Dismal Scientist exposes "Enemies of the WTO"[thought folx might be interested in paul krugman/slate's take on
anti-wto activists. short version: activists are pissed because
"globalization" has ruined thier vacations.]
Qx: I know I copied this but I feel that the upcoming WTO meeting has to be challenged in Seattle.
THE DISMAL SCIENCE
Enemies of the WTO
Bogus arguments against the World Trade Organization.
By Paul Krugman
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 23, 1999, at 4:30 p.m. PT
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a two-page spread in
the New York Times, featuring more than a dozen pictures, can
speak volumes. And sure enough, the lavish Nov. 15
advertisement by the Turning Point Project, a coalition of
activists opposed to globalization in general and the World
Trade Organization in particular, said more than any merely
verbal exposition about what really motivates those activists
could. Indeed, it revealed quite a bit more than its sponsors intended.
The occasion for the ad was the upcoming WTO "ministerial"
taking place in Seattle in a few days. The WTO has become to
leftist mythology what the United Nations is to the militia
movement: the center of a global conspiracy against all that
is good and decent. According to the myth, the
"ultra-secretive" WTO has become a sort of super-governmental
body that forces nations to bow to the wishes of
multinational corporations. It destroys local cultures, the
headline on the ad read "Global Monoculture"; it despoils the
environment; and it rides roughshod over democracy, forcing
governments to remove laws that conflict with its sinister purposes.
Like most successful urban legends, this one is based on a
sliver of truth. The gradual global progress toward free
trade that began in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt
introduced the Trade Agreements Program, has always depended
on international negotiations: I'll reduce my tariffs if you
reduce yours. But there has always been the problem of
governments that give with one hand and take away with the
other, that dutifully remove tariffs and then use other
excuses to keep imports out. (Certainement, there is free
trade within the European Union, but those British cows, they
are not safe.) To make agreements work there has to be some
kind of quasi-judicial process that determines when
ostensibly domestic measures are de facto a reimposition of
trade barriers and hence a violation of treaty. Under the
pre-WTO system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,
this process was slow and cumbersome. It has now become
swifter and more decisive. Inevitably, some of its decisions
can be challenged: Was the U.S. ban on dolphin-unsafe tuna
really a trade barrier in disguise? But the much-feared power
of the WTO to overrule local laws is strictly limited to
enforcement of the spirit of existing agreements. It cannot
in any important way force countries that are skeptical about
the benefits of globalization to open themselves further to
foreign trade and investment. If most countries nonetheless
are eager or at least willing to participate in
globalization, it is because they are convinced that it is in
their own interests.
And by and large they are right. The raw fact is that every
successful example of economic development this past
century--every case of a poor nation that worked its way up
to a more or less decent, or at least dramatically better,
standard of living--has taken place via globalization; that
is, by producing for the world market rather than trying for
self-sufficiency. Many of the workers who do that production
for the global market are very badly paid by First World
standards. But to claim that they have been impoverished by
globalization, you have to carefully ignore comparisons
across time and space--namely, you have to forget that those
workers were even poorer before the new exporting jobs became
available and ignore the fact that those who do not have
access to the global market are far worse off than those who
do. (See my old Slate piece "In Praise of Cheap Labor
[/Dismal/97-03-20/Dismal.asp].") The financial crisis
of 1997-99 temporarily gave those who claim that
globalization is bad for workers everywhere a bit of
ammunition, but the crisis did not go on forever, and anyway
the solution to future crises surely involves some policing
of short-term capital movements rather than a retreat from
globalization as a whole. Even the Malaysians continue to
welcome long-term foreign investors and place their faith on
manufactured exports.
