Globalization - Difficulties

There are a lot of challenges involved with reaching a globalized endstate, and the biggest of them is fear.   Given our history, some of it is quite valid.  Some, less so.


Fear that some outside force would dictate terms.  Fear of job loss.  Fear of change.  Fear that we would lose our identity. 


Fear that the UN could come in and force us to change our gun laws.  Fear that the United States would overwhelm a smaller nation.  Fear that the United States would lose it's identity in a flood of immigrants.  Fear that Europe would lose it's identity in a flood of immigration.  Fear of financial disaster.  Of being stuck paying for some 'other' like Greece and the EU right now.  Fear of having our lives affected by strangers we don't know, understand, or care to give such power to.


Funny, though - I sometimes wonder how those proud Virginians, New Yorkers, etc would feel if they saw where we were today.  Our states are about the size of many nations, and those early colonies felt more loyal to their own state than to some new and fuzzy notion of our nation.  Just think of the word change between 'these united states' and 'The United States'.


I think most of those fears are tied up to world history.  That is - in the past, nations were bound together either through conquest or marriage.  Sometimes both.  Since we don't really do dynastic marriages any more, that pretty much leaves conquest.  And nobody wants to be the conquered.


This is, again, part of why I find the Articles of Confederation, the US Constitution, and the European Union so fascinating.  The United Nations to a certain degree, too.  (Though since I'd put it on par with the Articles of Confederation in the inability to enforce decisions, it's not as interesting as the EU at this moment).


I think the only type of system that would gain support would be a system that created another layer of government, so nations would operate sort of like states do in the US today.  (Sure, for simplicity's sake I wonder what it would be like if anyone invoked our laws to apply for statehood.  Given the fears of US dominance as it is, I doubt anyone not already in our sphere would try it.  Though the fuss it would create, the upset it would do to various interest groups, that'd be fun to watch!)


There would be all sorts of questions raised.  One currency?  Taxation?  Executive powers?  National sovereignty? 


Most of those are questions that could be answered, addressed.  Compromised on.  The one thing that can't, the true obstacle, is the first one -


Fear.

Break

I've been thinking about my follow up posts.  Unfortunately, the problem with doing this as a hobby is that I have to fit it in, in my spare time.  (Like lunchtime, right now). 


It doesn't help that I get so focused on writing a post that I lose track of time.  I get like that when I read a really good book, too.  Which is part of why I can't do that during the work week...otherwise I'd stay up until 3 or 4 am to finish it.


Well, let's see what I can do in 20-30 minutes.

Globalization - Opportunities.

I was trying to decide if I should start with the potential positives, or address the pretty hefty fears of globalization. I think the subject of this post makes it clear which one I decided to start with.

I've done a short little search online, trying to track down a reference that is unfortunately lost.  It was to the National Screw Thread Commission.  A commission created in the United States to help standardize screws.  The reference I recall mentioned it as one of the most successful commissions in our history.  It seems a little silly, to talk about the importance of a standardizing a screw.  Yet all it takes is a few moments of thought to realize just how critical it could be.  How much do we take for granted, that if we lose a screw - or ruin one by stripping it - that you can just go to a hardware store and find one that's the right size?  That the threading is the same, and will do exactly what you need?

Something similar happened with train tracks.  Imagine what a disruptive mess it would be if every train track was a different width.  Each train would have to figure out which tracks could support it's design, or you would have to create a one-size-fits-most design that could adjust to the different sized tracks.  Aren't we all better off by having a standardized system for building train tracks?

This does come at a loss, of course.  Nobody could build a monopoly by insisting on their own unique system (the way cell phone companies create phones with their own unique chargers).  There is less room for individuality, less of a chance to distinguish yourself with a unique screw design.

This is the strength and weakness of centralization, standardization, control.  In some situations (like screws and train track widths) it's fairly obvious which one has been better.  In others?  Not so much.

So to get back to globalization - right now each nation has their own way of doing things.  Almost as though they all have a unique train track width, and multi-national companies have to adjust their trains to each different system.  How much do we waste on this?  I see this where I work.  Somewhat.  Now that I'm at our returns center, I occasionally deal with returns from India and China...and sometimes find myself wishing I had a Chinese or Indian customs expert on speed dial.  And labels!  How do we put labels on our parts in all the local languages?  Covering the legal requirements of every nation?  We could wind up with labels larger than the parts themselves!

