Can Globalization be reformed

Question for Discussion: Can Globalization be
reformed and made more people-centered?

Readings: Friedman, pp. 348-364; Cavanagh, pp. 147-163;
Hindery, Education isn't the only solution for jobs ;
Frank, "The Creation Myth of the Geo-Achitect";
Tom Tomorrow Cartoon on Friedman ; Friedman, "The Post-Binge World" ; Editorial Cartoon: The Wall Street Choice

Video: Scene from Network on the Global Economic System

Is the Market Democratic?

National Governments and the Interests of Nations
(in-class)
Friedman, Who will Rule the Electronic Herd
(in-class)
Thatcher: Only the Individual Exists (in-class)
The Declaration of Independence:
The Purpose of government (in-class)
The Rise of Market Populism (in-class)
The Market as God (in-class)
Frank, The Creation Myth of the Geo-Architect
(in-class)
U.S. State Department: The Mixed Economy
(in-class)
Friedman argues for the Benefits of Globalization
(in-class)
Cavanaugh, Subsidiarity--or helping
local and national societies first (in-class)
Korten argues for Reforming our Societies (in-class)
Korten's Alternative to Corporate Globalization
Friedman vs. Korten on Globalization (in-class)

Who does Globalization Help?
Does Globalization Help the Poor (in-class)
Hindery, Education isn't the only Solution for Jobs
(in-class)
"Korten: Earth's Three Sociological Classes"
Different Worlds of Globalists and anti-Globalists
Who or What is Middle Class?

Debating the Global Economy and
Free Market Globalization

The Globalization Debate

Is Market Freedom equal to Democratic Freedom?

Editorial Cartoon: The Wall Street Choice
Tom Tomorrow Cartoon on Friedman
Friedman, "The Post-Binge World"
Watchdog Sees Huge Bill for Banks Bailout (Oct. 2009)
Debating the Global Economy and
Free-Market Globalization (in-class)
Who does Globalization help? (in-class)
Friedman's definition of the Electronic Herd
( in-class)
Friedman, No One is in Charge ( in-class)
National Governments and the Interests of Nations
(in-class)
Lewis, Who Governs the Government?
Friedman, Who will Rule the Electronic Herd
Thatcher: Only the Individual Exists (in-class)
The Declaration of Independence: The Purpose of government
(in-class)
The Constitution: the Larger Mission of government (in-class)
The Rise of Market Populism
The Market as God (in-class)
Frank, The Creation Myth of the Geo-Architect
(in-class)
U.S. State Department: The Mixed Economy
(in-class)
Friedman argues for the Benefits of Globalization
(in-class)
Cavanaugh, Subsidiarity--or helping
local and national societies first (in-class)
Korten argues for Reforming our Societies (in-class)
Korten's Alternative to Corporate Globalization
Friedman vs. Korten on Globalization (in-class)

Does globalization Help the Poor?

" Economic globalization has only proved to be successful in making global corporations and a few elites wildly wealthy. For example, of the largest 100 economies in the world, 52 are now corporations. In what the UN describes as the "staggering concentration of wealth among the ultrawealthy," total wealth controlled by people with assets of at least $1 million nearly quadrupled from 1986 to 2000, from $7.2 trillion to $27 trillion. Even with the dot-com crash and the current global financial slump, Merrill Lynch predicts that wealth controlled by millionaires will continue to increase by 8 percent a year, reaching $40 trillion by 2005.

Contrary to its claims, wealth generated by globalization does not trickle down. Rather, the rules lock the wealth at the top, removing from governments and communities the very tools necessary to redistribute wealth, protect domestic industries, workers, social services, the environment, and sustainable livelihoods."
...Jerry Mander at al.

Hindery, Education isn't the only
Solution for Jobs

"For example, what are we doing today to preserve the kinds of jobs we tell students will be there for them once they graduate? What are we doing today to preserve the ladder of success?

Not much.

During the last four years, at least 3 million U.S. jobs have been moved offshore, and over the next decade another 10 percent to 15 percent of today's 134 million jobs will be lost to foreign operations.

And the jobs flowing to countries such as China and India are not just low-paying manufacturing jobs. This year alone, 830,000 high-quality service and information technology jobs will be lost offshore.

It is increasingly clear that the much-touted tradeoff around globalization - cheaper consumer products here at home in exchange for higher corporate profits from offshore operations - isn't an equitable deal. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. jobs that are expected to grow the most this decade include food service providers, waiters and waitresses, retail salespersons, cashiers, janitors and cleaners. Think of our future as a "Wal-Mart nation" of low-paid workers buying foreign products and foreign services that American plants and workers used to provide."

