The new rules of the global game

BBC ^ | 02.19.06 | Jonathan Marcus

[Coleus]

"Globalisation" has become one of the great buzzwords of modern times.

Microsoft's Bill Gates is amongst those who say the world is 'flatter'

It came to the fore during the 1990s, and the impact of globalisation looks set to play a prominent part in shaping our world during the first decades of this new century.  To see the advocates of globalisation at work and play there is no better vantage point than the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  Its members have probably all read columnist Tom Friedman's best-seller, The World Is Flat: A Brief History Of the Twenty First Century, many times over.

Friedman accepts that what he calls the "flat world" - measured, say, by comparing the more equal life-chances of a software engineer in Bangalore with those of another working in California's Silicon Valley - is a great all-simplifying metaphor.  While it certainly contains a truth, it is not so much a flatter world as one with many more peaks and troughs.  There are of course the success stories of Indian software engineers, but, as Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek International told me, the process of globalisation is leaving hundreds of millions on the margins - Chinese, Indian, Africans and, yes, even tens of millions of Americans and Europeans too.

Asset and vulnerability

But progress has always been unequal.  Of greater concern is what might be called globalisation's "dark side" - the extent to which the new linkages in this increasingly borderless world are helping to promote crime, terrorism and the spread of pandemic disease.

You gasp at the way the modern world is joined up

Globalisation is really about flows of everything, from money to microbes. And the bad inevitably travels with the good.  As Craig Mundie, Microsoft's Chief technical officer points out, criminals are among the earliest adopters of information technology.  If you visit one of the great hubs of the just-in-time economy - for example, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad's huge container terminal outside Fort Worth in Texas - you gasp at the way the modern world is joined up.

Here, giant, brightly-coloured steel boxes with goods from China, Taiwan, Europe, Israel - all computer-tracked - are routed on their way to consumers in American cities.  But as the commentator Philip Bobbitt told me, these linkages illustrate both globalisation's "greatest asset and greatest vulnerability."  At the giant control rooms that regulate the passage of container trains on BNSF's tracks, you see the potential weakness of the emerging globalised world: break any one link in the chain and the result could be disruption on a major scale.  Pandemic disease has the capacity to bring our world to gridlock.

Eastward shift

The key thing to understand is that globalisation is not "unequivocally good."  John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, says that "like any other large historical change rooted in technological development , globalisation will have both good and bad aspects".  Globalisation is not simply about China or India punching their weight in the world economy; as the "Davos view" would have it, becoming more like "us".

Scams like phishing occur as criminals worldwide exploit IT

It is also about a fundamental shift of economic power - perhaps eventually even political power - eastwards.   Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard University calls it "a resurgence of the Orient"; part of what he describes as a "great re-convergence".

In our new series for BBC World Service radio we grapple with the complex world that is slowly emerging from the fog of aspirations prompted by the ending of the Cold War.  It's a world, which, as Moises Naim, Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Policy magazine told me, is crying out for some form of global governance.  But who is to set the new rules of the game? Will it be the international lawyers? Or will it be re-vitalised international institutions that will take charge?  According to Niall Ferguson, the new rules of the international system will not be so very different from those of the past.  "The forms of the global order are far more elaborate than they were a hundred years ago," he says.

"But the fundamental content of international relations is just the same as it always was."Welcome to the shock of the not so new!  The New Rules of the Game is broadcast each Monday at 0905 on BBC World Service from 20 February 2006.

[Travis McGee]

Yes indeed. What a position to be in, depending on communist China to buy our treasuries!

[Mulder]

Do you want to see this movie or would you prefer to live this one event to the end? Is it time to stop globalization or shall we continue walking to our graveyards?

Most people are too busy watching Desperate Housewives or the football game to care. Even after Katrina, etc...., they still aren't taking steps to be prepared.

[Lady Heron]

Thanks.

[Travis McGee]

I gather that this type of emergency may go on quite a bit longer than three days?

I think two weeks, and we're in serious trouble. It's back to choking somebody for 7 minutes. Doesn't matter if it's 7 minutes or 7 hours, the result is the same. I'm liking the skyscraper analogy here. A modern skyscraper can be compared to a modern city, run with a modern "just in time" delivery system. The skyscraper allows a tremendous number of peope to live on a few acres, with an incredible amount of conveniences and even luxury. Climate control, hot and cold water on demand, etc. But if an explosion in the sub basement takes out the pipes and destroys the water and HVAC system, how long can people live in the skyscraper, and where would they go? Big trouble results, in a hurry. Our cities are like that. If the ATMs, gas stations and and grocery stores are cleaned out during any type of panic, then what? Chaos, fear, panic and hunger. Fathers will not sit around while their children cry from starvation. We will see either brutal martial law to keep order, or total anarchy.

[Travis McGee]

Sad but true. Add fear and hunger to the mix, and people would support any dictator who promised to restock the grocery shelves.

