalism (so, anti-globalization, in the pop-culture, colloquial sense of globalization) messaging, which worked pretty well for him since most R voters (and a good chunk of true-swing, and actually a lot on the left though they mostly wouldn't have voted for him for other reasons) more-or-less hate neoliberalism—regardless of the movement's merits, it's unpopular.
- adventured 4y ago
  > it's the only way toward the future The primary matter is not globalization or no globalization, it's about what balance and for which countries and industries. These things will constantly shift back and forth, the pendulum will over-swing as it does. Just because N amount of globalization makes sense, that doesn't mean the extent we have at present, and its composition, makes the most sense. And obviously that (what makes sense) will vary significantly by the national interest of a given country based on its culture and stage of development. The world is filled to the brim with competing interests and that will never change, some benefit more or less from more or less globalization.

tareqak 4y ago

> No American, or any Western media outlet for that matter, bothered to cover this speech. Only Nikkei and a handful of Taiwanese outlets wrote about it. Not even C-Span carried footage of the speech. (And C-Span carries everything!) I find this news to be extremely surprising: everyone talked about the success of having the TSMC fab open, but nobody cared to listen to what the founder and former CEO of the company had to say. The fab might as well not be owned by TSMC. update: 1 . former CEO. Thank you `astroalex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Chang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Chang .

thephyber 4y ago
> The fab might as well not be owned by TSMC. Something similar happened with FoxConn in Wisconsin around 2018. Lots of talk about on-shoring factories, but that one was built and sits idle (last I heard it was partially converted to office space). TSMC didn’t build US You fabs before. They are doing it now because the US government is throwing some money at a few current generation fabs to mitigate the geopolitical risk of Taiwan. The fact that TSMC owns it is almost incident for them. But this is a mistake. We should be fixing the upstream reasons why TSMC didn’t want to build these fabs in the US prior to recent large government subsidies. Making sure local governments and NIMBYs have only a small amount of veto power, making sure there is a safe disposal system for the byproducts (the original reason chip fabs left the SF Bay Area), and making sure we are training the specialties required to build and run the current and next generation fabs. And in the case of the Arizona TSMC and Intel fabs, making sure there is sufficient fresh water for the region, which is needed to supply the fans and the local economy.
- efficax 4y ago
  No factory was built at all for foxconn in Racine county. A weird globe building was built that contains some kind of data center, although nobody knows for sure what goes on there. The whole thing was a complete boondoggle, although I don't know if anyone gained anything, it didn't even get Scott Walker re-elected. https://www.theverge.com/23030465/foxconn-lcd-factory-wisconsin-alan-yeung-trump-scott-walker-wisconn-valley-dome-decoder-interview https://www.theverge.com/23030465/foxconn-lcd-factory-wiscon... Hopefully this TSMC thing is real and not just a game around tax credits. Kind of bonkers to me to build it in the desert as the colorado river is drying up if water is so important, though.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> No American, or any Western media outlet for that matter, bothered to cover this speech. Only Nikkei and a handful of Taiwanese outlets wrote about it. There were highlights of the speech, including "Globalization is almost dead" and "Free trade is almost dead" quotes, reported in the New York Times, which is where I first read about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/technology/tsmc-chips-factory-phoenix.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/technology/tsmc-chips-fac...

miguelazo 4y ago

Perhaps the American/Western version of globalization has failed, but the Chinese version seems to just be getting started. In fact, the decoupling that the US is forcing upon China will be a boon to them in the long run, as they become even less dependent on the US and care less about sanctions on severely underserved markets with huge growth potential.

ren_engineer 4y ago
China ironically follows a purer form of capitalism where they pretty much keep it strictly business. They don't try to push cultural change on countries they are trading with, it's just economics and things that benefit China the most
- oliv__ 4y ago
  "They don't try to push cultural change on countries they are trading with, it's just economics" Umm, what? https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-universities-retain-ties-chinese-schools-support-chinas-military-bu-rcna8249 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-univer... among other things...
- dartharva 4y ago
  Can you give an example where a Western player explicitly pushed a culture change and its Chinese counterpart didn't?
  - three_seagrass 4y ago
    Apple tried but just gave in to the government surveillance.
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    Go read the USAID and NED websites— their entire premise is around realignment of target countries’ cultures in exchange for “aid”.
- asdajksah2123 4y ago

nodesocket 4y ago

Peter Thiel has talked extensively about globalization and was ahead of the trend it seems[1]. Despite what feels like the majority of people on HN being pro-globalization, Covid and the War in Ukraine hopefully taught countries a good lesson in the power of domestic first and domestic focused production. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/03/08/thiel-globalization-is-over.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/03/08/thiel-globalization-is-o...

