Question for Discussion: What is the Global Backlash
against Globalization? Is this Backlash good or bad
according to Friedman and Korten?

Readings: Friedman, pp. 327-347; Korten, "Localizing
Economies" ; Pope, "Globalism, RIP" ; Faioia, The End of American Capitalism;

Video: Commanding Heights, vol. 3, chapters 15 & 16 ;
Since Seattle (Check to see if this is the same video
as chaps. 15 and 16)




Competing Perspectives on Globalization

• Two Competing Models of Globalization ( in-class)
  
  
• WTO Protests in Seattle (in-class)
  
  
• Friedman: Senseless in Seattle (in-class)
  (Friedman dismisses the Protesters as Those
  Who are Being Left Behind)
  
  
• Paul Hawken: A Report on the WTO in Seattle
  
  
• Global Issues: Free Trade and Globalization
  (in-class)
  
  
• The World Economic Forum (in-class)
  
  
• The World Social Forum (in-class)
  
  
• The International Forum on Globalization (in-class)
  
  
• Friedman: Globalization as Juggernaut (in-class)
  
  
• National Governments and the Interests of Nations
  (in-class)
  
  
• Korten's Alternative to Globalization (in-class)
  
  
• Korten: Guiding Principles for an Ecological Revolution (in-class)
  
  
• The Larger Values of an Ecological Revolution
  (in-class)
  
  
• Debating Globalization: Friedman vs. Korten
  (in-class)

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Debating Globalization

• Debating Globalization
  
  
• Who are the Players in Globalization
  
  
• The Key Questions on Globalization
  
  
• Is there any alternative to Globalization?
  
  
• Globalization is Greatttt
  
  
• Debating Globalization: Thinkers
  
  
• Debating Globalization Websites
  
  
• Who are the Players in Globalization?
  
  
• The World Economic Forum
  
  
• The World Social Forum
  
  
• Alternative to Economic Globalization:
  Introduction
  
  
• People-Centered Development Forum
  
  
• Resources for building the Alternative
  Global Economy
  
  
• Susan George: Another World is Possible
  
  
• Edward Hermann: The Threat of Globalization
  
  
• Global Civil Society: The Path ahead

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Globalization and Cutlural Change

• Jihad vs. McWorld
  
  
• Beyond Jihad vs. McWorld
  
  
• Globalization is Greatttt
  
  
• Terrorism may have put sand in its Gears,
  but Globalization won't stop, Thomas Friedman

• Are We a Global Society or just a Global Economhy?
  
  
• Is the Global Occupy Movement Undermining Democracy?
  
  
• Europe Puts $2.3 Trillion on line for Banks
  
  
• Paulson Calls Meeting of Major U.S. Banks
  
  
• Two Competing Models of Globalization ( in-class)
  
  
• The Globalization Debate is about Who Makes the Rules
  for Globalization and What the Rules Should Be to Regulate
  the Global Economy
  
  
• WTO Protests in Seattle (in-class)
  
  

  Estimates ranged from 50,000 to 100,000 protestors. Protesters came from all over the world, not just the developed countries. They ranged from human rights groups, students, environmental groups, religious leaders, labor rights activists etc wanting fairer trade with less exploitation. Even right-wing protectionist groups were there also arguing against the current corporate-led free trade, (although the protectionists were there for very different reasons).

  The fact that 50,000 to 100,000 people turned up in the pouring rain, through all the police crackdowns etc indicates the sheer number of people who are concerned at the current issues, as obviously not everyone could be in Seattle. How many more would have turned up had it not been raining so bad!
  

• Friedman: Senseless in Seattle (in-class)
  
  
• Paul Hawken: A Report on the WTO in Seattle
  
  Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of an elegy to globalization entitled The Lexus and the Olive Tree, angrily wrote that the demonstrators were "a Noah's ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix." Not so. They were organized, educated, and determined. They were human rights activists, labor activists, indigenous people, people of faith, steel workers, and farmers. They were forest activists, environmentalists, social justice workers, students, and teachers. And they wanted the World Trade Organization to listen. They were speaking on behalf of a world that has not been made better by globalization.
  