[B4Ranch]

snips from http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/food-cn.htm


Dawkins said in 1994-95, 10 cents out of every food dollar spent in the United States went to Philip Morris and another 6 cents went to CongAgra. Four companies - IBP, ConAgra, Cargill and Beef America - sold 87% of all slaughtered beef. Two companies - Kelloggs and General Mills - sold two-thirds of all ready-to-eat breakfast cereals. Campbells sold 73% of all canned soups. Frito-Lay sold 85% of all corn chips and 40% of all potato chips. Kraft is owned by General Foods, (the latter is owned by Philip Morris) sold more than half of all sliced processed cheese.

Small farmers are paying the price for this corporatisation. They have been seen as dispensable in the US and the dispensability of the small farmer is now being globalised through trade liberalisation.

The main argument used for the industrialisation of food and corporatisation of agriculture is the low productivity of the small farmer. However, even the World Development Report has accepted that small farms are more productive than large ones.

In spite of all evidence pointing to the high diversity, productivity and sustainability of small family farms, globalisation is wiping out these efficient systems and replacing them with inefficient and unhealthy industrialised food systems under corporate control.

The myth of low productivity of diversity-based small farms is also being used to promote genetic engineering. In her paper on 'Biodiversity and Biotechnology', Beth Burrows called genetic engineering a form of Structural Adjustment but directed by Ciba-Geigy and Monsanto rather than by the World Bank and IMF.
_________________________________

How many family farmers/ranchers do you know who do not have either the wife or the husband working in town at another 'cash' job today? I don't know a single one and I know a bunch of these folks.

40 years ago the big shots decided that they needed these people as part of the labor force where their wages were taxable.

More family farms have been sold out to the top four or five ag corps in the last 25 years than you can imagine. In many instances the farmer still lives on the land but the crop belongs to Monsanto or some other world wide corporation.

[Doe Eyes]

How many days food supply do you have in your home?

I maintain several months worth of caloric intake as body fat.

I'm ready.

[B4Ranch]

Do you or the Mrs. go food shopping every three days? Imagine what that would be like if you had to stand in line for six hours to get your next three days worth of food that FEMA or the local Emergency Services decided that you need.

The three days later the process repeats once more except this time you don't receive even 50% of what you need. Can you fathom what your neighborhood would look like if armed people were robbing homes for food?

Would you care to imagine what the 12th and 15th days would be like or do you doubt that you still be alive?

[Nowhere Man]

This is the dark downside of our total global interconnectedness, based on JIT delivery. Shut that global conveyer belt down for any period of time.....and it's like shutting off the HVAC system in a modern skyscraper. The results will be swift.

A side note story, this actually happened to me once when I worked for an engineering firm as a computer/plotter operator. One summer, we had temps of like 90F to 100F and the building's A/C burned out a motor and of course we had no A/C at all. But in my computer room, I had my own independent A/C unit so we can keep the computers and plotters cool plus the humidity had to be kept at a certain level. I made friends really fast for a while, I had something in the entire building that even the CEO didn't have. B-)

[Nowhere Man]

When you have a few million people who are hungry, retooling isn't an option. I would doubt that, during the winter months, if one was to gather every can of food in the entire North America that you could feed us all for 15 days.

I think you'd see a comback in game hunting with a lot of people out there hunting for game with anything from revolvers to assault rifles. The downside is that if you spot a deer, elk, buffalo, etc., when you fire your gun, the noise will let others know within a 5 mile radius (sound will carry more when things like airplanes don't fly anymore, etc, I live near an airport and it was kind of eerie when the President ordered all flight traffic to a halt for a week) of your general direction and give them the idea that the best way to bring home the venison is to find you.

[B4Ranch]

"the best way to bring home the venison is to find you."

They will know ahead of time that you are also armed, so that reduces the risk somewhat. The increased risk is that those who were serious about finding you would probably shoot you from a concealed location.

One answer would be to kill the deer or whatever then stay where you are for 12/24/36 hours, remaining on the lookout for armed men who appear to be tracking, before you headed back to camp.

[Jeff Head]

Buy gold...mold lead...load powder hehehe.

[Travis McGee]

Yep, and those small farms were our safety system for hard times. That's gone now.

[Travis McGee]

Imagine any city if the power went out and stayed out for more than a week.

[hgummer]

I understand your point. I find it interesting that with hundreds of billions more spent on the military, Department of Homeland Security, etc. since 9/11 we appear to still be just one "incident" away from poverty, riots, hunger, etc. Once again, this is not in my local paper or tv news. All that spending, regulations, taxes and government employees, and "homeTOWN security" will still depend on prepared Americans with a little foresight and well stocked pantries!

[Travis McGee]

And we know that only an insignificant % of Americans will have a week's worth of food and water if and when the SHTF.

[archy]

It's a world, which, as Moises Naim, Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Policy magazine told me, is crying out for some form of global governance.

Someone finally gets it?

Yeah, but I suspect a CoDominion such as has been described by Jerry Pournelle is not quite what they have in mind. But it may come to that.

[vrwc0915]

My street would look like this:

[B4Ranch]

Let's hope the outside temperatures are low otherwise the smell in 48 hours would be real rank!

Psst. Do you have another BMG tucked away that you'd be interested in selling?

[B4Ranch]

I knew there was something about that pic (beside the fencing) that didn't look right. It just hit me that you're out of ammo. Get another belt in there quick!