Comment by maerF0x0
4 years ago
Globalization is only good for GDP and only on first order thinking.
Shipping things that could easily have been made local. Second order cost -- Environmental damage.
Concentration of ecological damage (eg smog in China, clear cuts instead of selective foresting etc).
Decreasing the varietals of foods brought to market so they're stable for shipping , easier to grade / machine. Second order cost -- higher risk to crop failures, loss of heirloom / heritage kinds.
IMO much of "Globalization" is really just power and market arbitrage. Things are inherently cheaper or easier there, the people are just poorer and more desperate. As soon as they have a middle class the "advantage" disappears.
> Shipping things that could easily have been made local. Second order cost -- Environmental damage.
One thing I'd like to mention is that sea shipping is actually very efficient, and the things being shipped usually have much more CO2 associated with their production and use than the shipping itself. For shipping cars:
> A cargo ship produces 16.14 grams of CO2 per metric ton of goods shipped per kilometer.
From https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-ecol...
If we say a car weighs 2 tons and is shipped 10,000km, that emits 323kg of CO2. But in a year, the average car produces 4 tons of CO2 (in the US): https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...
And for food it's similar:
> Transport typically accounts for less than 1% of beef’s GHG emissions: choosing to eat local has very minimal effects on its total footprint.
From https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
I continue to believe that eating locally sourced meat is just a way for people to feel good while continuing to damage the environment 99% as much.
And one last thing:
> As soon as they have a middle class the "advantage" disappears.
And how do these poor countries acquire a middle class without resources or trade?
This isn't to say that I disagree with your overall point that going full on globalist has hidden costs. National security concerns are often not addressed for one.
> the people are just poorer and more desperate
Precisely because of this, globalization is destined to stay. It is the ultimate wet dream of capital: an endless reserve of cheap labor.
Marx might not have got the prognosis right, but his diagnosis still holds.
If you look at China, it's exactly due to the West's insatiable appetite for cheaper labor that it has become more technically competent, and more well-off, especially the coastal cities. And this is why it now (for some years) ceases to be a pool of cheap labor: the living standards, while not near Western, have risen so much, the Western customers started finding the labor cost too high. Now it's the turn of Vietnam for many industries.
Previous participants of this joyride: Japan, Korea, half of Southern Europe.
Reserves of cheap labor are not endless, and it's great that the capital actively seeks them out and eventually fills them in.
> it has become more technically competent,
Let's not forget rampant corporate espionage, and deliberate IP infringement whereby designs used contractually to produce something, and then stolen to make knock offs as well.
> Reserves of cheap labor are not endless
In practice, in aggregate they are. As you mentioned, there were other countries filling that gap before, and there will be new ones. East Asia got there first because of a combination of factors (cultural, historic, and logistical), but once that area is spent, new frontiers will be opened. In fact, in markets where there are fewer logistical constraints (i.e. software), those new frontiers are already coming online (South America, Africa, etc).