What about the environment? Certainly some forests have been
cut down to feed global markets. But nations that are
heedless of the environment are quite capable of doing
immense damage without the help of multinational
corporations--just ask the Eastern Europeans. For what it is
worth, the most conspicuous examples of environmental pillage
in the Third World today have nothing to do with the WTO. The
forest fires that envelop Southeast Asia in an annual smoke
cloud are set by land-hungry locals; the subsidized
destruction of Amazonian rain forests began as part of a
Brazilian strategy of inward-looking development. On the
whole, integration of the world economy, which puts national
actions under international scrutiny, is probably on balance
a force toward better, not worse, environmental policies.
But anyway, these are side issues, because what that
advertisement makes clear--clearer, I suspect, than its
sponsors intended--is that the opposition to globalization
actually has very little to do with wages or the environment.
After all, leaving aside a photo of tree stumps and another
of an outfall pipe, here are the horrors of globalization the
Turning Point Project chose to illustrate:
A highway interchange, a parking lot filled with cars, a
traffic jam, suburban tract housing, an apartment building
with numerous satellite dishes, an office with many computer
screens, office workers on a busy street, high-rise office
buildings, a "factory farm" with many chickens, a supermarket
aisle, a McDonald's arch.
Each picture was accompanied by a caption asking, "Is this Los
Angeles or Cairo?" "Is this India or London?" etc.
What is so horrible about these scenes? Here's what the ad
says, "A few decades ago, it was still possible to leave home
and go somewhere else: The architecture was different, the
landscape was different, the language, dress, and values were
different. That was a time when we could speak of cultural
diversity. But with economic globalization, diversity is fast
disappearing."
You can't argue with that; lives there the tourist with soul
so dead that he does not wish that he could visit rural
France, or Mexico City, or for that matter Kansas City the
way they were, rather than the way they are? But the world is
not run for the edification of tourists. It is or should be
run for the benefit of ordinary people in their daily lives.
And that is where the indignation of the Turning Point people
starts to seem rather strange.
For surely the most striking thing about the horrors of
globalization illustrated in those photos is that for most of
the world's people they represent aspirations, things they
wish they had, rather than ominous threats. Traffic jams and
ugly interchanges are annoying, but most people would gladly
accept that annoyance in exchange for the freedom that comes
with owning a car (and more to the point, being wealthy
enough to afford one). Tract housing and apartment buildings
may be ugly, but they are paradise compared with village huts
or urban shanties. Wearing a suit and working at a computer
in an office tower are, believe it or not, preferable to
backbreaking work in a rice paddy. Today In Slate
[/Dismal/99-11-23/SideB01.asp]
Now, of course what is good for the individual is not always
good if everyone else does it too. Having a big house with a
garden is nice, but seeing the countryside covered by
suburban sprawl is not, and we might all be better off if we
could all agree (or be convinced by tax incentives) to take
up a bit less space. The same goes for cultural choices:
Boston residents who indulge their taste for Canadian divas
do undermine the prospects of local singer-songwriters and
might be collectively better off if local radio stations had
some kind of cultural content rule. But there is a very fine
line between such arguments for collective action and
supercilious paternalism, especially when cultural matters
are concerned; are we warning societies about unintended
consequences or are we simply disagreeing with individual tastes?
And it is very clear from the advertisement in the Times that
the Turning Point Project--and the whole movement it
represents--are on the supercilious side of that line.
Although they talk of freedom and democracy, their key demand
is that individuals be prevented from getting what they
want--that governments be free, nay encouraged, to deny
individuals the right to drive cars, work in offices, eat
cheeseburgers, and watch satellite TV. Why? Presumably
because people will really be happier if they retain their
traditional "language, dress, and values." Thus, Spaniards
would be happier if they still dressed in black and let
narrow-minded priests run their lives, and residents of the
American South would be happier if planters still sipped mint
juleps, wore white suits, and accepted traditional deference
from sharecroppers ... instead of living in this "dreary"
modern world in which Madrid is just like Paris and Atlanta
is just like New York.
Well, somehow I suspect that the residents of Madrid and
Atlanta, while they may regret some loss of tradition, prefer
modernity. And you know what? I think the rest of the world
has the right to make the same choice.
