[wordup] Globalisation - Speaking out for the silent majority.

[Adam Shand]

let me start by expessing my personal opinion ...

... i think this article is self-serving, moralistic crap.  however it's
also hard to argue with until you actually understand what's going on in
the world (something i'm working on).  so go read about why it's okay to
exploit the weak and poor, and think ... in the mean time i'll see if i
can drege up some more positive information.

adam.

URL: http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/5/3/12239/35245

Globalisation - Speaking out for the silent majority.
By Urban Existentialist
Fri May 4th, 2001 at 07:18:55 AM EST

For years, capitalists have been a silent majority. They stood by as
communism spread around the world, apparently content to take a
laissez-fair approach, not just to economics, but to the governance of the
world as well. However, as I watched the anti-capitalist riots around the
world, I felt it was time to speak up for those who do not demonstrate
against capitalism, but demonstrate it in their billions every working
day.

First of all, let us examine the case against globalisation. The main
arguments are as follows:

* Globalisation increases the poverty gap between the rich of the world
  and the poor. Often postulated in support of this argument is the
  statistic that in the last 40 years the gap has increased dramatically.
  According to Niall Ferguson, a professor of political and financial
  history at Oxford University, "In 1963, the richest fifth of the
  [world's] population earned 71 per cent of the world GDP; the poorest
  fifth, 2.3 per cent. Today the top fifth get 89 per cent of the total
  output; the poorest, 1.2 per cent."

  On the surface, this is a very powerful argument indeed, the sort of
  factoid that urges a Gas Masked May Day protestor into the police lines
  one more time. However, there is a very simple flaw with this - it is
  talking about relative poverty. It doesn't take into account the 5-fold
  increase in the world's wealth over the same period. It doesn't sound
  quite so good when one says that the world's poor have seen their wealth
  triple in the last 40 years.

  The very idea is flawed. Why should globalisation increase poverty?
  Presumably through 'exploiting' the Third World. However, multinational
  companies (to which we will return), are fundamentally moral
  organisations, in the sense that they are based on fair tenets. No one
  is forced to buy from, or to work for, a multinational company. That we
  do so in our millions every day is a reflection of their fairness.
  Multinational companies are just like any other company, just a hell of
  a lot larger. We have a fair social contract with them, and are free to
  work or not work for them as we choose.

* The Irrational Nature of the Global Marketplace. The case here is that
  the marketplace and capitalism are irrational and chaotic, and are
  damaging as a result. There are, however, some very obvious problems
  with this viewpoint. Firstly, if one criticises the mechanisms on which
  the global marketplace are based, and wish to tear the edifice down, one
  must have a reasonable replacement. Of course, noone does. If one is
  against the marketplace and capitalism, then presumably one is for some
  sort of planned economy, or perhaps (and these people actually exist)
  some sort of primitive state with no economy at all.  Personally, I am
  not against the planned economy on principle. In principle I think that
  it is our ultimate destination. The problem with any planned economy is
  that the planner of it all must be of incredible intelligence, fairness
  and so on, well beyond our present capacities. So yes, I would agree
  that the global marketplace is irrational, and can often be unfair, but
  the simple fact is that there is no plausible replacement, and
  furthermore that the wealthiest countries of the world owe their wealth
  to the marketplace and capitalism. Those third world countries that
  embrace capitalism invariably perform better than those that don't. A
  brief perusal of global economic indices will show this.

* Cultural reasons. The argument here is that globalisation is destroying
  indigenous cultures, and spreading the Anglo Saxon worldview to all
  corners of the globe.  Unfortunately, like so many antiglobalisation
  arguments, this is very patronising indeed. To subscribe to this view,
  one must be in the grand Victorian tradition of patronage towards
  'native peoples'. These poor, noble savages are of course incapable of
  thinking for themselves, and must be protected from our big bad third
  world ways. I would argue that it is entirely up to these native people
  what they do in this regard. I myself am from the North of Scotland.
  The language spoken in my village was Scottish Gaelic, a dieing language
  that has only some 80,000 speakers. Whilst this is a shame, I would have
  been extremely annoyed as a young man if a bunch of Londoners had
  marched into town and ordered that I not learn English and that I not
  buy anything not locally produced, and that I marry a local girl and
  live a very picturesque and touristy life devoid of possibilities in
  order to salvage their guilt. We should have respect for other cultures
  yes, and globalisation helps this by bringing them into contact with
  each other, but if the result is that peoples of the world decide to
  learn English, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese in order to better themselves
  and seek an interesting life and better their standard of living, we
  should not stand in their way.

Let us return to the one thing in that the globalisation protestors all
seem to hate without exception - the corporation. In my view, the
corporation is one of the finest inventions of Western Civilisation, being
responsible for the great majority of our advances and at the very heart
of our society. Corporations are not evil, self seeking entities. This
very website, kuro5hin, is itself incorporated, and I would argue that
kuro5hin.org is a moral, perhaps even a tiresomely moral, place. The
administrators of this site doubtless had a look at the advantages and
disadvantages of incorporation, and saw that the status of incorporation
would increase the stability of kuro5hin, help secure its long term
existence and insulate it from the whims of the owners to some degree.
Incorporation means that the company becomes, if you will, a moral agent
in the eyes of the law. It is responsibe for its own transgressions, and
it is treated as an entity in its own right. Of course, some will argue
that kuro5hin is an exception because it is small and nonprofit. This
reveals an agenda, however - there is no particular reason why a large
corporation should be any better or worse than a small company. And why
should a corporation be worse because it makes money? Is the profit motive
immoral?

The protestors seem to have very simplistic and emotional reasons to
dislike corporations. They will moan on about child labour, for example,
and Nike and McDonalds. But this is just liberal western meddling - the
simple fact is that it is much better to be working for Nike for $3 a day
(a lot of money in a country like India) than to be a street urchin in
Calcutta. If the children thought it was too little money, or had
somewhere better to go, then they would not do the work. This is the
unpalatable fact. Nonetheless, companies are now unwilling to employ
children under any circumstances, even part time (the vast majority of
children are employed part time), which has led to an increase in
suffering for these children. And all because Western protestors, who know
nothing, feel the need to meddle.

I think that seeking wealth is to be greatly encouraged. The reason that
Bangladeshis don't give money to charity is that they don't have any money
to give. Meanwhile, in America, people like Bill Gates and Ted Turner are
giving 10 figure sums to charity. The profit motive, combined with a fair
environment, results in wealth, and has many trickle down effects.

There is a very simple reason that America is the world's wealthiest and
most powerful nation. It is because it is the most business friendly. It
was even discovered by companies - Columbus didn't come to the Americas in
the spirit of exploration, after all. He came to make a quick buck.

The only way we as a civilisation will move forward is if we realise both
our own nature and the nature of others. I find the antiglobalisation
protestors to be extremely misguided in this regard, and more damningly,
they appear to have a core of racism and western patronage in their
attitude towards the rest of the world. We should let the people of the
world decide for themselves, through the aggregate of their everyday
actions of taking jobs, working, buying and selling. Through the ultimate
democracy that will decide this issue - the global marketplace.

----
if you made it this far there are lots more comments at the listed url.  a
lot of them are pretty bad (on both sides of the argument) but it's still
a good read if you're interested. - adam.