"The Virtues of Deglobalization"

I'm honestly shocked to see that Economists and policy shapers are quietly discussing this. We've had 20 hard years of Free Trade and Globalization forced down our throats when any average worker could attest to the fact that it wasn't a smart or viable long term plan.

www.fpif.org...

The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the last two years. As the much-heralded process of financial and trade interdependence went into reverse, it became the transmission belt not of prosperity but of economic crisis and collapse...

...There is increasing acknowledgment that there will be no returning to a world centrally dependent on free-spending American consumers, since many are bankrupt and nobody has taken their place...

There are 11 key prongs of the deglobalization paradigm:

1. Production for the domestic market must again become the center of gravity of the economy rather than production for export markets.

2. The principle of subsidiarity should be enshrined in economic life by encouraging production of goods at the level of the community and at the national level if this can be done at reasonable cost in order to preserve community.

3. Trade policy — that is, quotas and tariffs — should be used to protect the local economy from destruction by corporate-subsidized commodities with artificially low prices.

4. Industrial policy — including subsidies, tariffs, and trade — should be used to revitalize and strengthen the manufacturing sector.

5. Long-postponed measures of equitable income redistribution and land redistribution (including urban land reform) can create a vibrant internal market that would serve as the anchor of the economy and produce local financial resources for investment.

6. Deemphasizing growth, emphasizing upgrading the quality of life, and maximizing equity will reduce environmental disequilibrium.

7. The development and diffusion of environmentally congenial technology in both agriculture and industry should be encouraged.

8. Strategic economic decisions cannot be left to the market or to technocrats. Instead, the scope of democratic decision-making in the economy should be expanded so that all vital questions — such as which industries to develop or phase out, what proportion of the government budget to devote to agriculture, etc. — become subject to democratic discussion and choice.

9. Civil society must constantly monitor and supervise the private sector and the state, a process that should be institutionalized.

10. The property complex should be transformed into a "mixed economy" that includes community cooperatives, private enterprises, and state enterprises, and excludes transnational corporations.

11. Centralized global institutions like the IMF and the World Bank should be replaced with regional institutions built not on free trade and capital mobility but on principles of cooperation that, to use the words of Hugo Chavez in describing the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), "transcend the logic of capitalism."

I don't fully understand number 10 and I know some will howl at number 11. I'd love to hear the pros and cons from ATS about these 11 steps toward deglobalization.

The so-called free market has created nothing but wage slaves and a dismantled Middle Class. I'm not calling for revolution, just a more rational system that avoids the insanity of economic bubbles and provides financial stability and a decent life for all of those willing and able to work.

Hopefully we can discuss it politely.

About the author:

en.wikipedia.org...

www.tni.org...

Well, number 11 seems to be advocating formation of regional currency. In other words, the US, Canada, and Mexico would adopt a single currency (the Amero?) and operate under a regional centralized bank which all 3 nations manage cooperatively.

Number 10 looks, to me at least, to be suggesting that we enact regulations requiring global conglomerates like Coca-Cola or Walmart to break up, placing only the businesses operating in the same region under the same control. It also elevates the communal business idea. As far as I'm concerned, you can remove the "community enterprises" from the list, add them to the state run enterprises, slap a socialism logo across them and be done with it, because that is essentially what #10 is advocating.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


Dang. You took the wind right out of my sails.

The way you characterize it sounds much less attractive. It's hot-button words like "socialism" that kill conversations and any real discussion on how to move forward. And I completely understand why that happens.

Can we at least agree that globalization, in it's current form, has benefited multi-national corporations far more than it has benefited individuals or most countries other than China, India or Mexico?

reply to post by kosmicjack


Absolutely, we can agree on that! My #1 beef with George W. Bush was that I wholeheartedly disagreed with his anti-protectionist stance. Globalization would hurt like a SOB to break loose from, on that he was correct. Americans would have been forced to radically change their lives and expectations. However, it would have re-awakened the American dream! Long before NAFTA came along and import tariffs on Asian goods were lifted, we still had Mexican winter produce, Japanese electronics and Japanese gaming consoles (and, if you're a fisherman, crappy Japanese fishing reels) and I distinctly remember them costing about the same as they did after those tarriffs were lifted. What happened to the savings we were supposed to receive?

Simple answer, they were used, as profits, by American companies to move operations and jobs from America to foreign countries and to their low expectation worker base. The passage of bills by our government which opened those doors was a criminal, war like act waged against the American middle class.

H. Ross Perot had it almost right, but he was a bit off on his geography and time frame. immediately following the breaking of the dot.com bubble in the US there was a giant sucking sound heard, not so much to the south and into Mexico (that was more of a mild whistling noise) but towards the far East... Asia, India, and the Mediteranian sucked away our money and our jobs.

I am fully supportive of Dr. Ron Paul's push for the US to economically isolate herself from the world, fix the damn holes in our boat, and then keep the laws and tariffs in place to ensure that never again will the US drive the trade deficit road to colapse.

I see the OP as trying to play two uncompatible games simultaneously. National economic protectionism IS capitalism... at least it is the only way capitalism can be maintained as the best solution. Similarly, socialism isn't compatible with protectionism, as China is demonstrating and Cuba has demonstrated. If you combine the two, you end up with a nation unable to provide enough toilet paper for your people, let alone food. China, on the other hand, is on the brink of becoming the top economic superpower thanks to embracing free international trade while maintaining national socialism (which, by the way is the only way either one can work and why I oppose free trade... I refuse to embrace socialism, which my grandfather and uncle fought to rid the world of!)