Ask the former head of the WTO anything

Andrew sez, "Reddit's been rocking the 'I am an X, ask me anything' bit for a while now, but logging on to find this one was a bit of a shock. Mike Moore, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand & Director-General of the WTO from 1999 to 2002, recorded a youtube video introducing himself to reddit. People are asking him all kinds of questions this week & he'll be recording a video response on the weekend."

IAMA former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, AMA (particularly regarding globalization). (Thanks, Andrew!)

• [freeyourcrt]

  Okay, I’ll bite, If this wealth that is created benefits only the smallest and most powerful minority, is it still beneficial?

  • [niten]

    Yeah! Take, for example, my life, as one of the squalid underclass.

    Here I am, one of the record number of post-secondary students in the world, living in a bustling city full of various cultures and a small-to-vanishing crime rate, enjoying free, modern medical care, struggling on my TA wages to support my one-bedroom apartment, array of electronics, connection to the Internet and practically all human knowledge, trying to juggle my relatively few commitments with exercise in order to avoid gaining weight from all of the delicious food I enjoy.

    Or how about my wife, who’s parents had to scrimp and save for months in formerly-Communist, formerly-starving China in order to send her abroad to study? She’s busily being exploited for a fair wage, which barely allows her to fly halfway around the world to visit her folks twice a year! Of course, she can talk with them (with video) over that sum-of-all-human-knowledge thing I mentioned earlier every night for free, but really, that’s a poor substitute. Why, in Imperial or (actually) Communist China, she’d probably have had the opportunity to live in the same room as them for her entire life!

    And what about all my Iranian, Indian, African, and Chinese classmates? Those guys were so much better off before being so ruthlessly exploited in the last century. See the way they’ve been ruthlessly forced into pursuing doctorates in Computer Science! They’d have been free to be either farmers or soldiers in the past!

    Truly, globalization is the bane of us all.

    • [CANTFIGHTTHEDITE]

      Besides all of those things, what has globalization of trade ever done for us?

    • [davidasposted]

      What percentage of Chinese citizens have the opportunity to study in the global North? African? Indian? This group represents a cosmopolitan class not of the same character as the jet-setting businessmen or internationally renown academics they may become, but hyper-privileged nonetheless in comparison to most of the world’s 6.6b residents. Globalization has been good for some, just as was 19th century European imperialism. Your sarcasm is noted: the folks/examples you mention are in fact not representatives of a squalid world underclass. But then nothing in freeyourcrt’s comment suggest they are or that he had these cosmopolitans in mind as part of the implicit majority who do not necessarily benefit from the wealth creation championed by Moore. Life still sucks for a majority of the world’s inhabitants. For them, globalization is no more or less a bane than colonialism was… get some perspective.

      • [niten]

        Well, first, I feel bad; I had a similar argument IRL recently, and I was propelled by that momentum in my response.

        What proportion of the world’s population can travel, live comfortably, and pursue studies? Far more than ever before. In China, apparently, the middle class is in the hundreds of millions now. That’s better than any other point in history. A century ago, I’d have been a farmer, too.

        My classmates are not, by and large, the richest people from their countries. They’re the smartest/hardest working. So, any person in India or China can hope for and aspire to success, at any rate. That’s also a huge improvement.

        Starvation in India and China, and in fact most of Asia, is practically eliminated. That’s astounding.

        So is war. Also astounding.

        I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that we live in a fair or equal world, or that needless suffering and poverty are solved problems. But if you can look at the world today and suggest that we were better off a century ago (or at any other point in history…er, pre-2006), I would strongly suggest that it’s not my perspective that is skewed.

        Oh, I also felt bad about straying from the topic. Questions:

        * How can globalization and environmentalism possibly interact? In a global market, won’t we end up with a race to the bottom, where the best price is offered by those with the least regard for their environment? How do you prevent that?

        * Couldn’t peak oil derail all our progress?

        • [strangefriend]

          There’s also the problem that the free market eats its own. Since everything is connected globally, we can watch the whole mess go down together.
          No war in Asia? Uh, Afghanistan is in Asia. So is Pakistan, where the Army just finished going after the Pakistan Taliban in the Swat valley, & American drones are bombing people. There are still Maoist guerrillas in rural India fighting the government.
          In the US, globalization has been used to ship jobs overseas where corporations can pay workers pennies compared to US pay. This also kills the unions, which again increases corporate power. Over in Europe, when the same strategy is tried, the workers launch a general strike & the government & corporations back down. In the US, Michigan, which used to be a rich industrial powerhouse, has 15% unemployment & the state government is laying off employees. Globalization hasn’t helped average Americans. It wasn’t supposed to.

