Why people oppose globalization
I was reading a good blog entry on MarginalRevolution on this subject. What follows is not necessarily a summary of the blog entry, but my personal thoughts on the matter. For starters, there’s money to be had by the (local or domestic) business community in stifling free trade. Free trade means that consumers get free choice for additional sources of competition. Hence, there’s strong economic incentive against the business community advancing free trade (unless their business is dependent on it, which many are). If there’s good money in something, chances are there’s lobbying. Politicians can be bought, of course. But ordinary citizens can be convinced of the “danger” of free trade as well. Again, when there’s money to be had by convincing people for or against something, you’ll have an army of people who do just that.
Then there’s “irrational nativism,” of course. We see a lot of that with the illegal immigration debate here in the States. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not endorsing illegal entry into this country. But neither am I going into the sort of irrational and uncompassionate foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric that some people get into on this subject. Immigrants have had an historical positive effect on this country, and while I don’t endorse illegal entry, I suspect that the illegal immigration “debate,” if one can call it that, isn’t so much about illegal immigrants but about immigration policy in general.
Protectionism and anti-immigrantism are not good for this country, or any country. Such sentiments aren’t good for our economy, our collective values, and our security (long argument on that one that I’ve expounded on in previous posts). But they’re good for businesses that want to restrict consumer freedom and choice; and there good for some politicians, who want to get elected and leave the electorate holding the bill.
UPDATE: just noticed blog entry on Thomas Barnett’s site on this subject. Related to globalization, Barnett summarizes 5 characteristics of growing economies:
1) Openness to global trade and FDI
2) Political stability but not necessarily democracy; a gov committed to growth
3) High savings
4) Sensible gov spending and inflation control
5) A willingness to let markets allocate resources
On point 1, “FDI” refers to foreign direct investment. On point 2, I’ll add that, as Barnett has pointed out elsewhere, free markets result in freedom in the broader sense, including politically. Point 5 has the obvious humanitarian advantage of greater prosperity (greater access to healthcare, food, etc).