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Globalism, Corporatism and Open Source
To Soros, the current state of globalism -- capital is free but social concerns are underfunded -- represents a distortion of globalization, not its true promise.
Corporatism and globalism have become hopelessly confused in the public mind.The many excesses of valueless, greedy, proprietary and unrestrained multinational corporations have become enmeshed with tech-driven networked economies. It's difficult to even imagine what an effort it would take to separate one from another, sadly.
In his book George Soros on Globalization, the billionnaire asks for institutional reforms to address some of the many political concerns globalism raises:
l. Contain the instability of financial markets.
2. Complement the World Trade Organization (WTO),which is supposed to generate equitably-distributed global wealth, with equally powerful international organizations devoted to social goals, like reducing poverty and making necessary goods available all over the world.
3. Improve the quality of public life in countries suffering from corrupt, repressive or incompetent governments.
Free software advocates have argued for years now that open software could help create wealth and promote open societies in once-repressive, impoverished and technologically-primitive regimes. This idea is exciting. It attracted non-geeks like me to Open Source and Slashdot in the first place. That they are right is almost beside the point. How will proprietary software be curbed, and open software developed, in regimes that are corrupt and repressive? Why would these noxious governments support the use of software to develop an open society any more than they would encourage free speech or abandon censorship?
Legal scholars like Lawrence Lessig see the GPL as a major cornerstone of a vast, global "digital commons." So far, this vision has failed to materialize. In fact, new software is creating personalized, fragmented, narcissistic media in which screening and blocking (products, people, differing opinions) has become widely accepted, even epidemic.
In his terrific new biography of Richard Stallman, Free As In Freedom writer Sam Williams quotes Stallman: "What history says about the GNU project, twenty years from now, will depend on who wins the battle of freedom to use public knowledge. If we lose, we will be just a footnote. If we win, it is uncertain whether people will know the role of the GNU operating system -- if they think the system is 'Linux' they will build a false picture of what happened and why. But even if we win, what history people learn a hundred years from now is likely to depend on who dominates politically." So far, the big winners are the big corporations.
But Stallman, the Thomas Paine of the Net, is obviously right in some ways. To many people on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, the GNU project is already a footnote. It remains the most vibrant and exciting political idea on the Net, whatever the obstacles. But it seems that corporatism is too deeply entrenched to really change, and who is going to make it change? Few governments in the world as as powerful as Microsoft or AOL-Time-Warner. The multi-nationals are, in a way, the new nation-states of globalism. In recent years, they have been the primary beneficiaries of globalism -- as Soros concedes -- and for much of the undeveloped world and many political activists, they are the spawn of globalism's first generation of existence.
Soros skirts some major obstacles to his proper and idealistic vision. He recognizes that the networked global economy is forcing market values into areas where they don't properly or historically belong, from copyright to publishing to medicine to the law. These intrusions also occur in foreign cultures where they are distinctly unwelcome. Anti-Americanism has become a staple of life in many parts of Europe, and even more virulently elsewhere, where the United States is equated with evil, greed, corruption and blasphemy.
One of the great -- and widely foreseen -- political consequences of the rise of the Net was a widening gap between developed and undeveloped countries, many of which simply lack the infrastructure to wire up their populations and economies. How can governments in places like Afghanistan embrace open software and an open society if they can't even bring electricity and telephones to most of their citizens?
There's already enormous opposition to ideas like the ones Soros proposes. Market fundamentalists and conservatives object to tinkering with the global marketplace. And the broad range of people who call themselves "antiglobalization activists" don't buy the idea that globalization could conceivably improve lives in impoverished parts of the world. Many don't believe meetings should even be held by governmental officials to discuss globalism.
Soros argues that the world's worst conditions aren't necessarily caused by globalism. It's bad governments that are responsible for exploitive working conditions, lack of social and economic capital, and political repression.
Soros's primary argument is that globalism could be used as a powerful social tool, one that could undermine or circumvent incompetent or repressive regimes. The increased wealth globalization produces, he maintains, could make up for the inequities and other shortcomings of networked, global economies. The problem is that the winners don't compensate the losers, says Soros. "There is no international equivalent of the political process that occurs within individual states. While markets have become global, politics remain firmly rooted in the sovereignty of the state."
