Globalization, Protectionism, and the Global Poor
In an insightful article in Prospect Magazine, “Protecting the Global Poor,” Ha-Joon Chang argues that developed countries’ push toward global free trade may increase total economic development, but without necessarily doing a lot to alleviate poverty in developing countries. Chang gives a useful overview of the past few centuries’ economic history and the role of protectionism in the economic development of almost all of the currently developed countries’ histories. For anyone who’s read much economic history or world systems theory, this will be review, but a concise and nicely written review.
Importantly, Chang is not against globalization and increased trading among all countries. He recognizes that trade is critical for economic development and that economic development is necessary, if not sufficient, for the alleviation of poverty. It’s just that Chang also recognizes that unfettered free trade tends to disproportionately benefit more developed and wealthier nations. It’s no coincidence that the British were protectionists when the Dutch were the dominant mercantile power and became free-traders after becoming the dominant economic power themselves.
Chang also usefully points out a rhetorical strategy often employed by free-trade advocates, which is to conflate opposition to free trade in some form or another with opposition to trade generally. Chang writes:
“But there is a huge difference between saying that trade is essential for economic development and saying that free trade is best. It is this sleight of hand that free-trade economists have so effectively deployed against their opponents—if you are against free trade, they imply, you must be against trade itself, and so against economic progress.”
Mexican Cuisine
I’ve recently encountered two interesting articles on Mexican food. The first, “Mexico’s long chilli (sic) love affair,” reports on recent archaeological findings of systematic use of chiles in Mexican cooking at least 1500 years ago. As the article points out, the cultivation of chiles implies a well developed tradition of seasoning and cookery. (There is some research indicating possible antiseptic qualities to chiles, but as food, chiles are grown more as seasoning than for caloric sustenance.) The finding of use of both dried and fresh chiles indicates familiarity with the distinct quality of chiles in different preparations, and to me implies even longer familiarity and use of chiles than is directly indicated by the archaeological evidence.
The second article, “A Crash Course in Mexico’s Varied Cuisine,” simply presents a savory overview of “Mexico’s varied cuisine.” For those only passingly familiar with Mexican food, much less its regional diversity, there will probably be several surprises. For those who are familiar with Mexico’s regional cuisines, there probably won’t be any surprises – but if you’re thoroughly familiar with the range of regional cuisine diversity in Mexico or anywhere else, you probably like reading about food like I do.
Burying the N-Word
A week or so ago, the NAACP held a mock funeral to bury the “N-word.” In my local newspaper, The Pensacola News Journal, columnist Reginald Dogan presented his response to this event in “NAACP campaign to ‘bury’ N-word overlooks the bigger picture.”
Dogan writes:
“I wasn't as troubled by the mock funeral to bury a word as I was by NAACP officials saying ending the use of the N-word is one of their main goals.
“I cannot believe that of the myriad problems facing black people in America, the NAACP sees the N-word as the root of all troubles.”
See also Dogan’s follow-up column, “Racism is not the cause of all ills that plague black people.”
Florida and Climate Change
Also about a week ago, Florida’s governor made surprising announcements regarding plans for the state on energy and carbon emissions. An article in Grist magazine summarizes the announcement:
“His plans include adopting California's strict vehicle-emissions law, making Florida the first Southeast state to go that route; calling for a 40 percent reduction in statewide greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025; and requiring state agencies to prioritize fuel efficiency when buying or renting vehicles and to hold events in facilities certified as green by the state Department of Environmental Protection. Crist is also asking state utilities to produce 20 percent of their power from renewables, and creating a Florida Governor's Action Team on Energy and Climate Change.”
Optimal Foraging
An article on Science Daily, “Monkeys don’t go for easy pickings,” has the following to say:
“Animals’ natural foraging decisions give an insight into their cognitive abilities, and primates do not automatically choose the easy option. Instead, they appear to decide where to feed based on the quality of the resources available and the effect on their social group, rather than simply selecting the nearest food available.”