        • [niten]

          Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Maoist guerrillas, and all the rest of the conflicts in Asia are vanishingly small when compared to the conflicts in the first half of the century, and in previous centuries.

          http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll (note that while the population is growing exponentially, wars are getting smaller and fewer)

          Globalization hasn’t helped America much because America was absorbing much of the wealth of the world for decades after WW2. It was the only major industrialized country in the world that hadn’t been devastated (or even, really, harmed) by the war; it became the nexus of the new economy (replacing the UK a few decades earlier), and, thanks to the prohibitive cost of shipping and general devastation of industry worldwide, the manufacturing hub of the world. They (you?) have been riding high on that wave ever since, but things are slowly shifting to a more natural state now. That’s good for every one else, but means that America will no longer dominate the world the way it has, which is bad for America.

          @davidasposted:

          “Far more? More than what? How many? I hope you won’t think poorly of me if I demand data, not platitudes.”

          Far more than ever before, exactly as I said. Now, as for specific figures, since you brought it up, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind providing some concrete data yourself? IMHO, yours is the extraordinary claim. You are suggesting that people lived better, could travel more and farther, and could more easily pursue studies in the past? When, exactly?

          Your links point out that starvation is still a problem in India. That is, if you define it as ‘malnourishment’. I don’t mean to dismiss malnourishment, but a generation ago (my father-in-law’s generation) something like 36 million Chinese died in the Great Chinese Famine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine). That, of course, immediately followed the Civil War, which followed the war with Japan, which followed, well, the Civil War. And India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India) has not experienced a major famine since the second world war.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Famine_in_Asia

          I like this line, from that article: “One of the hottest controversies in Indonesia today is the news about famine in Sikka district, East Nusa Tenggara, where about 60,000 people are at risk of starvation.” That would have attracted worldwide discussion and attention at no point prior to about (I would guestimate) 1990.

          By “we” I mean the human species as a whole. As for proving that we’re better off…to me, it seems obvious. There are so many figures I could quote that it’s almost pointless; choose almost any country in the world and read about it’s history and demographics on Wikipedia.

          I also think you don’t really want to be convinced. I would guess you have a worldview already, and you’re sticking to it. You’d accuse me of the same, I’m sure, but my last comprehensive worldview was more similar to yours than it was to the former head of the WTO’s. I’ve had to give it up; it’s predictions rather spectacularly failed to match the present.

        • [davidasposted]

          I also think you don’t really want to be convinced. I would guess you have a worldview already, and you’re sticking to it.

          Not exactly. My research involves summarizing claims made by scholars in the field of ‘Globalization Studies’ and comparing them with actual data. Whatever the differences, most of these scholars claim that globalization represents (1) a unique phenomenon that, as I mention previously (2) erodes and internationalizes national economies and politics. The data does not support either of their claims. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to echo them, of course. But you’d be wrong. Unless you want me to copy/paste a dissertation here, check out the following two sources for starters:

          Lang, Michael. “Globalization and Its History.” Journal of Modern History. 78 (December 2006): 899-931

          Hirst, Paul and Grahame Thompson. Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press; Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996.

          So forgive me if I’m suspicious when you say, “There are so many figures I could quote that it’s almost pointless; choose almost any country in the world and read about it’s history and demographics on Wikipedia” or ask me to provide data for claims that you, in fact, brought up.

        • [niten]

          You have found some claims from some researchers or globalization proponents regarding the liberalization of governments and markets? I believe you.

          You have found data that suggests that things have gone downhill across the board, that national economies are expanded by international trade, or that globalization is, generally, bad for humanity? I seriously doubt it. And if you have, I’d like to see the data too.

          I think I’ve supported my own claims. I didn’t make many specific claims about the effect of globalization on governments and economies. I suspect the ‘experts’ are right about what the eventual effect will be; a middle class is hard to control. But that remains to be seen. I’d agree that so far, we haven’t seen the liberalizing effect we were told to expect, at least across the board; but it’s still early in the game.

          But if you can ignore the general trend towards less starvation, less violence, and more prosperity as communications, transportation, and market relationships multiply and grow, then we must be seeing very different data.

        • [davidasposted]

          What proportion of the world’s population can travel, live comfortably, and pursue studies? Far more than ever before. In China, apparently, the middle class is in the hundreds of millions now. That’s better than any other point in history. A century ago, I’d have been a farmer, too.

          Far more? More than what? How many? I hope you won’t think poorly of me if I demand data, not platitudes.

          My classmates are not, by and large, the richest people from their countries. They’re the smartest/hardest working. So, any person in India or China can hope for and aspire to success, at any rate. That’s also a huge improvement.

          That someone can “hope for and aspire to success” is “a huge improvement”?

          Starvation in India and China, and in fact most of Asia, is practically eliminated. That’s astounding.

          “2008 India State Hunger Index: Key Findings and Facts”
          http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/publication/2008-india-state-hunger-index-key-findings-facts

          “Undernourishment in the Asia Pacific Region”
          http://hunger.undprcc.lk/insideap/pages/article2_print.html

          So is war. Also astounding.
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Asia#21st_century

          I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that we live in a fair or equal world, or that needless suffering and poverty are solved problems. But if you can look at the world today and suggest that we were better off a century ago (or at any other point in history…er, pre-2006), I would strongly suggest that it’s not my perspective that is skewed.