The Net becomes a significant political factor in this evolution, because it is both individualistic and trans-national. It permits the rapid movement of capital and, if open source activists are correct, could also use free software and other technologies as a powerful tool for developing nations who want to join the globalization movement.
But it's difficult to see by what process this is going to occur. As a result of globalization, the divisions between the world's rich and the poor continues to widen. According to the United Nations Development Program, the richest one percent of the world's population receives as much income as the poorest 57 percent. More than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day; nearly a billion lack any access to clean water; 826 million suffer from malnutrition; 10 million die annually due to lack of basic health care. Some of these conditions pre-dated globalization, but the new economy has hardly improved matters. And it seems to be generating hatred of the United States, where contemporary notions of globalism were born and shaped.
Next: Getting specific about reforming globalism.
"Herd-like college kids"
But then, for the most part, you repeat yourself. As a college student, I'm amazed how often kids who have led sheltered lives, upon finding out there is more in the world, latch onto every new idea they get like its the holy grail of modern thought. I think this explains a lot of the college protests going on.
When is the JonKatz madness going to stop?!
Mentions globalism: check!
Mentions Open Source: check!
Mentions WTO: check!
Makes some strange connection between Open Source and social politics: check!
If only he could somehow blame Swaziland's continuing strife on Microsoft's business practices, he'd be set.
Sounds like a closet communist trying to show that the GPL and open-source support communism.
:-)
I think they are more like democracy, allowing everyone to know the truth and everyone to have a vote. Everybody knows humanity as a whole is greedy and collectivly ignorant of its own well-being. The only reason that open-source really works is because it has more of a republic-style structure. There are very smart people working in a tight-knit group for the good of the software and those that use it. They don't allow just anybody to get their hands on the code (read that as modify the CVS tree), and if the community doesn't like what's going on in it they fork and create a new small tight-knit group that does the same thing a different way.
The problem with extending this philosophy to government is that software can passively take away the goods of the closed-source guys by the rules of supply and demand. Try to take away governments candy and you are going to pick a fight. They don't have to compete, they RULE.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Like so many other things, globalisation can be good, or can be bad. Make that "can be great, or can be dreadful". Unfortunately, it seems to swing to one or t'other extremes, and the rhetoric certainly focuses on little else.
Certainly the removal of trade barriers should be a force for good all round, but not when unrestricted trade allows a masive multinational to come in and crush local industry by running at a loss until the market is "secure".
The only possible solution is a carefully moderated one, but that's what the EU was supposed to achieve, and it's proving a MUCH more painful process than expected.
Trouble is, the conglomerates only ever talk about the pros, and the protesters only ever talk about the cons. It's very very rare to encounter a forum which discusses both sides frankly, AND attempts to find middle ground. Which is silly - there's no fundamental reason why everyone couldn't benefit from the process.
2c, anyway.
If there is anyone anywhere who comes closest to the Smoking Man in the X-Files, it is Soros. The guy is a genius, no doubt, and I'm all for rampant capitlism and money making, but Soros is just a son-of-a-bitch. Really. That guy would be more than happy to utterly destroy the economy of any third world country to make $50. Happily.
Come to think of it, maybe I actully like Soros and I'm just suprised to read a limp wristed, whiny, leftist, apologist like Katz stick up for him.
Cunning linguists
...please...
What we need is good education in developing countries, we need equal possibilities to trade under similuar sets of trade-rules.
Open source (the idea that people should give their work away for free) has abolutely NOTHING to do with this. Giving work away for free doesn't create welth.
I'm sick and tired when not-so-serious articles tries to connect one thing that they support with something else thats really has nothing to do with it.