In other words, monkeys at least do not simply always forage the closest resources, but also forage partly on the basis of nutritional quality of food resources. That alone is easily understood in terms of something like optimal foraging theory. What I find particularly interesting is that monkeys seem to take into account non-nutritional qualities of food resources, specifically potential social effects (presumably things like the different effects likely to result from foraging fruits that are large but less common versus smaller but more common and dispersed), when selecting foraging strategies. This could also be understood in terms of optimal foraging – it’s just that what’s “optimal” becomes a bit more complex to include factors in addition to use of physical space and nutritional qualities of foods.
Showing posts with label free trade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free trade. Show all posts
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Global Trade and Free Action
In an earlier post, “Maintaining and Enhancing Free Action,” I argued that increasing individual freedom in general in any significant way required production of greater wealth. I further argued that this was a necessary but not sufficient condition for enhanced quality of life and real freedom for any significant number of people in global terms.
Much of Sub-Saharan Africa provides a case in point. Most of the African continent has been quite marginal to global trade, and its population, cut off from trade and much economic development, has suffered for it. (I’d argue that most of Africa has been thoroughly enough incorporated into global trade to be dependent on it, while simultaneously not integrated enough or in a way to benefit much from it.) One of the lead articles in the April 28 issue of The Economist, “Will Africa ever get it right?” (pp. 14 – 15), puts it bluntly:
“The post-colonial continent has hitherto been a colossal flop. The killer comparison is with Asia, where many countries suffered from the same colonial humiliations and rapacity that independent Africa customarily blamed for its early failings. According to the World Bank, real income per head in the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa between 1960 and 2005 rose on average by 25%, while it leapt 34 times faster in East Asia; countries like South Korea and Malaysia were once as poor as Ghana and Kenya.”
I’d question whether many places in Asia suffered the same degree of “colonial humiliations and rapacity” as much of Sub-Saharan Africa, and I’d point out that trade and production of wealth in Africa was seriously set back by the continent’s role as major site for numerous Cold War proxy wars. (Parts of Asia experienced that, too, most obviously Korea and Vietnam – though in both of those cases, armed struggle ended long ago, whereas much of Africa has been beset by lingering, continuous, low-intensity armed conflict.) Still, this is to debate the cause of Africa’s economic marginality, and not its effect, which is clear: endemic grinding poverty.
Still, recently things are looking up for much of the continent. The same Economist article points out that the economies of many Sub-Saharan nations (and not just oil-exporting nations) are growing at annual rates of 6 – 7 % for the past several years. This has been accomplished via changes that have been conducive to trade and investment, such as more openness to private enterprise, moves toward democratization, freer markets, etc. There are many obstacles in the way of sustained development (continued political tension and violence in some countries, the recent election scandal in Nigeria, malaria and AIDS, recent indications that Global Warming may affect Africa especially severely, etc.), and I’m under no illusion that the wealth produced through increased trade will be distributed in equitable ways, but even small increases in the wealth of average persons could significantly alleviate the worst miseries of poverty in the continent.
In a recent article in The Washington Post, “Free Trade’s Great, But Offshoring Rattles Me,” economist Alan S. Blinder makes the case for how globalization, free trade, et al., will improve conditions for people around the world, but with the big caveat that it will not make things better for everyone. Blinder argues that two things are driving globalization, and associated phenomena such as offshoring or outsourcing. The first is technological innovation, especially in information and communication technology, the second being the more systematic entry of huge numbers of workers into the world economy in countries such as China, India, and Eastern Europe, workers willing and able to perform information based or manufacturing jobs more cheaply that workers in more developed nations.
Blinder writes:
“Looking at these two historic forces from the perspective of the world as a whole, one can only get a warm feeling. Improvements in technology will raise living standards, just as they have since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. And the availability of millions of new electronically deliverable service jobs in, say, India and China will help alleviate poverty on a mass scale. Offshoring will also reduce costs and boost productivity in the United States. So repeat after me: Globalization is good for the world. Which is where economists usually stop.”
Blinder doesn’t stop there. He also points out that globalization will have ill effects on some. Globalization and freer trade may be related to greater total production of wealth, but it also changes the distribution of wealth. In some ways this is good, as with the degree of poverty alleviation that increased numbers of jobs brings to places like India or China. For workers in the U.S. or Western Europe whose jobs are offshored, their share of wealth clearly drops, and as Blinder writes, this will potentially affect large numbers of people. “In some recent research, I estimated that 30 million to 40 million U.S. jobs are potentially offshorable. These include scientists, mathematicians, and editors on the high end and telephone operators, clerks and typists on the low end.”