"None of this is to say that education at all levels isn't important. It is critically important. Skills matter, and a college education continues to provide a substantial earnings advantage. We must be dead serious about reforming our schools, paying fairly for and retaining good teachers, building safe and modern school facilities, and helping students achieve high standards.

And we must continue to explain to students that learning is the key to paving rewarding career paths. But education will not fulfill its promise if quality jobs aren't there at the end of these paths. And we'll be further reneging on our "contracts" with students if workers don't share more fairly in the rewards from their increased productivity and the profits they produce."

"Society does not exist, only the
indiviudal exists.."
Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher

The Declaration of Independence:
The Purpose of Government

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Constitution of the United States of America

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Market as God

"The diviners and seers of The Market's moods are the high priests of its mysteries. To act against their admonitions is to risk excommunication and possibly damnation. Today, for example, if any government's policy vexes The Market, those responsible for the irreverence will be made to suffer. That The Market is not at all displeased by downsizing or a growing income gap, or can be gleeful about the expansion of cigarette sales to Asian young people, should not cause anyone to question its ultimate omniscience. Like Calvin's inscrutable deity, The Market may work in mysterious ways, "hid from our eyes," but ultimately it knows best."
....Harvey Cox, The Market as God

An Essay on the Market as God

"The argument here is that our new religion, The Market, drives this destruction, and that, further, it is The Market's radical devotee, modern corporate capitalist business, that is primarily responsible for this disaster. Paul Hawken speaks the truth bluntly when he says, “[t]here is no polite way to say that business is destroying the world.” 5 Another commentator concludes that modern corporate big business is destroying the world because, to The Market, the environment has almost no intrinsic value. Such observations are certainly not remarkable . 7 What is remarkable is that the forces of the American political system that have traditionally, and triumphantly, curbed all other religious or cultural excesses, and that have kept any other one world -view system from becoming monopolistic and oppressive, have failed to curb the excesses of The Market. That failure has resulted in an environmental crisis .8 Arguably, we again confront religious warfare. On one side of the battle is The Market and its earthly emissaries, the giant corporations; and on the other side, nature and its self-proclaimed defenders, the environmentalists."
......Daniel Warner

Frank: The Rise of Market Populism

"On the contrary: At the center of the "New Economy" consensus was a vision of economic democracy as extreme and as militant-sounding as anything to emanate from the CIO in the thirties. From Deadheads to Nobel-laureate economists, from paleoconservatives to New Democrats, American leaders in the nineties came to believe that markets were a popular system, a far more democratic form of organization than (democratically elected) governments. This is the central premise of what I call "market populism": that in addition to being mediums of exchange, markets are mediums of consent. With their mechanisms of supply and demand, poll and focus group, superstore and Internet, markets manage to express the popular will more articulately and meaningfully than do mere elections. By their very nature markets confer democratic legitimacy, markets bring down the pompous and the snooty, markets look out for the interests of the little guy, markets give us what we want. "
....Thomas Frank, The Rise of Market Populism

Creation Myth of the Geo-Architect

"By now most readers have heard of globalisation and have understood that it means something familiar : "capitalism or else". Oh, but it is so much more than just that, declares Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. His goal in his much-celebrated and best-selling book The Lexus and the Olive Tree is not to describe globalisation for us but to help us to understand it. By this he apparently means hammering into our heads the notion that globalisation is the end object of human civilisation , that globalisation is loveable and trustworthy, that globalisation will make us rich, set us free, and generally elevate everything and everyone everywhere."

"Or take his definition of democracy. It is not a thing of citizenship and the common good but a simple matter of money. It is "one dollar, one vote" --a system in which the market and corporate interests rightly and naturally dictate to everyone else. Thus even as Friedman whoops it up for the People, he takes pains to warn us that the real boss, the market, will not tolerate any sort of political activity beyond its very narrow spectrum of permissible beliefs. No country that wishes to participate in the global gloriosity will be allowed to regulate its markets or provide for its unfortunates beyond what Friedman deems appropriate. Their "political choices get reduced to Pepsi or Coke - to slight nuances of taste, slight nuances of policy ... but never any major deviation from the core golden rules". He even describes the various punishments that the wrong sort of voting would bring down on a country, as investors "stampede away" and stock markets crash."

But what Friedman has actually written is a veritable dictionary of the shibboleths of our time, awesome in its inclusiveness. They are all there : enthusiasm for the "rebranding" of Britain, casual badmouthing of France for its efforts to retain its welfare state, facile equating of Great Society America with the Soviet Union. Each of them is monstrous, foolish, and preposterous in its own way, but thrown together here they make a truly dispiriting impression.

