61–70 of 91 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you accept that your only political power is your power as a consumer, they've already won.
Patrick Henry didn't accept that, did he?
So, this may sound awkward but I'm going to say it anyway: this is what globalization enables. The very fact of sourcing things as elemental as the food you eat, from the other side of the planet (whichever side has the laxest environmental, health, and safety rules), makes this easier. It is easier to live far away from the things your company does, and the people it does them to, if they're on a different continent…
It could be solved by making transitive EHS rules. I.e. rules that require the source also applying these rules. This is still some kind of rarity but they do exist. For instance for years it has been very difficult/impossible to import US meat into the EU because of that. (Mostly because of different antibiotics usage AFAIK.) To some degree such rules also exist in other industries. For example it makes little sense to import a cheaply produced car from a non-EU/non-US vendor into the EU (or probably US) because it won't match the safety regulations and would at least have to go through an expensive individual (re-)certification process, and might even need customizations for that. Of course nobody does this and people buy a cheap FIAT or VW instead.
Globalization is really nice I think because it connects countries and people through economy and thus also fostering peace. ;) It could become even much nicer by adapting regulations in the destination markets. Custom tariffs and local subsidies are another way to solve this but those are obviously much less fine-grained (25% on everything :)) and come from a time when there was no globalization. In fact the high EU subsidies on agricultural products still seem to be the reason that impede African countries to export agricultural products into the EU. On the other hand the African market is flooded with subsidised EU produce, making it hard to sell products for small farmers.
Probably markets could be far less distorted if the regulations in the industry nations would be modernized... I'm not in favour of any form of turbo capitalism but free markets cannot really be blamed for this because we don't have them anyways.
Seriously? Worst company in the world? Come on. They’re responding to demand. If Cargill doesn’t buy the palm oil, another importer/distributor will. Sure, educate customers regarding the impacts of their purchases, but “worst company in the world” is just trolling. It’s this kind of partisan over-the-top hyperbole that turns people off and, IMHO, gets dudes like Trump elected.
Voting for a racist that puts babies in concentration camps is a fairly extreme overreaction to someone criticizing the environmental impact of a company to say the least.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Voting for a racist that puts babies in concentration camps is a fairly extreme overreaction to someone criticizing the environmental impact of a company to say the least.
Babies in concentration camps? I thought it was all brown people in ovens and all women in kitchens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And it completely ignores what the company has done for Minneapolis and the surrounding area. But it’s easy to disregard local knowledge when Internet outrage is the preferred reaction.
so wanton destruction of the earth is fine as long as there are some positive benefits in the short term to Minneapolis?
So, this may sound awkward but I'm going to say it anyway: this is what globalization enables. The very fact of sourcing things as elemental as the food you eat, from the other side of the planet (whichever side has the laxest environmental, health, and safety rules), makes this easier. It is easier to live far away from the things your company does, and the people it does them to, if they're on a different continent…
Changed how? Globalization took off 500 years ago and the rules seem to have changed for the better during that time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization
So, this may sound awkward but I'm going to say it anyway: this is what globalization enables. The very fact of sourcing things as elemental as the food you eat, from the other side of the planet (whichever side has the laxest environmental, health, and safety rules), makes this easier. It is easier to live far away from the things your company does, and the people it does them to, if they're on a different continent…
Agreed. I’ve often thought that the banes of regulatory arbitrage and labour arbitrage could be simultaneously killed by allowing the free movement of people across borders. It’s strange to me that corporations and money can cross borders easier than people.
So, this may sound awkward but I'm going to say it anyway: this is what globalization enables. The very fact of sourcing things as elemental as the food you eat, from the other side of the planet (whichever side has the laxest environmental, health, and safety rules), makes this easier. It is easier to live far away from the things your company does, and the people it does them to, if they're on a different continent…
>Moreover, by its very nature globalization enables regulatory arbitrage, so you can live in a country with relatively good EHS rules, and produce in a country with bad or no EHS rules. It could be solved by making transitive EHS rules. I.e. rules that require the source also applying these rules. This is still some kind of rarity but they do exist. For instance for years it has been very difficult/impossible to impo…
Brought to you by the Louis Dreyfus company, Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, Bunge, Callebaut, Glencore, Armajaro and so on... There's a great book "Merchants of Grain" written in the 70s about the secretive foods megabusinesses. It's arguably gotten worse since then. They make oil companies look like public servants.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Globalization isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s the rules surrounding trade that perpetuates the problem you outlined. In some alternate universe we could have free trade laws that enshrined environmental, labor, and other protections into law to benefit all. Instead we have laws that are silent (or with what we almost had under TPP toothless) on protections for anything other than corporations.
Globalization isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s the rules surrounding trade that perpetuates the problem you outlined. Except I believe the lack of rules, and the specific anti-regulatory pressures of modern neoliberal economic rationalists are one of the underlying axioms of globalization as implemented: Its not a coincidence, it was designed into the DNA.
But then the banana would probably become a luxury product and people vote with their wallets. Some countries that rely on this would be gutted and lose a lot of the income making their lives even worse. And it still wouldn't change anything that happens at home and is legal regardless of globalization (cut down a forest to make room for cattle? Lobby says yes).
The fact that it happens elsewhere just helps put people's minds at ease. Everybody can now have plausible deniability. But it could happen one town over, if it doesn't affect them directly most will still vote with the wallet. Some can't afford not to.
It's not globalization that does this, it's that people want cheap. And if globalization goes away tomorrow they will just find new ways, someone will always have to pay the price so all the rest don't have to. A poor town? An Indian reservation? Some wildlands? Someone will have to "take one for the team" whether it's at home or on the other side of the world.