yah and how many isolated economies survived on their own above bare starvation? Even in the earliest days of human history tribes engaged in specialization and trade.


And dustin what is your take on the bird-swing flu (causes, potential fallout, etc).

the wut? Swine/human yes. Bird/human, yes. All three? Doesn't exist.

We're definitely getting more abstract now then I want to go-- at least not without smoking some weed first and thinking about this a little deeper-- but I've already said that I don't have a problem with globalization per se, only with how and why its being implemented.

I'm also willing to concede that globalization is probably the "natural" course of human history.

But in early human history tribes traded products with each other. One tribe would have something that another tribe needed and vice-versa and everybody was happy.

There was no credit and fiat currency and producer and consumer economies like we have today.

I'm not quite willing to give my take on this yet other than to say that it is conspiratorially minded.

Definitely too soon to discuss potential fall-out though.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/usTopN...53N4ZC20090424

According to Reuters you are wrong.

That's new since the last time I read. I had heard something about Alex Jones screaming this was done by the Government in a lab, and that's what you were talking about.

Zurvan, that information has been out since the story first broke. Go back and look at my post on the 24th where I quoted this:

"This is the first time that we've seen an avian strain, two swine strains and a human strain," Dave Daigle, a spokesman for the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told AFP."

*although apparently according to the reuters article its actually 1 swine strain two avian strains and not vice-versa

this may be a little partisan but I'm hearing reports of Specter switching parties, giving the dems the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.

Did you read that book "The World is Flat"? Same hyperconventional global market propaganda.

Tabarrok says we must do two things, keep opening new markets and keep putting money into education.

Opening new markets is code for the economic hitman type activity of the world bank and the IMF, also read The Shock Doctrine for details on exactly how the US goes about opening new markets. Putting money into education sounds completely harmless but it isn't from my perspective.

Government support of education has driven the price to the point where people who actually need one for whatever reason can't get it, without the government's help.

Nothing in this talk was about individuals acting to accomplish goals.

yeah, definitely take that to the partisan politics thread

He's been a D for at least 20 years, it's about time he made it official.

Yeah, when it rains, it pours...

And I left my damn umbrella at home.

It's easy to criticize someone if you assume that what they said is "code" for something bad, then criticize the something bad. Tabarrok is a libertarian and either an anarchocapitalist or AC-sympathetic. What evidence do you have to support the idea that he supports "economic hitman" activity or increased government spending on education?

Before NK stands as the case against closed economies, you've got to find me an open economy run by a madman on a permanent war footing spending what it doesn;t spend on the military on a nuclear programme, that is thriving. Otherwise, I'm not going to acept that it's closure is the root of its problems.

Anyway, the choice isn't one between open and closed, because the western economies weren't exactly like NK before the rise of globalisation. It might be intellectually unsatisfying, but most successful western polities appear to be a compromise between ideas like democracy, open economy but not too much. Try and implement a whole intellectual framework as more important than practical reality and you risk ending up with the soviet union.

And another thing... what exactly do we mean by globalisation? Information flow? that sounds like a good thing, i guess.
Free flows of capital? That's not exactly working out so far.
The roll out of US shareholder based free economic model? That was what a lot of people argued was happening, through the spread of the MBA and the free flows of capital.
If the fundamental phenomenon of gloabalisation is big companies getting bigger, then I'm prepared to argue that globalisation is not a great idea (Clown's 'monopolies are good schtik bedammed).

*but if it leads to a reduction in the role of state(s) in the life of the individual, then bring it on.

No. one tribe traded with another. Then a third tribe, backed by its radical religious vision of it as the chosen people came and killed the first tribe, only to fight to a stalemate with the second, where an uneasy truce was established, until the third tribe exhausted its supply of fish through overeating and was forced to go to war again, whereupon a fourth tribe, etc etc etc etc.

how has globalisation acted to do this?

Bobman, I take it you mean people in india/china benefitting from offshoring? I'm not convinced that the people who are the winners in India/China from that trend were realy dying of starvation beforehand, unless you're going to suggest that there is a trickledown effect.

That said, if globalisation leads to a general equalisation of cost of labour worldwide, then i guess it's probably 'fair', but it's certainly not a good thing as far as the individual worker in a western economy is concerned.

Also, i'd like to introduce you to the reverse of pascal's wager, let's call it Kokiri's wager. It has applications to swine flu, global warming, anything else you care to mention and basically suggests you assume that it's not going to be a big deal. If you're right, all the better; if you're wrong, well it's the end of the world and you'll be dead, so no biggie.

.

well if globalisation is the free flow of capital and information, then i'd say that the information aspect is really just another way of saying the internet, since there weren't exactly barriers to information flow in the west in the past, it was just a question of technology.

And as for capital, then I think there's basically zero evidence that it's been successful. Capital is pretty stupid, as we've seen from the cluster**** that the credit crunch is. Free flows of capital pretty much seem to have allowed the entire western banking model to bankrupt itself

free flow of information is aided by the internet but its also things such as a lack of censorship, open and transparent government, open and transparent business, etc (i.e. not controlling what information can and cannot be recieved is pretty instrumental. Dustin- stop reading).

Capital is more than just monetary flows (though that's important) its also the availability of equipment to manufacture goods, etc.

Banks went bust on American mortgage debt, not Vietnamese factories. The sort of barriers to capital that would have prevented the financial crisis from having a global scope have never really existed, at least not this century. I can't even imagine a regime where US banks aren't allowed to borrow from China, or trade derivatives with Barclays.

I think you're underestimating the progress China has made. Not that long ago, the majority of the population was living in severe poverty. Maybe the big winners are the elites from the old regime, but there are hundreds of millions who used to be poor subsistence farmers who now have higher-wage factory jobs or who have the chance to go to university and become engineers. Obviously part of that is ending the insane policies of Mao, but a big chunk is the development of an export-oriented industry that has the chance to compete freely with the West, and is allowed to receive direct investment by the West.

I don't find anything to support the idea that Tabarrok is sympathetic to anything far outside of the currect power structures. I checked out his blog, he seems to have more sympathy for Keynes than Rothbard afaict and he provided the following quote in an interview following up that TED talk:

My Italics. If you like democracy and think that governments are legitimate holders of power, he might come off as slightly libertarian. In my reality tunnel, he's another hand pushing pots to the big stacks.

Capital equipment != capital.
Anyway, in terms of globalisation, the free availability of of japanese capital equipment to western industry, for example, long predates any idea of globalisation.

I'm not sure i entirely agree. Again it's not an all or nothing thing. Anyway, the UK financial sector only really opened to competition as recently as the mid eighties, and it was pretty early. I also think that the financial sector has changed a lot more than people really give credit for in a short space of time

What exactly do you mean by the financial effects of globalisation? My suggestion was the spread of the american model of shareholder corporate governance. I guess it's no longer such heresy to suggest it, but i do think that shareholder corpgov is not the perfected state of capitalism

I guess this is probably true. I really had in mind India, but I don't have that good a understanding of either. There's a book called mr. China about the experience of a guy who was on the front line of investing china (and lost his (clients') shirts). It's a good read.

The percentage of university educated people in india is small i guess, but it's a small percentage of a very large number of people, and that gives you a large number.

quite so

let's agree to disagree then

works for me