[lbo-talk] In Defense of Global Capitalism by Johan Norberg

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Fri Sep 19 21:02:26 PDT 2003


Saw an ad for this book in the New Statesman. http://www.johannorberg.net/neo.asp?page=indefense_exc Preface, Chapter 1 and 2. http://www.globalcapitalism.st/contents.asp http://www.globalcapitalism.st/reviewers.asp The Cato Institute: Public Policy Analysis, Limited Government, ... ... In Defense of Global Capitalism In Defense of Global Capitalism by Johan Norberg A young writer from Sweden, who started on the anarchist left, Johan Norberg ... http://www.cato.org/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51927-2003Sep9.html
> ...Further north, a 30-year-old Swede with long blond hair has recently
> conquered Europe with a book called "In Defense of Global Capitalism,"
> just published here by the Cato Institute. Johan Norberg, a former
> anarchist who believes in a world without borders, makes the case that
> free trade is good for the developing world, good for freedom, good for
> social progress, even if the dull old Marxists refuse to see it...

Yet the shift in fashion also reflects a shifting intellectual consensus. Listen hard to Third World activists these days -- Oxfam, say, or the Jubilee Network -- and it is not anti-globalization rhetoric you hear but anti-trade-barrier rhetoric. In the run-up to Cancun, at least a half-dozen people have told me that the average European cow receives $2.50 in daily agricultural subsidies, more money than at least 3 billion of the world's humans have to live on. These agricultural subsidies are, without question, one of the least-discussed, farthest-reaching of international scandals: Every year, the rich world spends many billions more on subsidies and agricultural tariffs than it does on aid to the countries that these subsidies and agricultural tariffs help impoverish. Despite its traditional help-the-poor rhetoric, even Sweden, Norberg points out, makes sugar from sugar beets instead of importing sugar at a fifth of the price from the sugar cane-producing South. -- Michael Pugliese



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