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I would have agreed with you before COVID and the Russo-Ukrainian war. Today, the world is slowly changing direction on globalization. There is increasing under

I would have agreed with you before COVID and the Russo-Ukrainian war. Today, the world is slowly changing direction on globalization. There is increasing understanding, at the national policy level, of the value of more localized supply chains, where local manufacturing is encouraged through tariffs. This is besides newfound focus on privacy and data sovereignty, and the race by cloud providers to build globally-accessible datacenters all over the globe. The next step will be a focus on localizing not just the data but the software itself: the operators, the code, and finally developers. > unless somehow it’s done globally, worldwide The vehicle for this is the WTO, or at least, it used to be, before the US decided to take its teeth away. Giving it teeth requires moral leadership. It doesn't happen overnight, but it starts with licensure, then working through the WTO to establish new rules and tariffs for violators.

drdaeman 3y ago
> Today, the world is slowly changing direction on globalization. I'm not so sure about this. The world is slowly realizing heavy dependence on exports of autocratic countries was not exactly the brightest idea - and this superficially polite wording is very intentional here, because that's how it goes. Even the war hadn't stopped trading - worse, on the contrary, Russian trading boomed after the invasion. And it's not something unique that money beats anything - oil deals are advertised at climate conferences, and somehow this doesn't surprise me at all. And I think WTO also wouldn't do a thing that won't benefit its stakeholders - not the consumers. There's barely any global consensus about anything important, and international institutions like UN look dysfunctional at best. And in terms of money, cheap junk beats consistently anything else out of the market. The homeostasis of price-regulation-quality is very hard to maintain, and consumer products either fall down towards cheap junk extremum, or towards regulatory capture extremum (but still junk under the hood - just see how banking and medical apps are doing). Sorry to be this pessimistic - I really wish I'd be wrong here. But unless somehow there's bigger money in making changes than in maintaining the status quo, I doubt anything would happen.

drdaeman 3y ago

> Today, the world is slowly changing direction on globalization. I'm not so sure about this. The world is slowly realizing heavy dependence on exports of autocratic countries was not exactly the brightest idea - and this superficially polite wording is very intentional here, because that's how it goes. Even the war hadn't stopped trading - worse, on the contrary, Russian trading boomed after the invasion. And it's not something unique that money beats anything - oil deals are advertised at climate conferences, and somehow this doesn't surprise me at all. And I think WTO also wouldn't do a thing that won't benefit its stakeholders - not the consumers. There's barely any global consensus about anything important, and international institutions like UN look dysfunctional at best. And in terms of money, cheap junk beats consistently anything else out of the market. The homeostasis of price-regulation-quality is very hard to maintain, and consumer products either fall down towards cheap junk extremum, or towards regulatory capture extremum (but still junk under the hood - just see how banking and medical apps are doing). Sorry to be this pessimistic - I really wish I'd be wrong here. But unless somehow there's bigger money in making changes than in maintaining the status quo, I doubt anything would happen.