How different the world looks depending where you live and the culture that shapes your thinking. Attitudes from the Third World are not the most popular topic or dynamic input for global policy makers. Nevertheless, there is a growing reproach in the value of the doctrine of globalism, coming out of the subcontinent. If you haven’t been living under a rock, you know that the hottest transfer of service related jobs is taking place. Transferring functions to India is supposed to be good business – enhancing total return – for the competitively minded corporations.
The elimination of domestics jobs becomes the end result of the transfer of back room banking and computer tech services. What is significant, is that some voices in the Hindu hinterlands are not fooled by this stampede to set up shop. Will this formula for assembly line telecommunications produce prosperity at a subsistent level or will it just line the pockets of the privileged few that control the global economy? According to Shelley Walia, the “Prospects are not bright for ordinary people”.
Citing Chomsky and Globalization by Jeremy Fox and The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson, the argument is presented that condemns the economic model of GATT, the IMF and the WTO. When Chomsky states: “The rich people, are going to have a nanny state protecting and subsidizing them. The neo-liberal reforms used by the global system are clearly meant to trick people into thinking that the West is using democratic principles to usher in an environment of freedom and equality”, he appeals to the predisposition of distrust that drives the thinking in the Third World. Reinforcing hard lessons learned during the colonial era, the message resonates. “Euroamerican elites must inevitably grow richer, while the rest of the world could revert to the conditions of Blake’s “dark Satanic Mills.” The rich countries ignore the rules, subsidizing the multinationals at the cost of the poor countries”.
Noting that Chomsky is hardly an exemplary advocate for Capitalism, his point strikes a suspicious cord. The age old conflict between who does the work and who gains the profits, causes the excitement for this business invasion to be taken with a grain of salt. As we all know, that march to the sea for harvesting salt, played a major part in creating a country out of a colony. Ghandi might well see a risk in having multinationals run all the sewing, spinning wheels and doing the custom service for garment sales.
Walia continues: “Globalisation, therefore, is a shift from the local to the global, a hasty and headlong movement by the Third World to get incorporated into the seemingly blissful economic prosperity espoused by the neo-liberal West. It is a process “whereby state-centric agencies and terms of reference are dissolved in a structure of relations between different actors operating in a context which is truly global than merely international.” Once again the term neo-liberal is used. For most Americans, the push for interdependency is seen as having a right of center, Republican or conservative bent. The reason that such a stereotype is so out of date is well known in most of the rest of the world. Countries that experience the predominance of the transnational, understand that the issue is best viewed when the power of money is the gauge of political policy.
Chalmers Johnson’s book examines: “the elaborate ideology of neoliberalism “that has obscured America’s international endeavors – the triumph of unilateral militarism – and how militarism has displaced and discredited America’s economic leadership.” The Third World sees themselves as the victim of a financial imperialism that uses a network of garrison outposts to enforce the commercial enterprises of a Western elite. Even when Japan became the world’s leading creditor and the U.S. the biggest debtor, the conclusion still held correct. SONY translates into Standard Oil of New Jersey!
Is this assessment a reasonable synopsis of international business? Many Americans refuse to accept that their economy is a controlled organism. They desperately want to believe that the economy is a living creature that grows and nourishes their worldly needs and that they benefit from the corporate paradigm. The harsh economic facts of a virtual servitude are rejected, because dealing with this outcome upsets the work schedule. If some perceptive peasants from the underdeveloped world smells rotten pork and refuses to eat, why do so many Americans continue demanding to consume life threatening fat?
The folly of aspiring to corporate careers is hitting the wall of reality. When wages can be slashed by moving off shore, the pay check of the family household in your suburbs dives. The central point that Chomsky makes is that a select few dominate the means of conducting business. Johnson details that in order for this elite to maintain their dominance, the extension of military enforcement is needed to be projected globally. If both are wrong, explain the soaring trade imbalance, the foreign outsourcing of services and record debt? The decline in the U.S. Dollar only invites speculation, and benefits financiers.
When a journalist from India can outline the master scheme, why is it so difficult for Americans to learn and accept the brutal conditions that are designed to impoverish our own domestic citizens? Globalism is recognized as a self serving formula for advancing the power and wealth of the money cabal, by this Third World reviewer. Just maybe those ordinary people should learn from the foreign press. Neoliberal is just as bad as Neoconservative. Both have an identical disturbed viewpoint that globalization is desirable. Their policy will emasculate the nation state, drive out independent businesses and place labor on a planetary plantation.
The next time you call for customer service, be prepared to talk to the night shift in Bombay. Allowing this practice to continue and expand means your neighborhood will start to resemble the slums of Calcutta. A life less ordinary will be a mere memory of the past. If globalism is the inevitable outlook there is no future. Willing acceptance won’t relieve the pain. Buying a Dell computer sells out your domestic economy. Tell them to support America, keep the jobs on home soil . . .
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”