  
  
• Global Issues: Free Trade and Globalization (in-class) :
  
  "For globalism to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is.…The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."
  Thomas Friedman
  
  
• The World Economic Forum (in-class)
  
  
• The World Social Forum (in-class)
  
  
• The International Forum on Globalization (in-class)
  
  
• Friedman: Globalization as Juggernaut (in-class)
  (The Turtles are being left behind by the Electronic Herd)
  
  
• President Clinton and the Electronic Herd (in-class)
  
  
• National Debt 1950 to 2010
  
  
• National Governments and the Interests of Nations (in-class)
  (Electronic Herd vs. Democratic Governments
  
  
• Korten's Alternative to Globalization (in-class)
  
  
• Korten: Guiding Principles for an Ecological Revolution (in-class)
  
  
• The Larger Values of an Ecological Revolution (in-class)
  
  
• Debating Globalization: Friedman vs. Korten (in-class)
  (Friedman's World vs. Korten's World -- Polar Opposities)
  

 

Friedman: Globalization as Juggernaut

Who are the Players in Globalization?

"The annual Davos World Economic Forum is as good a barometer of global affairs are you can find. Every February the world's greatest globalizers gather together in the Swiss mountain retreat to celebrate and debate globalization. The meeting is attended by top industrialists, political figures, economists, technologists, scientists and social scientists from every corner of the world."
(Friedman,327)

"I doubt we will see a new coherent, universal ideological reaction to globalization--because I don't believe there is an ideology or program
that can remove all of the brutality and destructiveness of capitalism and still produce steadily rising standards of living."
(Friedman, 334)

I came "to realize that this Electronic Herd was replacing the Soviet Union as the other superpower in our two-superpower world....Goodbye Soviet Union. Hello Electonic Herd." (Friedman, 328)

"If he can't provide them with jobs, housing, and food, they will eat the rain forest -- whether that's sustainable or not." (Friedman, 331)

"I call people "turtles" who are threatened by globalization because they fear that they just don't have the skill sets or the energy to make it into the Fast World. The turtles are are those people who got sucked into the Fast World...and for one reason or another now feel economically threatened or spurned by it...Because this global competition is also forcing their governments to downsize and streamline at the same time, it means many of these turtles have no safety net to fall into " (Friedman, 331)

"As globalization progresses, replacing many manual repetitive jobs with machines and requiring more skills to do the jobs that are left, the number of good jobs available to turtles becomes fewer and fewer....Some of the jobs were moved to Canada and Mexico, where plants were either more efficient or less costly, but the bulk of the people were simply replaced by machines."
(Friedman, 333)

"So not only do you need more skills than ever if you want to get a job in manufacturing today, but you need multiple skills to keep your job from going to a robot. This makes it very hard on the turtles."
(Friedman, 333)

"As for the poorest turtles in the developing world, those really left behind by globalization, they will express their backlash by simply eating the rain forest -- each in their own way -- without trying to explain it or justify it or wrap it in an ideological bow." (Friedman, 335)

"They have only their own unment needs and aspirations. That's why what we have been seeing in many countries instead of popular mass opposition to globalization, is wave after wave of crime -- people just grabbing what they need, weaving their own social safety nets, and not worrying about the theory or ideology." (Friedman, 335)

"Like all revolutions, globalization involves a shift in power from one group to another. In most countries it involves a power shift from the state and its bureaucrats to the private sector and entrepreneurs [Global corporations and the Electronic Herd]." (Friedman, 336)

"As we enter the second decade of globalization, there is an increasing awareness among those countries that have resisted the Golden
Straitjacket and the Fast World that they cannot go on resisting. And they know that a strategy of retreat will not produce growth over the
long run." (Friedman, 343)

"Many people obviously are ready either to abandon a lot of their local culture in favor of an Americanized-globalized consumer culture or to juggle the two together in their lives, clothers, eating habits, and outlook.
" (Friedman, 344)

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National Government and the Interests of Nations

"The interests of all nations ought to be fairly straightforward--quality jobs, a rising standard of living, technological and industrial development, ensured rights of workers and consumers, and a high-quality environment at home and globally .... As compared to nations, the interests of MNEs are far more situation-oriented and linked to opportunity."
(The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment)

• Friedman's definition of the Electronic Herd
  ( in-class)
  
  
• Friedman, No One is in Charge ( in-class)
  
  
• Friedman, Who will Rule the Electronic Herd
  (in-class)
  
  
• Lewis: Who Governs the Government? ( in-class)
  
