Global Economy
Global trade emerged with rise of civilizations and the creation of empires.
You could argue that trade is an innate behavior of humans. Trade, wars and
empires form a complex of human behaviors that created wealth, destruction and
death for thousands of years. The modern history of global trade accelerated
with European colonization and exploitation of the rest of the world. The push for expanded world trade is often advocated as a benefit for
underdeveloped nations. Industrialists claimed that it is better work in a shoe
factory for minimum wage and live in poor tenements than it is to continue to
live on a poor family farm with your local village culture, language and values
intact.
When you understand human nature, you know that humans do best as members of
small local groups. Local autonomy is an intrinsic value that is violated by
global trade. As citizens of many countries protest against economic conditions and
seek more autonomy, politicians refer to protectionism and offer dire
predictions of global economic crashes. Enlightened leaders will seek bottom-up solutions by supporting local
groups, local initiatives and will only write rules and laws that increases
local autonomy of human groups wherever they live.
Global Trade
World trade matured ideologically in the 20th century. An optimistic vision
was the global trade would create a unified, productive world with exchange of goods and technologies among all countries.
Affluent leaders assumed that the human tragedies of the third world would
spontaneously resolve with free trade. New affluence and influence would spread
from more technologically advanced countries to the least. This assumption is
now known to be fallacious. Cash crops for export obliterate
regional autonomy. African countries, for example, still struggle with food
shortages and famine, in part because colonial world trade replaced indigenous
food crops with monocultures for export. Africans cannot eat coffee and cocoa.
The monocultures damaged local food production in many different ways – physical
changes in the environment coupled with the loss of skills and motivation
required for self-sufficiency.
A world trade organization was created to
negotiate trade agreements and to arbitrate disputes among members. A
well-publicized series of protests at the WTO meeting in Seattle in November
1999 brought the existence and the potential problems with WTO to the attention
of all sentient beings. The most important concern was the WTO had emerged as a
top-down method of organizing world trade. While the WTO was still in its
infancy, the most unpopular idea was a centralized bureaucracy imposing rules
and regulations that interfered with or contradicted local policies and laws.
There is a deep instinct for local autonomy and a corresponding suspicion of
alien control. All attempts to build large systems with top-down policies have
failed. While the WTO looked like the best efforts of free-market capitalists,
the tendency for powerful elites to affiliate and impose their will is as deeply
embedded in humans as is the resistance to outside control. The WTO Seattle
negotiations failed because of substantial differences in the perceptions, needs
and limitations of member nations more than the protests. Both disturbances will
continue to dominate world trade negotiations.
Global trade has
progressed to a world of ships, airplanes, treaties, intermeshed stock markets
and currency trading. Trade talks are commonplace and bring indulged politicians
from many countries to the bargaining table. They believe that global trade is a
good feature of human existence and should be advanced, despite the resistance
of their citizens and loss of autonomy. US president Obama warned against "a
crude sort of nationalism’ taking root." He, like many other smart and
responsible humans, fails to understand human nature. The tendency to prefer
small groups and to protect boundaries that separate our group from others is an
innate feature of humans and is not going to disappear. Obama pursed the wrong
argument, stating: “We are
going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic
identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them, and I will never
apologize for saying that the future of humanity and the future of the world is
doing to be defined by what we have in common, as opposed to those things that
separate us and ultimately lead us into conflict.” The beginning of his big
mistake is the suggestion that ethnic identity and tribalism are recent
constructs, add-ons that can be changed. Ethnic identity and tribalism is
innate and creates societies rather than the society creates ethnic identity
and tribalism. Idealists have proposed a world government that could unite
nations and develop worldwide solutions for our most compelling problems. The
United Nations is the best organization to date with many problem-solving groups
but the UN demonstrates the national, ethnic, religious, economic identities of
the participates that resist world government.
Enlightened leaders will seek bottom-up solutions by supporting local groups,
local initiatives and will only write rules and laws that increase local
autonomy of human groups wherever they live. The authentic basis of trade is
surplus. Each group grows its own food and makes the goods they need; when there
is a surplus, the extra food and goods are traded. When cash crops and trade
goods dominate a group's activities and interests, they lose their sense of
purpose, cohesion and sooner or later become dysfunctional and fail. Imported
industries distort local economies. An emerging hybrid economics will have to
find a new balance point between local need, the human preference for proximate
communities and local autonomy.
For
many years, insightful people have described the harm done to poor people in
third world countries by inappropriate technology, movies, television
programming and magazines arriving from affluent western countries. Media
thrive by printing articles about rich and famous people, exotic food, luxury
vacations, expensive homes, flashy cars and numerous other goodies that most
citizens, even in affluent countries cannot afford. Extravagant desires and
inevitable disappointment are constant features of modern life.
