Globalization: When Cure Is Worse Than Malady

Attempts to halt globalization can cause more harm than global economic integration itself

Richard Hornik

YaleGlobal, 27 June 2006

Instead, workers of the world – whether they be former iron mongers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk or erstwhile executives of Enron – are now united in a grudging appreciation of why American capitalism was so much more successful than Soviet communism: Unfettered competition ruthlessly wipes out old institutions and ways of doing business, allowing more efficient actors and methods to take their place.

For the foreseeable future the crucial political issue in most of the developed world will be how to resolve the tension between the efficiency imperatives of economic growth and the personal security desires of an increasingly frightened and disoriented body politic.

The immigration bill passed by the US House of Representatives is among the most nativist pieces of legislation seen since the 1920s. The bipartisan congressional resistance to the sale of an American oil company to a Chinese one, of a cargo-handling service to a Dubai entity, not to mention saber-rattling about the value of the Chinese currency, is matched in socio-cultural issues like the reintroduction of a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning – co-sponsored by none other than New York’s supposedly liberal Senator Hillary Clinton.

In Europe and Asia, a more troubling model has taken shape, with ideological underpinnings that resemble fascism: reliance on the leadership of a strong, self-appointed elite; a mixed economy with a largely free market at the bottom, but one that is rigged in favor of state or

From an economic standpoint, the dislocation that stems from the transition to a post-industrial, globalized economy, whatever that may turn out to be, will probably last another 10 years. But the discomfort and resulting public anger will likely increase, and that will only intensify the polarization of electorates in Europe and North America. If politicians at both ends of the political spectrum continue to win votes by pandering to the worst fears and basest instincts of a frightened electorate, it seems only a matter of time before the resulting governments indulge in the self-destructive grand gestures that could lead to a global trade war or a violent anti-immigrant backlash or both. As the world discovered 80 years ago, the dislocations wrought by globalization’s creative destruction are nothing compared to the economic chaos unleashed when efforts are made to halt the process.

Richard Hornik is director of Southeast Asia Programs with the Independent Journalism Foundation. He has been an editorial consultant specializing in corporate governance and social responsibility issues since retiring from Time Inc. in 2002.

With the disintegration of the New Left and the gradual integration of what remained of the American Left within the Democratic Party, Telos became increasingly critical of the Left in general. It subsequently undertook a reevaluation of 20th century intellectual history, focusing primarily on forgotten and repressed authors and ideas, beginning with Carl Schmitt and American populism. Eventually the journal rejected the traditional divisions between Left and Right as a legitimating mechanism for new class domination and an occlusion of new, post-Fordist political conflicts. This led to a reevaluation of the primacy of culture and to efforts to understand the dynamics of cultural disintegration and reintegration as a precondition for the constitution of that autonomous individuality Critical Theory had always identified as the telos of Western civilization

We're now very risk-averse. We fret about statistically tiny risks — carcinogens in food, one in a million chance of being killed in train crashes, and so forth. It's hard to contemplate just how great the risks of nuclear catastrophe once were. The Cuban Missile stand-off in 1962 was the most dangerous moment in history. and McNamara was then the US Secretary of Defense. He later wrote that " we came within a hairbreadth of nuclear war without realising it. It's no credit to us that we escaped — Khrushchev and Kennedy were lucky as well as wise." The prevailing nuclear doctrine was deterrence via the threat of 'mutual assured destruction' (with the eponymous acronym MAD). Each side put the 'worst case' construction on whatever the other did, overestimated the threat, and over-reacted. The net result was an arms race that made both sides less secure.

In the two World Wars and their aftermath, 187 million perished by war, massacre, persecution or policy-induced famine. But during the Cold War we were at still greater hazard: a nuclear war between the superpowers could have killed a billion people, and devastated the fabric of civilisation. The superpowers could have stumbled towards armageddon through muddle and miscalculation.

But we can plausibly predict some disquieting trends. Some are environmental: rising populations, especially in the megacities of the developing world, increasing energy consumption, etc. Indeed, collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the entire biosphere — perhaps irreversibly — through global warming and loss of biodiversity. We've entered the new geological era, the anthropocene. We don't fully understand the consequences of our many-faceted assault on the interwoven fabric of atmosphere, water, land and life. We are collectively endangering our planet.