First of all, globalism is as much of a dream as communism. It looks good on paper, but people in general are too corrupt to make it work properly, so it will fail. Many Americans fail to see this because we live in a nation where our government's corruption is minimal RELATIVE TO MOST OTHER COUNTRIES (not meant to be flamebait--if you don't believe me, stop over in any South American or African country for a few days). Globalization will merely turn into an excuse to basically turn third world countries into slave nations. There will be no point in the rich trying to make themselves richer by exploiting people in their own country; they can already exploit the wealth gap that will be readily available in other countries! Don't believe me? It's already happening! And don't kid yourself with reform--PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY POLITICIANS, ARE INHERENTLY CORRUPT!
Secondly, how is this "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters?" Just because you mention RMS doesn't mean we're interested!
Globalism's whole premise is based upon the presumption that so-called third world countries want to join us in becoming increasingly technologized.
Secondly, it drives large corporatists crazy with dreams of raizing new nations of consumers -- ready to purchase their wares without sophistication or restraint.
mbbac
Take a look at your clothes tag. Were are they made?
Globalism is great for multinational corporations. Big business depends on cheap labor as a commodity to be sought out and exploited. Globalism removes the weak boundaries that might prevent a company from laying off it's entire domestic workforce and shipping it's jobs and money overseas... ala Nike. A strict utalitarian might argue that it betters the lives of workers in other nations by giving them a slightly better wage. Given the current climate of flag-wavin, USA-cheerin americans, it's hard to imagine people getting excited about allowing more US workers to get the axe just so that corporations can improve their bottom line.
People too often confuse globalism with some of its results. But globalism itself is rather simple. Throughout very time an improvement in transportation, shipping, and/or communication came about, the ability of an individual to trade goods and information got wider, leading to new opportunities for collaboration and new sources of conflict. As one region finds itself in a common market with another, it finds differences in culture that both enrich and enrage, and a market in which it may excel or suffer in due to natural advantages or disadvantages. The net result is generally a richer and more productive lifestyle on average - that frequently comes at the costs of individuals, cities, and now whole nations in the process.
All globalism is is the latest and perhaps last ('til space) iteration of this process. It's just as inevitable as it was before. Fighting against it with favoratist practices just makes things harder. The less competitive nations and companies will naturally have a problem with it, as will anyone opposed to the market system in general (which explains all the neo-marxist college students). One thing is clear: your comfortable and predictable lifestyle (for however long you've had it) won't be there for you forever. Preserve the unique things that matter most, and be prepared to adapt to change and compete in the world.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Hmmm. According to the United Nations Development Program, the richest one percent of the world's population receives as much income as the poorest 57 percent. More than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day; nearly a billion lack any access to clean water; 826 million suffer from malnutrition; 10 million die annually due to lack of basic health care.
George Soros has $3000 million to his name. He could rid himself of $2500 million and still be one of the wealthiest men on earth.
That's seven million people fed for a year at a dollar a day. That'd be clean water for every person on the planet (clean water is easy; there's a sand-filter technology that's perhaps a hundred bucks a pop); that's all malnutrition eliminated; that's basic healthcare for everyone.
George Soros could singlehandly wipe out most of the starvation/dire health problems on this planet. But he doesn't.
For that matter, George is #60 on the Forbes list. Imagine if all those ultra-mega-elite rich were to get some compassion and donate 10% of their unimaginable wealth to solving these basic problems of human needs.
Globalism isn't going to fix a damn thing. The rich will get richer, and the impoverished will continue to drop like flies because the rich don't care to share enough. (Which isn't to say that non-globalism is a cure. It isn't. The only cure is for the ultra-rich to become ultra-generous.)
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
But before I get moderated into oblivion, let me explain what I mean. Too many people, especially those in America, associate "Communism" with all sorts of evil things that have been pounded into their heads (i.e., torture, labor camps, atheism, etc.) The fact of the matter is that Soviet-style "Communism" had very little to do with little-c "communism" as envisioned by Marx.
Open Source is *very much* a philosophy that embraces "from each to his own ability, to each to his own needs." To that extent it IS communist. But it is not, and will never be, the big-C COMMUNIST that millions of Americans were taught to hate when they grew up. Because that was, by and large, evil, and OSS is not evil.
Globalism could be good, but the mechanisms for it to work and be fair to everyone do not exist.
