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The future of globalization

Globalization is the intensification of trade and cultural interchange to such an extent that national economies and national boundaries have little, or greatly reduced, significance.  It is the trend towards the whole world acting as a single economy and with a single culture.  So what are the main features of globalization?

Globalization allows regions of the planet to consume far more than they could normally consume.  This is just another way of defining globalization, after all, why would you be trading internationally if you could get everything at home? Obtaining more than you can produce at home is summarised in the concept of "ecological footprint", each person requires about 2.1 hectares of land to survive comfortably but globalization has allowed the principal trading nations to use far more than this:

These nations are understandably very keen to continue this trend.  Although Canada and Australia look bad on this graph they are not really bad because these countries are thinly populated and consume less than they could produce at home.  Some of the worst countries are Belgium, UK, Holland and Japan which, being overpopulated, are using massive amounts of other countries' land to sustain themselves.  The worst country of all is probably the USA which has vast amounts of local land but still manages to consume vast amounts from elsewhere.  If we look at the number of hectares of other people's land that are exploited by each country the results are rather different from the ecological footprint chart above:


Belgium, Singapore and the Netherlands are the worst of the larger countries in the world for using other people's resources (only countries with a population over 4m were included). Cuba ceases to be a paragon under this analysis, using 1.11 hectares per head in excess of local resources.

Most of the prosperous countries in the world use over twice the land that they have available to them as a fair share of global resources.  It is little wonder that these countries are frantic for the continuation of the Globalization agenda.  Globalization is a substitute for colonialism, it allows other countries to be exploited without planting colonies.

The world as a whole uses about 2.7 hectares per person whilst the sustainable usage is about 2.1 hectares per person.  The 2.1 hectares is only sustainable if great care is taken to manage the land and resources effectively.  If the population fell so that there was 4 hectares per person available and only 2 hectares being used then the population would be truly sustainable.  The way that globalization has produced an overshoot in the population is very dangerous  (see The Limits to Growth) and invites a catastrophic adjustment. (See Is climate change a threat because of overpopulation?).  However, those entrusted with correcting this danger are postmodern and often propose yet more globalization as the solution!  The solution is, in the long run, to wind back globalization and encourage national economies to be sustainable entities that trade with each other in a moderate fashion.  The solution is a stable diversity of economies, not to further remove all barriers to trade.  Globalizers want to implement widespread global regulation and controls.  If they do this the uniform, clumsy entity that is created will implode and become a global tyranny; this must not be allowed to happen. 

Globalization is the replacement of numerous independent national economies that interact with each other with a single world economy.  This is unstable and will result in intermittent global collapses (see Globalisation and Great Depressions).

Globalization has a huge cultural impact, it is responsible for a widespread loss of local languages and customs as well as a devastating loss of wildlife that is comparable with the major extinction events of the past such as asteroid impacts.

Globalization is also responsible for the current bout of global terrorism.  The Islamic extremists are most concerned about Western culture spreading to their countries (see Are women the cause of conflict with Islam?).  It is closely linked through oil to the problems with Iraq and Iran.


Globalization extols the free movement of labour.  This means that any country that has extensive social provision is under endless pressure.  Large numbers of people will move into these countries to receive free healthcare, education and welfare benefits.  This has two effects, the first is to overpopulate those countries and the second is to destroy the social provision by putting it under endless stress.  You can neither be liberal nor Green and be in favour of globalization.  The free movement of labour also puts stress on tax regimes because those countries that desire social harmony and equality will lose people overseas as tax exiles. (See Child poverty in the UK, Illiteracy in England, Is the pro-immigration lobby racist?, The Management of the NHS).

Globalization is undoubtedly the worst evil to befall the world since the demise of communism.  It is supported by fanatics, it is taught in schools and is malign to its core.  The principle fanatics are post-Marxists and corporatists who combine into a nasty nexus in the global media where they can spread their villainy (see The London riots and the mediocracy). It is amusing but depressing to see our robotic youth camping out in city centres as part of the "occupy movement", listing the ills of globalization as intolerable and then gushing forth in support of the philosophy of globalization as their political doctrine  (see The Occupy London Movement).

Stable systems either have many independent parts that can individually adapt or are held constant by continuous control and suppression.  The free peoples of the West are an example of the former and the crushed multitudes of the East are examples of the latter.  A system that has many independent parts not only permits freedom but also holds out the hope of change for the better.  Each part has a chance of discovering a better way of life. In contrast, a global society that is controlled so that it is held in stasis will crush all hope for a millennium.

Eventually Globalization will either stabilise as an international tyranny or people will wake up and work to de-globalize the world, respecting each other through International Law and developing their own nations in a sustainable way, trading moderately and, through diversity, finding new ways to run societies and economies for the good of the people.  We will either find ourselves as near slaves in a bleak, overcast, dreary, geo-engineered world or, after a painful period of adjustment, throw off the threat of globalization and have a sunlit, varied world where the free can thrive.

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See also:

Globalisation and Great Depressions

Nations are the unit of diversity

Globalization and global warming

The aims of localism

Comments

John said…
I am sure you are not. For instance, you might have specific and well thought out reasons for disagreeing with the article. Perhaps you can justify the move towards megastates and global governance.

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