Saturday, April 16, 2005
Thinking Globally, Act Foolishly
Who sponsored Rick Steves’ trip to El Salvador? The Center for Global Education. What’s the next part of Rick Steves’ essay will we address? The one titled "Globalization is a big train, and it’s moving out." Yet Rick Steves is against globalization, unless it helps with his trip. Here’s the dictionary definition of globalization:
Growth to a global or worldwide scale; "the globalization of the communication industry"
Rick Steves isn’t against globalization when it means the United Nations runs things. His real problem is with private multi-national companies. Let’s try to make some sense of this essay.
People in the Third World are told "Globalization is a big train and it’s moving out. Get on or get run over." Even proponents don’t claim anything compassionate about this power. It’s presented simply as an unstoppable force.
America’s passion for freedom is more accurately a passion for free trade. It’s driven not by altruism, but by a desire to open new markets to US firms and products. If you have resources, laborers, or potential customers, you must play.
First of all, it’s odd that the big train comment is in quotation marks when no one is quoted. Who said this? Every country is free to adopt its own trade policies. Globalization provides trade and employment to millions. Certainly that’s compassionate. Capitalism is far more humane than socialism. Its premise is that transactions should be voluntary and people need to provide something to get something. It delivers the goods. Socialism is based on the attitude that one should resent one’s neighbors’ success. It produces a disproportionate share of misery and mass murderers. Free trade benefits both buyers and sellers.
Some believe this is just tough love as the rich world tries to pull up the poor world. The score card tells a different story. In the last 40 years, the average annual income in the world’s 20 poorest countries has barely changed. In 1960 it was about $200. Today it’s about $270. In that same period, the income in the richest 20 nations has nearly tripled, from about $12,000 to about $32,000.
The bottom half of humanity lives on roughly five percent of the planet’s resources. The top 20 percent lives on over 80 percent. The greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the human race is happening at the same time our world is becoming a global village. A planet with more and more window shoppers is unstable, fragile, and — sooner or later — promises lots of broken glass. Rather than call the poor end of our world the Third World and the Developing World, I think it’s more accurate to use the terms "Two-thirds World" and "Underdeveloped Nations."
It was a little over 40 years ago that the West’s colonization of the Third World ended. Isn’t it revealing that the Third World has had so little growth since then? Doesn’t the Third World have some responsibility for its situation.
Earlier Steves complained that globalization is being "presented simply as an unstoppable force." Yet he himself says that "our world is becoming a global village." Steves must agree that globalization is an unstoppable force. The distribution of wealth reflects the comparative superiority of the West’s economic systems. Later on Steves talks likes he’s a pacifist. It’s hypocritical and irresponsible for him to talk about "window shoppers" delivering "broken glass."
Rather then developing, these nations are systematically kept underdeveloped. It’s part of the big plan emanating from the USA. For instance: trade levies increase with processing. It’s O.K. for a poor country to export peanuts but the prohibitively higher tariff for processed peanuts makes producing peanut butter almost impossible outside of the already developed world.
Can we get a copy of the "big plan"? Steves complains about America’s "passion for free trade." Yet in the above paragraph he complains about tariffs for processed peanuts. Does Steves object to free trade or not? Steves has unwittingly stumbled on the real problem: Protectionism (lack of free trade) hurts the Third World.
America’s leadership in the drive for globalization is powered (and made possible politically) by politicized, militaristic, generally-fundamentalist Christians. Read to a neo-liberal Christian: "I was hungry and you fed me. Imprisoned and you visited me, naked and you clothed me. What you have done to the least of people, you have done to me." Most will look at you with disdain, turn their back, and continue to pound plow shares into swords.
Again, what’s the problem with neo-liberals? Later on Steves justifies a "Jubilee Year" based on religion. Is he the only one who can use religion to justify his principles, such as they are. Actually fundamentalists, free traders, libertarians, and national security types don’t always agree with each other.
Steves provides no evidence that he ever read the quote to anyone. It’s the American military that provided humanitarian relief to Afghans, Iraqis, and Asian tsunami victims. It was Americans that ended the imprisonment of Afghanistan and Iraq. Steves won’t mention this; apparently because he disapproves of humanitarianism when is consists of practical action instead of moral grandstanding.