If you really want to create a global economy that is fair you have to start thinking about things like a global minimum wage and global minimum worker entitlements, otherwise the multinational corporations will exploit the poorer countries even more than they do now.
The current ideas of globalism that the WTO are pushing are the opposite of a democratic society. They reduce the role of the democratically elected government and give more power to corporations. This is not a good thing, as the public has NO control over a corporation, whereas they have some control over a government.
As far as open source software and technology goes, there will be no extra benefits. They have as much access to that now as they will do in a global economy. For some countries this is nothing. For example if you are a non-government civilian living in Burma and are caught even posessing a computer or a private phone line you will be severely punished. People in Cambodia and many other countries don't want computers, they want their basic rights and needs, like food, clean water, decent shelter, a decent wage for a decent days work. If globalism addresses all of these social kinds of isses then I will give it the go ahead. Until then, lets help those that really need help.
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Herd-like college kids and knee-jerk political activists associate the term with a broad range of bugaboos, from cultural imperialism to sweatshops to environmental destruction. But others (like me) see it as the best hope for a world in which gaps between the tech and non-tech worlds are widening, and the have-nots are increasingly enraged at the haves.
That's cute. By using derogatory terminology to refer to activists that have protested against globalization, you dismiss their arguments without ever having to demonstrate why you think they aren't important. That frees you to trumpet your own ideas without addressing the drawbacks of globalization as it is currently being approached by the US.
The reason so many "knee-jerk activists" turned up in Seattle and elsewhere is because organizations like the WTO and trade agreements like NAFTA place an emphasis on global profit over local prosperity. It's an enforceable emphasis, too - under some of these agreements, if a corporation's profits would be hurt by new legislation (such as environmental or labor laws), a corporation can sue the government for compensation. That's had a discouraging effect on such legislation in countries that can't afford such compensation.
It's great to tout the benefits of globalization, but don't dismiss its drawbacks. At the least, if you are going to dismiss its drawbacks, tell us why instead of hiding behind name-calling. Tell us why it isn't important that globalization agreements are preventing improved labor conditions in these third-world countries, and why they're interfering with environmental legislation in first-world countries (to the point of demanding repeal of laws implemented by elected officials). Globalization as it's practiced today has become an emphasis of capitalism over democracy, and name-calling won't make that problem go away.
Naked.
>
> That's seven million people fed for a year at a dollar a day. That's 0.1% of the world's population. But let's continue with your altruistic notion that George Soros (who earned his money) should divest himself of his wealth and distribute it "fairly".
> That'd be clean water for every person on the planet (clean water is easy; there's a sand-filter technology that's perhaps a hundred bucks a pop); that's all malnutrition eliminated; that's basic healthcare for everyone.
There are 6 billion people on the planet.
George Soros could give each of them $0.50. (Or, more likely, governments could take his $3000 million, leaving him with nothing, and distribute the fifty cents "equally".)
Next year, George Soros would have nothing to give. So even if you could provide basic health care, education, food, etc. for $0.50 per person per year (you'd be hard pressed to do it at $0.50 per person per day!) you can't go back to him, because you've drained him dry.
Now whom will you loot to buy food and health care for the poor?
> Imagine if all those ultra-mega-elite rich were to get some compassion and donate 10% of their unimaginable wealth to solving these basic problems of human needs.
I have. Eventually, you run out of ultra-mega-elite rich people to loot, and the system collapses.
No thanks. Look at the standard of living 100 years ago, and compare it to today. Flush toilets, hot water, antibiotics, refrigeration, crossing the Atlantic ocean in hours instead of weeks, air conditioning in the home and office, a printing press and Cray supercomputer on every desk, and if the price of that standard of living is that the people who made all these things possible get rich as a result of my choosing to purchase them, then so be it.
Concerned Slashdotter: Your Majesty, the people in the third world are angry, for they have no bread
Katz: Let them have open source software
OSS advocacy is one thing, but claiming it's a panacea to everything is ridiculous. People in developing countries need:
1. Food
2. Healthcare
3. Non-corrupt governments
As for Soros, more power to him and his charities, but when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Soros thinks they need stable financial markets, etc., because he's a capitalist and his only tool is the market.