I can only compare the sensation of reading The Lexus and the Olive Tree to the first time I heard Newt Gingrich speak publicly and it began to dawn on me that this is what the ruling class calls thinking, that this handful of pathetic, palpably untrue prejudices are all they have to guide them as they shuttle back and forth between the State Department and the big thinktanks, discussing what they mean to do with us and how they plan to dispose of our country.

Thomas Frank on Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree

Cavanaugh, Subsidiarity -- or
helping local and national societies first

"The captains of globalization are driven by what is still essentially an economic ideology....They continue to praise their formulas despite the numerous spectacular breakdowns they have caused: the Asian financial crisis, the Russian financial crisis, the near-economic meltdown of Brazil, and the collapse of the Argentine economy, along with the global increase in poverty, hunger, inequity, dependency, and powerlessness. These theories do not work and cannot work; the main beneficiaries, unsurprisingly, remain the global corporations and economic elites that have instituted these processes." (147)

"When sovereign powers are removed from the local and put into distant bureaucracies, local politics must also be redesigned to conform to the rules and practices of distant bureaucracies. Communities and nations that formerly operated in a relatively self-reliant manner, in the interests of their own people, are converted into unwilling subjects of these larger undemocratic,
unaccountable global structures." (148)

"The operating principle for this turnaround is the concept of subsidiarity--that is, favoring the local whenever a choice exists. In practice, subsidiarity means that all decisions should be made at the lowest level of governing authority competent to deal with them. Global health crises and global pollution issues often require cooperative international decisions. But most economic, cultural, and political decisions are not international and can be made at the national, regional, or local levels, depending on the issue. Power should be encouraged to evolve downward, not upward. Decisions should constantly move closer to the people most affected by them." (149)

"The goal can no longer be individual or corporate wealth; rather it must be community self-reliance, public health, equity, accountability, and democracy....

Clearly, a reversal of this kind--consciously favoring the local over the global will not sit comfortably with the largest and most powerful institutions in the world, all of which depend on the larger global system, long supply lines, expanding trade, and centralized absentee control. Those are the forms that were made in their image, as it were, and that offer maximum profit opportunity." (150)

"Localization attempts to reverse the trend toward the global by discriminating actively in favor of the local in all policies. Depending on the context, the local is defined as a subgroup within a nation-state; it may also be the nation-state itself, or occasionally, a regional grouping of nation-states. In all cases, the idea is for power to devolve to the lowest unit appropriate for a particular goal.

Policies that bring about localization are ones that increase democratic control of the economy by communities or nation-states, taking it back from the global institutions that have appropriated it. These policies may enable nations, local governments, and communities to reclaim their economies, make them as diverse as possible, and rebuild stability into community life--to achieve maximum self-reliance nationally and regionally in a way that ensures more sustainable forms of development." (151-152)

"Globalization, on the other hand, offers no democratic promise. Globalization actually guarantees absentee rule by giant corporations that are designed to act solely in their own economic interests and have no real concern about conditions faced in the daily lives of most people. The real choice, therefore, is between allowing corporate-led systems controlled from far-away cities and attempting to strengthen forms that may bring power back to the local, where opportunity for democracy, equity, and attention to local social and environmental conditions still exists." (160)

"Other critiques of localization are essentially restatements of the many theoretical benefits of global free trade: that wealth will "trickle down" to the poor, that prices will be lower, and that greater diversity (of products) will exist in the marketplace. On the first point, that globalization lifts people from poverty, this is manifestly, tragically false. As chapter 2 of this volume explained, the benefits of globalization actually trickle up to the very wealthy. It accelerates gaps between rich and poor within countries and among countries. (A special report by the IFG, Does Globalization Help the Poor? provides more data on this phenomenon.)."(161)

"The goal of societies should not be to find cheaper prices for products but to find the means to ensure that all the needs of all people are met and that a satisfactory and stable life is perpetuated within a system that does not collapse from being part of the volatile global market. If people grow their own food, produce their own necessities, and control the conditions of their lives, the issue of price becomes irrelevant."(163)

Friedman argues for the benefits of Globalization

"The turtles are all those people who got sucked
into the Fast World when the walls came down,
and for one reason or another now feel economically
threatened or spurned by it." (Friedman, 331)

"[Speaking about the 1999 Seattle protesters]
These disparate groups are bound by a common
sense that a world dominated by global corporations
, and their concerns, can't help but be a profoundly
unfair world, and one that is as hostile to the real
interests of human beings as it is to turtles."
(Friedman, 334)

"The spread of capitalism has raised living
standards higher, faster, and for more people
than at any time in history." (Friedman, 350)

"While the backlash against globalization is alive and well, this backlash is constantly being tempered by the groundswell for more globalization -- more people wanting into the system." (351)

