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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

#21

Post by internet_user »

glitchc wrote: post #4

Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.

And the worst part is not just labor arbitrage.

Rules that we have defined to protect the environment in which we live, safety of the products we use, security/privacy of our data.

All of that gets arbitraged away, just like offshore havens are used to hide dirty cash behind veils of various legal stuctures.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#22

Post by leereeves »

glitchc wrote: post #4

Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.

Strong nationalism doesn't help multi-national corporations. It either prevents their operation entirely (for example, bans on imports and nationalization of assets as in Iran) or exploits them only when the government decides the country will profit more than the company (as in China).

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#23

Post by perfmode »

leereeves wrote: post #22
glitchc wrote: post #4

Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.

Strong nationalism doesn't help multi-national corporations. It either prevents their operation entirely (for example, bans on imports and nationalization of assets as in Iran) or exploits them only when the government decides the country will profit more than the company (as in China).

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.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#24

Post by InfiniteBeing »

glitchc wrote: post #4

Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.

In what way? Nationalism leads to immigration restrictions and protectionism.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#25

Post by omegaworks »

vowelless wrote: post #10
glitchc wrote: post #4

Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.

> Nationalism feeds into that How?

Nationalism is a shiny, ultimately self-defeating distraction for unions. It allows politicians and union leadership to avoid the hard work of crafting and executing on real pro-labor policies to grapple with the reality of globalized capital. Instead, it pits workers against each other, factionalizes them and creates scapegoats so they never organize as a class.

http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/erik-loomis-the-dem...

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#26

Post by leereeves »

perfmode wrote: post #23
leereeves wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong nationalism doesn't help multi-national corporations. It either prevents their operation entirely (for example, bans on imports and nationalization of assets as in Iran) or exploits them only when the government decides the country will profit more than the company (as in China).

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".

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#27

Post by Applejinx »

knuththetruth wrote: post #9
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…

Not sure why you’ve been downvoted. History from the 1990s onwards seemed to demonstrate that past a certain point, democracy becomes an obstacle which Capitalism has to overcome or devolve into crisis. If anything, the US is hemming more towards the authoritarian technocracy of China than away from it.

Absolutely. If you look at it in a game-theory sort of way it becomes obvious that capitalism proliferates in its most efficient manner, not in favor of other values like democracy, or the common good etc.

Rules aren't rules, rules are further obstacles that capitalism as a large evolving system is there to evolve around. Most of what we see as rules are only suggestions if you've got enough capital, or things in place to prevent tragedy of the commons: capitalism is not 'commons-alism' and not there to support the system on which it runs. If the entities maximizing capital get to amass more, as far as capitalism is concerned that's the whole point and everything is working optimally.

We assume we can get new workers, a new planet, whatever, because capitalism sort of processes through any such thing in order to reduce it to abstracted value that's assigned to whoever competes most effectively for it.

Of course democracy is orthoganal to this system.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#28

Post by mistermann »

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.

That's true (at least where there are large nationalist and globalist groups in conflict), but it seems to me a lack of nationalism may sometimes result in suppression of the expression of self-interested sentiments, especially when globalism does not decrease overall GDP but causes large changes in the distribution of income/wealth.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#29

Post by perfmode »

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".

it is nationalist policy that restricts flow.

Re: How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

#30

Post by marcosdumay »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #5
acd wrote: post #3

The corporation takes away personal responsibility. For a corporation profit is usually number one priority far more than caring for the environmen. I think globalisation under mines union, to some extent labour laws. I you don’t do the job there is often someone cheaper who don’t care about work hours, vacation who will.

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…

That's a point that deserves some consideration. But there's something that always bother me when people start talking about China:

Always keep in mind that China is a rather poor country. It's per-capita GDP has just passed above Brazil, and that's mostly because Brazil is facing the biggest crisis in its history. When you claim that China is a successful dictatorship, always remember that it's successful only from some points of view.

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