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How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

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Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#41

Post by robotomir »

mulmen wrote: post #39
robotomir wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article draws very big conclusions out of thin air, four pages of text, two pictures, and a pretentious DNS record. On the opposite side of the spectrum of journalism was the NY Times article from earlier today, about the Arizona aquifers. Great photography and research. Awesome Web presentation, too. Cheap journalism with big pretenses is a scourge on our society.

You seem to be suggesting that more words and pretty pictures make an argument at least more compelling if not more substantive. I disagree with that idea because it has nothing to do with the facts.

Yes, I would not draw brave conclusions about globalization out of a clickbait-format article. I also make an argument about authority of judgement, based on the longevity and reputation of the media channel.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#42

Post by RestlessMind »

The answer lies in Politics. If a multinational is ruining your beaches / water supply / air quality / whatever, use the power of government to apply regulations and taxes. One common argument against that is that a company will simply go to another place which offers friendlier regulations. In that case, good riddance.

Now, if someone depends on those multinationals for a better living and have no options otherwise, then they gotta pay up one way or the other. Typical path we have seen is for societies to get rich first and then start demanding nicer things like clean air / water.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#43

Post by User23 »

leereeves wrote: post #26
perfmode wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s not so simple. one side effect of strong nationalism is a restriction on the flow of people. when capital can flow freely, but people can’t, multinationals gain an advantage.

The mere existence of nations prevents the free flow of people. "Nationalism" usually means something stronger than the existence of nations, such as "the belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals".

The free flow of people historically involves all the males on one side getting murdered or enslaved and the women raped. The DNA evidence incontrovertibly supports this.

I’d say the idealistic nationalist sees each nation akin to a cell in a cellular automaton and believes that each nation looking after itself in the context of some fundamental rules will achieve better outcomes globally, not just locally, than heavy handed large scale top down control, aka empire.

Taleb cogently argues that scale is of fundamental importance to understanding human behavior. I also accept the argument that distributed local control is generally to be preferred.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#45

Post by leereeves »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #35
leereeves wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All nations do that. A definition of "nationalist" that includes every nation isn't particularly useful for distinguishing the policies of nations.

All nations are at least a bit nationalistic. If they weren't at all nationalistic, they wouldn't be nations. Restrictions on the free flow of people are not a binary decision. Countries in the Schengen Area which have almost completely given up the ability restrict movement between their territory and 25 other nations are not restricting the movement of people as much as say North Korea which doesn't even let most o…

By that definition the US is the least nationalist country on the planet. 20% of the world's foreign born population lives in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

And it seems to me that it's that lack of "nationalism" as you've defined it that's helping US-based companies exploit cheap labor in (or from) other nations.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#46

Post by drb91 »

sremani wrote: post #20
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And environmental protection laws, and human rights laws, and civil rights laws, you name it, globalization has effectively undermined. The best lie that America ever told the world (best exemplified by the 1939 World’s Fair[1]) was that democracy and capitalism go hand in hand. But when the U.S. blinked after the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre and kept on buying cheap goods from China, it became clear that the Weste…

Its not that Socialism & Democracy as a combination was not tried. The Pre-1991 India is a good example, it also had War on Poverty and whole enchilada. Nothing did more to get millions of people out of abject poverty than 1991 economic liberalization.

There are many socialist concepts you might implement. If you consider nationalized healthcare, then the vast majority of all western countries are socialist democracies.

This is why it's weird to hear people bring up gulags in the US--most "democratic socialists" are just trying to catch up to europe.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#47

Post by shard972 »

westiseast wrote: post #15
vowelless wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nationalism feeds into that How?

I assume he means because nationalism stokes tensions between citizens while companies quietly extract value from society.

Why would nationalism stoke tensions between citizens? The point of nationalism is to unite the society around the nation.

It seems to me that multiculturalism if anything leads to more tensions as it seeks to add more groups that don't have as much in common as the people already there.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#48

Post by r00fus »

Felz wrote: post #34

The article's central point seems to be that it's more difficult to track accountability and causality in an increasingly "overheated" and complicated world. True. But the major system for addressing that currently seems to be People Getting Upset, and the article proposes more organizations for People Getting Upset. But this isn't very efficient; sometimes the global economy DOES need to make Gladstone a bit less pr…

Government coffers belong to the people. If the carbon tax is done right the revenues go to a special use fund for addressing the externalities caused by the thing they're taxing to control... and not to the "general fund".

I'm fine not getting a share of the carbon tax if the monies are used to fight the problem.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#49

Post by shard972 »

RestlessMind wrote: post #42

The answer lies in Politics. If a multinational is ruining your beaches / water supply / air quality / whatever, use the power of government to apply regulations and taxes. One common argument against that is that a company will simply go to another place which offers friendlier regulations. In that case, good riddance. Now, if someone depends on those multinationals for a better living and have no options otherwise,…

Which society stands to become richer? The country that sold it's beaches to a foreign company, or the foreign country which operates the business and owns the profits?

To the extent this is politics, I guess you could say it's a battle between liberalism which would see the situation as efficient and the result of free capitalistic action while a nationalist perspective would lead you to see the beaches are apart of the nation itself and cannot simply just be sold off.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#50

Post by shard972 »

travelbyphone wrote: post #44

Maybe if we could buy shares of Earth there would be some economic value in preserving the well being and environment. How could one put economic value in preservation instead of exploration?

That sounds like a way to accelerate the lack of accountability. If i wanted to reduce accountability of american companies, I would make it so you could only by US stocks through unified stock.

You would just have 0 ability for anyone to apply market forces and accountability on a localized level and it would become giant scam for elites to siphon off.

The only way to add more accountability in the way you want it would be more selling off of public land to public companies that anyone could buy stocks in.

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