In addition to consistency, there's an opportunity to simplify, simplify, simplify.  I again did a quick search on a vague reference, and didn't quite find what I was looking for.  I remember hearing about the Code of Hammurabi, which apparently helped consolidate and simplify the laws of that region.  So much of our current system has grown haphazardly, over time, as the world has continued to change.  Sometimes the thought of cleaning it all up, codifying it, and simplifying it appeals.  (Almost too much...I try to remember the downsides, try to appreciate the little quirks, foibles and complexities that have developed over time.)

There are also some opportunities that have more to do with what I've been calling the endstate of globalization.  While going over this in my head, I realized that most of the perceived downsides have more to do with the start/stop process of globalization, than any real problem with the end result.  Fears of job loss, for instance...are more because of the tremendous imbalance in cost of living, currency, etc. between one region and another.  As I started to say in my response, once we're fully globalized a company is about as likely to move their business from the US to Vietnam as they would to move their headquarters from New York to North Judson, Indiana.  Not saying it couldn't be done, but it would depend on the market, the business, property taxes, etc.  The lower cost of living just isn't enough to justify moving when it takes you away from a key location.

Plus, a globalized endstate has the potential to determine what a truly appropriate cost of labor would be.  In a way, the disparities between industrialized world and developing world are suppressing wages in the industrialized one.  Hard to unionize when the company decides to close your factory and move to Mexico, hard to argue for a pay raise when workers in another country could live comfortably off a third of your income.

This isn't meant  as a 'rah, rah international labor movement'.  I believe the current situation skews what a rational business analysis of wages would be.  The companies that want to pay their workers more have to compete with companies that may not care, which means there's pressure on all of them to do more, cheaper.  Just to stay in business.  If the world economy were more balanced, that pressure would be gone and you could see the companies that invest in their people performing better.

Right now, we see a haphazard and inconsistent movement towards evening out the standard of living.  A company moves part of their business to China, for example.  Labor starts off cheap, but then costs go up.  The business then has to decide whether they're going to keep the investment of resources in China, or look to move to Vietnam. (Or some other country.  Countries are interchangable here, I'm not trying to pick on any particular ones.)  If you do that often enough, businesses on their own will even things out.  But not in any well thought out, planned process.  And it would all be affected by current events, political leadership, etc.

Some of that, btw, is not necessarily about cheaper labor.  I think most businesses want to get their toe in the door of the Chinese market.  In a fully globalized world, they probably would want some of their business over there.  Just as Toyota has factories over here in the US.  But those decisions have more to do with where your market is, etc.

Globalization, Endstate, Ways and Means

I posted a position on Brigade, and then felt like I didn't have a clear enough idea of what I wanted to back it up.  Or that it was too complicated, and not something easily explained.  (Even though there's no limit on text in the explanation for your position.  It's still not right to write pages of material explaining.  And it seems too much like a monologue).

The position was this:

Globalization causes upheaval, but we can have policies to ease the transition and the endstate could be good

Someone asked what those policies should be.  I was thinking about what we'd discussed in my class on globalization (back when getting my MPA).  It's a complicated topic, and a complicated process.  It doesn't seem to be happening steadily, either.  We grow more interconnected, trade grows more entwined, and then we get a recession or financial catastrophe.  Off-shoring becomes re-shoring, or on-shoring, or whatever the term used was.

I was fascinated by the notion of a Ricardian system.  One where the comparative advantage dictated where businesses were built.  Build a factory near the best location to ship raw materials, or best location to ship to your market, or both.  Build distribution centers near the roads and airports that will take your product to your customers...where depends on how many you want to build.  (Only one in the continental US?  You probably want to build somewhere close to where ours is. :)  Two?  Three?  You'd split up the locations to better cover a specific region.)

Getting there from here is daunting, though.  Would it mean giving up national sovereignty?  I think that's the big question, and fear.  Does it mean giving up our identity?

What about currency?  Would we be faced with a crisis, like the Greeks with the euro?

And borders.  We've already got a ton of Americans offended at our current immigration policies.  You'd have to be crazy to consider opening the border.  (Though, funny enough, that's the natural counterpoint to go with free trade agreements.  Funny how willing they are to discuss one and not the other.)

If I were thinking long term, strategically...I'd work at breaking down those barriers between the US and Mexico.  There's a certain amount of distrust and dislike, on both sides.  Yet I think integrating all of North America would be a pretty powerful and amazing thing.

Which also heads straight into everyone's fears.  How would you do it?  Nobody wants an invasion, which generally means treaties and diplomatic arrangements.  Yet those can be slow, tedious, and sometimes more about appearances than reality.  (Is the EU really powerful enough?  NATO seems to be run by committee, which raises the question of how well they'd fight.)