"If intellectual critics of globalization would
spend more time thinking about how to use the
system, and less time thinking about how to tear
it down, they might realize...that globalization
can create as many solutions and opportunities
as it can problems." (Friedman, 355)

"Too many people still want into this system, and
are finding ways to get there, even if it is
painful at times.. That is because too many
people in underdeveloped countries understand
that globalization is a tool to make them better
off, faster, than anything they have ever had
before." (Friedman, 362)

Korten argues for Reforming our Societies

"Healthy societies depend on healthy empowered
local communities that build caring relationships
among people and help us connect to a
particular piece of the living earth with which our
lives are intertwined....[We need to] take back
responsiblity for our lives, and reweave the basic
fabric of caring families and communities to
create places for people and other living things."
(Korten, pp. 234)

"The more we give our life energies to money, the
more power we yield to the institutions that control
our access to money and to the things it will buy."
(Korten, 238)

"What actually happens is a growing dependence
of people and localities on global corporations and
financial markets." (Korten, 239)

"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 baised toward the small, the local, the
cooperative, the resource-conserving, the
long-term, and the needs of everyone." (Korten, 241)

"By organizing societies around the pursuit of material gratification, we have made a virture of social dysfunction and diminished the quality of our living....'
(Korten, 249)

"Whether we organize our societies for social and environmental health or for dysfunction is our choice. To a considerable degree, it is a choice between organizing for the human interest and organizing for the corporate interest. By devoting ourselves to creating societies that enhance the quality of our living rather than the quality of our consumption, we move simultaneously toward sustainability and a better life for nearly everyone."
(Korten, 250-1)

"Some 80 percent of environmental damage is caused by 20 percent of the world's population -- 1.1 billion overconsumers." (Korten, 251)

See Korten "Earth's Three Sociological Classes" (252)

Korten advocates recreating:

1. Urban Space and Transport
2.Food and Agriculture
3. Materials Use
4. Sustainable Livelihoods

"We do have the option of creating healthy societies
that allow us to live whole lives. It is time to reclaim
our power and get on with the task." (Korten, 263)

Lewis: Who Governs the Government?

Conservative supporters of the "free market", like Friedman and President George W. Bush, believe that government interference in the economy and society weakens economic growth, individual freedom, and the
quality of life. The implicit assumption here is that what is good for corporations, the wealthy, and individual Americans is good for the larger society. Conservatives measure economic success by the creation of profits and wealth and by increasing material consumption. But there often is a contradiction between what is good for
the larger society and what is good for corporations, the wealthy, and individuals.

Conservatives do not trust government to make decisions that will protect the interests of corporations, the wealthy, and individuals. President Reagan used to say that "Government isn't the solution, it is the problem." But this conservative ideology forgets that in democratic societies, governments are created, as Lincoln said, "of, by, and for the people." The object of government is to promote the larger interests of all society -- the poor, children, the weak, the elderly, minorities. In democratic societies "the people" run the government. So when "the government" taxes the wealthy, limits the rights of corporation, and limits individual rights and opportunities, it does so in the name of recognizing and balancing competing interests. Not everyone will like government support for public education, health care for the elderly, environmental protection, and consumer and product safety.

Conservatives argue, however, that when government acts to balance competing interests it is protecting
"special interests" at the expense of the larger public interest. If you look carefully at what conservatives list as "special interests" -- children, the elderly, the poor, minorities, women, the environment, and public safety, you will discover that these so-called special interests are, in fact, the majority of the population. In democratic societies, the people govern the government and expect their government to protect the interests of everyone. From 1980 to the present, the Federal government has been dominated by conservatives. From President Reagan to President George W. Bush, the Federal Government has suffered from a declining reputation. Despite being run by political conservatives, conservative opposition to the Federal Government has grown. The code words for this opposition is "big government," "liberal," "special interests," "entitlements," and "minoritity rights."

Korten believes that the Federal government must play a vital role in determining the rules and shape of globalization. Instead of "caving in to the race to the bottom," the Federal government must continue to protect all its citizens and protect and promote the larger public interest. This means higher taxes on the wealthy, more money for education, more money for health care, more environmental protection, and more protection of the weakest members of our society. Of course, conservatives will scream that this Federal government is out of control, taxing and regulating us to death, and promoting special interests.

