How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

Firstly, it is unlikely that the mine manger has less power in the modern era than they did in the days of old. Mine managers wield enormous power under law and in practice.

Secondly, the real issue here is likely that nobody cares about small limestone mines, but the economies of scale in Gladstone are such that the mines are projects of importance at the State and global level. Local groups with real power (enough influence to get council moving) can still sway mine operations quite convincingly, larger mining companies have had some experiences with fighting real local opposition and it is not a profitable exercise. But the flip side of that, once a mine operation gets large enough it can no longer please everyone, and when the State & local governments support your operation, the people who are not pleased feel very powerless. Nobody likes that situation, but there isn't a straightforward resolution.

The idea that globalisation is responsible is a bit tenuous. Make the case that councils are blinded by greed, that is an easy one. I will politically remind the reader that the State government, who takes the cut, is also the same group who needs more money to fund schools & hospitals. EDIT And mining corporations usually spend lavishly on local projects to suppress organised opposition on council.

tl;dr; I have observed the process and don't believe that globalisation has broken the chain. Local government still has sufficient power to yea, nay or influence operations. State governments have absolute power to yea, nay and influence operations. They are responsible, not some shady globalist in Shenzhen, America or Japan.

The US did very little trade with China in 1989, though more than a few years earlier. I don’t think Tiananmen Square or its response says much about US internationalism or commitment to whatever abstract principles. You can draw much stronger conclusions from them about internal Chinese politics.

You know who else holds enormous power? The mine managers employer, as well as the collective will of all the subordinates of the mine manager who depend on high paying mining jobs. The mine manager may also be close friends with many of these people, and many of them may have spouses who are friends of the mine managers spouse.

Then, there's the letter of the law, and there's de facto (in practice) law. Sometimes these are closely aligned, sometimes they are not.

Also, there is huge variance in individual companies' ethics and compliance with local laws and customs, as well as variance in compliance in different operational locations around the world - you likely wouldn't get away with very much in advanced 1st world countries very often, but I wonder if the same can be said in smaller, less fortunate countries.

> The idea that globalisation is responsible is a bit tenuous.

Agreed. A more plausible culprit is the corporation as a legal structure, with multi-national corporations being even worse. I'm pretty far right fiscally, but one documentary that had a big effect on my opinion is The Corporation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(2003_film)

This seems to be the entire documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y888wVY5hzw

As it was produced 15 years ago I imagine it's a bit dated (I watched it over 10 years ago so can't recall much detail), but it's well worth the 2hr24min investment of your time.

As for the article itself....

> Global population and the world’s interconnections are increasing at an unprecedented rate; internet access, tourism, migration, and increased trade, among other phenomena, are transforming the planet. While the world gross domestic product has grown by 250 percent since 1980, world trade has grown by 600 percent; the ports of Shanghai and Singapore alone more than doubled their turnover of goods between 2003 and 2014. Cities like Mogadishu, Somalia, have seen growth rates of 1,000 percent in a generation, expanding from a couple hundred thousand inhabitants in the 1980s to a couple of million. The faster the rate of change, the harder it is for people to adapt.

I wonder if some important truths are hiding within or near these statistics. GDP up 250% while world trade is up 600%. Not stated is the extra layer of complexity around in what way the flows of money changed during this transition. Has great good come out of this for millions of people, raising them out of hellish poverty? Undoubtedly, and it makes me happy.

However, I often encounter a related opinion (that I'm often told disagreeing with in the slightest proves various things) that things have improved for everyone. Everyone is better off under globalization, full stop. I often find myself wondering whether this claim is actually true, and I also wonder how everyone is so certain about this fact when I've never encountered any evidence-based analysis that does a good job of substantiating it, without also leaving a large number of unanswered questions in my mind. I suppose it could be that I am really just as dumb as I'm told, but I can't find much else that corroborates that theory.

> There are alternatives to the current situation of powerlessness. One way to counter globalized power is to globalize the response by forging alliances between local community groups and transnational organizations that are capable of putting pressure on governments, public opinion, and corporations. This has been a successful strategy among feminists, trade unionists, and environmentalists in the recent past. Another option—an opposite yet complementary strategy—is to resist the forces that threaten to overrun and disempower local communities. One of the most striking examples of this strategy is the burgeoning support for locally grown food.

Another example is cooperative nationalism - sovereign nation states who trade with each other in a self-beneficial way, as well as assist those less fortunate nations (due to unfortunate geographical locations, plain bad luck, etc) for self-interested reasons of pragmatism as well as general humanity. How difficult it would be to pull this in real life I do not know, but neither does anyone else despite what they might say. But another side benefit this approach offers is that it enables true diversity. As globalization normalizes behaviors and conventions around the world (yes, often good, but there's more than one way to achieve goodness), diversity is actually decreasing in many ways (and if you think a variety of skin colors equals diversity, I happen to mostly disagree, and I actually think it's a tad racist). An independent nation state approach allows different countries to try different approaches to the full spectrum of life over long periods of time, and as optimal individual strategies arise, individual countries can choose to adopt them, or not.

It seems to me it would make sense to get some solid evidence and large-scale enthusiastic agreement that we've "got it all figured out" before we start merging the entire planet into a mono-culture, and rapidly rising populist sentiment in many nations would seem to suggest there might be some truth to this idea.