The Big Empty

[Daveparts]

The Big Empty
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.com



“Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.” (Robert Reich)

“Outsourcing and globalization of manufacturing allows companies to reduce costs, benefits consumers with lower cost goods and services, causes economic expansion that reduces unemployment, and increases productivity and job creation.” (Larry Elder)

If it were just jobs and growth, then globalization could be looked upon as the greatest invention since human writing; that is, if it is to be measured on the scale of jobs and growth alone. Slaves have jobs. Opium production provides thousands of jobs all over the world. Cocaine trafficking brings in billions of dollars to the cartels in Central America. Child pornography is a growing underground industry, generating huge profits for the perpetrators. So then it must be understood that if we judge all things as equal under the sun of jobs and growth, then there is no wrong and there is no right. Morality becomes an obsolete, decrepit concept.

But drug trafficking kills and injures people, they would argue, and using children in the sex industry is reprehensible. Not everyone is killed by drug trafficking; some users go on for years. And how is exploiting a child in a sewing factory or a coal mine until they die or become incapacitated any less reprehensible? Exploitation is exploitation; the US sends Colombia a billion dollars a year in aid to fight drug trafficking while at the same time American tobacco firms pushed to get China admitted to the WTO. The result was an increase of 127% in tobacco exports to China.

We in America know that tobacco use is unhealthy. If used as directed the user will likely die from it and yet in the name of jobs and growth we willingly support its export. How does that make us any different from Afghani opium farmers?

“NAFTA recognizes the reality of today's economy - globalization and technology. Our future is not in competing at the low-level wage job; it is in creating high-wage, new technology jobs based on our skills and our productivity.” (John Kerry)

There is a hole in that bucket, Senator. Any time a nation creates a new, high-wage industry based on new skills or technology, it immediately becomes a target for low-wage countries to mimic with their built-in cost advantage. So the computer chip industry, which once employed thousands in Silicon Valley, fled to Japan and then to Korea and then to China. The owners of these factories have, in many cases, remained the same; and if I buy a computer once every five years I will derive the benefit of a few dollars saved on the price of the computer. The thousands left unemployed by the flight to Asia of chip manufacturing are meanwhile left behind. How will city, state and federal tax coffers make up for the loss in tax revenue? The plant owners will profit every day while the former employees lose, and their communities lose, as well.

“The regime of globalization promotes an unfettered marketplace as the dynamic instrument organizing international relations.” (William Greider)

Gosh, doesn't that sound wonderful? It says, “There’s a better world coming for us if we just remain strong and climb up in our covered wagons and head west, slaughtering any peaceful natives that we might find occupying our new lands." God will be with us. So highfalutin that you just know God himself ordains it. Makes you want to build a temple to the unfettered marketplace, doesn't it?

When half a million family pets die from tainted pet food, do not mourn their loss as it was not in vain. They were sacrificed to the god of the unfettered marketplace. They are with him now, meowing and barking with joy. These things, the high priests say, are human errors. Let us bow our heads and remember that no matter how noble the profit motive is, in our common humanity there will always be human errors. But, brothers and sisters, do not let those errors besmirch the golden calf of the unfettered marketplace, amen.

When those same tainted dairy products jumped the broom into infant formula and chocolate, it spurred even more free trade, as Asian mothers sought desperately to find sources of baby formula from safer localities of production. Safer? That would be markets better-regulated, wouldn’t it? But regulation is the greatest sin that can be committed against the god of the unfettered marketplace.

It is high wages and environmental regulations which anger the holy of holies; he frowns upon those societies. He makes his continence to shine down upon the unregulated and the deregulated. He loves the humble, and desires to keep as many of them as humble as possible. That is why he loves Mexico. In Tijuana alone, industrial water use has increased from 106,000 gallons per day to over 4.1 million today. Tijuana has no system to filter industrial solvents; plants such as Samsung Electronics use up to a million gallons of water per day. Industries such as metal plating and electronics manufacturing use toxic cleaning solvents and chemicals such as arsenic and lead which are then dumped into a water system with no pretreatment or post treatment capability whatsoever.

These maquiladora plants have caused the population of Tijuana to rise by over 60%. Perhaps the government should tax the maquiladoras to pay for a new water treatment facility? No, no, no, taxing corporations hurts global competitiveness. Okay, then tax the citizens. Well, we could do that but the citizens are so poor, that there is no way for the treatment facility to ever pay for itself.

In Germany globalism has killed the livelihood of Baltic fishermen. The fish stocks in the oceans are falling worldwide with 76% of all species either fully exploited, over exploited or depleted. Praise be his name, fishing, once regulated in territorial waters, is now left to the honor system of quotas.

“Today, the forces of competition, technology, and globalization have converged to spur innovation and to transform the way business is done in the securities industry.” (Arthur Levitt)

German customs officials have impounded and returned tons of steel shipments from three Indian steel producers because their products are radioactive. They are so radioactive that exposure for one hour would surpass the safe levels determined for one year. German officials have also removed contaminated elevator buttons made with toxic steel products. But globalism isn’t a wave, it’s a tsunami, as Germany also fights to keep out shipments of radioactive milk and even radioactive Christmas trees.

Here in America, of course, the job is much simpler as the government is a devout believer in the unfettered marketplace. Toxic surf, following the ocean currents from the south, washes up on California beaches and American officials scratch their heads. I wonder where that could be coming from? The only thing down that way is Tijuana. Oh well, our concern starts at the border.

“We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step.” (Kofi Annan)

No, no, no, these governments fight against their people’s opposition to the imposition of these policies. These governments place profit above environment and barbarity above humanity, all in the name of growth, these are crimes against both God and man. As is the exploitation of every man, woman and child alive today, and even the unborn. Globalism is creating an environmental nightmare and a worldwide economic wasteland.

It has turned the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation. It has made China’s largest export air pollution and Mexico’s largest export it’s poor. If not stopped and soon the god of the unfettered marketplace will turn us out from this Eden, into the world of the big empty.