Globalism in Policy
Today was the first official day of the Davos - World Economic Forum Summit. And, just like every year, it brings a shadow across the world filling our politicians with ideas from the rich and powerful. But, as a rule a meeting in a eastern Europe country doesn’t change the world anywhere else than that town in any meaningful way. Even the WEF. But, there are many ideas that have come to light through the WEF over the past 50 years that greatly influenced policy in the United States, and largely the policies that have been pushed have negatively impacted the USA and nearly every country that has done something similar.
The WEF has been responsible for several “global policies” gaining traction over the years. In the 1973 there were speakers saying that if the world population reached 2 billion people that there would be a irreversible famine to take place, while also talking about how so many people would cause a “capital cost” to any management while serving their clients. In 1976 the initiative was to bring many nations of the “Arab World” into Western Culture. Countries included Iran, Ivory Coast, and Afghanistan. Over half of the countries listed have grown to not only resent the Western world, they’ve actively plotted against it causing countless wars, some people would even say that the propagation of the UNIDO has been how the Military Industrial Complex has planned to fuel never-ending wars without sending American’s to die. In 1979 WEF suggested bringing China into the fold, causing a mass exodus of jobs in the western world to Chinese companies, causing the west to grow weaker, China to grow stronger, and the Chinese people to be more and more improvised.
Those are just key moments in the past where any normal person can look at these decisions and clearly see how it has fueled wars, cost American’s jobs and sovereignty, along with stoking fear causing many people to have mental issues that are difficult if not impossible to overcome. All of which are what we’re commonly hearing from the right is “America Last” policies.
With the emphasis on “Globalism” (which is often espoused if not accredited to WEF) I felt compelled to discuss some of the issues that we find ourselves in, while we become more global and integrated. To a fair degree, some of these issues people might actually consider solutions to other issues, a idea that might even have some credence to it. But regardless of the benefits and cost of Globalism, it would be important to note as many aspects of the Globalism discussion as possible so we can weigh those cost/reward relationships.
Culture
One of the first and most important benefits and cost to a Globalist agenda has to be the increase of other cultures and the decrease of one’s self culture. Even in a Globalist system, there are still imports and exports. And each physical good or service comes along with a little bit of culture. But first, we should consider what items might make up a culture. Morals would be one of the first things to come a mind. A strong culture will have a clear set of “rights and wrongs”. In addition, there would be a clear set of social rules, shaking hands or bowing heads when greeting as a example. Also, the culture would have a clear history identifying their prides and shames.
As Globalism spreads, it will clearly trade off some of that culture. Occasionally in forms of entertainment like dancing, music, or reading someone will be exposed to these different attributes and occasionally, some of those ideas will be incorporated with that individuals life. And most of the time it is a completely harmless addition to someone’s life, that you could make a very good argument that the individually chose to bring that into their life, and incorporate this cultural item in your life.
Although often times the citizens clearly don’t want that culture in the first place, but it is forced upon them by the “deal” that is made to incorporate those two ecosystems. And if the deal was to trade corn from a farm village for water from a fishing village, there are clear advantages and disadvantages. If a person in the farming village doesn’t want to participate in the deal, they can build their own pod or mote of some kind to collect rain water. And if a fisher doesn’t want to take the other villages corn, then they can grow their own in their back yard. But, this scenario moves very quickly if there is a drought in the farming village. In order to grow the crops they will need the water. And unless you want to wither away, you’ll be forced into this deal. Even worse, imagine if you’re in the Fishing village and your policy makers decided to outlaw all personal farms because it poorly impacts your relationship with the farming village.
This is what is happening globally. You have the USA cutting off domestic supply of oil products because of middle east relationships that were tensing up. The Department of Agriculture telling farmers in Kansas to burn entire crops of wheat just so we can purchase some from Ukraine to bolster that relationship. Not to include NATO, USMCA, TTIP (which failed, mostly), APTA, and others where we agree to trade everything from lumber, services, jobs, and military might and now I challenge you to buy a television that wasn’t made in China that isn’t saving your personal data in random data centers around the world (usually South America or Europe), with software developed in India. You can’t. You’re forced to accept these goods and services from these sources and it is virtually impossible to not accept that. So the idea of choice ultimately is fantasy in a Globalist society.
