Richard,
> Your questions are clearly rhetorical, but I'll treat them as
>genuine questions nonetheless.
All right, all right; you found me out: I really don't buy the vision
you have laid out of how the international system works. I do
appreciate your taking the time and trouble to answer my questions,
but I'm afraid I have yet to be won over. Let me go over your
rebuttal:
>First-world popular prosperity/ welfare is trending downwards in
>absolute terms. In many cases third world prosperity is declining
>even faster, increasing the _relative_ disparity.
I am sorry, but this is not true by any measure that I know of--
unless you have a really creative definition of "popular" :->
According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States* (with no
known affiliation to any of the groups you have listed), the average
growth rate for the industrialized countries (US, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand,
Taiwan) all showed consistent upward growth in their international
economic indexes from 1984 to 1994. The rate of growth varied
from year to year, and occasionally went negative in some countries
in some years. Overall, though, growth has continued to be the norm,
recession the exception. Average industrialized growth has been
around 3-4 percent per year. varying widely by country. GDP per
capita also showed consistent gains of around 1-2% per year. What
is unmistakable is the fact that there is _no_ evidence for absolute
losses for any significant length of time.
The third world is more difficult to measure. This is partly because
there is a diversity of political, ideological, and economic systems,
making it difficult to make very accurate analyses of all "third
world" countries as a whole. However it is possible to look at
individual countries performance, and while you do find some
countries which seem to be doing worse, casual inspection reveals
that the vast majority are doing better over time. Again, a semi
random sampling of the Statistical Abstract (available in your local
library)
GDP per capita: (Constant PPP dollars)
1985 1993
Argentina 6,179 7,505
Bangladesh 175 200
Bulgaria 6,030 3,573
China 964 1,738
Cuba 3,830 1,959
Chile 1,889 3,067
El Salvador 1,242 1,342
Morocco 882 939
Philippines 710 791
Sri Lanka 465 578
While the evidence is not as sure, nearly all economists would find the
proposition that the world is seeing absolute declines in wealth
laughable. Income disparity is another issue, but I cannot agree with
you when you say that the third world is becoming _absolutely_
worse off.
If absolute wealth is not going down, then what about my original
question:
>>The "competitiveness" definition seems to say that >>1st world
>>countries are being forced by the NWO conspiracy to lower their
>>standard of living to 3d world conditions, but the section following
>>"globalization" seems to contradict this, saying that "globalization"
>>leads to a greater disparity between the first and third worlds.
>
> Which is happening?
I am not going to go into your belief that a job is a job, and a worker
is a worker, and it matters little to performance where they are or
how much you pay them ( which is not true, by the way) However, I
do want to go into your statement to the effect that corporations are
the enemy of all mankind.
Question: Who owns corporations?
Answer: "Investors"
Question: Who are "investors"?
Answer: they are not, on average, rich jerks like Donald Trump:
remember, Donald Trump _borrowed_ money, he did not _lend_ it,
which is essentially what you do if you buy stock or have it bought
for you. In fact, everyone who has a Pension plan, a 401k plan, or an
IRA is an "investor". Pension fund managers, as a matter of fact,
have worked a revolution behind the scenes over the last decade.
There was some concern that managers - who are only the
_employees_ of the investors - had taken too much control away
from the owners by the late 70s, and were padding their pay and
protecting their mediocrity as typified by what's-his-name who was
CEO at Disney before Eisner took over. The development of the huge
sums of money into Pension funds changed all of that, as the fund
managers were strong enough --had enough "votes"-- the other thing
a share of stock is -- to again assert control over the managers of
corporations. Pension fund managers - the representatives of
working America _Are the largest, most powerful investors in the
world_ .
The point of this story is that demonizing corporations is really a
pointless enterprise, since those most responsible for it are those
who are day to day, middle class, working America, (and Britian, and
Japan, and just about everywhere else with decent capital markets).
> My "ideal situation" would
>involve national self-determination (including domestic ownership
>of
>natural resources), with economic organization oriented around
>sound
>management and development of national resources (as has been
>_somewhat_
>exemplified by post-war Japan), and carried out under genuine
>democracies
>(which Japan has not at all exemplified).
Great! The only problem is, how do you do this? Specifically, who
decides? (excuse my Randian past showing here a little, *sigh* ah,
for the days of youthful idealism...) If you go into history a bit, this
issue was very big in the development theory in the late 50s through
the 60s. The theory was called the "import substitution" path to
development, where resources were nationalized and administered by
the state, in the name of the "people" -- because the only other way
to exploit a given resource was through foreign investment. Third
world countries by definition don't have a lot of capital to invest, so
the idea was that the state was the only one with the size and
coercive ability to extract domestic capital and invest it wisely.
Imports from the west were heavily taxed, and domestic industries
heavily subsidized, with an eye towards developing domestic
industries that eventually would be competitive in domestic markets
without the need for protection. In every country in which this was
tried, the results were an unmitigated disaster. The common factor of
the "Asian tigers", on the other hand , was a strategy called "export
expansion" where the emphasis was not so much on reducing and
replacing exports, but on expanding exports, and transferring wealth
from consumers to producers in almost every imaginable way --
which I might point out, does not seem to square with your
anti-corporation stand. Consumers in Japan are constantly
"exploited" by having their incomes diverted, through direct and
indirect ways, into the "bottom line" of corporations.
>Liberal" and
>"Conservative" are both essentially meaningless in today's context
>--
>they're primarily used as rhetorical labels -- for their positive or
>negative emotional connotative power.
Yes.
>I imagine you know the answer to this as well as I do, and you
>could possibly be one of those "deep thinkers" yourself.
Actually, I have no idea. I replied to your post to get a feel for the
argument of the progressive movement, and this aspect of it baffles
me. I wonder if you brand every person who disagrees with you to be
part of "the conspiracy". Very convenient, if intellectually lazy.
I will check the article you recommended, but I suspect it won't be
very different from the conservative press's attacks on the influence
of the Hudson Institute, the Center for Policy Studies, the
Progressive Policy Institute, and the other liberal think tanks.
>You tell me -- who dreamed
>up and sponsored GATT?
Well, I believe that who dreamed it up is a less important factor than
why it was dreamed up. It was developed because there was a
widespread conviction among policy makers and a significant segment
of the public that the Great Depression had been caused or greatly
exacerbated by exactly the same forces that you praised in your
original post: National Protective Tariffs, and competitive currency
devaluation.
Best Regards,
Greg