          Who is we? Care to provide data to support your claim that most of the world’s inhabitants are better off now than “at any other point in history pre-2006″?

      • [Jonathan Badger]

        Yes, the number of, say, Chinese who live reasonable facsimiles of a decent middle class life under capitalism is small. But it was basically zero under Mao, so that’s an improvement. Capitalism, much as Churchill said about democracy, is a flawed system that is only good because the alternatives seem to be worse.

        • [Spintherism]

          Probably true, but isn’t it problematic to consider _only_ the number of people of a certain class, leaving out inequalities in distribution? We can’t quantify the success of capitalism solely in terms of groups that have gained resources when (in, say China) hundreds of millions of people have lost their rural livelihood and been forced to relocate to densely populated and polluted urban environments where they work long hours for little pay in unsafe conditions. I don’t pretend to be able to compare the ethical impact these two factors, but it would be a mistake to take only positive economic movement of the few into account and ignore the possibility of negative effects for the many.

        • [Jonathan Badger]

          The idea that taking people away to the farms to work in the factories was horrible was very common among pastoral idealists in the Western Industrial Revolution as well. I’m unconvinced. Would I want to work on an assembly line? No. But I don’t see how it is worse than being a rural peasant — probably better in many ways.

        • [davidasposted]

          Thing is, in 21st century China, just as Mao’s China, you don’t get to make that choice.

• [Andrew Ferguson]

  I’m kind of amused that no one noticed that you have to go leave your comment on reddit in order for him to respond.

• [Anonymous]

  This is another one of those issues where the debate generally falls along right vs left lines, politically and socially speaking. Appealing to statistics can be useful, but misleading. Far more interesting is to get to the heart of what we actually mean by concepts like ‘wealth’.

  If we take wealth as a measure of the national GDP, then all indicators would seem to suggest that things indeed are getting better.
  However, this assesment convieniently glosses over the serious consequences of economic growth, which include growing income disparity, environmental destruction, and consumer debt.

  Real wealth can never be measured in terms of dollars, but in the sustainable productive capacities of ecosystems and societies. By this measure then, overall global wealth is in decline, even as a small investor class becomes enriched.

  If we take globalization to mean the unrestricted flow of capital, mediated by transnational corporations, then it is easy to see that globalization has been an unmitigated disaster.
  On the other hand, if by globalization we mean the gradual opening up of formerly rigid national and cultural borders via modern communications, travel, and trade networks, then clearly this is both a necessarily beneficial and unstoppable force, driven by the dissemination of advanced technologies.

  Strict globalizationists as per the first definition would have us believe that we can’t have the positive outcomes without also embracing the underlying logic of corporate/capitalist exploitation and control. What they don’t want anyone to find out is that these two aspects can be easily decoupled from one another, and indeed, this is the program that socioecological progressives are presently engaged in bringing about.

• [Spintherism]

  I’d like to ask: how do you measure that wealth of “all of history put together” when much of the world didn’t (and still doesn’t) have fungible currency until relatively recently, and when standardized accounting techniques still vary considerably from nation-to-nation (not to mention the idiosyncratic methods of individual corporations and accountants)? “Wealth” isn’t a universal metric with an essential character–its value depends on the context in which it exists. It is a very strange system indeed that measures a basement full of gold as wealth, but neglects to include the actual friendships kinships and life-experiences that bring real happiness. The production of measurable wealth is often predicated on a loss of less-easily measured wealth. Thus to take a parcel of land away from its long-time residents (eminent domain? Enclosure of the commons?) and sell it on the open market is to generate measurable wealth at the cost of destroying the historical and contextual (proximity to neighbors, kin) value of that land to its previous owners.
  Furthermore, as freeyourcrt mentioned above, even if we accept the mode a wealth management used by organizations like the WTO, that wealth is held by a small percentage of the population (something like the richest two percent own half the world’s wealth, the richest ten percent own eighty-five percent), and it is inconceivable that an executive’s twelfth ferarri gives him as much value as a ferarri’s-worth of food would give a less fortunate individuals.

• [davidasposted]

  By the way, I hope that Moore’s characterization of globalization in his book and the comparison between ‘globalized’ and ‘non-globalized’ countries is a megaton more nuanced than he suggests in the clip. Because in fact the poorest states in the world exhibit most clearly the effects of globalization (and thus by Moore’s account are the most globalized), if you accept ‘globalization’ to mean the process by which national politics and economies are eroded and ‘internationalized’. That is the most common definition in Globalization Studies and it doesn’t describe Northern states such as the U.S., Sweden, France, or New Zealand. It DOES, however, describe poor states in sub-Saharan Africa like Sierra Leone or the DRC, Afghanistan, etc. These countries don’t have national economies, functioning governments, state or economic sovereignty in the sense implied by the Westphalian model (itself a fiction).

  You want a model for globalization? Check out Congo-Kinshasa.

• [phenomenon]

  Being “against” globilization is fairly pointless, it is completely inevitable in the long run.

  The communication and logistic constraints that kept the world apart are growing less by the day thanks to technology.