For Korten, only democratic governments protecting the larger public interest and balancing competing rights can be trusted to promote globalization. The final irony here is that since President Reagan, conservative political leaders have engaged in a campaign to "bankrupt the government," which makes it very difficult for the Federal government to continue to protect the larger public good. Conservatives claim we can't afford to spend too much money on education, healthcare, the elderly, the poor, and regulating corporations and the economy, because we have a 8.6 trillion dollar national debt. (See the U.S. National Debt Clock.)The debate in the 2004 Presidential race is about the role of the Federal government in our lives. But whoever wins, our democratic government is governed by the people. So if people complain about the government, they really are complaining about themselves and their neighbors. In the end, in a democratic society, we get the government and the political leaders we deserve. And Korten believes that we deserve a whole lot better.
................Chris Lewis, Ph.D. (2004)

Different Worlds of Globalists and
Anti-Globalists

The corporate globalists who meet in posh gatherings to chart the course of corporate globalization in the name of private profits, and the citizen movements that organize to thwart them in the name of democracy, are separated by deep differences in values, worldview, and definitions of progress. At times it seems they must be living in wholly different worlds—which, in fact, in many respects they are. Understanding their differences is key to understanding the nature and implications of the profound choices humanity currently faces.

Corporate globalists inhabit a world of power and privilege. They see progress at hand everywhere, because from their vantage point the drive to privatize public assets and free the market from governmental interference spreads freedom and prosperity around the world, improving the lives of people everywhere and creating the financial and material wealth necessary to end poverty and protect the environment. They see themselves as champions of an inexorable and beneficial historical process toward erasing the economic and political borders that hinder corporate expansion, eliminating the tyranny of inefficient and meddlesome public bureaucracies, and unleashing the enormous innovation and wealth-creating power of competition and private enterprise.

Corporate globalists undertake to accelerate these trends as a great mission. They seek public policies and international agreements that provide greater safeguards for investors and private property while removing restraints to the free movement of goods, money, and corporations in search of economic opportunity wherever it may be found. They embrace global corporations as the greatest and most efficient human institutions, powerful engines of innovation and wealth creation that are peeling away the barriers to human progress and accomplishment everywhere. They celebrate the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization as essential and beneficial institutions for global governance engaged in the great work of rewriting the rules of commerce to free the market and create conditions essential to economic growth.

Corporate globalists subscribe to this worldview like a catechism. They differ among themselves mainly in their views of the extent to which it is appropriate for government to subsidize private corporations or provide safety nets to cushion the fall of the losers in the market’s relentless competition.

Citizen movements see a very different reality. Focused on people and the environment, they see a world in a crisis of such magnitude that it threatens the fabric of civilization and the survival of the species—a world of rapidly growing inequality, erosion of relationships of trust and caring, and failing planetary life support systems. Where corporate globalists see the spread of democracy and vibrant market economies, citizen movements see the power to govern shifting away from people and communities to financial speculators and global corporations dedicated to the pursuit of short-term profits in disregard of all human and natural concerns. They see corporations replacing democracies of people with democracies of money, replacing self-organizing markets with centrally planned corporate economies, and replacing diverse cultures with cultures of greed and materialism. In the eyes of citizen movements, these trends are not the result of some inexorable historical force but rather of the intentional actions of a corrupted political system awash in corporate money. They see the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization as leading instruments of this assault against people and the environment.

Ironically, the citizen movements seek many of the things the corporate globalists claim to offer but in fact fail to deliver: democratic participation, economies comprising enterprises that provide good jobs and respond to the real needs and preferences of their customers, a healthy environment, and an end
to poverty. However, where the corporate globalists seek a competitive global economy ruled by megacorporations that owe no loyalty to place or person, citizen movements seek a planetary system of economies made up of locally-owned enterprises accountable to all their stakeholders. Citizen movements work for economic justice for all, international cooperation, vibrant cultural diversity, and healthy, sustainable societies that value life more than money. Citizen movements recognize that corporate globalists cannot deliver on their promises because the narrow and shortsighted financial imperatives that drive their institutions are antithetical to them. Many corporate globalists may act with the best intentions, but they are blinded by their own financial success to the costs of this success for those who have no place at the table, including future generations.

Corporate globalists generally measure progress by indicators of their own financial wealth, such as rising stock prices and indicators of the total output of goods and services available to those who have the money to pay. With the exception of occasional cyclical setbacks in Latin America and elsewhere and declining per capita incomes in the poorest African countries, these indicators generally perform well, confirming in the eyes of corporate globalists their premise that their program is enriching the world.

In contrast, citizen movements measure progress by indicators of the well-being of people and nature, with particular concern for the lives of those most in need. With the exception of the highly visible pockets of privilege enjoyed by corporate globalists, these indicators are deteriorating at a frightening pace, suggesting that in terms of what really matters, the
world is rapidly growing poorer.

