The End of Globalism

[RPM]

An interesting article (from earlier this year) by the author of Voltaire's Bastards.

<snip>
Grand economic theories rarely last more than a few decades. Some, if they are particularly in tune with technological or political events, may make it to half a century. Beyond that, little short of military force can keep them in place. The wild open-market theory that died in 1929 had a run of just over 30 years. Communism, a complete melding of religious, economic and global theories, stretched to 70 years in Russia and 45 in central Europe, thanks precisely to the intensive use of military and police force. Keynesianism, if you add its flexible, muscular form during the Depression to its more rigid postwar version, lasted 45 years. Our own Globalisation, with its technocratic and technological determinism and market idolatry, had 30 years. And now it, too, is dead.

We have scarcely noticed this collapse, however, because Globalisation has been asserted by its believers to be inevitable - an all-powerful god; a holy trinity of burgeoning markets, unsleeping technology and borderless managers. Opposition or criticism has been treated as little more than romantic paganism. It was powerless before this surprisingly angry god, who would simply strike down with thunderbolts those who faltered and reward his heroes and champions with golden wreaths. If Globalisation has seemed so seductive to societies built upon Greek and Judeo-Christian mythologies, perhaps the reason is this bizarre confusing of salvation, fatalism and punishment. Transferred to economics, in however jumbled a manner, these belief systems are almost irresistible to us.

The British and French empires had vaunted and defended their power in similar ways from the late 19th century on; that is, just as they began to collapse. And as the various 19th-century nationalisms declined into ugliness, their supporters increasingly transformed them into a matter of race.

Inevitability is the traditional final justification for failing ideologies. Less traditional - and a sign of inherent weakness - is the extent to which Globalisation was conceived as old-fashioned religiosity. Perhaps the economists and other believers who launched Globalisation were instinctively concerned that people would notice their new theories were oddly similar to the trade theories of the mid-19th century or the unregulated market models that had been discredited in 1929. And so treating the intervening 40 years as an accidental interval, they began where their predecessors left off: with religious certainty.



Whole Article At
http://afr.com/articles/2004/02/19/1077072774981.html

[Maple]

1. The author

is the husband of Canada's Governor-General. Take him with a grain of salt.

We do.

[el_gato]

2. "globalization" is a sham and benefits only a very few at the top

by design of course

[Demeter]

3. When The Oil Runs Out and the Tankers Are Adrift

then the subsidized transportation ends and so does globalization. RIP!

[RPM]

4. yep - unless they start making nuclear tankers...

... or go back to old fashioned sailboats.

I agree in principle though - the end of oil is the end of the global, perhaps even national, economy. Local production / local consumption will be the new (again) paradigm.

[Maple]

5. I'm sorry

but this is so much hogwash.

We've had globalization for thousands of years. People have traded all over the world since the beginning of time.

It isn't about to end because of oil, or authors with a vested interest.

Why the hell does everyone want to live in primitive poverty ridden societies like serfs in thatched huts?

Trade and globalization are good things. They've led to every progressive thing we've ever had.

When we were without them temporarily, after the fall of Rome, it was called the Dark Ages.

[reprehensor]

6. Saul is great.

'Globalisation' is dying. Like it or not.

Not international trade, but 'Globalisation'.

And I'll gladly hammer in a few nails.