woeirua 4y ago

Globalization and free trade are dead because most of the promised benefits for the west failed to materialize. Yes, we got significantly cheaper goods, but one of the major promises was that free trade would liberalize the world. Instead, China has taken all the benefits and used our money to build a system of oppression that would make George Orwell blush. Globalization will live on, but only for countries who align themselves with the west.

pishP05h 4y ago
Meanwhile in the US we’re not allowed to care anyone else exists by putting more research and economic agency into better healthcare. We tacitly decided no one is worth keeping alive unless they coincidentally happen to be rich under a system intentionally funneling money to the top like all the rest. Why care what anyone else has to say if their existence is not something I have an obligation maintain?
CodesInChaos 4y ago
Even in the West you have complications, like the Schrems II decision which ruled that the US does not offer an acceptable data protection level.
trasz2 4y ago
- throw_m239339 4y ago
  > Also, the country with largest percentage of imprisoned people is US, not China. It’s also not China where police routinely murders random people on the streets with impunity. This is a very tough argument to make given how China has very little freedom of press, speech, association or information.
- godelski 4y ago
  I'm not sure what people think comments like this accomplish. Americans aren't super gung ho about America. The great universal American past-time is criticizing America.

andrejguran 4y ago

The one scary effect that is not mentioned here is that globalisation and trade are pushing towards peace. Without it I am afraid we might go back to much darker times

Izkata 4y ago
The late 1800s was also a time of increasing globalization. It was exactly that interconnectedness that turned a local conflict into WWI.
- AnonymousPlanet 4y ago
  Interconnectivity by trade before WW2 was very brittle, because everyone involved had to fend for their own trading routes. The pillar of today's globalisation is that big and middle powers don't have to roll their own security policy just to keep their own commerce running. The global naval hegemon has been doing that for them for decades now. The moment this goes away, we will suddenly see a whole lot of regional disputes popping up. "Safety" inspections for container ships of the competition or more blatant interference using drones. Once a precedent has been set of the US not stepping in, it can turn wild pretty fast.
yucky 4y ago
That depends on how you define peace. Many non-Western nations are not at all at peace with the idea of their cultures being displaced and destroyed through the cultural imperialism of the US. And our dominant economic role and continued push for globalization is widely seen as the largest factor in that. Many people in the West don't make that connection because our consumption of media is very insular. But it's been bubbling under the surface for awhile and now it's starting to boil over.

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lizardactivist 4y ago

Thanks, USA. Globalization was only good as long as they thought they could come out on top and make everyone else dependent and obedient. We should have continued to strive for globalization, and left the USA behind to implode into its own collapsed mess. Now we're just turning our backs to China and Russia, pretend we're the "good guys" and that everything's amazing.

trasz2 4y ago
AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
ROTMetro 4y ago
The average working American sacrificed a lot in the name of striving for your 'globalization'. Your generic demonizing of these people is gross and dishonest.
- lizardactivist 4y ago
  We often speak broadly like this, just like you speak about how Russia and China (everyone living there, apparently) are bad. It doesn't mean we're saying that every single person in that country is to blame. I say that the USA is to blame for the end of globalization, you don't, and so we have to agree to disagree.

jeffreyrogers 4y ago

Exaggerated headline. Lots of production of various goods still going to places like Mexico, India, Vietnam, etc. Semiconductors moving back to the US is mostly a reaction to China's growing power. Most trends point towards increasing globalization outside of specialized industries like semiconductors just because capital and goods are so much easier to move than people, and the developed world requires cheap labor to support its living standards.

ryanwaggoner 4y ago

Previous discussion on the referenced speech: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33902422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33902422

pishP05h 4y ago

What it means to be a global society will be redefined. Big brains who think their relative understanding is forever realizing they’re in their 50s and generational churn will mean the people who have enabled them won’t be here much longer are really melting down these days. I look forward to Gen Z and later showing as little obligation to traditions of the last 100 as the last 100 years showed to 200 years ago. Rotary phone makers, horse and buggy businesses are starting a protest they can all sign onto.