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Who sponsored Rick Steves’ trip to El Salvador? The Center for Global Education. What’s the next part of Rick Steves’ essay will we address? The one titled "Globalization is a big train, and it’s moving out." Yet Rick Steves is against globalization, unless it helps with his trip. Here’s the dictionary definition of globalization:
Growth to a global or worldwide scale; "the globalization of the communication industry"
Rick Steves isn’t against globalization when it means the United Nations runs things. His real problem is with private multi-national companies. Let’s try to make some sense of this essay.
People in the Third World are told "Globalization is a big train and it’s moving out. Get on or get run over." Even proponents don’t claim anything compassionate about this power. It’s presented simply as an unstoppable force.
America’s passion for freedom is more accurately a passion for free trade. It’s driven not by altruism, but by a desire to open new markets to US firms and products. If you have resources, laborers, or potential customers, you must play.
First of all, it’s odd that the big train comment is in quotation marks when no one is quoted. Who said this? Every country is free to adopt its own trade policies. Globalization provides trade and employment to millions. Certainly that’s compassionate. Capitalism is far more humane than socialism. Its premise is that transactions should be voluntary and people need to provide something to get something. It delivers the goods. Socialism is based on the attitude that one should resent one’s neighbors’ success. It produces a disproportionate share of misery and mass murderers. Free trade benefits both buyers and sellers.
Some believe this is just tough love as the rich world tries to pull up the poor world. The score card tells a different story. In the last 40 years, the average annual income in the world’s 20 poorest countries has barely changed. In 1960 it was about $200. Today it’s about $270. In that same period, the income in the richest 20 nations has nearly tripled, from about $12,000 to about $32,000.
The bottom half of humanity lives on roughly five percent of the planet’s resources. The top 20 percent lives on over 80 percent. The greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the human race is happening at the same time our world is becoming a global village. A planet with more and more window shoppers is unstable, fragile, and — sooner or later — promises lots of broken glass. Rather than call the poor end of our world the Third World and the Developing World, I think it’s more accurate to use the terms "Two-thirds World" and "Underdeveloped Nations."
It was a little over 40 years ago that the West’s colonization of the Third World ended. Isn’t it revealing that the Third World has had so little growth since then? Doesn’t the Third World have some responsibility for its situation.
Earlier Steves complained that globalization is being "presented simply as an unstoppable force." Yet he himself says that "our world is becoming a global village." Steves must agree that globalization is an unstoppable force. The distribution of wealth reflects the comparative superiority of the West’s economic systems. Later on Steves talks likes he’s a pacifist. It’s hypocritical and irresponsible for him to talk about "window shoppers" delivering "broken glass."
Rather then developing, these nations are systematically kept underdeveloped. It’s part of the big plan emanating from the USA. For instance: trade levies increase with processing. It’s O.K. for a poor country to export peanuts but the prohibitively higher tariff for processed peanuts makes producing peanut butter almost impossible outside of the already developed world.
Can we get a copy of the "big plan"? Steves complains about America’s "passion for free trade." Yet in the above paragraph he complains about tariffs for processed peanuts. Does Steves object to free trade or not? Steves has unwittingly stumbled on the real problem: Protectionism (lack of free trade) hurts the Third World.
America’s leadership in the drive for globalization is powered (and made possible politically) by politicized, militaristic, generally-fundamentalist Christians. Read to a neo-liberal Christian: "I was hungry and you fed me. Imprisoned and you visited me, naked and you clothed me. What you have done to the least of people, you have done to me." Most will look at you with disdain, turn their back, and continue to pound plow shares into swords.
Again, what’s the problem with neo-liberals? Later on Steves justifies a "Jubilee Year" based on religion. Is he the only one who can use religion to justify his principles, such as they are. Actually fundamentalists, free traders, libertarians, and national security types don’t always agree with each other.
Steves provides no evidence that he ever read the quote to anyone. It’s the American military that provided humanitarian relief to Afghans, Iraqis, and Asian tsunami victims. It was Americans that ended the imprisonment of Afghanistan and Iraq. Steves won’t mention this; apparently because he disapproves of humanitarianism when is consists of practical action instead of moral grandstanding.
