Globalization and its New Discontents … Fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, entitled Globalization and its Discontents, describing growing opposition in the developing world to globalizing reforms. It seemed a mystery: people in developing countries had been told that globalization would increase overall wellbeing. So why had so many people become so hostile to it? – Project Syndicate, Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz is concerned about why people are hostile to the idea of gigantic, impersonal and rapacious governments stealing from them while telling them what to do.
Governments don’t work on any level. But global government is worst of all. It will deliver ruin, mass incarceration and ultimately genocide.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Now, globalization’s opponents in the emerging markets and developing countries have been joined by tens of millions in the advanced countries.
… Can the open global economy be saved from populist challengers – and from itself? … How can something that our political leaders – and many an economist – said would make everyone better off be so reviled?
Maybe because people don’t trust politicians and economists and increasingly see ways they cloak their own venal malevolence in the rhetoric of “universal good.”
The world is in a quasi-depression. The gradual diminishment of the global economy is only livened here and there by the West’s endless, serial wars now playing out mostly in the Middle East, but no doubt to be expanded over time.
For Stiglitz, the solution is not to decrease technocratic control so much has to increase the benefits associated with it.
The idea is that people see substantial benefits from technocratic authoritarianism, they will be more likely to accept it, or at least tolerate it.
And that apparently would make Stiglitz happy. – READ MORE