  
• Lewis: Government as Countervailing Power
  ( in-class)
  
  
• State Regulation vs. Deregulation of
  Corporations ( in-class)
  

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President Clinton and the Electronic Herd

On President Clinton bowing to the Electronic herd in 1993 and 1994 and giving up his tax cuts for the middle class and increased social spending (for the social safety net), see The Politically Talented Mr. Greenspan:

"A closer look at the Greenspan-Clinton era suggests that the chair's genius stems more from his political talents than his economic insights. Thus, on the basis of dubious economics and weak history, he [Alan Greenspan] convinced Bill Clinton to give top priority to the elimination of the deficit, as opposed to the public investments in education, health, and infrastructure that Clinton had promised the Democratic faithful in his campaign. In effect, Clinton spent much of his presidency shortchanging the Democratic Party's constituency so he could pay down the debts run up by his two Republican predecessors. As a result, George Bush II is the lucky recipient of a massive fiscal surplus, which he fully intends to use for military spending and tax cuts to promote the interests of the Republicans' higher-income clientele."

'A few short days after Bill Clinton vacated the White House this January, Federal Reserve Board head Alan Greenspan publicly endorsed the new tenant's $1.6 trillion tax cut. Democrats who had been convinced by both Clinton and Greenspan to give paying off the debt priority over education, health, and other social investments were "shocked" and "stunned" to hear the chairman brush aside concerns that the government would have to borrow money in order to finance George W's largesse, 40% of which would go to the richest 1% of Americans. The New York Times announced that we had entered the "Greenspan-Bush" era, following the "Greenspan-Clinton" era, in which the president of the United States came to be the junior partner in the management of the U.S. economy."

National Debt Graph: 1950-2010 (in-class)

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Korten's Alternative to Corporate Globalization

• The World Social Forum
  
  
• The International Forum on Globalization
  
  
• Resources for building the Alternative
  Global Economy
  
  
• The People-Centered Development Center:
  David Korten's Organization
  
  
• Global Civil Society: The Path ahead

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"Standardization and uniformity seem to be almost inevitable outcomes of a globalized economy dominated by massive globe-spanning corporations geared to mass production and marketing in a culturally homogenized world, innovation is needed as never before. Corporate globalization is leading us to an evolutionary dead end."

"By contrast, economic systems composed of locally rooted, self-reliant economies create in each locality the political, economic, and cultural spaces within which people can find a path to the future consistent with their distinctive aspirations, history, culture, and ecosystems. A global system composed of local economies can accomplish what a single global economy can not encourage the rich and flourishing diversity of robust local cultures and generate the variety of experience and learning that is essential to the enrichment of the whole."

"Although advocates of economic globalization commonly argue that globalization creates interdependence and shared interests, the argument is a misrepresentation. What actually happens is a growing dependence of people and localities on global corporations and financial markets. The consequence of this dependence is to pit people and localities against one another in a self-destructive competition for economic survival, yielding ever more power to the center."

"A globalized economic system delinked from place has an inherent bias in favor of the large, the global, the competitive, the resource-extractive, the short-term, and the wants of those with money. Our challenge is to create a locally rooted planetary system biased toward the small, the local, the cooperative, the resource-conserving, the long-term, and the needs of everyone---a system that empowers all people to create a good living in balance with nature. The goal is not to wall each community off from the world but rather to create zones of local accountability and responsibility within which people can re-claim the power that is rightly theirs to manage their economies in the common interest."

"Healthy societies recognize that the planet's environmental resources and the accumulated knowledge of the human species are common heritage resources, and it is the right of every person--indeed every living being both present and future--to share in their beneficial use. No one has the right to monopolize or use common heritage resources in ways contrary to the broader interest of present and future generations."

"Organizing to meet economic needs as close to the local level as feasible would enable the application of the principle of subsidiarity, which maintains that governance authority and responsibility should be vested in the smallest, most Iocal unit possible. This would make it possible to maintain a market system in which market power is balanced with political power at each level. Local firms would enjoy a natural advantage, and there would be less long-haul movement of people and goods."

