Globalization: The sum of All Fears?
or Thus Spracht Klaus
I found this over in twitter-land and thought it was worth a few thoughts here. I may have this all wrong, but just about every ill we face, from racism to income inequality to broken food systems can be traced back, either directly or indirectly, to some effect of globalization.
When I’ve thrown this idea out in the past I don’t get a shrug and dismissal, I get roiling anger. Whether it’s small scale regenerative farmers or online social activists, suggesting that the root cause of the problems we all face is globalization makes folks angry. It does not seem to foster much curiosity (IDK, Robb is a nut, but IS there anything to this?) just anger and incredulity.
There are many frustrating elements to this: If my perspective is correct I’m suggesting the most networked, powerful, wealthy people on the planet are our greatest enemy.* If folks were actually on board with fighting this, we’d have a lot to deal with. But not many ARE on board with this idea. Most push back and continue to be embroiled in things like a $15 minimum wage when that situation is a symptom of globalization.
*-Just a quick update to address some shortcoming in my original post: I do not decry the fact folks have wealth, my point to this is the folks who are doubling down on the globalist playbook also have a lot of resources. That’s not an insurmountable problem, but it’s not trivial either.
On board. Just returned from shopping my local regenerative farmer. Let’s get back in our communities and stop arguing online. It just feeds the beast.
"If my perspective is correct I’m suggesting the most networked, powerful, wealthy people on the planet are our greatest enemy."
Here's the hilarious thing about this, Robb. You probably wouldn't have been on board with that statement 10 years ago. And they would have!
Personally, as a libertarianish person, I don't like demonizing rich people. The problem as I see it is that many uber-wealthy people are control addicts. This is something I've unfortunately begun to see only in the last 5-10 years. Before I would have seen it as a regrettable attitude of demonizing success.
But back to my point. The irony here is that this type of thinking you describe, above, was rather common on the educated left in the 1960s. The attitude was that there was a sort of wisdom in nature (whether one wants to call it creation or evolution, it doesn't really matter), while at the same time, conservatives were busy defending highly interventionist, somewhat dangerous, and technocratic approaches that were not at all informed by evolutionary theory or ecology.
Now the positions have practically flipped, if we can call the Democrats leftists. That we can call Democrats leftists rather than neocons is certainly arguable, but let's just observe where we are presently:
The Democrats are defenders of high levels of interventionism: wars, money printing, Big Ag dumping toxic chemical everywhere, censorship and fact checking, and also, puberty blockers and gene therapy for all, preferentially taken on a weekly or daily basis. 😝
Upside-down world.