Some of those issues remind me of our early American history.  It's hard to remember, before the Civil War, how much individual states really mattered.  How much saying you were from Virginia made a difference.  Now, sure it says something.  Kind of.  But not to the extent it did when we started.  And so much of our Constitution (and the Articles of Confederation) were tied up with allaying fears that individual states would lose out to a powerful central government.

Wait - where are we today?

Brigade (Political Social App), Update

Yet again, it's been a while since I posted here.  I started thinking about it...

Well, a couple of weeks ago I thought it would be interesting to try posting parables, but never got around to it.

More recently, I joined Brigade and had some thoughts I wanted to explore.  Brigade is a pretty new social media app, where you can post a position, choose to agree or disagree, and explain why.  It's in it's infancy, and definitely has some kinks to work out, but so far I'm enjoying it.

It means meeting people who are as interested in politics as I am, some of whom I can learn from and some of whom I can maybe contribute a bit of my experience to.

But...it's not so good at promoting discussions, you're kind of limited to agree/disagree and don't necessarily see the following remarks.  Not the best for an in-depth back and forth.

I read that the creators wanted to keep it simple, and I can see why.  I'm not sure they really should incorporate a forum or discussion board into the application.  But it would be a nice companion, a way of hashing out the nuances before selecting 'agree' or 'disagree'.

Baltimore, Counterinsurgency, and Why I am an Independent, Part II

I made the comparison between insurgents in Iraq and gangs.  Yes, I am aware that there are differences, very real differences.  But there are times when I think we should pay attention to the similarities.  This, btw, creates a similar parallel between counterinsurgency and policing.  (Since many African American communities feel like the police are an alien, invading force it's sometimes more apt than I'd like.)

Our classes on counterinsurgency talked about what makes a nation vulnerable to an insurgency.  There have to be grievances that the insurgent can exploit.  If the majority of the population doesn't have a grievance, then they are less likely to aid and abet an insurgent.  This, btw, is supposed to be one of the great strengths of a democracy.  Our first amendment specifically says we have the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

For a little more graphic detail - in the Algerian war for independence, the nationalists committed horrific acts.  The French were horrified, and reacted so strongly that they imprisoned and alienated Algerians who were previously neutral.  In so doing, they basically created the insurgency that would eventually defeat them.  (Opened up a whole bunch of issues that trouble the Algerians today, but that's a different story.) 

This isn't just wishful thinking, or naivety.  One of David Galula's famous laws of counterinsurgency is that "Most of the population will be neutral in the conflict; support of the masses can be obtained with the help of an active friendly minority."  Bad decisions on the part of a counterinsurgent can and will turn those neutral masses into outright hostiles.  Getting the population on your side, however, makes it harder and harder for the insurgent to hide.

Ferguson, Baltimore - these things could not have blown up the way they did if there weren't grievances to exploit.  The rioting seems to give people (who are unwilling to address those grievances in the first place) an excuse to ignore those grievances.  To blame it all on bad parenting, or stupid criminals.  

Now, I've heard questions about the Baltimore riots.  People saying it was instigated (whether by professional agitators or an overreacting police force, who knows?  I wasn't there.)  I've also heard that the vast majority of the protests were peaceful, and that it was the media hunt for a certain kind of story that has made the riots the face of Baltimore protest.  Again, I wasn't there.  I don't know.  The people saying these things seem to be locals, and seem likely to know more than I do.  And, let's face it, after seeing the media mangle Iraq I could totally believe that they'd focus on a few rioters and ignore the majority that didn't.

What I do know is this - yet again grievances are not being addressed.  They are sidelined.  Marginalized.  Ignored.  Stories about riots overshadow, by a great degree, the question of how someone who was arrested without force or incident could be dead a week later.

Whether or not someone has a criminal record should not affect whether he's alive a week after he was arrested.  It is not justice for a cop to rough someone up because they 'know' he's a bad guy...

Any more than it would be okay for a soldier to beat a detainee that they 'know' is al Qaeda.

Baltimore, Counterinsurgency, and Why I am an Independent, Part I

I would post about Baltimore, but I already put something up on Facebook and I don't feel like repeating myself.  I will say, however, that this article nails what I think pretty well.

I am blogging instead, because something I want to dig a little deeper into a passing thought.  My experiences in Iraq have turned me off the political parties (and the echo chamber of television news) pretty bad.

