Or just the threatening, bitter result of another spate of greed and ignorance on a global scale? Pogo correctly identified the enemy a half century back?
Is Protectionism God's answer to Globalization?
Sun, 2009-02-01 07:58
#1
Is Protectionism God's answer to Globalization?
Sun, 2009-02-01 10:19
#2
remind
A God has SFA to do with anything in this material world and I fail to see how a hot dog covered in corn batter could correctly identify anything. ;)
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"watching the tide roll away"
Sun, 2009-02-01 19:52
#3
Yeah, this old agnostic put it down to greed and ignorance too, Remind.
But it sure is acting as a corrective to something that seems to have disappeared from concern central, eh?
Now we just have to see what protectionism will do in the place of that hated globalization (and if we don't start making the items that have gone offshort in the last 30 years, it won't be pretty).
"God" was thrown in there as a humorous take on the great debate raging nextdoor in this forum about religious freedom.
But while much heat is expended on such subjects, events in your "material world" emerge unchallenged.
Or perhaps you have seen where emergent concerns for protectionism have replaced the old challenge to globalization in a shrinking economic world and I've missed it?
Sun, 2009-02-01 20:03
#4
As a Marxist, I'm all for globalization and establishing solidarity with international workers. Capitalists have pushed their own version of it and are giving it a bad name like everything else they do.
Sun, 2009-02-01 20:12
#5
But it is the globalization frowned on by the Council of Canadians, John Ralston Saul and Naomi Klein that is being challenged by shrinking economies Fidel - not your mental construct.
You know, the one that is taking away our sovereignty.
Sun, 2009-02-01 21:09
#6
I can appreciate what Saul says here:
Globalisation has been presented to us, sold to us for 25 years now, because that's when it first 25 years ago got a hold of a government. Happened to be the Chilean government interestingly enough. It has been sold to us as something which is and will be inevitable.
Now it's curious because those same people are the people who keep saying democracy has been winning, there's more and more democracy in the world, thanks to globalisation. But how can you have democracy if everything's inevitable? What's the point in voting, what's the point in choosing?
I mean if everything's inevitable why would we waste our time in being citizens? I mean if everything's inevitable let's just get some nice sort of, you know, not too nasty dictator to look after things! Look after the detail since everything's going to happen anyway, and all we're doing is negotiating half percentage points of the directions that we're going to take. It's not worth not going to the beach if that's all democracy is.
Globalizers cant pull the wool over JRS's eyes. He knows what they've been up to.
Mon, 2009-02-02 06:14
#7
"Globalizers cant pull the wool over JRS's eyes. He knows what they've been up to."
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Right on, Fidel.
But John Ralston Saul, who, philosophically dislikes any hint that the working world (materialism) could have any permanent hold over the free thinking of humanity, doesn't tell us how we will make a living in the emerging protectionist world either.
Being "a citizen" is JR's thing. And you have to be an unencumbered thinker to be "a citizen" (the highest order) in his books. So there can't be talk of determinism, eh? There is that one worrisome little fly in his philosophical ointment that has bothered me since "Voltaire's Bastards."
Or did you find his piece on the end of globalization hopeful in that regard?
Mon, 2009-02-02 14:40
#8
I think back to something I read about Chief Crazy Horse and what he said to white settlers about the need to work for a living. He apparently said something to the effect, You whites can work all you want. But it's not our way.
I dont think people will take to living nomadic lives, at least not all at once. But I do realize that if we are to take from nature, it should be for very good reasons. We cant afford to leave imortant decisions to market diktats anymore. Capitalism is extremely efficient at wealth creation, or adding value to natural resource wealth so to speak, but it's god-awful with fair and equal distribution. I think that as long as much will have more, so will many. Capitalists have created fairly complex economy world-wide to date, and we've become reliant on mechanism for trade and commerce that are now in question. A total rework is needed, imo. I think John Raulston Saul realizes the uncertainty of it all, and especially without thanks to the current order of things, or disorder, take our pick.
Mon, 2009-02-02 14:43
#9
And I think you had better read some Saul, Fidel.
Your "reading" of Crazy Horse sounds like it came from a white supremacist out of Chicago.
Mon, 2009-02-02 14:50
#10
And I think you had better read some Saul, Fidel.
Your "reading" of Crazy Horse sounds like it came from a white supremacist out of Chicago.
Ah! [url=http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Wisdom/CrazyHorse.html][color=mediumbl... Horse on predatory kapitalism[/color][/url]
"We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here, you are taking my land from me, you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live.
Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work if you want to. We do not interfere with you, and again you say why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them."
Who's crazy now?
Mon, 2009-02-02 15:02
#11
Do you not understand the different impact on the reader- perhaps one working his ass off - given the absence of context in the first instance, Fidel?
ANd I read about his superior tactical skills in the Battle of Little Big Horn as a child. A marvelous read.
Mon, 2009-02-02 15:09
#12
I'm not sure what youre getting at, George, no. Perhaps you will explain?