ryanwaggoner 4y ago

Ridiculous. This has the energy of "No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded!" Global trade is at record highs. Perhaps globalization will decline from here, even permanently (although I'm very skeptical) and I'm certain it'll continue to change like it always has, but declaring it "dead" makes exactly zero sense.

brookst 4y ago
Absolutely this. That TSMC fab in Arizona? The lithography machines come from ASML, a company in the Netherlands. The EDA tools? Those are from Siemens, a German company. And on and on. And that's on top of our new remote-first world for information workers. You used to offshore departments or teams; now teams are as likely to be made up of people living in different countries as they are to be made up of people living in the same metro area. Some aspects of globalization are changing. That's normal. But declaring it dead is like declaring the Internet dead because it just got absorbed into all of the products we use.

MisterTea 4y ago

> In Morris Chang’s own estimation, the chips produced from TSMC Arizona may cost “at least 50% more” than the chips from TSMC Taiwan. I'd like to know why its 50% more. Labor costs? Regulations? Taxes? We aren't told and I cant read the linked WSJ article.

armatav 4y ago

Yeah - if you take it to the limit, and every small organization can produce/consume everything they could ever need in a local area; then of course globalization will approach an asymptotic “death”. This is like the “limit” of technology. If ever we got an atomic assembler going, what use would there be for that interaction from a supply/demand standpoint?

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scottmckenzie 4y ago

I would recommend reading Peter Zeihan’s books, or watching some of his interviews on You Tube, to get a fuller geopolitical view. It’s fascinating stuff.

efields 4y ago

I'm listening. I've heard this three times in the last week. But I haven't been ELI5'd what this really means for the rest of my adulthood. I only know a "Globalized World". I was in elementary school when Bill Clinton was elected and globalization (economically) started, right? So is this a reversion? Is it socially bad but economically good? Does the $1 slice become the $2 slice in a couple years? Or are we trying to say something worse?

