Do you remember the anti-globalization protests that happened at the Seattle WTO meeting back in 1999?
You’re forgiven if you don’t. Anti-globalization ain’t what it used to be.
Back then, “globalization” was one of the Left’s big bogeymen. The protestors took “globalization” to mean a move towards some sort of Rollerball future, where big multinational corporations run everything. I understood their concern. I didn’t agree with it, but I understood it. The great big joke was, of course, that the unaccountable multinational power they feared from Big Business was power they wanted to grant to Big Government. And, of course, the goal behind that power shift was taking from others to benefit themselves. Or, in fancier language, they wanted a Global Justice Movement that sought to redistribute economic resources.
Consider some anti-globalization pearls of wisdom from some of the , linked here. Change just a few of the words, and these excreta masquerading as insights could just have easily been uttered a century ago by Marxist, socialist, communists and other by-force statists. It’s the same pap thats always been used to convince young people that they’re being screwed by Big Bad Business, and that Gigantic Good Government was the remedy. The joke’s on them, of course. Big Bad Business typically gets that way with the help of its best pal, Gigantic Good Government.
The wholly-expected gnashing of teeth from the Best-and-Brightest and their patsies that followed the Brexit vote reminded me of those anti-globalization protests. All the smart folks said that Brexit would be very bad for Great Britain, for the EU, and for the world in general. They declared that the Brexit supporters were stupid people who didn’t know what they were voting for, didn’t know that their ugly nationalistic ways were bad for them, and shouldn’t be trusted to determine the fate of their country. What they were REALLY saying, though, was that the people of Great Britain should continue to subject themselves to unelected apparatchiks from other lands, living and working in another land, and doing what they felt was best. In other words, Gigantic Good Government.
You’re forgiven if, upon encountering the world “globalization,” you took it to mean more free trade, freer movement of people, less protectionism/nationalism, and less influence by governments. Such meaning parallels the original meaning of “liberalization,” which itself referred representative government, greater individual liberty, and economic freedom. As we know, though, the definition of “liberal” has drifted so far from its original meaning that it’s in many ways the opposite of what it used to be. In true Orwellian newspeak and doublethink fashion, “globalization” now decries the concentration of power in the hands of an unelected few, and “anti-globalization” urges concentration of power in the hands of an unelected few. The only difference, of course, is the thin veneer of connection that the anti-globalists see themselves having to those they prefer in power.
Corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders. Period. End of story. This is what freaks out anti-big-business people and produces anti-globalist thinking.
Corporations must be responsive, however, to the consumers of their goods and services. This is an even more powerful controlling force than a corporation’s responsibility to its shareholders. An unresponsive corporation will suffer and may even die, causing its shareholders to lose the wealth they entrusted to it. Given that consumers make decisions every day, the “votes” they exercise via patronage are more powerful than the actual votes that people cast when they walk into a voting booth every couple years.
Who has greater control over those at the top, consumers who vote every day with the money they spend, or voters whose only recourse between elections is complaining?
The obvious answer to that question is, by the way, why cronyism exists. Corporations would FAR rather have the insulation from market forces that politicians enjoy than have to be endlessly responsive to consumers who get new options thrown at them every day. Cronyism/corporatism blends the coercive power of statism with the profit motivation of business and results in a system where coercion is used to undermine economic liberty. Anti-globalists incorrectly blame unfettered capitalism for the world’s ills, and in doing so fall right into the laps of the cronyists. In giving power – nay, demanding that power be given – to globalized politicians, they create fertile ground for cronyists to embed themselves.
Many anti-globalists have good intentions, but they are merely useful idiots being leveraged by people with selfish agendas. That, in a nutshell, is the history of socialism and its cousins communism and fascism. “Globalization,” both pro- and anti-, has been adopted into the socialism family.
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