"The principles of the Ecological Revolution point toward a global system of local economies that distributes both power and responsibility, creates places for people, encourages the nurturing of life in all its diversity, and limits the opportunity for one group to externalize the social and environmental costs of its consumption onto others. Instead of forcing localities into international competition as a condition of their survival, a localized global system encourages self-reliance in meeting local needs. Instead of monopolizing knowledge for private gain, it encourages sharing knowledge and information. Instead of promoting a homogeneous globalized consumer culture, it nurtures cultural diversity. Instead of measuring success in terms of money, it encourages measuring success in terms of healthy social function."

"No sane person seeks a world divided between billions of excluded people living in absolute deprivation and a tiny elite guarding their wealth
and luxury behind fortress walls....We are now coming to see that economic globalization has come at a heavy price...The threefold crisis of
deepening poverty, environmental destruction, and social disintegration manifests this
dysfunction." (Korten, 233)

"Corporate globalization is being advanced by the conscious choices of those who see the world through the lens of the corporate interest. Human
alternatives do exist, and those who view the world through the lens of the human interest have both the right and the power to choose them."
(Korten, 234)

"Having embraced material self-indulgence as our purpose, an appeal to limit indulgence in the interest of economic justice or concern for future generations becomes a call to sacrifice the only thing that gives life meaning." (Korten, 236)

"Rather than teaching us that the path to fulfillment is to experience living to the fullest through our relationships with family, community,
nature, and the living cosmos, the corporate media continuously repeat a false promise: whatever our longings, the market [and money]
is the path to their instant gratification."
(Korten, 238)

"Our seemingly insatiable quest for money and material consumption is in fact to fill a void in our lives created by a lack of love. It is a consequence of dysfunctional societies in which money has displaced our sense of spiritual connection as the foundation of our cultural values and relationships. The result is a world of material scarcity, massive inequality, overtaxed environmental systems, and social disintegration. " (Korten, 239)

"This power resides increasingly in global financial markets and corporations, which have established themselves as the de facto governance institutions of the plant....Our challenge is to create a locally
rooted planetary system biased toward the small, the local, the cooperative, the resource-conserving, the long-term, and the needs of everyone."
(Korten, 241)

"By contrast, economic systems composed of locally rooted, self-reliant economies create in each locality the political, economic, and cultural spaces within which people can find a path to the future consistent with their distinctive aspirations, history, culture, and ecosystems... " (Korten, p. 242)

For Korten, communities, states, and nations must decide how to protect their citizens, run their lives, and create a "good society." Instead of letting the Electronic Herd or Global corporations dictate to communities and nations, Korten believes that state and national governments set the ground rules for how their societies and economies will be run.
(Chris Lewis)

"A localized global system encourages self-reliance in meeting local needs....Instead of promoting a homogeneous globalized consumer culture, it
nurtures cultural diversity. Instead of measuring success in terms of money, it encourages measuring success in terms of healthy social
function [and communities]." (Korten, 248)

Korten: Guiding Principles for an Ecological Revolution: (Korten, 244-245)

1. Environmental Sustainability. Healthy societies are environmentally sustainable.

2. Economic Justice. Healthy societies provide all their members, present and future, with the essentials for a healthy, secure, productive, and fulfilling life.

3. Biological and Cultural Diversity. Healthy societies nurture the biological and cultural diversity of the planet.

4. Subsidiarity. In healthy societies, sovereignity resides in the people. The purpose of the human economy is to meet human needs -- not the needs of money, nor of corporations, nor of governments.

5. Intrinsic Responsibility. Healthy societies assign the full cost of resource allocation decisions to those who partiicipate in making them...No entity has the right to externalize the costs of its consumption to another.

6. Common Heritage. Healthy societies recognize that the planet's environmental resources and the accumulated knowledge of the human species are common heritage resources, and it is the right of every person to share in their beneficial use.

Korten's model of Nested Economies

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The larger values of the Ecological Revolution (Korten, 248)

1. Sovereignty resides only in the people.....Neither government nor corporations can ururp that sovereignty unless we choose to yield it.

2. Corporations have no natural or inalienable rights. The corporation is a public body created by a public act through issusing a public charter to serve a public purpose.

3. The problem is the system....The whole system of institutional power must be transformed.

4. The Ecological Revolution is a revolution of ideas, not guns. The human interest is not the corporate interest, but it is the interest of all people.

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Debating Globalization

The Key Questions on Globalization

Who are the Players in Globalization?

Is there any alternative to Globalization?

Alternatives to Economic Globalization

Globalization is Greatttt