chrisco255 4y ago
I don't think anyone knows to what extent this will play out over the next decade. Yes, we are more reluctant to trust outsourcing production to China, and tensions over Ukraine & Taiwan highlight this rift between NATO nations and the East. But by no means has this stopped the inflow of goods arriving from China. I think that within industries that are deemed critical to national defense, especially semiconductors, these are going to be forcibly on-shored. Whether that spills over into "less critical" imports remains to be seen. When it comes to on-shore vs off-shore production, not sure it can neatly be described as "good or bad". There are trade-offs. When we outsourced more production and manufacturing to China, our economy became more service oriented. We lost some valuable manufacturing skills in the labor force in the process and it takes time to ramp that back up. We are also saddled with far more regulatory and legal issues in the U.S. and that adds a significant burden to costs. I think as article points out, on-shoring will contribute to CPI increases. Off-shoring offset some of the inflationary fiscal (spending from govt) and monetary policies (QE) of the past few decades. Ultimately goods will cost more. At the same time, it's likely that automation technologies get boosted investment. On-shoring may induce a robotics boom to counter act some of those higher costs (since the ROI will have increased). So maybe goods will be more expensive in short to medium term, but longer term, we may end up in a better place. The more open questions are how the world grapples with a "multi-polar" world and whether that leads to kinetic war or active trade wars between U.S. & China.
rsj_hn 4y ago
Here goes: First, let's define what is meant by "Globalization", as this word is used to mean many things. First, it does not mean trade. You will still be eating Chilean oranges. You will still have Vietnamese coworkers in your company. The history of the world is filled with trade - that's not what makes our current era of "Globalization" unique. What it means is trade imbalances. The world as it exists now has one group of nations running persistent trade deficits and another group running persistent trade surpluses. To run a trade surplus means you take the money you get by selling goods to the world, and invest it overseas. China invests $2 Trillion overseas. Saudi Arabia $1 Trillion. Russia $750 Billion. Qatar $250 Billion dollars. This creates a web of dependencies, it increases trade massively, and it also reduces the sovereignty that each nation has, as those who invest large amounts overseas are dependent on others that their assets are not seized, and those who are the recipients of such foreign investment become dependent on it to maintain their consumption levels and high asset prices (low interest rates). So in many ways, the world becomes smaller and each nation has less freedom to act independently. This is why we call it "Globalization". It refers to the globalization of investment. If the exporting nations did not invest this money overseas, what would happen is that their currencies would appreciate up to the point where their trade is balanced -- as many exports as imports. Now, what would the world look like if each nation's trade was roughly balanced. So that Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Qatar, and the US all exported about as much as they imported? It would be a very different world than the one we have now. Now how did we get to this world of persistent trade imbalances - it didn't happen by accident, it was a long term project requiring: 1) A vast international web of investor rights, so that when Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, or China park their money overseas, they can be assured it is not confiscated and that the value of their investments is maintained. 2) Global trust What we are seeing now is this system is unravelling. That is, foreign investment is being confiscated, global trust is eroding, and the international frameworks are not able to maintain sufficient global trust to justify parking huge sums overseas. The canary in the coal mine was the US seizure of Afghanistan's sovereign reserves, but really the increasing way that the US has been using the dollar system as a proxy for foreign policy, which undermines the usefulness of the dollar as a reserve currency for those nations that matter -- e.g. the exporting nations. The seizure of Russia's sovereign reserves was the fatal blow to this system. Now, it is clear that all these investor rights agreements are no longer being honored. And so all the exporting nations are scrambling for alternate places to park their money, many are preparing to begin a round of asset seizures and counter seizures, and are building trade systems based on specie flows, various hostage mechanisms, and limited bilateral treaties in which trade is roughly balanced. These are massive changes, and they don't get a lot of US media attention, but they are taking place in international conferences and high level diplomatic agreements all over the world right now: Saudi Arabia just signed a $40 Billion trade deal with China, it's largest deal ever, in which it will sell oil to China in exchange for Huawei coming in and building out a new telecom infrastructure in Saudi Arabia as well as constructing factories there. Note that this trade is roughly balanced, and it is occurring between net exporting nations. This is the future of trade -- something tangible for something tangible, so that nothing is exposed to being seized by a foreign government. Russia and Iran signed a $40 Billion trade deal along similar lines. At the same time, China has been structuring its capital controls so that it's impossible for Western companies to pull money out. For example, Apple has huge earnings in China, but it's stuck in China. China is preparing for the US to seize their assets and they will counterseize the Tesla factories, Apple earnings, etc. In terms of prices, what it will mean is higher prices and higher interest rates in those nations that have traditionally run trade deficits, and lower prices and lower interest rates (stocks will be worth less and cost of living will go up) in those nations that have traditionally run trade surpluses. But you will still be able to buy your Chilean orange -- there will still be trade, but it will be much more balanced, so that orange will cost more -- and your mortgage payment will be higher. A second casualty will be the anti-carbon movement, as it was depending on international investor agreements to be both the carrot and stick for mandating change. At the same time, the deficit nations will find it much harder to import the minerals and finished goods such as batteries and solar panels necessary to transition even their own energy grid.

pphysch 4y ago

Many people are conflating "unipolar USD dominance" with "economic globalization", when the former is very much a subset of the latter. The former is definitely dying (see last week in KSA). If economic globalization is genuinely suffering, it is a direct result of Washington's unilateral sanctions and trade wars. Global logistics aren't suddenly collapsing. However, there is increasingly more red tape created mainly by Washington, and this causes strain on the system.

rsj_hn 4y ago
The problem is that there is nothing to replace the US dollar/Euro -- e.g. the western capital markets, because other nations (excluding Japan) do not want to open their capital markets to foreign investment. So if this was just a matter of switching from one reserve currency to another, then globalization would be fine. But this is a situation in which the world is realizing that the dollar/euro system is no longer fit for use, and there is nothing to replace it, which is why nations are realizing that they can no longer run these massive trade surpluses full stop. That's how you get to the end of globalization. > see last week in KSA Yes, let's look at this deal, because the KSA deal is a perfect example of the end of globalization. It's basically barter -- Saudi will send China oil and China will send Saudi Huawei gear and build factories there. People are focusing on the fact that the oil will be denominated in CNY and assume this means a massive increase in Saudi CNY holdings -- but China doesn't want other nations to start buying up CNY assets, and it has capital controls in place to prevent that. So the CNY is not replacing the dollar as a reserve currency -- that would be China's worst nightmare. Instead, we are switching to bilateral, managed, balanced trade in which each side gets something tangible under their own control and there is no residual large cross border financial flow to finance the deal. Now let's assume this is how trade will be done in the future. You want to import natural gas from me? Fine, build me a chip fab. Or a port. This is a very different world than saying "You want to import natural gas from me? Fine, I'll buy lots of your bonds and keep my money in your financial system. Do you see the difference?
- pphysch 4y ago
  Yes, I see your point. There are simply different definitions of "globalization" going on here. I believe there is a meaningful distinction between "USD-d(en)ominated global finance" and economic globalization. The latter isn't going anywhere.