The U.N. Food and Agriculatural Organization (FAO) reports that the number of chronically hungry people in the world declined steadily during the 1970s and 1980s but has been increasing since the early 1990s. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that by 2008 two-thirds of the people of sub-Saharan Africa will be undernourished, and 40 percent will be undernourished in Asia. In a world in which a few enjoy unimaginable wealth, two hundred million children under age five are underweight because of a lack of food. Some fourteen million children die each year from hunger-related disease. A hundred million children are living or working on the streets. Three hundred thousand children were conscripted as soldiers during the 1990s, and six million were injured in armed conflicts. Eight hundred million people go to bed hungry each night.

This human tragedy is not confined to poor countries. Even in a country as wealthy as the United States, 6.1 million adults and 3.3 million children experience outright hunger. Some 10 percent of U.S. households, accounting for 31 million people, do not have access to enough food to meet their basic needs. These are some of the many indicators of a deepening global
social crisis.

On the environmental side, a joint study released in September 2000 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the World Bank, and the World Resources Institute assessed five ecosystem types—agricultural, coastal, forest, freshwater, and grassland—in relation to five ecosystem services—food and fiber production, water quantity, air quality, biodiversity, and carbon storage. It found that of these twenty-five ecosystem-service combinations, sixteen had declining trends. The only positive trend was in food and fiber production by forest ecosystems, which has been achieved by an expansion of industrial forest monocropping at the expense of species diversity. Human activity—in particular, fossil fuel combustion—is estimated to have increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to their highest levels in twenty million years. According to the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental think tank, natural disasters, including weather-related disasters such as storms, foods, and fires, affected more than two billion people and caused in excess of $608 billion in economic losses worldwide during the decade of the 1990s—more than the previous four decades combined. Three hundred million people were displaced from their homes or forced to resettle because of extreme weather events in 1998 alone.

It becomes more imperative to rethink human priorities and institutions by the day. Yet most corporate globalists, in deep denial, reiterate their mantra that with time and patience corporate globalization will create the wealth needed to end poverty and protect the environment.

Citizen movements counter that the policies and processes of corporate globalization are destroying the real wealth of the planet while advancing a primitive winner-takes-all competition that inexorably widens the gap between rich and poor. They reject as absurd the argument that the poor must be exploited and the environment destroyed to make the money necessary to end poverty and save the planet.

Many citizen movements embrace the present imperative for transformational change as an opportunity to lift humanity to a new level of possibility—the greatest creative challenge in the history of the species. Yet experience leads them to conclude that the institutions with the power to provide the leadership are neither inclined nor suited to doing so. Nor is there realistic cause for hope that leaders who are lavishly rewarded by the status quo and hold steadfastly to the view that there is no alternative will suddenly experience an epiphany.

The challenge of providing leadership to create a just and sustainable world thus falls by default to the hundreds of millions of extraordinary people in an emerging global civil society who believe a better world is possible—and who are forging global alliances that seek to shift the powers of governance to democratic, locally-rooted, human-scale institutions that value life more than money. Although the most visible among them are those who have taken to the streets in protest, equally important and even more numerous are those struggling to rebuild their local communities and economies in the face of the institutional forces aligned against them.

(from the introduction to Alternatives to Economic Globalization

The Threat of Globalization

The Washington Consensus: A Definition

Washington Consensus or Washington
Confusion?

Progressive Globalism: Challenging the Audacity
of Capitalism

10 Ways to Democratize the Global Economy

See The anti-Thomas Friedman Home Page

Thomas Friedman: "Parsing the Protests

"Whom to root against: Root against the economic quacks peddling conspiracy theories about globalization; the anti-free-trade extremists, such as Ralph Nader's group, Public Citizen; the protectionist trade unions; and the anarchists. These groups deserve to be called by their real name: "The Coalition to Keep the World's Poor People Poor."

These characters are fighting free trade. But they can't point to a single country that has flourished, or upgraded its living or worker standards, without free trade and integration. And they offer the third world no coherent plan for how to develop and preserve the environment. Their only plan is that developing countries stop developing."

See Thomas Friedman's "Senseless in Seattle" (1999)

Imagining life in 2030:The Collapse of
the Global Economy

Because most of you can't imagine a time when our modern, industrial society would be forced to learn from traditional peoples and cultures, I want to examine a scenario in which peoples from modern, industrial culture might be forced to learn from traditional cultures. Our modern industrial society and global economy is only four hundred years old, and the traditional societies and cultures it has replaced throughout the world were hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. What if our present industrial culture proved to be economically, socially, and environmentally unworkable? How would peoples from modern industrial cultures adapt to economic and environmental collapse created by the growth of this global industrial economy? My larger argument is that they would be forced to draw on models from other cultures, and particularly from extent traditional societies, to transform their cultural, social, and economic institutions to these new circumstances. Okay, now under what circumstances would modern industrial peoples be forced to give up their industrial way of life and adopt more traditional ways of life?

