ray245 wrote: ↑2020-04-28 05:07pmYes, China has reached a point they are no longer dependent on the West. But few developing countries have reached where China is today. So they are still dependent on foreign expertise and investments, in whatever form and in whatever shape they can get.
So once again, decarbonization and demise of personal air travel will limit the possibility of purchasing machines, electronics, etc. from China? Is that what you are saying? If people no longer fly to Halong bay Vietnam would be unable to buy electronics from China, or is Vietnam still perfectly capable of buying electronics, machine tools, heavy duty vehicles from China, or South Korea, or wherever else, if not able to make them locally? Explain yourself.
Just because the existing system does not work does not mean going to the opposite end would necessary solve the problem. Neither globalisation nor anti-globalisation will resolve the issue at work here. Anti-globalist position does not mean wealth transfer will take place for the developing world. They might not be subject to richer nations the way they are now, but it does not mean they will be able to achieve parity with the developed world either.
And? I mean, under globalization they won’t be able to achieve parity, without it they won’t be able to achieve parity. But in the second case they would have to build up diversified economies with a variety of experts in all fields of production, from agriculture to aviation, from computing to construction etc. In the first case they would have no engineers of their own, no scientists, being doomed to being the poor back-end of some global supply chain or worse. In the second case, they would be building up a diverse working class that has to specialize in various fields.
The centuries and decades long head-start that the developed nations had over the developing world will not go away even if the current globalism system is dismantled. It will simply cement the status quo.
Dancing like a jester in front of the king won’t make the jester into a king, ever, either. So I guess you are saying, not only cement the status quo but also cement it in a way that won’t deprive the masters of their status abroad?
ray245 wrote:Where did I advocate for a position that tourism incentivized transfer of technology? That is not what I am saying at all. I am saying your position does provide an incentive for transfer of technology and expertise.
Yes, of course it does. Governments can cooperate & agree to transfer knowledge and skills. Companies and cooperatives can also do so, if they are not hell-bent on protecting industrial secrets & monopoly domination, that is.
Sustainability and global inequality are two separate issues
Indeed they are separate, but connected to each other. Because the West rose on global-scale plunder, murder and destruction of environments and habitats, the other nations seeking to develop cannot utilize the same model. There are no other ten Earth to plunder for cheap forest, coal & oil, there are no other ten continents to enslave as colonies & suck dry to help your industries. So it naturally follows that the inequality which resulted from mass plunder, colonialism and Western global empire, or prior incidents of imperialism, can hardly be solved by applying the same solution, ie being imperialistic, because there are very few areas left where you can do so.
Being more sustainable does not mean you are resolving the problem of inequality. Having less tourists and less air travel can help the planet, and also shield the developing world from suffering the burden of climate devastation. That does not mean the issue of inequality is going away.
I fully agree with you, and yet you seem to have missed the point: tourism solves neither sustainability NOR equality issues, so even if these are separate issues as you say, seems your solution solves neither. The people from poor countries do not become equal to the people from rich countries due to tourism, as you might have noticed, and additionally mass air travel is destroying the planet for all people alike. This seems fairly evident. What is your actual point?
My position is that all our talk and solutions about combating climate change needs to take the perspective of the developing world before we take the perspective of the developed world.
Yes, if you watch the news, the developing world is begging for action on climate change from rich nations - and in much stronger terms than any lf the rich nations themselves - but so far has gotten little reaction. Australia and the US, two apparently-wealthiest ones, sabotage all such requests and pleas. So the developed world is sabotaging action requested by those threatened most.
If we are cutting down the tourism industry, then the first and foremost problem should not be about cutting it down for the sake of it, but trying to come with alternative solutions so that the workers in developing countries that are reliant on tourism can still gain the resources, wealth and expertise to help them ease the transition to other forms of industries that are far more sustainable.
Exactly, and it seems were are in agreement here, because I said above: these things are matters of policy, of agreements. Nobody transfers expertise and knowledge while sipping pina coladas on a beach. People do so when executing government agreements or commercial agreements. Also, please google “path dependency” and come back to me explaining why we should remove extreme path dependency from our considerations. It necessarily follows that people will transition to other forms of occupation when certain industries are removed. We don’t use asbestos in construction and we don’t use lead in water pipelines, we don’t burn wood in house cheminees with few exceptions, and occupations related to this are of course no more existent, or severely curtailed in number. But so?
They can figure out the solutions on how to better develop as a nation. That does not mean they will gain the wealth, resources and expertise to do so on their own.
Why? The source of all wealth is transformative collective labour of humans, and human ideas. People will use their labour, and ideas, to improve their life. Governments and companies can order technology, and humans can also invent technology. But producing pina coladas for tourists is not actually inventing anything. It is servitude.
Saying they can figure out on their own is basically a form of "passing the buck" on responsibility and cementing the status quo of wealth inequality. That is my fundamental issues with the anti-globalist rhetoric. It might stop some of the worst tendencies of the existing system, and give the developing world some breathing space. However, that breathing space is not sufficient.
I see your criticism. But you also admit that globalism is not reducing the gap, and that it is not helping the countries build diversified and resilient economies (all the more obvious now when rona has shut everything down and locked all borders). Thirty years of globalism and non-diversified, fewer-goods-and-servics economies have made the countries vulnerable and weak, and oftentimes utterly dependent on the global “deciders”, the rich nations. This is not solving any issues, it is exacerbating them and perpetuating into infinity. Also it removes all agency from nations, forces them to make their economies carbon-copies of blueprints laid out by the rich nations, who hold them at gunpoint via control of debt, reserve currency arrangements, etc.
The robber has gotten his huge share of wealth, but of course his victims cannot get this wealth, and cannot reach him.
But do they? Is the level of wealth fundamentally important, or the quality of life of the citizens? If by purchasing power the citizens can afford all the same things they could in a rich nation, what is the ultimate difference? Why should China have a GDP or whatever other indicator you can come up with of 40k per person, if it has essentially the same living standards for most of its population at 20k per person?
I challenge your narrative precisely because there are many points in it to be challenged. What good is wealth built, say, on exporting wholesale all the wood in your nation, cutting down all the forests to the last tree? This is a form of wealth that is based on plundering your own compatriots, privately appropriating profits & leaving an entire nation deforested at the end of the cycle, with no other sources of income to boot. So “wealth” should appear from strong, sustainable and diversified economies.
So far the West is failing that test, because its economies historically built on plunder, plentiful resources or stolen resources. It also fails sustainability. The East is doing better with diversified & resilient, but sometimes failing on sustainability as well.
We all have a lot to learn, but building one-shot poor economies that crumble at the first sight of crisis is untenable. It is untenable exactly because we are under capitalism. If the one shot or one thing these economies make fails or is no longer needed, then they are fucked. Nobody will care to do anything. When socialist nations phase out a factory, they would reassign the workers to different factories to make different goods. Under capitalism nobody will.
Indeed, previously existing phenomenon of “ghost towns” is being repeated on a much larger scale, there are entire “ghost nations” by now that lost a significant share of their able-bodied populations via labour force drain, useless and abandoned, making nothing important and bound to lose even more of their population in the future. Is this the way we want to go forward?
If yes, why?
