Globalisation 3.0 isn’t about ‘empowered individuals’

D. Murali

Globalisation is the greatest reorganisation of the world since the Industrial Revolution, but you need to “go beyond the media hype and the metaphors to fully understand the global forces shaping the twenty-first century.” Thus write Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo in ‘The World is Flat?’ from Meghan-Kiffer Press (www.mkpress.com). The book is ‘a critical analysis’ of Thomas L. Friedman’s bestseller by the same name without the question mark.

“The notion of globalisation has been around for centuries, and has taken many forms: political, economic, cultural, and technological, to name a few. But the twenty-first century-style globalisation that Friedman writes about is unique. It has a name: ‘corporate’ globalisation,” begin the authors.

They urge those who got awed by Friedman’s book to think again. Because his personal anecdotes may ‘make for good tales at cocktail parties,’ but it is what gets left out that makes Friedman’s book so dangerous, caution Aronica and Mtetwa, before launching into a chapter-by-chapter dissection of the book.

Friedman, you may remember, shares with his wife his ‘discovery’ on Infosys premises, whispering: “Honey, I think the world is flat.” Parodying this, the authors suggest ‘a more accurate opening’, as follows: “Honey, I really don’t mean the world is flat, I just meant the exclusive golf course on which I am playing here in Bangalore… I’ll tell everyone how all these young Zippies in India are now ‘empowered individuals’ ready to take over the world’s economy, just like how the multinational corporations of Globalisation 2.0 before them, grabbed power.”

Globalisation 3.0 isn’t about ‘empowered individuals’ as Friedman asserts, Aronica and Mtetwa fret. “It’s about transnational corporations being totally deregulated, above the control of any nation-state, and being able to exploit poor people in developing countries and, in the process, bringing down the wages of individuals in developed countries.”

Was the fall of the Berlin Wall on 11/9/89 the first flattener, as Friedman wrote? “All it did was to flatten individuals and put more Soviets than ever into extreme poverty,” rue the authors. The move from communism to capitalism has had its many victims. For instance, in Russia, “By the time of the rouble crisis of August 1998, output had fallen by almost half and poverty had increased from 2 per cent of the population to over 40 per cent,” as Joseph Stiglitz wrote in a 2003 article in Guardian.

The tipping point for opening up socialist economies to capitalism occurred, not in 1989, but in 1979, the authors argue; the watershed was Deng Xiaoping’s embrace of capitalism, saying, “Whether a cat is black or white makes no difference. As long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.”

The book also questions the other flatteners of Friedman. Accordingly, Netscape going public in 1995 was not as much a flattener as worldwide connectivity over the Net. So too, workflow software, which dates back to the mid-1970s, just made big companies more powerful, rather than make the world flat, say the authors; what you need for the current century is BPM or business process management. And more…

Slim but forceful protest.

http://www.thehindu.com/holnus/006200706230339.htm

Now, I know that Tommy has to be right cause he is a NY Times columnist and all and I see him on TeeVee all the time getting his ass kissed by the big name talking heads so he must have something really sweet he is pulling out of his ass but . . .

Could Tommy be setting up an economic system that is a train wreck waiting to happen? A system that magnifies one of the primary reasons for the great depression (overproduction due to workers not being able to buy the products they produce). An economic system, because it is based on trade between what are essentially rival nations, could collapse catastrophically essentially overnight.

But, then again, the nations of Europe in the early 20th Century had similar economic integration, and they never went to war. Oh, wait . . .


Nineteen-ten was peaceful and prosperous, with the second round of the Moroccan crises and Balkan wars still to come. A new book, "The Great Illusion" by Norman Angell was just published, which proved that war was impossible. By impressive examples and incontrovertible argument Angell showed that that in the present financial and economic interdependence of nations, the victor would suffer equally with the vanquished; therefore war had become unprofitable; therefore no nation would be so foolish to start one. Already translated into eleven languages, "The Great Illusion" had become a cult. At the universities, in Manchester, Glasgow, and other industrial cities, more than forty study groups of true believers had formed, dedicated to propagating it's dogma.

From "The Guns Of August" by Barbara Tuchman


OK, I think I know what is wrong. I have been reading all the wrong stuff, Tuchman and Diamond and Tainter and McKibben, when I should have just been reading Tommy. My Friedman has become diluted by knowledge.

The collapse of the dot com boom in 2000 fits fairly well with the crises of 1873, when overinvestment in railroads and steamships suffered a similar meltdown. This was followed by Great Britain's slide from post-Napoleonic War predominance to just being another Great Power. I'd expect the same to happen to the United States over the next couple of decades.

Then get set for the next total war.

Global warming: Just what overcrowded, polluted India didn't need... the $3,000 car
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2692472.ece

It was the Indian economist Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad, in his 2004 book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, who reminded companies of the profits to be made - and, he alleged, the two-way flow of benefits to be gained - by focusing on the world's poor and by producing goods they both wanted and could afford. He argued that even if profit margins were tiny, the sheer numbers of products being sold could generate a sufficient amount to make it worthwhile. He argued, too, of the benefits to the poor, who had long been ignored by manufacturers.

Gee, wiz, Tommy . . . oops . . . Coimbatore, that sounds great. And because you are an economist, you can ignore resource limitations (petroleum, metals, climate impacts etc etc etc) and just impart the magic incantation "once the price increases, substitutes will become economically viable."

India is an interesting society, since if we don't enter another period of total war (for which see above), the social model of the future will most likely resemble India.

Highly complex, highly inequitable, caste and tribal based, excruciatingly bureaucratic, and extremely rigid.

The disparities in standard of living between countries will be replaced by disparities in standard of living within countries.

After all, power-mongers must exploit in order to maintain and exploit power.

I'm glad these two went after Friedman's bullshit.