<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> Doug Henwood wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite="midp05200f06bb81179c6066@%5B192.168.1.101%5D">[I sent this the other day hoping it would provoke some conversation, but it didn't. This contradicts a lot of "left" wisdom on "globalization." The concept, whatever it means exactly, is apparently popular even in Vietnam, Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico, and Old Europe. No reaction? Or would people rather not think about this? Too busy getting ready to protest Cancun?] [full release with charts: <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://people-press.org/commentary/display.php3?AnalysisID=68"><http://people-press.org/commentary/display.php3?AnalysisID=68></a>] World Publics Approve Increased International Trade But Concern for Problems of Global Economy </blockquote> <snip> “Globalization” has always been “popular.”  People have always wanted more and better stuff, more possibilities, more novelty, more excitement.  If you had taken a poll of people living in North America at any time between, say, 1870 and 1900 and asked if they approved of railroads and the telegraph, the response would have been overwhelmingly favorable.  That was the “globalization” of the day.  The railroads were financed abroad, mostly in England, and the commodities that they distributed came from far away.  People in Illinois or Nebraska didn’t mind on the whole that inexpensive, durable, factory-produced British ceramics, exported across the Atlantic by the boatload and distributed far and wide by rail, drove local potters and tinsmiths out of business. After all, the same railroads provided them with distant markets for their wheat and corn and hogs, and the income to buy all of that cool new stuff.  This would have been true even given the fact that everyone knew that the railroad companies were financially corrupt and undermined democratic self-government; this would have been true even though most people had direct personal experience of the costs of industrialization.  The benefits outweighed the costs, whatever ambivalence people may have felt, and the benefits were not just material--cheap, attractive commodities, better jobs--but cultural too: the chance to learn what’s going on elsewhere in the world, the chance to travel easily outside of a thirty mile radius from your place of birth.  Sure, there are problems with polls, but it doesn’t surprise me that people today in Vietnam or Brazil would endorse “globalization” as a general phenomenon. <o:p></o:p> People in the US a century ago responded quite favorably to movements for the oversight and regulation of the railroads and the breakup of the “trusts,” which went hand in hand with calls for political reform, though many of the reform proposals of the progressive era that would have been enacted under a more democratic and transparent political system had to wait for the great depression and New Deal.  Moreover, while people want the benefits of “globalization”--call it what you will--they also want security: labor protections, health care, pensions, education.  The desire for security is politically a two-edged sword, though.  A left that seems likely to kill the goose that laid the golden egg isn’t going to get very far.  I know that social democracy isn’t very exciting... <o:p></o:p> So how about a preview of that chapter, Doug.  What do you mean by “misspecified?” Jacob Conrad </body> </html>