Sovereignty
Closely related to the topic of culture is the countries ability to make it’s own laws to govern and control it’s society in it’s own way. There are many examples where a nationalist agenda has provided benefits to greater society, including the abolition of slavery, limitation of regional famine and poverty, and civil strife of all kinds. But, often times with the increased trend towards Globalism, you’ll find ideals like a “global minimum tax” starting to pop up. Occasionally this is a good thing though. With the idea of abolition of slavery as a example, the pressure on the United States (culturally) from places like Canada and Brittan, helped sway the opinions of few and provide a roadmap to achieve this goal. But, occasionally leaves a lot of room for other scenarios where negative things tend to happen.
For example, with the “Paris Climate Accord” the United States has agreed to give up it’s ability to create laws on energy production. It is a ceiling where you can’t go above these lines, and in this instance the ceiling will continue to come down more and more. This is a clear forfeiture of the USA’s ability to plan, pass, and execute their own laws - instead people that no one had ever voted for, approved of, or even knew of are setting policies for half of the developed world. The fun part about the PCA is that after the USA left the agreement, it continued to not only meet, but exceed all of the goals and metrics that were a part of the PCA. Which is a clear indicator that Sovereignty is closely related to the culture underlying the policies that are being dictated.
But another even more clear ability to forego our sovereignty is the United States (pre 1950s) hesitancy to go to war. Both world wars have been fairly clearly demonstrated that nearly 4 million lives would have been saved if the United States would have joined within the first 6 months of Brittan joining. Now, with NATO along with the many other treaties that have been signed, the United States is compelled to go to these wars like Vietnam, Korea, and the Middle East to protect both our interested (because of the interconnected nature) and fulfill our agreements. And all of those wars (Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan/Iraq) were wildly unpopular back home amongst the population. And our politicians have no control over it. Keep in mind the last time Congress officially declared war was in 1942. So every war in your life (assuming you weren’t born before WWII) hasn’t been a war. It has been a response from a treaty that needed to be fulfilled or a response to “thwart” other adverse affects. I could go on this for a long time, but to spare all of us some time let’s move on.
Community
If culture and sovereignty are at risk, the next thing that will fall is local communities, often synonymous with kindness. Once you get to the point where you’re being forced to accept certain cultures, and you’re not able to govern yourselves, you start to feel like you have less ability to control yourself and you will feel less critical to the people around you. A loss of purpose. Not only that, if we go back to our Fishing and Farming village example, imagine if you were the person in the Farming village who went around giving people water regularly? Your business is now degraded significantly, and if you go out into society (even if you find another job and purpose) you’ll always feel like the failure. Or you’ll feel like a “what if”. Not to include it’s possible that you loss a key interest in your life.
This turns into bitterness after generations. As a example in 1998 in my home town as a part of globalism, the number 1 employer left my town (Fruit of the Loom), and to this day I’ve never bought a shirt, underwear, pants, etc where a Fruit of the Loom tag was in the article of clothing. As a matter of fact, I have thrown away birthday gifts in the past because it had the grapes on it. I didn’t even want to return it. I was a kid, and didn’t even work. Both of my parents (who had worked there in the past) had already moved on and gotten other jobs. So I was luckily not even impacted. But, because of NAFTA (once again, a international globalism agreement) there was a great negative impact on my home town that I personally always took as a slight to myself.
There were dozens of people that I knew growing up, after years of not being able to provide for themselves or their families because this one job is all they knew, these people either took up a life of drugs and seclusion (destroying everyone around them) or they proceeded to withdraw from their families in what I assume is shame. This causes any kind gestures to leave someone, simple smiles and waves aren’t going to affect someone in such a foul mood and they’re certainly not going to share that to the next individual. Then it turns into horn honking on the road. All of a sudden, you’re putting up a fence along side your neighbors because their kids dare to kick their soccer ball into your yard one day. This bitterness is a disease that swells up until it engulfs the host, and its source comes from a globalist agenda and the lack of self agency, dignity, and worth.
