From hyper-globalization back to sensible globalization

I had a piece in the New York Times over the weekend that tries to steer our globalization discussion in what I think is a more sensible direction. A brief excerpt:

We need to rescue globalization not just from populists, but also from its cheerleaders. Globalization evangelists have done great damage to their cause not just by underplaying the real fears and concerns on which the Trumps of this world thrive, but by overlooking the benefits of a more moderate form of globalization.

We must reassess the balance between national autonomy and economic globalization. Simply put, we have pushed economic globalization too far — toward an impractical version that we might call “hyperglobalization.”

The principles I discuss are taken largely from my book, The Globalization Paradox --  so if you've read that book, you will not see much that is new. But the intervening developments have made these ideas even more relevant now, I think.

Comments

[Spengler]

Dani, if the resultant gains from globalization remain undistributed, as in their current state, while globalization continues to expand unabated, will it be fair to say that the case for protectionist policies should surpass free trade dogmatism at some point in time? East Asian economists figured out the answer to this question half a century ago, but it seems even our brightest minds struggle to come up with honest answers beyond some semi-apologetic simpering about "democracy" and "democratic principles". Neo-Luddites like Krugman can put two and two together, so even an Erdogan opponent should be able to as well. I hope.

[Bryan Atkins]

I think the efficacy of democracy, at least this version of it, has been overrun by exponentially accelerating complexity (EAC). Yes, decision making needs to be distributed. But not here to write about democracy.

I submit that economists don't place / consider code, including monetary code, in a physics / evolution / complexity context. And that this omission destroys the validity of much of their work.

We've generated unprecedented environs in-and-across all networks: geo eco bio cultural & tech. These new environs are driven by EAC, which includes exponentially accruing knowledge.

Re Code:
“The story of human intelligence starts with a universe that is capable of encoding information.” -- Ray Kurzweil -- How To Create A Mind

Code is relationship infrastructure in bio cultural & tech networks: genetic, language (sound, signed & alphabet coded), math, moral, religion, monetary, legal, etiquette, software, etc.

Globalization, or the increasing alignment in the manner in which world culture conducts its relationship / reality interface is vital for passing natural selection tests.

Think we're way past little policy adjustments. Our problems are deeper, more fundamental (and include violent convulsions in networks).

Here's one problem: We're in Anthropocene.

Part of that: Human cultural selection increasingly drives natural selection.

Part of that: We're increasingly doing natural selection with world culture's dominant code for relationship / reality interface: monetary code.
FAIL. Exhibit A: Sky. Exhibit B: Ocean

The idea that world culture's dominant mechanism for the information processing and ordering of complex relationships -- humans using monetary code -- could possibly generate selectable relationship hierarchies in the aforementioned networks, and importantly, across time, has been rendered dinosaurian by EAC; it's omnicidal. (Yes, legal, religious, moral, and other codes are in play, but again, monetary code is clearly dominant. And much of the efficacy of those coding structures has also been overrun by EAC.)

Probably already too late, but here's some thinking outside the mass grave, some variation re code:
The Price Is Wrong
http://ow.ly/5DlX303zDDQ

[Jacky]

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