not flat
I was recently made aware — courtesy of my some - day - to - be - a - judge - but - currently - starting - law - school friend Mark (thanks Mark!) — about an article in U.S. News & Report interviewing Nobel Peace winner (2001) Joseph Stiglitz, author of Globalization and Its Discontents and Making Globalization work, and former chief economist at the World Bank. He talks about the growing global division between the weatlhy and the poor. Here is an excerpt:
“The problem for both is that economic globalization has outpaced political globalization. Governments used to ensure that the capitalism was tempered and that development helped people across society. Now, we are more interdependent and need collective action on a variety of things, yet we have yet to create the political structures that allow that to be done in a democratic way.”
He continues at the end of the interview:
“The world is becoming less flat as inequity grows. One way to think about globalization is simply the lowering of transport and communications costs. As we become more interdependent we need to solve together a whole host of problems. If the world is going to do it, we should do so in a way that reflects our fundamental values: democracy, fairness, respect for the individual, concern for the poor. Unfortunately, the way the United States has been exercising leadership in the area of globalization has not been consistent with those values.”
Last summer I tried to read The World is Flat with my friend Walter. We never finished… at least talking about it. Maybe I’ll have to pick up this book now.
September 12th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Stiglitz is a main economical man. No right wing bs but a respect for markets and some common sense rather than dumb ideology.
I’ve gotta learn more about this Acton thing. What I’ve read so far hasn’t been that impressive to me. Sounds like an approach trying to challenge various concentrations of power but in practice sounds mostly like just another conservative selective thing that challenges big government and big science but excuses big business and big religion. I’m looking for somebody with some honest consistency. I’d love to hear you Acton guys make your case.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
I wonder if he thinks that world leaders actually want to develop global political systems? I would argue that they don’t simply because global markets without the political and legal accountability is exactly what they want. The wild west on a global scale is hard to tame without a lot of a good and honest sheriffs in every region.