Blinder argues that some reforms could be implemented to ease the transition, such as better economic safety nets for displaced workers, and changes to education to emphasize training for flexibility and for the sorts of jobs least likely to be offshored, but he is ultimately gloomy about the prospects of such reforms being implemented and warns of a rough transition for many Americans.
Globalization is not a panacea for people in China or India or Sub-Saharan Africa either. The jobs being offshored to such countries are generally low-wage (or else they wouldn’t be offshored there), and sometimes associated with dangerous working conditions. In an earlier post, “A Different Globalization for Labor,” I wrote:
“Another common assumption is that such globalization processes are also bad for labor in the developing nation contexts that manufacturing and service jobs are being outsourced to, e.g. promoting sweat shop labor conditions. Robert J. Flanagan has recently published an important book on this topic, Globalization and Labor Conditions (Oxford University Press, 2006). Flanagan closely examines the available data on labor conditions around the world. He is clearly sympathetic to critiques of globalization, but comes to the conclusion that overall, globalization has led to improved conditions for labor in much of the world. He in no way implies that globalization processes make things wonderful for workers in developing countries. As he documents, there are things like sweatshop labor associated with globalization, but there are more overall jobs and fewer jobs with the worst labor conditions in more open developing economies – hardly what I’d consider a ringing endorsement, but still having more crappy jobs available might be better than having fewer or no crappy jobs available, even while still not good.”
What do I conclude from all this? Globalization and more trade (and the greater production of wealth associated with it) has its problems – and major problems at that for workers in all countries. At the same time, globalization is here to stay, and to the extent that production of greater wealth is a precondition for increasing individual human freedom in general, there are positive developments associated with globalization as well. As Blinder points out, economists and other free trade apostles often emphasize what is positive or what they see as positive about globalization and ignore the rest. Leftists of a variety of stripes just as often emphasize what is negative or what they see as negative and ignore the rest. The goal, as I see it, should be an emphasis on more equitable distribution of wealth (which would entail things like better social safety networks, better job training and re-training programs, better regulation of work conditions globally, emphasis on freedom of speech and assembly so that workers could better organize and act collectively, emphasis on often neglected aspects of “free” trade – freer movement of labor and reduced agricultural subsidization in rich countries, etc.) within a system of global trade and development which is sustainable (which would require positive work on global warming and major diseases, such as malaria and AIDS).
Much of Sub-Saharan Africa provides a case in point. Most of the African continent has been quite marginal to global trade, and its population, cut off from trade and much economic development, has suffered for it. (I’d argue that most of Africa has been thoroughly enough incorporated into global trade to be dependent on it, while simultaneously not integrated enough or in a way to benefit much from it.) One of the lead articles in the April 28 issue of The Economist, “Will Africa ever get it right?” (pp. 14 – 15), puts it bluntly:
“The post-colonial continent has hitherto been a colossal flop. The killer comparison is with Asia, where many countries suffered from the same colonial humiliations and rapacity that independent Africa customarily blamed for its early failings. According to the World Bank, real income per head in the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa between 1960 and 2005 rose on average by 25%, while it leapt 34 times faster in East Asia; countries like South Korea and Malaysia were once as poor as Ghana and Kenya.”
I’d question whether many places in Asia suffered the same degree of “colonial humiliations and rapacity” as much of Sub-Saharan Africa, and I’d point out that trade and production of wealth in Africa was seriously set back by the continent’s role as major site for numerous Cold War proxy wars. (Parts of Asia experienced that, too, most obviously Korea and Vietnam – though in both of those cases, armed struggle ended long ago, whereas much of Africa has been beset by lingering, continuous, low-intensity armed conflict.) Still, this is to debate the cause of Africa’s economic marginality, and not its effect, which is clear: endemic grinding poverty.