turnsout 4y ago

With all respect, Chang has this exactly backward. TMSC manufacturing 100% of the world's most advanced chips in Taiwan is not "globalization." If anything, it's the opposite. Globalization is about leveling the playing field, so companies can source products & services from countries across the globe. A fab in Arizona is literally advancing globalization.

loyukfai 4y ago
The theory of international trade is based on the principle of comparative advantages. So theoretically if Taiwan can produces chips the cheapest, including transport and other costs, they shall do just that. The decline of globalisation is due to, IMO, risk aversion of having too much of your supply chain, especially for essential and/or not easily replaceable merchandise, tied to an antagonistic or potentially antagonistic partner. In other words, some of these "other" costs have become too high to just buy certain things somewhere else and call it day.

UIUC_06 4y ago

We can now expect Tom Friedman, Joseph Stieglitz, and Paul Krugman to write new books explaining it all for their readers. Of course they will tell us how they knew it all along. The truth is that geopolitics has not gone away. The world is not "flat" but bumpy and separated by big oceans.

cesarvarela 4y ago

"X is dead" content needs a neologism if it doesn't have one already.

hayst4ck 4y ago

Globalization will never be dead. Globalization, more than anything else, means a set of rules that apply to all countries (trade, human rights, or otherwise). Globalization is a philosophical consequence of belief in the rule of law and human rights. Here is the most thought provoking piece of literature I've ever read on American philosophy (giving it the benefit of the doubt or at least painting it in the best light): https://www.amacad.org/publication/what-does-it-mean-be-american https://www.amacad.org/publication/what-does-it-mean-be-amer... In short, societies fall on a spectrum of one end being built on a set of values (are you an American because you love guns and freedom?) and the other being based on an ethnicity (are you American because your parents are American/you have a shared history with other Americans). This is the key divide between conservatives (ethnicity based) and liberals (value based). So we see the great philosophical fights of our time: isolationist/nationalist vs globalist ethnicity vs civility might makes right vs rule of law loyalty to people vs loyalty to ideas They are all share a root idea in where authority comes from. Does authority flow from people and the power structures they craft or does authority flow from philosophical reasoning. Anti globalization pragmatically follows the idea that authority flows from those with power. Globalization idealistically follows the idea that there are rules that must supersede power itself.

ambientenv 4y ago

Like many folks, I suppose, I thought I had a reasonable layman's grasp of globalization. Turns out it was mostly superficial. I'm currently reading "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" by Peter Zeihan [1] and it is enlightening. Highly recommended in helping to add (especially historical) perspective to understanding the death throes of globalization. Paired with "normalcy bias" [2], which I was vaguely aware of, and beliefs and behaviours begin to become somewhat more understandable and an opportunity to shift my worldview in an appropriate and preparatory manner begins to reveal itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_is_just_the_Beginning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_is_just_t... [2] https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/its-not-cool-to-overreact-how-normalcy https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/its-not-cool-to-overr...

TheHappyOddish 4y ago
> We’re well into the social shaming stage of the pandemic. It doesn’t seem to matter how much evidence we have. People won’t adopt the simplest measures to protect themselves or anyone else. That one made me double take. Is it a commonly held view that COVID is "still happening"? In my area of the world (and in other Western areas, from talking to friends), it's seen as over basically since we got our two jabs. Based on this quote and other articles by the author (complaining about children coughing on each other or adults not wearing masks), I assumed this article was 1-2 years old. Regardles, > A disturbingly large portion of the public seems totally unmoved by stories of children dying in hospitals. If we look at the world around us, we see preventable awfulness daily. Everyone's aware that aggressive driving and speeding increase the chances of car accidents resulting in injury or death, yet most people seem to do at least one daily. Most people are aware that their clothes, watch, computer, iPhone, kettle, etc are made overseas often in awful conditions, yet they continue to shop. Most people are aware after 30 years of marketing that you can feed a child in Africa for a very small amount of money per month (yes, you can afford it), yet they elect not to. What the author calls normalcy bias, I wonder if this is simply an in-built protection to stop us breaking down on a daily basis. Either way, I'm unsure why the author is at all surprised.