Imagine it is the year 2030, and there is a global economic collapse. This economic collapse was triggered by the the desperately poor Third World countries. The first countries to default on their debts to First World banks and governments were Brazil, Mexico, Zaire, and the Philippines. These countries had adopted the development model in the 1950s and 1960s. They were forced to borrow tens of billions of dollars to "develop" their economies and societies. But, as a result, between the 1970s and the 2020s they found that they had to borrow more and more money just to pay the interest on their debt and to pay for the growing economic and social problems created by rapid development and environmental destruction. Because increasing amounts of the monies earned by the national economy were needed just to pay off the interest on their huge loans, these countries found that they had to reduce government spending on education, health care, water and sewage, and protecting the environment. With the increasing exploitation of their economies, natural resources, and their environments, people in these countries found that there standard of living and quality of life were declining. There was a massive growth in population, poverty, and overcrowding in their polluted industrial cities. The majority of their peoples were getting poorer and increasingly demanding government reforms and government support for the people, not the First World banks. Faced with the rise of social protest and economic and political turmoil, the most desperate of the Third World countries, Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, and Zaire, defaulted on their loans. These defaults caused a financial panic in the First World, because First world governments had guaranteed to pay these loans if these Third World countries defaulted. The financial panic only got worse, when an increasing number of other desperately poor countries in Africa and Latin America also defaulted on their loans.

As a result of the financial panic created by these Third World defaults, there was an economic crash and a global depression, as First World governments struggled to find ways to pay off these massive debts created by these Third World defaults. Faced with their own rising poverty, overcrowding, pollution, and environmental destruction, First World governments found that they did not have the money, resources, or the support of their people to invade these Third World countries and force them to continue to pay off their loans. Their inability to do reimpose order and control on these Third World countries quickly led to the collapse of the global economy. If these recalcitrant Third World countries could not be trusted to pay off their loans, First World governments and corporations quickly began to pull their money out of the Third World.

With the collapse of the global economy and the rush by global corporations to pull their monies out of Third World countries, Third World poverty, economic and social chaos, and insecurity grows. Facing these growing problems, leaders of Third World countries make a fateful decision. They nationalize the property and wealth of global corporations, claiming the resources, factories, and wealth as the property of the people of these countries. Third World governments now develop a bold and desperate plan: They will now permanently withdraw form the moribund global economy. They will now focus their country's economy and resources on supporting the needs of their own people. They will try to become as self-reliant and self-sufficient as possible, using their own resources and people to produce the goods and services they need to survive. This focus on self-reliance and developing local and national economies is the result of the First World's reaction to the Third World's default on their development loans. Because they can't borrow any more money to acquire new technology and resources to further develop their economy, Third World countries now try to go it alone, realizing that they must now supply their peoples' needs with their own resources. As a result, most of the agricultural land that was used for export crops is now replanted to grow food for the local peoples, the factories used to produce cheap industrial goods for the global economy are now used to produce industrial products for the local and national use, and people are now encouraged to move from the desperately overcrowded industrial cities to rural villages and towns. The end result of all these changes is Third World country's focusing their economies and societies and producing foods and goods for local and national consumption. Because they can't rely on external sources of resources, these countries must use their land and natural resources carefully, knowing that if they are wasted or destroyed then their own people will soon suffer.

With the collapse of the global economy and Third World countries nationalizing First World and global corporations lands and factories, First World people soon find that they can no longer rely on the cheap natural resources, food, and industrial goods from the Third World that their high standard of living depended on. Before this economic collapse, First World countries were consuming over 80 percent of the resources, but were only 20 percent of the world's population; the 80 percent of the world's population in the Third World only consumed 20 percent of the resources. It was, in fact, this growing inequality in resource use and standard of living between the First and the Third Worlds that led Third World peoples to take the desperate actions they did. They realized that their poverty, destruction of their environment and natural resources, and pollution were all caused by First World peoples drain on their national wealth and economies. Given the finite nature of the Earth's natural resources and the global environment's inability to support continued economic growth and destruction, Third World leaders realized that they would never be able to solve their economic, social, and environmental problems as long as First World peoples were allowed to continue to drain the wealth and resources from their countries to support their "outrageously" high standards of living. But without continued access to cheap resources, food, industrial goods, and cheap labor, what would maintain First World peoples high living standards?