Still, recently things are looking up for much of the continent. The same Economist article points out that the economies of many Sub-Saharan nations (and not just oil-exporting nations) are growing at annual rates of 6 – 7 % for the past several years. This has been accomplished via changes that have been conducive to trade and investment, such as more openness to private enterprise, moves toward democratization, freer markets, etc. There are many obstacles in the way of sustained development (continued political tension and violence in some countries, the recent election scandal in Nigeria, malaria and AIDS, recent indications that Global Warming may affect Africa especially severely, etc.), and I’m under no illusion that the wealth produced through increased trade will be distributed in equitable ways, but even small increases in the wealth of average persons could significantly alleviate the worst miseries of poverty in the continent.
In a recent article in The Washington Post, “Free Trade’s Great, But Offshoring Rattles Me,” economist Alan S. Blinder makes the case for how globalization, free trade, et al., will improve conditions for people around the world, but with the big caveat that it will not make things better for everyone. Blinder argues that two things are driving globalization, and associated phenomena such as offshoring or outsourcing. The first is technological innovation, especially in information and communication technology, the second being the more systematic entry of huge numbers of workers into the world economy in countries such as China, India, and Eastern Europe, workers willing and able to perform information based or manufacturing jobs more cheaply that workers in more developed nations.
Blinder writes:
“Looking at these two historic forces from the perspective of the world as a whole, one can only get a warm feeling. Improvements in technology will raise living standards, just as they have since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. And the availability of millions of new electronically deliverable service jobs in, say, India and China will help alleviate poverty on a mass scale. Offshoring will also reduce costs and boost productivity in the United States. So repeat after me: Globalization is good for the world. Which is where economists usually stop.”
Blinder doesn’t stop there. He also points out that globalization will have ill effects on some. Globalization and freer trade may be related to greater total production of wealth, but it also changes the distribution of wealth. In some ways this is good, as with the degree of poverty alleviation that increased numbers of jobs brings to places like India or China. For workers in the U.S. or Western Europe whose jobs are offshored, their share of wealth clearly drops, and as Blinder writes, this will potentially affect large numbers of people. “In some recent research, I estimated that 30 million to 40 million U.S. jobs are potentially offshorable. These include scientists, mathematicians, and editors on the high end and telephone operators, clerks and typists on the low end.”
Blinder argues that some reforms could be implemented to ease the transition, such as better economic safety nets for displaced workers, and changes to education to emphasize training for flexibility and for the sorts of jobs least likely to be offshored, but he is ultimately gloomy about the prospects of such reforms being implemented and warns of a rough transition for many Americans.
Globalization is not a panacea for people in China or India or Sub-Saharan Africa either. The jobs being offshored to such countries are generally low-wage (or else they wouldn’t be offshored there), and sometimes associated with dangerous working conditions. In an earlier post, “A Different Globalization for Labor,” I wrote:
“Another common assumption is that such globalization processes are also bad for labor in the developing nation contexts that manufacturing and service jobs are being outsourced to, e.g. promoting sweat shop labor conditions. Robert J. Flanagan has recently published an important book on this topic, Globalization and Labor Conditions (Oxford University Press, 2006). Flanagan closely examines the available data on labor conditions around the world. He is clearly sympathetic to critiques of globalization, but comes to the conclusion that overall, globalization has led to improved conditions for labor in much of the world. He in no way implies that globalization processes make things wonderful for workers in developing countries. As he documents, there are things like sweatshop labor associated with globalization, but there are more overall jobs and fewer jobs with the worst labor conditions in more open developing economies – hardly what I’d consider a ringing endorsement, but still having more crappy jobs available might be better than having fewer or no crappy jobs available, even while still not good.”
What do I conclude from all this? Globalization and more trade (and the greater production of wealth associated with it) has its problems – and major problems at that for workers in all countries. At the same time, globalization is here to stay, and to the extent that production of greater wealth is a precondition for increasing individual human freedom in general, there are positive developments associated with globalization as well. As Blinder points out, economists and other free trade apostles often emphasize what is positive or what they see as positive about globalization and ignore the rest. Leftists of a variety of stripes just as often emphasize what is negative or what they see as negative and ignore the rest. The goal, as I see it, should be an emphasis on more equitable distribution of wealth (which would entail things like better social safety networks, better job training and re-training programs, better regulation of work conditions globally, emphasis on freedom of speech and assembly so that workers could better organize and act collectively, emphasis on often neglected aspects of “free” trade – freer movement of labor and reduced agricultural subsidization in rich countries, etc.) within a system of global trade and development which is sustainable (which would require positive work on global warming and major diseases, such as malaria and AIDS).
