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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.
Jon ... I fear your slashdot headline generator has become jammed in the "on" position again.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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
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
Top left square.
Imperialism
Bottom right square.
Open Source
Center square.
Corporatism
2nd row, 2nd column square.
Multi-nationals
4th row, 4th column square.
BINGO!!!!
If he somehow included 'Post-Columbine', 'Hellmouth' and 'Post-911', I could have filled the entire card.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
>
> 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.
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?
Chicken/egg. A population will not value a legal system that is corrupt, protects only the few, and generally doesn't serve the populace. Historical circumstances create cultural mores to a greater extent than the inverse (it's no accident that a work-ethic can thrive in a population that has never been enslaved, never been conquered or occupied, never had life savings devalue to nothing overnight - all these experiences tend to erode that Protestant work ethic, and respect for property also tends to disappear when one's family is hungry and sick.) I don't think it's an accident that respect for the law declines most sharply in the US where the law is seen as an unfair, outside force meant to protect the privileged from the rest, and the white from the non-white.