Globalisation

[Zanza]

  French food snobbery. How original.

[Duque de Bragança]

Luso-French/Latin/Welsch/Whatever food snobbery.

Por favor! French people have not been the ones complaining.

[Oexmelin]

Indeed. Technological progress in general has favoured the lower classes throughout history. (it basically made things that were exclusive to the rich more widely available) It is just the sad way of things that they always had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a better age.

That's terrible history.

[mongers]

Indeed. Technological progress in general has favoured the lower classes throughout history. (it basically made things that were exclusive to the rich more widely available) It is just the sad way of things that they always had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a better age.

That's terrible history.

We're not talking about Hungary.

[Monoriu]

What can I say.  Hong Kong won't even exist without globalisation. 

[Ed Anger]

Fuck yeah, I benefitted.

[Camerus]

I am a substantial winner. I lived abroad for years, got married and brought back a sizeable amount (by middle class standards anyway) from overseas. I invest in international markets and am also something of a restaurant hound,  so I enjoy the multicultural cuisine options.

[Razgovory]

What is weird about this anti-globalist talk from Americans is that this is the system we set up. It was designed to benefit all the countries that play ball.  Mexico and China becoming wealthy is not a problem, it's part of the whole point of this.  Are there problems?  Of course, it isn't perfect, but hundreds of millions have been lifted out of dire poverty.  But the US trying to leave the global economic system would be like Great Britain trying secede from their own empire.

[viper37]

Indeed. Technological progress in general has favoured the lower classes throughout history. (it basically made things that were exclusive to the rich more widely available) It is just the sad way of things that they always had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a better age.

That's terrible history.

how so?  was it a better world when only the very rich could own a car?

[CountDeMoney]

how so?  was it a better world when only the very rich could own a car?

Yes, that would explain the rare and economically out-of-reach Ford Model T.

[Oexmelin]

how so?  was it a better world when only the very rich could own a car?

I don't have too much time, but the idea that history "proves" that technology guarantees a better future for all, and that the lower classes had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a better age is fairy-tale history for self-satisfied "classical liberals". One easy criticism is that what constitutes "best" is not adjudicated by technology, but by values drawn from political philosophy. One can be incredibly efficient at killing millions of people, and warfare now has the potential of being much deadlier than it ever was. Is that a better world? Conversely, the accessibility of incredibly efficient modes of killing has nonetheless accompanied a decline in homicide rates in Europe and North America. Is this thanks to technology?  Technological progress -- which, contrary to what the focus on automatization suggests is not limited to production -- also allowed much tighter control of enslaved and colonial population during the 19th century, and they certainly qualified for being "the lower classes". 19th century urbanization brought dreadful mortality - higher than, say, the 18th century countryside - that political activism reversed. And lower class reluctance has much more to do with the realization that they would *still* be the losers of a changing world. This would be akin to heaping scorn upon aristocrats for being reluctant to be dragged kicking and screaming at the guillotine - sorry, "into political modernity".

[Zanza]

A few negative effects can hardly overshadow the vast progress that technology has meant for the human condition.

It was only after we invented agriculture and some other basic technologies that people even had a chance to become philosophers.

And what we gained in deadlier weapons, we way over compensated with medicine, hygiene, nutrition etc.

Not every bit of technology is a collective good, but technology overall is.

[Valmy]

I don't have too much time, but the idea that history "proves" that technology guarantees a better future for all, and that the lower classes had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a better age is fairy-tale history for self-satisfied "classical liberals". One easy criticism is that what constitutes "best" is not adjudicated by technology, but by values drawn from political philosophy. One can be incredibly efficient at killing millions of people, and warfare now has the potential of being much deadlier than it ever was. Is that a better world? Conversely, the accessibility of incredibly efficient modes of killing has nonetheless accompanied a decline in homicide rates in Europe and North America. Is this thanks to technology?  Technological progress -- which, contrary to what the focus on automatization suggests is not limited to production -- also allowed much tighter control of enslaved and colonial population during the 19th century, and they certainly qualified for being "the lower classes". 19th century urbanization brought dreadful mortality - higher than, say, the 18th century countryside - that political activism reversed. And lower class reluctance has much more to do with the realization that they would *still* be the losers of a changing world. This would be akin to heaping scorn upon aristocrats for being reluctant to be dragged kicking and screaming at the guillotine - sorry, "into political modernity".

Apologists of technology cannot have it both ways, claiming that technology is both value-neutral and a collective good.



Another is that the scale of technological change we have witnessed in the past 200 years is so unprecedented in scale and rapidity that history is a poor guide for the future.

Indeed, one could very well argue, for instance, that technology accompanied

We have become incredibly good at killing

Technology is only as good as the engineering priorities in its design which are determined by many different factors. We are headed rapidly in a direction now, nobody knows quite where. Instead of gnashing teeth about how it is not like the 18th century, or the 1960s and 1970s anymore people need to be thinking about the future and how we want things to go.

I don't see much point is sitting around bemoaning reality. The clock is not going to be turned back.

The funny part of what you are swaying is that you point to the horrors of factory labor. Well now what are we facing? People longing for a return to a factory labor system.

[Oexmelin]

A few negative effects can hardly overshadow the vast progress that technology has meant for the human condition.
It was only after we invented agriculture and some other basic technologies that people even had a chance to become philosophers.

I don't know how one can meaningfully make that calculation outside an article of faith. At best, we end up self-congratulating ourselves for a history that seems inevitably to lead to us. I am happy we have philosophers. But I also know that philosophers emerged in societies that had had to become vastly unequal. Was it better to live a slave in the Roman Empire, or a free man amongst the Scythians or the Germans? How can we meaningfully answer these things? Was it better to work at the factory for 10-12 hours, or in the fields for 5-6? Is it better to have two weeks of paid vacation, or to live in a society where one day out of three is a holy day? We are products of societies which obviously value the kind of things which make us judge past societies as lacking, but that says little about the goods of technology. The "compensatory" technologies you evoke were not explicitly devised as compensation: only in this quite debatable cost-benefit analysis are we putting them side by side, as if "technology" was a self-animating force. In fact, I can very easily envision a society in which technology is used to enslave others (and to call this "a few negative effects" seems cold for something deployed at that scale): it's not the cotton gin that killed slavery, it's political activism. More technology doesn't necessarily makes us freer, or more equal, or even more comfortable if there is no political will to make it so.

[Oexmelin]

We are headed rapidly in a direction now, nobody knows quite where. Instead of gnashing teeth about how it is not like the 18th century, or the 1960s and 1970s anymore people need to be thinking about the future and how we want things to go.

I entirely agree. My point is that our answer to all political and economic challenges seem to always be "more technology" - it's faith in technology as an impersonal force for good. This is the point I am contesting. We need to be thinking politically about technology.

The funny part of what you are swaying is that you point to the horrors of factory labor. Well now what are we facing? People longing for a return to a factory labor system.

When my father bemoans the end of the factory, it's not the 19th c. steel mill, or the 21st century sweatshop he bemoans; it's the factory that existed under social-democracy.