It is at this point that we can now imagine what First World peoples could learn from traditional Third World societies and cultures. The most important thing First World people can learn is that individual freedom without larger responsibility to the community and society threatens their future. The individual demand for increasing freedom, wealth, and opportunity fueled the growth of the global industrial economy. In traditional cultures, individual freedom is limited by the larger needs of their communities and societies. Instead of individual's measuring their status based on increasing material consumption and wealth, Third World traditional cultures measure an individual's status based on their larger place and role in their families and communities. Instead of celebrating individual freedom to escape their communities, Third World traditional cultures pressure individuals to remain in their communities to support their families and local communities. Without the wealth and resources from the Third World, First World peoples would be forced to
re-evaluate their focus on individual freedom, endless consumption, and ceaseless accumulation of wealth. Without the economic surplus and resources from the Third World to support economic growth, the individual freedom to consume resources and accumulate wealth would soon threaten the well-being of the larger society. Given scare and limited resources, First World communities and societies would be forced to limit and reduce peoples' standard of living. Individuals would be forced to sacrifice their wealth and freedom in the name of supporting the larger needs of their communities and their societies.

Without the wealth and resources from the Third World, First World societies would increasingly be forced to now depend on their local natural resources and environments to feed their people, provide goods and services, and support their societies. With reduced access to oil, wood, fish, grain, metal ore, rubber, and other vital natural resources, First World peoples would have to drastically reduce their consumption and their societal use of natural resources. As a result, because of shortages of oil to make industrial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, American farmers will be forced to rethink what crops they grow and their basic methods of farming. With reduced access to fossil fuels, Americans will be forced to reduce their dependence on the automobile and use electricity much more efficiently. Without access to the fossil fuels and the natural resources to power and develop the advanced technologies First World people depended on, they will be forced to develop alternative technologies using local resources and local sources of energy.

Here, the Ladakh project provides a number of exciting examples of how to develop passive solar technologies to provide heating, lighting, water, and electricity. But without cheap sources of oil and natural resources, photovoltaic and high technology solar energy technology will be prohibitively expensive. Thus, First World peoples will be forced to reduce the energy used in transporting themselves and food and industrial goods over long distances. Instead, community and regional economies will need to develop that focus on using local resources and material to develop technology to support local needs. The Ladakh project demonstrates that alternative technology does not have to mean old-fashioned or primitive technology such as wind mills. Instead alternative technology can be micro-hydro power dams, solar cooking and heat pumps, water pumps and water-driven mills.

Just as Third World countries discovered that they had to empty out their overcrowded industrial cities because of the exorbitant use of energy, heating, transportation costs, water and sewage, garbage and waste disposal, and pollution costs. Instead of allowing the continued drain of people and resources from the rural areas into the cities, First World countries will be forced to encourage people to re-migrate back to rural communities. Instead on focusing on the needs of these overgrown industrial cities, First World governments will be forced to focus on the needs of rural and local communities and regions.

Our larger inability to imagine a radically different future for First World peoples and modern industrial culture and society is dependent on our continued access to cheap Third World resources, industrial products, and labor. Without access to the 80 percent of the resources developed and consumed by our global industrial economy, First World peoples would be forced to radically rethink every area of their lives and cultures. The outrageous standard of living of the First World minority is based on increasing exploitation, destruction of natural resources, and environmental pollution of Third World countries and peoples. Only with the growth of European imperialism and the First World economic and political domination of the Third World in the last four hundred years have First World peoples been allowed to create and develop a culture based on endless consumption and the ceaseless individual accumulation of wealth. Without the wealth of the Third World, First world peoples and cultures would be forced to return to many of the cultural and social practices of more traditional cultures.

The authors in The Future of Progress believe that we must do everything in our power to protect the remaining traditional peoples and cultures now threatened by the growth and expansion of our global industrial economy. These traditional cultures and societies, they argue, provide models, examples, and alternatives to the modern way of life promoted by global industrial societies. Without the examples of these traditional cultures, the anarchy, chaos, and turmoil created by the collapse of the global industrial economy will make it even more difficult and painful for modern industrial peoples to adapt to a radically new economic, social, and political environment.

But, of course, the supporters of modern industrial culture and the modern industrial global economy continue to argue that it will never collapse. They declare that modern industrial society represents progress and development. They can't imagine that the increasing struggle over limited global natural resources, poverty and social disorder, and global environmental destruction threaten the future of our modern industrial society. They proclaim that with a little more scientific and technological development, more economic growth and global expansion, and individual freedom and opportunity, our global industrial society will be able to solve these problems and create even more wealth and higher standards of living. This, of course, is based on hope and gambling with the future. How long will Third World peoples continue to accept this blind faith in modern industrial society? How long will First World peoples continue to accept this blind faith in progress and increasing living standards? The answer lies in how well our global modern industrial society solves the growing economic, social, and environmental problems created by the growth and expansion of a global industrial economy.