Thursday, May 10, 2007
An interesting perspective on free trade
Alan S. Blinder has an interesting essay on global free trade in this past Sunday's Washington Post. It's worth taking a look at.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402555_pf.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402555_pf.html
Monday, May 7, 2007
A Different Globalization for Labor
It is commonly acknowledged among scholars and activists who identify as “progressive,” “liberal,” or otherwise left-leaning that globalization is bad in many ways for workers in developed countries such as the United States. While there is always tension between the interests of capital and labor, there have been moments when the economic interests of the two somewhat converged in specific contexts. In the case of “globalization” as currently practiced, with its “just in time” production, the outsourcing of manufacturing, and increasingly service, jobs, and free trade agreements conceptualized primarily in terms of free movement of goods and services (but not of workers), this is very much not the case. Rather, the interests of labor and capital (or corporations or “the economy”) are in some ways becoming highly divergent in developed nation contexts. (See also my recent posts on these topics: How Unique or Radically New is Our Current Situation Today?; Three Things Karl Marx Didn't See Coming; The "Sameness" of Republicans and Democrats)
Another common assumption is that such globalization processes are also bad for labor in the developing nation contexts that manufacturing and service jobs are being outsourced to, e.g. promoting sweat shop labor conditions. Robert J. Flanagan has recently published an important book on this topic, Globalization and Labor Conditions (Oxford University Press, 2006). Flanagan closely examines the available data on labor conditions around the world. He is clearly sympathetic to critiques of globalization, but comes to the conclusion that overall, globalization has led to improved conditions for labor in much of the world. He in no way implies that globalization processes make things wonderful for workers in developing countries. As he documents, there are things like sweatshop labor associated with globalization, but there are more overall jobs and fewer jobs with the worst labor conditions in more open developing economies – hardly what I’d consider a ringing endorsement, but still having more lousy jobs available might be better than having fewer or no lousy jobs available, even while still not good.
The argument Flanagan makes that I find most interesting is that workers in poorer countries would be well served by an even more open trade regime, one more open to the movement of labor. He writes (p. 181):
“Few people actively support poor labor conditions; many advance proposals for improving them. How should one sort through the flow of proposals to decide which ideas deserve serious attention? A very useful first principle of policy choice is to favor policies that expand, rather than contract, opportunities for target groups. The mechanisms of globalization fare very well by this criterion. The evidence developed and presented in this book and reviewed in the early part of this chapter shows how international trade, international migration, and multinational companies contribute to improved working conditions and labor rights. Contrary to the indictment of globalization outlined in the first chapter, the world’s workers would gain from fewer restrictions on these mechanisms of globalization. This conclusion applies most strongly to the world’s poorest workers. Relaxing barriers to international migration offers the most promising opportunity for expanding the positive impact of globalization on labor conditions, but prospects for international action to promote the international movement of labor seem dim at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”
Freer movement of labor (which wouldn’t have to mean unregulated or unmonitored) would benefit labor by allowing tools such as modern transportation technology to benefit labor as well as capital. As Flanagan suggests, this would most benefit the poorest workers, but by helping the cheapest labor not be stuck in place, easier movement would indirectly aid other workers as well by making the strategy of chasing the cheapest labor via outsourcing a little less effective.
As Flanagan also points out, international action to promote freer (and regulated) movement of labor is unlikely soon. For starters, it’s not in the interests of capital (though having some available undocumented immigrant labor to mercilessly exploit in developed nation contexts is in capital’s interests). Second, freer movement of labor is understandably resisted by labor in developed countries – more immigrants are more competition for jobs that are already being reduced through outsourcing.