[thought folx might be interested in paul krugman/slate's take on
anti-wto activists. short version: activists are pissed because
"globalization" has ruined thier vacations.]
THE DISMAL SCIENCE
Enemies of the WTO
Bogus arguments against the World Trade Organization.
By Paul Krugman
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 23, 1999, at 4:30 p.m. PT
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a two-page spread in
the New York Times, featuring more than a dozen pictures, can
speak volumes. And sure enough, the lavish Nov. 15
advertisement by the Turning Point Project, a coalition of
activists opposed to globalization in general and the World
Trade Organization in particular, said more than any merely
verbal exposition about what really motivates those activists
could. Indeed, it revealed quite a bit more than its sponsors intended.
The occasion for the ad was the upcoming WTO "ministerial"
taking place in Seattle in a few days. The WTO has become to
leftist mythology what the United Nations is to the militia
movement: the center of a global conspiracy against all that
is good and decent. According to the myth, the
"ultra-secretive" WTO has become a sort of super-governmental
body that forces nations to bow to the wishes of
multinational corporations. It destroys local cultures, the
headline on the ad read "Global Monoculture"; it despoils the
environment; and it rides roughshod over democracy, forcing
governments to remove laws that conflict with its sinister purposes.
Like most successful urban legends, this one is based on a
sliver of truth. The gradual global progress toward free
trade that began in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt
introduced the Trade Agreements Program, has always depended
on international negotiations: I'll reduce my tariffs if you
reduce yours. But there has always been the problem of
governments that give with one hand and take away with the
other, that dutifully remove tariffs and then use other
excuses to keep imports out. (Certainement, there is free
trade within the European Union, but those British cows, they
are not safe.) To make agreements work there has to be some
kind of quasi-judicial process that determines when
ostensibly domestic measures are de facto a reimposition of
trade barriers and hence a violation of treaty. Under the
pre-WTO system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,
this process was slow and cumbersome. It has now become
swifter and more decisive. Inevitably, some of its decisions
can be challenged: Was the U.S. ban on dolphin-unsafe tuna
really a trade barrier in disguise? But the much-feared power
of the WTO to overrule local laws is strictly limited to
enforcement of the spirit of existing agreements. It cannot
in any important way force countries that are skeptical about
the benefits of globalization to open themselves further to
foreign trade and investment. If most countries nonetheless
are eager or at least willing to participate in
globalization, it is because they are convinced that it is in
their own interests.
And by and large they are right. The raw fact is that every
successful example of economic development this past
century--every case of a poor nation that worked its way up
to a more or less decent, or at least dramatically better,
standard of living--has taken place via globalization; that
is, by producing for the world market rather than trying for
self-sufficiency. Many of the workers who do that production
for the global market are very badly paid by First World
standards. But to claim that they have been impoverished by
globalization, you have to carefully ignore comparisons
across time and space--namely, you have to forget that those
workers were even poorer before the new exporting jobs became
available and ignore the fact that those who do not have
access to the global market are far worse off than those who
do. (See my old Slate piece "In Praise of Cheap Labor
[/Dismal/97-03-20/Dismal.asp].") The financial crisis
of 1997-99 temporarily gave those who claim that
globalization is bad for workers everywhere a bit of
ammunition, but the crisis did not go on forever, and anyway
the solution to future crises surely involves some policing
of short-term capital movements rather than a retreat from
globalization as a whole. Even the Malaysians continue to
welcome long-term foreign investors and place their faith on
manufactured exports.
What about the environment? Certainly some forests have been
cut down to feed global markets. But nations that are
heedless of the environment are quite capable of doing
immense damage without the help of multinational
corporations--just ask the Eastern Europeans. For what it is
worth, the most conspicuous examples of environmental pillage
in the Third World today have nothing to do with the WTO. The
forest fires that envelop Southeast Asia in an annual smoke
cloud are set by land-hungry locals; the subsidized
destruction of Amazonian rain forests began as part of a
Brazilian strategy of inward-looking development. On the
whole, integration of the world economy, which puts national
actions under international scrutiny, is probably on balance
a force toward better, not worse, environmental policies.
