Terrorism as a Global Market Failure

thanks, wsn'ers, for leaving so much free cyberspace for me. what do you think of this piece of prose?

 

 

Terrorism as a Global Market Failure

 

On the surface, terrorism is "political-military" and the market is "economic". Seemingly, terrorism and the market have nothing to do with each other, since the political-military sphere and the economic sphere are separated from each other, as many people think.

 

However,  here is a possible relationship (not surprising for wsn'ers, just a bit of ideology critique:) --
according to the global neoliberal point of view, free global markets are benign and the best for all, creating the most prosperity for the mostest the fastest. Yet, many people around the world have not experienced this proclaimed truth. There have been many anti-IMF-and-World Bank demonstrations and riots in many countries over the past twenty-five years, in which a multitude of people essentially said: stop it, you are hurting us. In particular, global neoliberalism has not brought an even measure of prosperity to the Middle East. That may not be so much a fault of the market, in the sense of an economic mechanism, as, rather, a fault of the governments, alliances, corporations and international organizations that pursue the relentless spread of global neoliberalism into all corners of the world with political, economic, military, and clandestine means. Their ideology does not pursue the goal of global or national full employment or the goal of providing basic needs. Human dignity counts for nothing in the technocratic utopia of global market fundamentalism. In as much as the recent terror attacks signal dissatisfaction with the global status quo, they can also be understood as a failure of global neoliberalism. This ideology did not deliver the promised goodies to a significant number of people. Ideologies can err.

 

Gert Kohler

Oakville, Canada