A recent commentary in The Nation (May 7, 2007, p. 8) by Deepak Bhargava and Angelica Salas makes a case for immigration reform, including regulated but freer movement, being in the interests of all labor and a worthy progressive cause. Freer, but documented and regulated immigration could contribute to eliminating the abuses of undocumented laborers and the problems for resident laborers in terms of wage competition. Also, as argued above, a move towards a free trade regime that emphasizes not just free movement of goods and services but of labor as well would most benefit the poorest, but would indirectly benefit labor in general by reducing capital’s ability to locate and fix in place the cheapest labor (because those laborers could simply move elsewhere for higher wages, contributing to upward pressure on wages in general).
Like it or not, we’re stuck with capitalism and globalization. That’s simply not going to change anytime soon. We’re not so clearly stuck with the precise details of capitalist globalization as it now functions. For those of us seeing ourselves as progressives, it makes sense to contribute to efforts at modifying globalization so that it serves the interests of labor as much as capital.
Another common assumption is that such globalization processes are also bad for labor in the developing nation contexts that manufacturing and service jobs are being outsourced to, e.g. promoting sweat shop labor conditions. Robert J. Flanagan has recently published an important book on this topic, Globalization and Labor Conditions (Oxford University Press, 2006). Flanagan closely examines the available data on labor conditions around the world. He is clearly sympathetic to critiques of globalization, but comes to the conclusion that overall, globalization has led to improved conditions for labor in much of the world. He in no way implies that globalization processes make things wonderful for workers in developing countries. As he documents, there are things like sweatshop labor associated with globalization, but there are more overall jobs and fewer jobs with the worst labor conditions in more open developing economies – hardly what I’d consider a ringing endorsement, but still having more lousy jobs available might be better than having fewer or no lousy jobs available, even while still not good.
The argument Flanagan makes that I find most interesting is that workers in poorer countries would be well served by an even more open trade regime, one more open to the movement of labor. He writes (p. 181):
“Few people actively support poor labor conditions; many advance proposals for improving them. How should one sort through the flow of proposals to decide which ideas deserve serious attention? A very useful first principle of policy choice is to favor policies that expand, rather than contract, opportunities for target groups. The mechanisms of globalization fare very well by this criterion. The evidence developed and presented in this book and reviewed in the early part of this chapter shows how international trade, international migration, and multinational companies contribute to improved working conditions and labor rights. Contrary to the indictment of globalization outlined in the first chapter, the world’s workers would gain from fewer restrictions on these mechanisms of globalization. This conclusion applies most strongly to the world’s poorest workers. Relaxing barriers to international migration offers the most promising opportunity for expanding the positive impact of globalization on labor conditions, but prospects for international action to promote the international movement of labor seem dim at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”
Freer movement of labor (which wouldn’t have to mean unregulated or unmonitored) would benefit labor by allowing tools such as modern transportation technology to benefit labor as well as capital. As Flanagan suggests, this would most benefit the poorest workers, but by helping the cheapest labor not be stuck in place, easier movement would indirectly aid other workers as well by making the strategy of chasing the cheapest labor via outsourcing a little less effective.
As Flanagan also points out, international action to promote freer (and regulated) movement of labor is unlikely soon. For starters, it’s not in the interests of capital (though having some available undocumented immigrant labor to mercilessly exploit in developed nation contexts is in capital’s interests). Second, freer movement of labor is understandably resisted by labor in developed countries – more immigrants are more competition for jobs that are already being reduced through outsourcing.
A recent commentary in The Nation (May 7, 2007, p. 8) by Deepak Bhargava and Angelica Salas makes a case for immigration reform, including regulated but freer movement, being in the interests of all labor and a worthy progressive cause. Freer, but documented and regulated immigration could contribute to eliminating the abuses of undocumented laborers and the problems for resident laborers in terms of wage competition. Also, as argued above, a move towards a free trade regime that emphasizes not just free movement of goods and services but of labor as well would most benefit the poorest, but would indirectly benefit labor in general by reducing capital’s ability to locate and fix in place the cheapest labor (because those laborers could simply move elsewhere for higher wages, contributing to upward pressure on wages in general).
Like it or not, we’re stuck with capitalism and globalization. That’s simply not going to change anytime soon. We’re not so clearly stuck with the precise details of capitalist globalization as it now functions. For those of us seeing ourselves as progressives, it makes sense to contribute to efforts at modifying globalization so that it serves the interests of labor as much as capital.
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