[I recall a talk here by Francis Fukuyama, about his book Our Posthuman Future. He argued that habitual use of mood-altering medications would narrow the range of humanity. He cites the use of prozac to counter depression, and of ritalin to damp down hyperactivity in high-spirited but otherwise healthy children. He feared that drugs will become universally used to tone down extremes of behaviour and mood and that our species would degenerate into pallid acquiescent zombies.

But my worry is the opposite of Fukuyama's. 'Human nature' encompasses a rich variety of personality types, but these include those who are drawn towards the disaffected fringe. The destabilizing and destructive influence of just a few such people will be ever more devastating as their technical powers and expertise grow, and as the world we share becomes more interconnected.

Can civilisation be safeguarded, without humanity having to sacrifice its diversity and individualism? This is a stark questions, but I think it's a serious one.]

Our Sun is less than half way through its life. We're maybe only the half way stage. Any creatures witnessing the Sun's demise 6 billion years hence won't be human — they'll be as different from us as we are from bacteria.

But in just a tiny sliver of the Earth's history — the last one millionth part, a few thousand years — the patterns of vegetation altered much faster than before. This signaled the start of agriculture. The pace of change accelerated as human populations rose.

I do not review this book as a medical book, but rather as a social construction book. It helped crystalize in my mind the absolute ignorance of governments that fail to see that the minds of their individual citizens are the ultimate source of national power.

Yet Schwarzenegger recently announced his opposition to the Clean Alternative Energy Initiative, a landmark ballot measure that would finance alternative energy research and development by imposing a tax on oil companies. (The initiative is backed by dozens of California green groups, and would boost the state’s economy according to UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.)

The governor’s opposition might have something to do with the nearly $2 million in campaign contributions from oil companies he’s received since 2002. Chevron gave a total of $600,000 to his campaign and paid for his trip to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Chevron also reportedly enjoyed “considerable influence” over the content of the Governor’s major reform proposals in 2004, which included significant benefits for the oil industry.

The game was tight. The other team's captain, Gary Engle...went up for a shot. Bush slugged him — an elbow to the mouth, knocking him to the parquet. "What the hell are you doing?" Engle remembers saying. "What, you want to get into a fistfight and both of us end up in the fucking emergency room?" Bush just smiled.

Moments later, at the other end of the court, Engle went up high for a rebound and felt someone chop his legs out from under him. Bush again. Engle jumped up and threw the ball in Bush's face. The two went at it until two teams of future business leaders leapt on their captains, pulling them apart. Engle, angry and vexed by what had happened, began wondering why the hell Bush would have done what he did. He lost his composure, and his team lost its leader.

A few years later, Engle...bumped into Jeb Bush....Engle, a Republican contributor, had thought from time to time about his game against George. Nothing like that had happened to him before or since. This was his chance to get a little insight about it. He told the story. Jeb kind of laughed, Engle recalled. "In Texas, they call guys like George 'a hard case.' It wasn't easy being his brother, either. He truly enjoys getting people to knuckle under."

The Earth's biologically productive area is approximately 11.2 billion hectares, or 1.8 global hectares per person in 2002 (assuming that no capacity is set aside for wild species). Global hectares are hectares of biologically productive area with world-average productivity. This standardised measurement unit, or 'ecological currency,' makes comparisons of demand and supply possible across the world.

In 2002, humanity's demand on the biosphere, its global Ecological Footprint, was 13.7 billion global hectares, or 2.2 global hectares per person. Thus in 2002, humanity's Ecological Footprint exceeded global biocapacity by 0.4 global hectares per person, or 23 percent. This finding indicates that the human economy is in ecological overshoot: the planet's ecological stocks are being depleted faster than nature can regenerate them. This means that we are eroding the future supply of ecological resources and operating at the risk of environmental collapse.

The failed consumer suffers not just from exclusion from normal society but isolation. The poor of the past had each other in a community of poverty. Misery could be shared and countered through class solidarity and the hope of a different life. The new poor lick their wounds alone in their council flats, with nowhere to hide from the messages on billboards and TV that constantly remind them of their social failure. The new poor, without the right labels and brands, are not just excluded but invisible.

The final ignominy of today's poor is that they don't want to overthrow the rich to create a new order, they just want to be like them. So they are denied even the satisfaction of anyone to hate - just B-list celebrities to envy and copy.

The problem of not belonging, of being anxious and insecure, afflicts us all. It's just more sharply focused for those at the bottom of the heap. The social theorist Roberto Unger says: "Almost everyone feels abandoned. Almost everyone believes they are an outsider, looking in through the window at the party going on inside."

Really great video content was just released by the TED conference.