Globalization Free Trade Fail

The fox has been in the henhouse for many years, but now the coon is coming.
Hunter S. Thompson, Better Than Sex, p. 88

God! What a haul it was! Finally finished reading George Ritzers monster book on globalization, entitled Globalization - A Basic Text. Yes, dear reader,  the Oracle of Ottawa read it so you wouldn't have to. Drier than all the sand dunes in Libya. But in conjunction with the Oracle of Ottawa's Thinking About Thinking Project, I think I have made several breakthroughs! You don't need the Oracle of Ottawa to tell you that there is really something fishy with this globalization crap. When you hear the knuckle dragging social Darwinist's of the Conservative Party of Canada going on about its wonders you know you have to be worried. And when you are sitting at home in, say, Southern Ontario, waiting for your first unemployment check, that you are not going to get, because your workplace just left for Mexico or China without you, then you will know that globalization is a crock of crap. How did it all come to this?

Milton Friedman - Fooled ya!

It is all a very convoluted and twisted tale. The two names you will hear the most often are Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The right wing Chicago School economist will go on endlessly about the benefits of the Invisible Hand as first written about by Adam Smith, then this will lead invariably to a long dissertation on the brilliance of Comparative Advantage. Now the Chicago School is big and unquestioned ever since Milton Friedman did his big thing in Chile, you know that miracle story? But when you really look at the whole thing closely today, you see it was all an engineered set up. It seemed to be old Milty's big rush to get into the Ivy League. Never happened, alas. Now you will hear about the miracle of the Chicago Boys, but did you hear about the bits about the Ford Foundation and the United States State Department? Geez, you soon come to realize that once with the full unimpeded power of the United States of America you could make darkness happen at noon! Let us just say that the playing field was altered somewhat before the said great experiment even started! And of course that coup thing had nothing to do with the "successful" outcome...

We will get it all back Comrade....

Well, the Oracle of Ottawa has discovered two new logical fallacies that allow this crap to be continued to be sold. The first fallacy I call Era Displacement. For example comparing the workings of comparative advantage in the time of David Ricardo to the modern world of today! Workers at the time of Ricardo who were engaged in so called foreign trade were not much better off in respect to one another, more or less. In todays modern world, there are great differences between the workers of the first world and the third world! And when you allow the capitalist corporate pigs to carry off our factories to third world countries, you are essentially allowing them to export unpaid for surplus labour back to the originating country, got it? Talk about adding insult to injury! Ponder that for a moment! And soon your first world country will be transformed ever so slowly to a third world country! Don't believe me? Just ask anyone that lives in say Windsor, Ontario...

Working through another problem....

The second fallacy is very similar to the first, but very subtle, I call it the fallacy of Proportion Displacement. Free trade between similar countries of social development will more or less work pretty well. But so called free trade between a first world country and a third world country is a total rip off for the citizens of the first world country, and the citizens of the third world country. The only ones that really laugh all the way to the bank coming and going are the right wing economists and the global corporate whores, of no fixed address.
Now the Oracle of Ottawa has a solution to these two newly discovered fallacies. See my blog post entitled "A Gold Standard For the Rest Of Us". (Not a neo-con rant...) Totally solved it didn't I? And by the way, it was not Karl Marx who first coined the concept of surplus labour, it was Adam Smith! Can you find the exact reference in The Wealth of Nations?  No? Some economist you are!
        

Now watch this carefully and then read the above text again...