What’s all this Globalization, Anyhow? As I ponder a range of issues, localization begins to look more and more attractive as the baggage of globalization outweighs it’s assumed benefits.
* Family feuds, religious antagonism, and tribal feuds have been a part of the Middle East and Africa for millenia. The Middle East has economically developed to the point where individuals have finances and freedoms to pursue their angst. Hence terrorism continues. Terrorism is not new. What’s new is the way of terrorism as it spills onto the world stage. The globalization effect of television since the late 1950’s has positioned the Middle East on stage, and the antagonistic parties comply with the requested performance.
* We used to accept oil off the tankers, and put it into our cars. Few people thought of where it came from and didn’t care what went on at that corner of the world. Now, America engages in the other end of the world because we have gained visibility to see it. Ability to see and engage has totally bypassed the responsibility to consider if we should engage. Globalization has tempted us like candy in the store. This can be reversed with a choice.
* An effect of globalization that can’t be reversed is global competition. We could choose to pragmatically live within our national means, but this may mean others – China, Russia, India – fill the national investment stage and answer the call to globalize.
* Health care is more expensive in New York than rural Tennessee. Globalization expectations make people aware of the disparity. We declare cost disparity to be unfair or immoral, and abandoning a real belief in free market, we decide health care costs must be the same for both. Somehow we mandate health care with mandated health insurance. Hence ObamaCare. Why has everybody forgotten that people in New York also earn more than people in rural Tennessee? Because of globalization, we’ve become aware of disparities, and in the pursuit of equality, we need to stamp out all differences. Stamping out differences is socialism, my friend. Instead, we should encourage differences. Let each city be different. Let each state be different. Give people a choice. Can you conceive of a situation where I don’t want to do it your way? Let me have a place to go live with my preferences among people who agree. Promote LOCAL communities, not a global community.
* Globalization is claimed to be a good thing by many authors. However, look analytically at the published reasons. They call come down to “more money for more people”. Problem is, as everybody adopts this paradigm, the richer nations are positioned to make this true for themselves rather than the newcomers. Perhaps newcomers run their own LOCAL version of the free market until they build some experience and savvy to operate on a world stage. This will give them all the benefits of touted free-market, without the risks of global competition. Remember, “opening your economy to global benefits” also means “opening your economy to global exploitation.”
* Globalization speeds up the standard of living equalization process. After WWII, America standard of living quickly climbed higher than most of the world, so now it is being brought down as other nation’s standard of living are brought up. The high-income elites value globalization because it gives them other target audiences for their wares; they’re doing fine. Don’t complain too loudly against them until you stop wanting all the wares they provide. The bottom-income portion of American society provides most of the grumbling. Two homes, 3 cars, cell phones all around, etc. etc.. is where we are decending from. It looks really silly to the world as we complain about decending down to where everybody else is.
More in Part 2.
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