What is the globalization information economy exactly? The broad suggestion and standard interpretation of globalization is that the movement of physical goods is coming to and end.
Thats also bogus: there is no end to extraction of goods, raw materials from overseas, the players are just shifting around.
You think lithium won't continue to be bought from Australia and Chile for use in Europe?
You think manufacturing in India and China and Vietnam and Pakistan and Bangladesh is all coming home to fruit-of-the-loom unionised labour in the USA?
You think EV will be Tesla, Rivian and never VAG, Volvo, or BYD?
There is no end to movements of goods, (and services) worldwide. The borders and boundaries on what moves to whose profit is shifting. "Globalisation" isn't ending. "We trade with anyone, irrespective of geopolitical blocs" isn't ending. Whats happening is re-balancing.
The global information economy is the profit being made from trading in electronic services. Rent on transactions in payments, funds transfer, arbitrage, the dutch-irish sandwich...
I think what Globalization skeptics like me are saying is actually really simple: you shouldn't outsource your critical shit to hostile countries.
Not really more complicated than that. If we're talking about the US, other countries can sell their EVs here, no problem, but you have to be in the club. Since the 1990s, we've sort of skirted our moral responsibility on who we trade with because it made a bunch of people rich, and then those rich people gave money to politicians who helped make other people rich, who then ran for office and so on. This responsibility isn't limited to "don't trade with countries that have concentration camps", it also extends to "be smart about how you trade and who you trade with such that you don't destroy your own industry and middle class".
Really not that complicated.
>The global information economy is the profit being made from trading in electronic services. Rent on transactions in payments, funds transfer, arbitrage, the dutch-irish sandwich...
This is a goofy way of saying "the global information economy" makes money on spying on human behavior and then selling ads based on that behavior. Yuck.
> don't destroy your own industry and middle class".
> Really not that complicated.
whenever somebody makes that claim they usually ignore all the nuances that make it complicated.
The reality is that especially the US( and to a lesser degree the rest of the developed world as well) has had a disproportionate high quality of life for decades precisely because of doing this.
It was the best thing for the generation that made this decision, even if it's terrible for the people today.
And we continue to make decisions like that. it will be even more obvious just how careless we are today once the limited resources are depleted. Thankfully that's going to be an issue for a future generation, not mine.. but reading statements such as that kinda ticks me off a little
> Since the 1990s, we've sort of skirted our moral responsibility on who we trade with...
What trade laws prior to the 1990s were created due to "moral responsibility"? I believe all trade policy from the start of the country was designed to make certain people rich for political favor. You can say NAFTA and the WTO are bad deals, but that doesn't mean what came before it met some standard of morality.
> This responsibility isn't limited to "don't trade with countries that have concentration camps"...
Case in point, in WWII, US companies were allowed by US law to trade with Nazi Germany. IBM even helped directly with the genocide. When did the US trade policy driven by "moral responsibility" appear?
> What trade laws prior to the 1990s were created due to "moral responsibility"?
Almost all federal revenue prior to the 20th century came from tariffs. The US still managed to industrialize just fine during that period. After which, and with the institution of the income tax, things get way more complicated.
It’s probably obvious to me but those trade laws did protect domestic industrialization, which is, again, obviously a good thing. You’re probably reading too much into my use of the word “moral”, and that’s my bad, because I should’ve used some word that denotes ensuring self sufficiency in your country. That’s all I’m really talking about. Don’t screw over your working and middle class so some nerds on Wall Street who can’t bench press 100lbs can make a couple basis points.
I agree that the protectionist policies might have had some benefits for workers. However, they were primarily to the benefit of the landed gentry, and then industrial capitalists. Free trade reflects our switch to finance capitalism.
Marx made a similar point to yours: the interests of the industrial capitalists are more aligned with the workers than the finance capitalists, yet the industrial capitalists will choose finance over the workers.
> You think lithium won't continue to be bought from Australia and Chile for use in Europe?
Globalization does -not- merely mean global trade. Globalization was the equivalent of centralized optimization applied to national economies. Far flung corners of the planet have been doing long distance trade for ages, long before globalization.
Physical movement of goods due to foreign trade is not the same thing as physical movement due to a distributed ("globalized") production chain.
Until Australia tools up to add value, lithium is substantially part of a distributed production chain. We're also the source of the feedstock silicon for some fab lines. Almost all manufactured meat product (bacon and the like) is using imported meat, sometimes as little as 15% Australian content and our meatworks are owned by a Brazilian company importing from Canada to Australia.
We ship iron ore to China, to buy back construction metal forms..