Independence
The last greater issue that I feel like is absolutely key in the Globalist agenda is how quickly different area’s become so specialized in specific areas along with being so dependent on other regions. Along with losing your ability to govern, you will eventually lose the capability to live on your own - with or without the governance of anyone else. Let’s go back to our two villages example, where one village is on the water and one has land. Both could live sufficiently without one another, and with trade they clearly will live more full and easier lives. But, the issue is the deal is more important than the end goal of a better life. And eventually, no one wants to fight with the work needed to collect their own water, and they become dependent on the other village for their water. All it takes is for the fishing village to decide they want a bigger slice of the pie, and all of a sudden they’re bullying the other village who’s only crime was trusting the original part.
This proposes a real problem, and essentially turns you into a slave “with more steps”, and as the old saying goes “you’re selling hardship you can handle today, for hardship your kids can’t handle tomorrow.” And globalism will always lead to this eventually because of the inherent nature for power hungry people to rise to the top. The only way to avoid that is ensuring that local people have the ability to control their local government; and that requires the local government to not give into the convenience to globalism.
This is often confused with free trade, because it has a lot of the same elements. But, it should be held distinctly in different light. The key difference with globalism versus free trade is globalism is a “top down” model where the government makes the deal and you have to interface through them to make use of the commodity that is being provided and free trade must consist of individuals crossing these borders to make a deal on their own with their own terms, with individual agency.
I don’t know that there is any clear solution here, as a “free” market without restrictions is, generally speaking, a bad idea. As whatever laws are in the farming village to protect their farms and culture, will just be exploited in the fishing village where they don’t value those items in the same way. A reverse example that we’ve seen in recent past is where the farming village has one source of water (a creek or river that runs through) and the fishing village, who has plenty of water on the large lake they sit on, doesn’t care about water quality because they have a basically infinite supply of the stuff! Well, eventually the fishing village needs to get rid of their fish leftovers - they’ll just dump it upstream in that creek. And down stream, unknowingly to them, it ruins the lives of the farming village.
Maybe the solution here is the farming village setting a policy that “you owe the community a $$$ fine if you are found trading with someone who has polluted the creek”. Allowing free trade, with a certain restriction. But not making the clear agreement of the trade up front. This allows the farmer to “twist the arm” of the fisher, saying “Hey, I don’t have to make your trade for water. I can do it myself, and no one is guaranteeing you a monthly trade.” This forces both parties to interact with a way that is “good” for the fishing village as a whole. This can also be abused if it is a very narrow policy that says something like there is a $1000 fee per occurrence, but doesn’t take into account the quantity. This would allow the wealthy to skirt the rule and just look at it as a “cost of business” and average wealth people would look at it as a life altering punishment. (I’m looking at you Jeff Bezos with your parking tickets) But, ultimately allowing people the personal agency to make their own decisions will inevitably raise the standard of living for everyone in the area.
I also think ultimately a key component of all of this is ensuring that everyone is as educated as possible about how the world really works, and the “circle of life” for their local area. Understanding where the majority of their wealth comes from and understanding where their shortcomings are. If you understand you use a lot of water but then you don’t have water (like the farming village) then you can plan for such a thing. But if you don’t understand how all of that works then you’ll be spending a lot of time learning and re-learning this issue, at which point solutions have probably already come and gone. And so many people today have no idea where their beef comes from, or where their bread is baked. Much less where their car’s are made, or how many quality plumbers live in the area. All of these things are important to understand, so you can determine that “circle of life” for your own situation.
Globalism can never be a solution for specific regional problems, but it can exacerbate theses problems. Yea, connecting with China does make some of the people of China have more full lives - no doubt. But, as we’ve seen over the past few years, nearly all of our medicines are made in China because we have such strict rules on labor and medicine manufacturing, that China just doesn’t agree to. Although, because of the World Economic Forum and their policies from the 70’s and 80’s opening up the world to China for trade completely forgetting to hold China to modern standards, has really caused a major issue for these countries that participate. Maybe the true issue here is that the current version of globalism is just so poorly thought out and that the technology isn’t here yet to help make it happen. But, they’ve been going at it now for the better part of a century (assuming that most of these efforts began with the forming of the United Nations after WWII) and it seems like things are worse now on these key issues than maybe they’ve ever been at any point in time.