I like to call myself an independent. I believe I'm focused more on solutions...in public affairs we discussed evidence-based public policy, and I'm all for that.  I turned away from the political parties because I think they are so caught up in their rhetoric, their worldview, and promoting certain ideologies that they've lost touch with the real world and no longer represent the average American.

I can go into long explanations on the reasons why, but that would take too long and I don't have any good solutions to offer.

I could discuss this with almost any topic, but this is about my experiences in Iraq, so I'll stick with that.

It felt like both parties were trying to make Iraq a Vietnam II.  The same rhetoric, the same competing world views.  "Stay the course".  "Why keep losing American lives needlessly?"  "Violence begets violence, you can never win if you resort to violence" "We have to fight terrorists with overwhelming force"

Each statement is packed with all sorts of assumptions and beliefs.  Again, it would take too long to address them all.  Let me start with a few:

"Stay the course" - this goes back to the belief that we won every single battle in Vietnam but lost the war.  Why?  Because the American people lost the will to keep fighting.  If we had just stuck with it, we could have won.

From what I've read, there is *some* evidence for this.  The North Vietnamese lost a lot of people in the Tet Offensive.  But I don't think we lost because we 'were betrayed at home'.  We lost because of bad leadership.  We lost because our leaders lost credibility.  The American people did not believe there was a viable plan, they felt we were stuck in a quagmire, and there was no real counterargument.  To bring this back to Iraq - "Stay the course" was a stupid leadership strategy.  Especially when any soldier over there could see that we were playing 'whack a  mole', losing areas as soon as we left.  The Iraq forces were a joke, and the great plan involved ignoring their weaknesses in order to prop them up and get the hell out.  The surge, as well as the changes in strategy, all constituted changes that should have been done even earlier.  And I think could have, if leadership wasn't stuck in a bubble and unwilling to consider alternatives.

"Violence begets violence, and never wins" - this was something I used to agree with, actually.  It made sense - you hit me, I get angry and hit you back.  We wind up starting a personal feud.  Heck, maybe it even grows to be a family feud.  Or a tribal one.  Or even national.  But I heard so many people use that argument to claim that the situation in Iraq was hopeless.  That there was nothing we could do.  That we should just cut our losses and leave.  Now, this may be hard to convince people of when we're back in Iraq again...but that is BS.  Let's start at a macro level.  If violence didn't appear to work, people would have stopped fighting millenia ago.  Don't get me wrong - I think it's sad to lose any culture, I think every different culture offers new insights into what it means to be human.  New ideas to play with.  I think it's sad for any culture to really die out.  But the modern world was created, in part, by the violence of the past.  Tribal migrations that displaced others.  These things are so far in the past, now, that it's hard to relate to the losses involved...but do you think the Duke of Normandy, if he knew what the history of England would be, would think invading England was a bad idea? This world view is the kind of thing that appeals to people who already believe, and will be completely ignored by the ones who don't.

I think what sticks in my craw, here, is the belief that violence never wins. On a personal level, I still kind of agree...but I didn't think the situation in Iraq was hopeless.  I do think there are situations where an army, with good strategy and good leadership, can make a difference.  I feel like pretending that isn't so actually makes it harder to be effective, because your refusal to understand and learn about warfare leaves you vulnerable to the ones who don't.  The issue, to me, was not that we were doomed to failure.  It was that the horrible decisions made by people who were supposed to know better had very real, and deadly, consequences.

Even worse...we had invaded a country, disrupted the established order, let loose chaos and violence...and then the people who believed this felt that the only answer was to abandon everything.  I find myself struggling to explain why this was so horrifying to me, so here's another way of putting it -

One of the articles I read discussed the viewpoints of Iraqis in a town that US forces repeatedly had cleared.  To them, the real crime was when we came in, cleared out the bad guys and then left.  Why?  Because the bad guys came back, and they killed anyone they thought collaborated with us.  And the next time we came around, there was no reason to believe we were there to stay, or that they wouldn't face threats from the bad guys as soon as we left again.

And these were bad guys.  This wasn't some nice little insurgency where the Iraqis were all working together to oust the evil imperialists.  The Iraqis were not rejoicing when we left, and welcoming back the insurgents with open arms.  (Or not everywhere, at least.  Obviously they had supporters and bases.)  This was Iraqis who were terrified of what the insurgents would do to them if they didn't go along.

I don't know if I could have morally supported us in Iraq, if we had been facing the Iraqi equivalent of a George Washington.  But all too often the ones we were fighting acted more like gangs.

Which brings me to Baltimore.  Since this has gotten long, I'll go into that in Part II.