National Economies under a Global Shadow
Throughout long history of life on earth, economics has been the main driving force of progress of all living things. Like a force of nature scarcity of resources, a never ending problem, like food, sunlight, water, gave birth to competition among individuals. As Darwin explained this competition gave birth to better equipped life forms as generations pass. One can expect the same rule to be invalid (or at least semi valid) for the dominant species of the planet, us. After all, we do not behave as we are supposed to in a global competition. Instead we cooperate, even with other species. And most surprisingly we share our very scarce resources, without an apparent benefit. Sounds like a flaw in the great design of competition. Perhaps it is, but at the end it is what makes us successful, it is what makes us “Humans”.
Independent emergence of civilizations, in Middle East, China and Americas, is today interpreted as dominance over nature of our ancestors, by many archeologists. At first glance humans have broken the chain, the savage nature used to enslave us by means of highly sophisticated cooperation of individuals. But in the end even this cooperation was a directed rivalry (even this word itself bears the mark of those days, borrowed from latin, users of the same river, water is very scarce around Mediterranean ), against “others” , causing thousands of years old problems, like expansionism.
Efforts to solve these newly generated problems , never had lasting results. Like Industrial Revolution causing problems that we are still dealing today(for example, over population and environmental issues) and scarcity still stands on. During the early days of this revolution, philosophers like Karl Marx revived an old idea, under the light of French revolution, classless society and equal sharing of resources( in practical use it became equal sharing of scarcity). Idea caused turmoil around the globe, and let to a cold war, which would last for almost half a century, with a great loss for the Marxist humanism. But weakening imperialism and giving a chance of choice to third world countries, many rights to oppressed classes(like racial equality, women rights) ,ironically, thanks to the competition it created.
As soon as the cold war ended with the loss of Marxist ideology,(reasons are open to debatable), planet was again subject to the mercy of the winners. A new race started for the conquest of the globe, exploit as much as possible, by any means necessary. Using corrupt politicians, military dominance, financial tricks and media, resources of the planet was once again open to feed the scarcity of a minority. People starved to death while their governments and businessmen enjoyed agriculture exports (like in Sudan). Countries were burnt to ashes when their governments denied exploitations of its resources (like Iraq, Serbia). Economic Crisis hit markets like Brazil, Argentina, Turkey to avoid them to stand on their own feet. Rapidly destroying social and political benefits of cold war by excuses like security, recessions. Another irony is, all of these are justified to publicity by shiny names, promoting “cooperation”, thanks to the only castle of people, the media, which has fallen to hands of the capital even before cold war began.
The name chosen for this planet-wide exploitation was Globalism, forging all markets into a single, unified entity.
Dominance over this unified entity is ensured only by a single word, which has no real value over resources but currently holds 64% of all resources, US Dollars, greatest export of the largest economy of the world. The designated value of this word is also subjected to its scarcity. And its abundance means bankruptcy. To avoid this people have to support the word itself, by investing on the word owner, USA, like a self fulfilling prophecy, every single dollar has to return to its motherland, no matter who owns it(Financial system). By this way, growth of Japan was halted in early 80s, now same game is played on China with a smaller scale.
Another side effect of this unified market is that it creates a more heterogeneous scarcity. While increasing wealth of a nation, it decreases life standards even to death in another one or more.
For a group, scarcity of one resource is fed by imports. Take a farmer family for an example; they have land, enough water, animals, knowledge, labor and tools. Given enough time food scarcity will not be a problem for them. But they will need energy for their tractor, to obtain that have to import, and in exchange they must export what they produce, food, so that they can keep on living. Same rule applies to economies. What an economy produces only costs time and imports unless the economy is forced to unnatural rules, like the ones of the Globalism. Instead of using local labor, to produce cars, importing may become more attractive, thanks to scarcity and abundance of Dollars in different markets. Leaving a community, with a chronic unemployment problem, while the labors of the other are exploited by forcing them to work for less. But who is the winner? Capital, by paying its tribute to the creator of this system, US dollars.
France was heavily criticized because of promoting national interest over that of EU in particular Slovenia, when Renault decided to expand its production in France rather than previously promised Slovenia. Accusations may be fair (new Europe is like a new colony to old one), but Sarkozy had obligations to his own country, fighting with unemployment is one of them. And to withstand this economic recession, at least to ease its local effects, protecting national economies seems like the best tool we have. Eliminating need for a third hand (USA) in trade, as China proposes, today may also help further.
Humanity rises with crisis of any kind, what will this global recession teach us? A fool’s hope but perhaps it will teach both capital and people are on the same ship.