hirundo 4y ago

Between breakfast and lunch I've worked with three people from India and one each from Germany, Canada, China and a half dozen around the US. That's just a normal workday in a normal dev job. Globalization is looking hale and hearty from my chair.

fleddr 4y ago

There's no such thing as de-globalization or "globalization is dead". Even in this very best case example of a factory in the US, a country large enough that it can self-sustain in some ways, it is 100% globalized. The 5 million little parts that go into the factory are sourced from all across the world. As the article suggests, education comes from Taiwan. Rare earth minerals come from Africa and China. The machine comes from ASML, which in turn sources parts from all across the world. But yes, do go ahead and slap a "Made in the USA" on it if that makes you feel better.

kkfx 4y ago

I think too many have ignored a classic logic: do your best to avoid SPOF. Globalization is the extreme evolution of works specialization, instead of being "different States in the World" anyone as autonomous / self-sufficient as possible we have reached a point of being a "single system all other the world" where States blend a bit their role and no one is anymore self-sufficient. Such model works beautifully well until it breaks. Like any hyper-centralized systems. Doing the best to being self-sufficient is expensive, slow, complex etc. BUT pay off when things goes wrong. That's the very same principles of having lifeboats&c on ships: 99% of the time they are just costly useless tools. We can spare more space and reduce costs cutting them. That's works very well until something goes wrong. That's is and that's also why the WEF corporatocracy model is equally crazy. They want the power of course, but they forget the fact that companies are not different: they tend to be all on the same line of thought. Witch means they inevitably copy one another, they are a single entity so a SPOF. WE NEED VARIETY to maximize evolution and chances to survive as a spices. That's the real missing point. That's why is terrible to see a Chinese leader with an English dress. We need to be different, very different, see each others and share, but anyone with a path.

hintymad 4y ago

> the hard-earned lessons from TSMC’s first time building a fab in America 25 years ago IIRC, one of the hard lessons was that it was expensive to operate a factory in the US. It's not even the cost of paying workers, but that the workers needed a lot of training. Or my interpretation: the American workers are simply not as efficient as the Asian counterparts. This also reminds me the story in the Obama's documentary "American Factory", in which the hourly productivity of American workers was about 1/3 (or 2/3) of the Chinese workers. So, I have a pretty pessimistic question: can American workers still be competitive even if we move manufacturing back to the US? I really really hope that Americans are as competitive as they are decades ago: they earn more than people in other countries, yet the unit cost of products were lower than those of other countries because Americans simply led in productivity.

scrubs 4y ago
Aside from the soap opera part --- US v. Taiwanese culture and whether a TSMC wafer in Arizona is more Taiwanese than American --- here's what all managers and engineers should want to know: will these American plants continuously improve? If the plants can be profitable and products from it can be profitable there will be a good positive feedback to attract, retain talent, and to grow the market for same. The US has let globalism probably overshoot 30% ... so yah we suck right now compared to TSMC at manufacturing 'cause we spent our time doing supply chains ordering from Taiwan. If we still suck after 10 years, then let the criticism fly. Globalism is not dead; c'mon. But it does need some straightening out. The US is finally at a place where we prefer jobs (with attendant security) over cheap prices.
- hintymad 4y ago
  Yeah. If the US manufacturing can't become competitive in a global market, then whether globalism is dead will not matter: there was no globalism 100 years ago, yet the US economy arose while Britain's declined, simply because the US could build better, cheaper, and faster. Allyn Young didn't believe that the finance center would move from Britain to the US because Britain was appeared so powerful 100 years ago, well, the rest was history.

tim333 4y ago

Globalization as in trade and interaction bringing people together has been going on a long time, maybe a couple of thousand years with the original silk road and boats trading around the med. There's a bit of a blip at the moment especially with regard to Russia and China going a bit warlike on us but I think the long term trend is intact.

amai 4y ago

Globalization that included trade with authoritarian regimes is dead, because Putin showed that these regimes don‘t behave rational. Globalization between democratic countries is thriving. E.g. CETA between Canada and the EU will soon be active.