Talk:Globalization

Nice edit. Thanks. Researcher 20:23, 29 September 2008 (EDT) Addition: And don't worry about it taking a million edits...mine do too. Researcher 20:38, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

HEY--good to see you again. Thanks...and thanks. PFoster 20:41, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Thanks. I'm currently up to my eyeballs in school work that I should be doing, but damn it, this is more fun (and I can do it while chatting and doing school work, etc.) Researcher 20:43, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

Hey! Since when is NPOV appropriate here? I thought we had our own POV here...what was it called again? Researcher 21:12, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Your POV and my POV are obviously polar opposites on this issue. Secret Squirrel 21:13, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * I was actually making a joke about the SPOV(?) that "governs" here. (Or maybe it was sNarky Point of View, I don't remember exactly.) And actually, of interest, while I do worry about Chinese imports, none of the baby formula wound up in this country, and it was McDonald's of all companies that began the push to stop rainforest destruction for the creation of hamburgers.  They worked together with Greenpeace on it. Researcher 21:14, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Well then we can have my SPOV and your SPOV together in the same article... ;) last point, debatable, I really doubt McDonalds initiated any change on the beef/rainforest issue except for outside pressure on them.  They "worked together" with Greenpeace only 'cuz Greenpeace had them pwned. Secret Squirrel 21:19, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Actually, no...the head of McDonald's is the one who called in Greenpeace, and then began lobbying their competitors to do the same. (After making changes themselves.) Researcher 21:35, 29 September 2008 (EDT)


 * Well Mac Donald was much bigger and therefore initiated the corruption of local administration to buy real estate and deforesting. I'm sure it's plausibe they eventually called Greenpeace themselves, but upon pressure and solicitation.

"Closed factories in the Rust Belt that were horribly inefficient anyway."
Inefficiency is a good thing, not a bad thing. "Efficiency" means more output for less pay, which means cheap labor, which (according to my man Jack London) means scabbing. "Horribly inefficient" is an anti-union buzzword for "unionized". Just sayin', and I'm not making snark here either. Secret Squirrel 21:45, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Actually, there is a long line of economic data that shows greater productivity leads to higher wages. Lower productivity means lower wages and higher prices down the line on everything you buy, including for the workers themselves. Researcher 21:50, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Yes, the Cato Institute says this. So do John Stossel, Virginia Postrel, Milton Friedman, and Julian Simon.  And a family with one wage earner in an entry level job used to be able to afford home ownership 40 years ago, and now they can barely afford to rent with both adults working.  I don't buy it.  Secret Squirrel 21:56, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * You both have a point, I think. Efficiency is not bad in general, so that doesn't mean inefficiency is good, but sometimes is a codename for enslaving and exploitation, in particular depending on how the benefits of such increased productivity are distributed. So it's good, imho, as long as the benefits are shared. The fact that there are some general benefits for the population, to some extend, from increased productivity, and cost lowering, doesn't address how the benefits are reparted and the costs cut. Also mindin that purchase power is relative to general balance, certainly few big societies, holding etc, can lower the costs and even the pay and make it so such lower pay yields a higher purchase power toward others who adopted the same policies. Making so that any new startup is hardly competitive. But it's true that productivity, with an eye on quality corruption linked to its eccesses,makes generally, for higher general well being.--78.15.234.124 (talk) 17:02, 20 November 2015 (UTC)


 * But at least a (made in China) TV costs $295 at (non-union, no benefits) Wal-Mart, which is the same as a (union-made in the USA) TV cost (at the unionized department store) 40 years ago! Glad to see we have our priorities straight. Secret Squirrel 21:57, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * As the housing market collapses, and the ARMs reset, everyone who didn't get a fixed rate mortgage they could afford is moving into rental properties, so with the law of supply and demand you get an inversion, with rents higher than mortgages.Francine 22:00, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Considering inflation, that's actually a price cut. In fact, the only thing not inflating right now are those kinds of produced goods.  Don't get me wrong, the Bush administration policies have been disastrous, but under the Clinton years (with the same kind of pro-globalization policies) we saw a tremendous increase in wealth among all levels, not just the super-wealthy.  (I notice you didn't mention the fact that many liberals, including Paul Krugman and the whole Bill Clinton economic team, also accept this.)  Some more income redistribution is necessary, as well as more job retraining programs, but tariffs to keep out foreign goods merely increase overall costs at all levels, leading to further unemployment.  Negative GDP growth will cause everyone to get poorer, not just the wealthy. Researcher 22:04, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * I'm not a big fan of either Krugman or the Clintons... Secret Squirrel 22:12, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Look, in the end, there is no way for either of us to convince the other, yes? (The problem with politics...)  I could probably cite every economist in the country, and it wouldn't matter to you.  And you could cite someone, and it wouldn't matter to me.  (I'll be honest about this.)  Truce? Researcher 22:14, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Actually it's time for some ZZZs too... Secret Squirrel 22:17, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

