Oink

It's all about surplus value.

Lord Vader

You need the right environment. Communism limits the environment in which ideas can flourish.

Oink

No it doesn't, that's bollox crap. Marx wrote, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs)." Communism is probably the most democratic system of political administration that we’ve ever come up with.

Lord Vader

except in practice

dbd33

Ha! And I was about to respond to the reference to me by saying that my ignoring his sales pitches should not be taken as acceptance of there being even a hint of truth in them.

FWIW, I've done without a lawn sprinkler for two decades because I haven't seen any made in the USA or Europe. That's my position on most consumer durables.

<thumps table>

"How many dinners did the Taiwanese put on here, eh?"

Atlantic Xpat

How much of your John Deere is actually made in North America d'ya think?

dbd33

Not the motor, that's Japanese. And the cars are as bad. There's nothing to be proud of in my driveway.

Oakvillian

My reference to you was only to point out that the services IT contractor provide fall into the same general category of "business services" as those provided by lawyers. I thought you would appreciate being in the same pigeonhole.

I'm glad that you and Novo take such pleasure in belittling my employment. I see very little difference between what you do and what I do; Novo, I appreciate, comes at it from an ideological standpoint that his ivory tower affords him the luxury of holding, but in the bits of this discussion that weren't simply tit-for-tat insults there seems to have been an acknowledgement that the global free movement of goods, services, labour and capital is a reality, even if its implementation is less than perfect and its desirability is sometimes questionable.

JamesM

In the James Martindale checklist of "making a purchasing decision" I can't think of the last time I actually looked at where a good or a service was sourced and made.

I usually engage the following process:
Identify a need
How serious is the need?
What money is required to address the need? Can I afford to address the need?
What addresses the need now and in the future that is within my money?
Purchase made- receipt kept for several weeks incase of quality issues

I don't see a need to then discriminate based on country made. When I bought my coffee this morning- I was not upset that the person serving me was not Canadian nor that the company serving me was non-Canadian because my need was addressed.

I suspect I would of spent all morning in the foodcourt coffee-less if I wanted a coffee made and served purely in Canada. This would of been harmful in itself effecting my time and productivity in the office.

Further to this debate on buying Canadian I currently sit here in Downtown Toronto the "hub" of the Canadian economy and I can happily inform you that the majority of our workforce have not turned up today. Somebody is paying the wages for these 4 day per weekers. Apparently having to be in at 8 every morning this week Monday to Thursday due to year end has "drained" them.

Novocastrian

Apologies if what I wrote came across as ad hominem, since that wasn't the intention. Your positions are as ever superbly articulated, but they are not ones I can accept.

I see three major flaws in the implied basis of your argument.

Firstly you believe that globalization is inevitable and irreversible and that, since it's the reality we face we just have to lump it when negative consequences are brought up.

I disagree and provide this for your weekend reading...

http://www.cmre.org/eckes.htm

Note that the speech was given in 1999 and some of the dangers which the author viewed as "not likely" have already occurred.

Secondly you suggest that "labour" is globalized whereas it's not: apart from folk like you and me, labour mobility (as opposed to off-shoring unskilled tasks) is at a low. That's quite a different matter and has severe negative consequences, especially for lower skilled workers in developed countries. There is a large literature on this but I'll only link to one, which is from a Canadian source.
http://workhealth.org/2005%20ICOH/we...P1%20ostry.pdf

Thirdly, you, together with the huge majority of advocates of laissez faire capitalism, consistently ignore the many other things which are being globalized such as climate change, ocean pollution, desertification, diversity loss, megacity urbanization etc. etc., all of which together mean that our present course is utterly unsustainable.

We've seen the collapse of one bubble in the last two years and we see now who pays the price for the greed of the elite; I can't imagine why you think that globalization is a sensible strategy for the future.

jimf

So when the last period of globalisation ended there was a period of conflict lasting 60 years including two world wars. Is it going to be as bad as that again?

Novocastrian

Worse of course.

Alan2005

The problem with the CMRE piece (which is well written opinion rather than research) is that it picks and chooses it's own straw man (cringe) definitions of 'globalism' to suit the argument it's making at the time. It goes as far as arguing that globalization didn't prevent the first and second world wars even though it didn't exist then in the modern sense.

Our course is unsustainable because we don't have enough long term energy security to feed everyone on the planet. The root of this is dwindling oil and over-population.

No we haven't. The bubble has not collapsed; we have not seen any deflation. We've seen massive state intervention to keep the bubble inflated and it's kind of 'working' for now. That's 'working' in the sense that debt is still increasing. Again, not that much to do with globalization, and everything to do with incompetent governments.

Novocastrian

I plead guilty to using shorthand. I agree that governments have been incompetent, but incompetent in buying into the rhetoric of deregulation to the point of becoming irrelevant, and by failing to enforce what little power they have left.

GavinR

It never has worked, never will.