Whatever happened to the anti-globalisers?

And so to globalisation. Whatever happened to the anti-globalisation protesters? They got a lot of mileage picketing Davos and other places frequented by the great and not-so-good, and then disappeared like the morning dew.

 

Menu for tonight; roast duck, sweet potatoes, new potatoes, long beans, followed by a nice ripe papaya.

 

The duck is from China, the yams from the West Indies, the beans from Kenya, and the papaya from Brazil. There is no such thing as ‘season’s vegetables’ any more. We can get pretty well all we want year-round.

 

The transformation wrought by globalisation has been staggering. Only a few years ago, the growers of the beans would have been subsistence farmers of members of Kenya’s vast army of unemployed. Now they are part of an operation which is so slick fresh roses are on sale in London the following day.

A heart-warming story from Zimbabwe: in anticipation of his farm being stolen by Mugabe’s thugs, he did a deal with his employees. He gave them the land and he processed the vegetables and exported them to London. All were happy and making good money.

 

Then along comes the ZANU mob demanding to take over the land. The women (who do most farm work) were having none of it. Confronting the mob with budzas and pangas, they soon saw them off!

 

Globalisation is what it says: a global phenomenon; we tend to think of it sole in terms of economics, but we have globalisation of tourism, culture (especially American), fashion, politics and particularly language. Apparently the percentage of English in internet traffic is colossal; the next biggest, Japanese, doesn’t even make double figures.

 

As to economic globalisation, it is said that since India opened up in 1991 300,000,000 people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. I haven’t seen equivalent figures for China, but since it joined the real world in 1980 they must be even bigger. Of course, China has a particular problem. It needs to create 5 million jobs a year just to stand still. If it fails, watch out for political instability that would suit none of us. For them, globalisation is as much political as economic.

 

What the antis don’t seem to understand is that globalisation means mutualisation. In simple terms it is an expression of the theory of comparative advantage – if I am better than you at making hammers and you are better than me at making nails it makes obvious sense for us to specialise and trade with each other instead of the beggar thy neighbour stance advocated by the antis. Although China may be best known for manufacturing, the Germans have a massive trade with Mr Chin in the machine tools. Audis from Germany not locally-assembled Toyotas are the car of choice amongst the nouveaux. Rolls can’t knock ‘em out fast enough for the top strata, and Jaguar is doing just fine, thank you.

 

And it is a waste of time to try to make a case ‘for’ or ‘against’. Globalisation has been going on since civilisation began. It is not a ‘policy’ or an ‘ideology’.  It is a happening that is not controllable.

 

Attempts to control it have always ended in tears. Of course, you can go in for protectionism, one of the chief factors that led to the economic distress of the 1930’s and WW2. But the effect is always to invite retaliation and trade wars, let alone the fact that it increases the price of goods to your own people.

 

Or you can go down the road of subsidies. This is the weapon of choice for the EU, which is protectionist by nature. The CAP deliberately discriminates against agricultural products from the third world. For example, subsidies on sugar, a tropical crop by rights, heavily disadvantages countries like Jamaica and Malawi, especially as it produces more than it needs and dumps the surplus on world markets. And as we know it disadvantages the European consumer by increasing the cost per person of the family shopping basket by over € 1100 a year the total cost to the taxpayer is €53 billion.

 

Some countries limit exports – Russia with wheat at this time. This also distorts markets.

 

The unspoken message of the antis is ‘We shall keep you poor so that we can stay rich’.

 

Well, it may be a case of ‘Stop the world, I want to get off’, but it just won’t do your bidding.