Critique section
Seems to mostly promote the idea. I don't get it. 05:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
 * There was a big fight between me (promoting) and Secret Squirrel (anti). This was teh rough consensus.  (Notably, I've moved back a touch from when I wrote it, and I might write something up on it later.)  Researcher (talk) 06:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Potential for Poverty Elimination
I think it's important to discuss the potential for globalization to alleviate global poverty. After all, hundreds of millions in China were able to climb out of poverty with the help of exports to western markets, whose funds flowing into china helped fund investment in Chinese factories. Also, you can look at how India's economy took off after they underwent market reforms and opened their economy up to foreign trade. Internationally, countries engaging in trade-focused economic policy (rather than import-substitution protectionism) tended to be the ones to succeed; see the success of Korea and Taiwan, while Zimbabwe's import-substitution protectionism helped contribute to their current extremely unfortunate situation. There's also the rise of Vietnam on the back of exports as well.

Not to apologize for bad labor standards, but it's true that the local sweatshops are in even worse condition than the ones that sell to foreigners. Exporting to western countries actually raises the wages in these developing nations, as there's now more employers competing for those workers, and those workers are now more productive as capital moves into the country.

So, while it might hurt some workers in the United States, it's overwhelmingly good for the global poor in general, who are now paid much higher wages and whose countries have attracted foreign investors (and foreign direct investment is very positive here). Furthermore, given the often underdeveloped government infrastructure in some developing countries, corporate tax can comprise an important source of revenue for the government, as it's easier to collect. So the attraction of foreign companies can be helpful to them. Erik Tiber (talk) 01:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)


 * There was a Nobel in Economics prize given for the discovery that in the third world, the initial labor supply is "infinite" in the sense that until the vast majority of the population is employed wages will not rise. So no, the foreign sweatshops don't have better working conditions, even though in the long term they do benefit the local economy. CorruptUser (talk) 02:13, 19 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Are the workers not better off as a result of no longer being unemployed? It still results in the workforce as a whole being paid more wages, and would still serve to eliminate poverty in those regions of the world in the short run. The workers who are now employed in that region of the world certainly need the money more than people in the US did, and poor people in the US can now afford more thanks to the lower prices from imported goods. Thank you for mentioning that study however, I was not aware of it. Erik Tiber (talk) 00:06, 31 May 2017 (UTC)


 * If I remember correctly, one downside in developing countries is that the local businesses often can't compete with western competition, which can be a disadvantage for the region, but I'm not an economist --Imaginative username (talk) 02:49, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

"Be Careful"
How exactly is the "race to the bottom" model a load of bullshit? Assuming no centralized world government, the incentive is always to keep tax and regulatory regimes as lax as possible to attract business. Any country that wants to have more taxes and worker safety protections will lose some business to countries with no such scruples. I'm genuinely confused on how this is so flawed a line of logic.

Globalism section
There is a very obvious difference between globalisation and globalism - one is an organic process, and the other is the aggressive, and often underhand movement to produce global government, as exemplified by the World Economic Forum and other such groups. In some cases the propaganda for a global system is not even subtle - e.g. the Young Global Leaders movement or the Global Citizen pop concerts.

That a global government is not desirable from a number of points of view (such as the fact it can't challenged, if it turns bad) doesn't seem to factor in this article.

The article is misleading in suggesting it is code for Jewish world domination (maybe in some cases, but not most). It is also wrong to suggest that anti-globalism is an exclusively right wing phenomenon, since there are plenty of anti-capitalist protestors who demonstrate against Davos in Switzerland (who get very little press for doing so.) -Albannach (talk) 20:43, 18 July 2021 (UTC)