Essentially, how do underdeveloped countries build a middle class and have a democratic society?
Ignored by most of the anti-globalism activists is that without a workable legal system, no amount of financial aid, loans, industrial investment, farming assistence, etc., will help create a middle class and a sustainable economy.
Without the legal system, no other progress is feasable.
I'm with you 100%. If you even mention that America might not be corrupt to its core, you get flamed for being a naive flag-waver.
The few Americans that have travelled extensively generally get a tourist's point-of-view of other countries. I've been (un)fortunate enough to partake in business dealings with other countries.
Stuff that would get you fired and/or arrested in America is widely accepted, and even encouraged in other countries.
I worked aboard a cruise ship and assisted the pursing department when the ship pulled into port. The port agents *expect*, not ask for, not hint, *expect* a bribe to make sure all the paperwork goes through smoothly.
We kept a stock of whiskey bottles, wine and cartons of cigarettes in the captain's meeting room just for this reason. Some of the nastier agents/ports will require an envelope stuffed with money. Once in Turkey, the captain had to pay $5000 cash to avoid a $40,000 'fine'.
And this happens in countries you wouldn't expect.
France, Italy, Portugal and Spain were the 'least worst' offenders, with Italy being a little dirtier. Their port agents held a server that was shipped from the U.S. until we paid a $1000 duty. We told them to shove it, and had it re-routed to France. Their port agents only charged us a $500 duty...
These fees are negotiable, you see, depending on the scumminess of the particular agent.
Greece is bad. 50% of the cargo we had shipped to Greece somehow 'disappeared' from the port authority.
India, Morocco and Turkey are borderline criminal. Want your luggage to get through Customs? Better have a 20-spot in your pocket.
In fact, Gibraltar was the only port that didn't require greasing some port official's palm. It's run by Brits, so no surprise there.
I never appreciated America more than when I tried to do business overseas.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
This is so far from reality that it's hard to know where to start debunking. First of all "As a result of globalization" barely qualifies a hypothesis; it certainly isn't a proven fact. "As a result of disparities in legal respect for property rights" is a better hypothesis.
Second, growing disparity between rich and poor is not necessarily bad. If you could wave a wand and improve the standard of living of the poor by 8x, but in the process make the rich 10x as rich, would you do so? If not, why not? Just because disparity would grow?
Third, by almost all objective standards, the amount and severity of poverty in the world has dropped significantly during the era of globalization. There is less starvation; infant mortality is lower; life expectancy is longer; there is less malnutrition.
Finally, the places where things haven't improved correspond not to hotbeds of globalization, but to regimes so repressive or corrupt that global investment doesn't happen. Globalization has barely touched most of Africa or North Korea because no one will invest. In those places the standard of living is wretched.
So if the "anti-globalization" movement isn't really against globalization, then what is it really about? It's against a new form of top-down globalization, where ordinary people are stopped at borders, but corporations are free to move jobs whereever wages are kept artificially low (due to lack of ability of most third world workers to move to democratic countries that respect workers' rights). The movement is against new organizations that can veto national and local laws, yet the people affected by these decisions have no power to elect representatives to these organizations.
In most if not all countries, things are stacked against ordinary people influencing the laws that affect their daily life. But in many semi-democratic countries, it is possible to change the laws if you spend many years building a large movement, forcing politicians to represent us. But imagine our surprise after finally having our voice heard, just the tiniest bit, only to have the WTO decide that our democratic rights are a violation of "free trade".
You don't have to be a much of a cynic to see the folly in saying "if you don't like the laws the current crop of politicians enacted, vote them out", but at least with local and national governments, that is an option. When the WTO creates new rights for corporations and destroys rights for people, there isn't even a pretense of the ability to "vote them out".
So, yes, I'm all about "globalism" or "internationalism" or whatever you want to call it. I'm just for a globalism controlled by the 5 billion or so people it affects. And this is hardly a new idea. Internationalism has been a fundamental aspect of the struggle since the early 1800's. We were fighting for it then, and we're fighting for it now. The Industrial Workers of the World had hundreds of members in Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization's idea of globalization, yet the IWW is as firmly committed to uniting working people across the globe as they were at their founding in 1905.
