First, the anti-Globalists have to admit there's not much we have to say in the matter.
Pretending that the USA and Europe can isolate themselves, and that Asia, Africa, and Latin America's 6 billion people are going to develop better or more slowly without us is an a priori joke. There simply is no solution to "globalization" and kvetching about it is like complaining about getting old. Hippy grandparents yearning for the good old days of starvation and smallpox in poor countries is not my scene. Wealth is increasing (see chart below) in countries which trade most.
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| No thank you, Daisy Racism |
So, if the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, are ideas like alter-globalization and fairtrade going to do better if the rich and well regulated consumers get on the sidelines and boycott the emerging markets? Of course not. The poor benefit more when they have more choice of people to trade with.
Third, having lived in Africa and having opened a recycling factory in Latin America, and having traded millions of dollars of goods with Asia, I can tell you that the Tin-Tin comics image of the emerging world is about as accurate as Uncle Toms Cabin in describing Atlanta. The image of "primitive wire burning" recyclers around the world is intensely over-played, to the point of racial profiling, and belongs with "Arab terrorist" and "American cowboy" and "Japanese kamikaze". All those anecdotes exist, but if that's your primary image of Dubai, Houston or Tokyo, you are ignorant. Ignorant means "stupid with hope for a cure", though I'm sometimes afraid the condition is chronic.
Boycott as a response to "globalization" is like burning libraries to prevent pornography. It's that damn stupid. As a lifelong environmentalist who had devoted my life to recycling, I am ashamed to the point of tears that the "green movement" has harbored racist images of fixers and tinkerers, technicians and geeks. We hurt the American economy when we shred items of value which could have been exported, and we hurt the buyers who then buy used product from Hong Kong or Shanghai with fewer choices. Worse, when we shred up rare earth magnets and turn circuit boards into "fluff" to avoid superior hand disassembly, we help mining.
Mining is what builds the roads that kill the gorillas. Mining "non-toxic" tin from Indonesian coral islands is what kills the sharks. White eco-witch-doctors need to stop prescribing death.
If you are a "green" environmentalist, and you have friends who are global isolationists, tell them to get on a fair trade bandwagon, because boycotts are the new segregation, giving sinister meaning to "the new black".
Give the developing world a choice of jobs besides warrior, miner, poacher, sex worker... let them refurbish and recycle, give them incentives and tools, implement contracts to reduce child labor by paying adult wages.
Give boy scout badges for recycling to the poster children, and say "shame on you" to "watchdogs" who exploit poster children for money and don't share a dime with the kids.
I'm a globalist because I have friends in Africa, Latin America, and Asia who I met through trade, and we treat each other as equals, and we have all benefited. My children eat with their children, my wife meets with my partners and their sisters and brothers. None of this would have happened if I had been afraid to cross the tracks and trade with brown people. I see my friends profiled, and I'm called names for expressing my loyalty to them. Very harsh names. I was too young to join the Civil Rights marches in the American south. But I learned enough about those marches, from my home in Arkansas, that I can spot a person using "inference" to make recycling, repair, and trade look like it's causing poverty.