But anyway, these are side issues, because what that
advertisement makes clear--clearer, I suspect, than its
sponsors intended--is that the opposition to globalization
actually has very little to do with wages or the environment.
After all, leaving aside a photo of tree stumps and another
of an outfall pipe, here are the horrors of globalization the
Turning Point Project chose to illustrate:
A highway interchange, a parking lot filled with cars, a
traffic jam, suburban tract housing, an apartment building
with numerous satellite dishes, an office with many computer
screens, office workers on a busy street, high-rise office
buildings, a "factory farm" with many chickens, a supermarket
aisle, a McDonald's arch.
Each picture was accompanied by a caption asking, "Is this Los
Angeles or Cairo?" "Is this India or London?" etc.
What is so horrible about these scenes? Here's what the ad
says, "A few decades ago, it was still possible to leave home
and go somewhere else: The architecture was different, the
landscape was different, the language, dress, and values were
different. That was a time when we could speak of cultural
diversity. But with economic globalization, diversity is fast
disappearing."
You can't argue with that; lives there the tourist with soul
so dead that he does not wish that he could visit rural
France, or Mexico City, or for that matter Kansas City the
way they were, rather than the way they are? But the world is
not run for the edification of tourists. It is or should be
run for the benefit of ordinary people in their daily lives.
And that is where the indignation of the Turning Point people
starts to seem rather strange.
For surely the most striking thing about the horrors of
globalization illustrated in those photos is that for most of
the world's people they represent aspirations, things they
wish they had, rather than ominous threats. Traffic jams and
ugly interchanges are annoying, but most people would gladly
accept that annoyance in exchange for the freedom that comes
with owning a car (and more to the point, being wealthy
enough to afford one). Tract housing and apartment buildings
may be ugly, but they are paradise compared with village huts
or urban shanties. Wearing a suit and working at a computer
in an office tower are, believe it or not, preferable to
backbreaking work in a rice paddy. Today In Slate
[/Dismal/99-11-23/SideB01.asp]
Now, of course what is good for the individual is not always
good if everyone else does it too. Having a big house with a
garden is nice, but seeing the countryside covered by
suburban sprawl is not, and we might all be better off if we
could all agree (or be convinced by tax incentives) to take
up a bit less space. The same goes for cultural choices:
Boston residents who indulge their taste for Canadian divas
do undermine the prospects of local singer-songwriters and
might be collectively better off if local radio stations had
some kind of cultural content rule. But there is a very fine
line between such arguments for collective action and
supercilious paternalism, especially when cultural matters
are concerned; are we warning societies about unintended
consequences or are we simply disagreeing with individual tastes?
And it is very clear from the advertisement in the Times that
the Turning Point Project--and the whole movement it
represents--are on the supercilious side of that line.
Although they talk of freedom and democracy, their key demand
is that individuals be prevented from getting what they
want--that governments be free, nay encouraged, to deny
individuals the right to drive cars, work in offices, eat
cheeseburgers, and watch satellite TV. Why? Presumably
because people will really be happier if they retain their
traditional "language, dress, and values." Thus, Spaniards
would be happier if they still dressed in black and let
narrow-minded priests run their lives, and residents of the
American South would be happier if planters still sipped mint
juleps, wore white suits, and accepted traditional deference
from sharecroppers ... instead of living in this "dreary"
modern world in which Madrid is just like Paris and Atlanta
is just like New York.
Well, somehow I suspect that the residents of Madrid and
Atlanta, while they may regret some loss of tradition, prefer
modernity. And you know what? I think the rest of the world
has the right to make the same choice.
None.