And, yes, I'm happy that some billionaire likes the idea of a kinder-gentler unelected organization controlling our lives in a way that benefits us. That sure beats the sort of thing billionaires are usually arguing for. But that's hardly a solution. Doesn't anyone remember all that "of the people, by the people, for the people," crap? So this billionaire wants some kind of international body "for the people" but presumably of and by unelected politicians and corporations. That's a third of the way there. Hell, I'd be happy enough if it was at least honest - one vote for every $100,000,000 of wealth.
As for how to get there... Free software is definitely one aspect of it. The general priniciple is people coming together and collectively creating and controlling the things that affect our lives. Free (as in speech) Software gives computer users the chance to opt out of Bill Gates' orwellian wet dreams, and it also demonstrates an alternative method of organization and creation. It even makes ideas of a sane future imaginable -- and, as a programmer, Free Software is the only method of software production and distribution that makes sense in a (hopefully not too distant) future where people are in charge instead of corporations. The general principle applies in all other spheres of life, as well -- joining together with others working at the workplace, in our communities, and so on.
Amen.
A certain amount of corruption will inevitably occur. What matters is how the government and especially the CITIZENS respond to it, once they become aware of it. Corruption is the single most dangerous threat to any government, and especially democracies, because a democracy that won't control corruption is not a democracy at all. Severe punishment and righteous indignation are the hallmarks of societies which can keep corruption in check, allowing themselves to prosper. Apathy and capitulation are hallmarks of societies which will allow corruption to grow until they can't even function.
The US is pretty good about corruption, at least where domestic affairs are concerned, but we could be better, particularly with regard to corporate regulations and international concerns. Some spots in Northern Europe may be as good or better, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned they need a lot of improvement. Yes, even and in fact especially Japan.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
That is, all the WTO and G8 talks are designed to make it easy to send capital around the world easily but not allow people to move to different places according to need for skills. As long as corporations have global freedom but not people, we will have the disparity between different people. If a true market in labour existed where people could move anywhere where their skills were wanted, then dicatators would not be able to oppress their citizens so easily, since they could just leave.
Open Source on a global Internet threatens monopoly power because it allows someone in Brazil to develop software that is used in Australia and that same person to use software developed in Finland. The software goes pretty directly from creator to user rather than having some intermediate owner like Microsoft controlling supply and demand.
Open Source tends to reduce the tyranny of money, whch allows a controller of money such as a bank to profit without production, and return to a barter system where my labour is directly available to consumers, and their labour is directly available to me. This threatens the global money monopoly a lot. So that is one reason there is such an attempt to block easy flow of information products (DMCA SSCA etc.). Both the banks and Disney want to ensure that information only is exchanged through a medium where they get a cut.
Remember that money doesn't really exist. It is just a convenient fiction to keep track of the exchange of the real things like goods and knowledge. Any thing that threatens this fiction is very dangerous.
Where does FFFish say that George Soros is at all obligated to provide this service? He merely noted that Mr. Soros is able to provide great good at no impact to his lifestyle and chooses not to.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Let me get this straight. The price for our 20% of the world to have all this technology is that the other 80% of the planet doesn't (yet) have (all of) it (at the same time I have it).
Are you seriously alleging that if the capitalist economies of the world hadn't developed flush toilets, indoor plumbing, antibiotics, refrigeration, jet aircraft, air conditioning, computers, laser printers, (that is, that the First World had chosen to continue to live in a 19th-century agrarian economy), that Africa, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Argentina, Palestine, and Peru would now have invented, produced, and distributed all of these things?!?!?
Do you expect me to believe that antibiotics rain from the sky like manna from heaven, and that air conditioners and laser printers spontaneously materialize out of quantum fluctuations? (Let's hope it's this way and not the other way around, 'cuz HP Laserjets falling from the sky would suck!)
What are you smoking, and are you sharing?