Our species' collective answer to this question will have significant impact on how the future plays out. We can compare the views of David Korten in "The Post Corporate World" and Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat".

I like the idea of globalization and the market favoring each with their natural advantage - in the sense of bringing us together as one world and one people - and because it makes war less likely when we are all trading partners. We will need to find additional structures to support those who are left out of the Market (see below) - but, I don't think Korten's prescription of irradiating the corporate cancer takes us in the right direction.

From Better Maps:

It seem to me that there is a limit to what we can expect from the “free market”. Although the market excels at increasing the availability of goods and services at increasingly higher quality and lower price, there is a limit to the abundance the market can create. That limit is the point where the abundance of an item reduces the market value below the cost of production. If we want more of that item than is provided by the market limit, then we will need to provide a subsidy, or find some other way to produce it. Farm subsidies are the prime example where both lions and gazelles agree that subsidies are justified because We want more food at a lower price than the market would otherwise provide.

Another limitation of the market has to do with the supply and demand for gazelles. Increasing productivity in the market is, by definition, producing more goods and services with fewer people. To increase productivity, the market needs fewer people with more specialized skills. Those who do not have the skills in demand in the market, become an excess supply of labor driving down wages in the remaining jobs that do not require advanced skills. As the wages of more laborers are reduced, there are fewer goods and services that they can purchase, limiting the number of businesses that can survive providing them goods and services, further reducing the number of jobs and the rate of pay for those jobs.

It's interesting to contrast this with George Monbiot's view that:

The founding myth of the dominant nations is that they achieved their industrial and technological superiority through free trade. Nations which are poor today are told that if they want to follow our path to riches, they must open their economies to foreign competition. They are being conned.

Almost every rich nation has industrialised with the help of one of two mechanisms now prohibited by the global trade rules. The first is “infant industry protection”: defending new industries from foreign competition until they are big enough to compete on equal terms. The second is the theft of intellectual property. History suggests that technological development may be impossible without one or both.

Yes, although the country does have to ensure that the protectionist measures don't become a crutch over time.

This question came up for me in the university course Political Economics, and the conclusion I drew at that time was that protectionist measures were essential, given the vulnerable nature of homegrown industries.

It's even more telling that today's economic success stories were achieved -- with some possible exceptions -- because of protectionist measures, which makes the Washington Consensus appear to be a prescription the developed world applies to the undeveloped world -- much to their regret.

The term Economic Nationalism refers to this strategy of retaining control, and thus preventing foreign competition from acting as a parasite on the economy.

ALSO SEE DEPENDENCY THEORY here

I am reading Food is Different: Why the WTO Should Get out of Agriculture (Global Issues) by Peter M. Rosset

It is an eye opener. Free trade is only fair to the industrialized nations.

I guess I am way closer to David Korten than David Braden is, though I don't think I am that far off of David Braden!

Thanks Linda,

I think part of the problem we have is in thinking we must choose one or the other. I have been trying to describe the other option as a program of localization to balance globalization. The solutions we are looking for do not necessarily involve prohibiting something (such as cheap imports) - we can think in terms of enabling additional things. That is the way I see the Self-help Corporation and Chris Cook's open corporate - additional structures designed to support those not currently in demand in the market.

Maybe part of the problem is that in poverty and despair, short term necessities win out over long term implications and people act to eat in the short term with a long term result that means the destruction of local structures and even capabilities.

I am teaching a course on Technological Change and the Environment this semester. The thing I have been drumming into their heads is that I want them to leave the class being able to look at an action that they are taking in terms of the long term effects on the natural, built and social environments. These students have never done anything like this and I am beginning to believe that it is a "luxury" afforded those who have time to think about the long term future. That is not to say that those who have the time necessarily think ahead. Sometimes it is economically advantageous to ignore the implications (read that greed).

Yes, those who do not know where their next meal will come from cannot be expected to plan for the future.

I developed the idea for the Self-help Corporation thinking about - if I was born into poverty - and somehow knew what I know from all the advantages I have had - would I still be doomed to live out my life in poverty? I think the knowledge would have allowed me to escape - how can we help those who need it obtain that knowledge?

It is in the interest of every community to find a way to help all of their residents contribute to the wellbeing of the community - and that is why I am now promoting the conversation - "What can We do to make Our community a better place to live?" and thinking about the Self-help Corporation as a Community Investment Enterprise.

In that way, I think we can establish local stability in the local economy and ecosystem as a firm basis from which everyone can have the opportunity to participate in the planetary economy - at least that would be the ideal way to structure it IMO - and each community has the power to choose to approach the future in that way.