Trading Up or Trading Down

Economic globalization, particularly the free movement of goods and capital, has had a profound impact on our society.  It is hard to gauge the direction and consequences of open markets on our society, as this new competition permeates nearly everything.  From a strictly economic point of view, free trade and the free mobility of capital redounds to the advantage of everyone, the general person.  However, it is well known the the "particular" person can be very seriously affected in a ruthlessly negative way by global trade/global capital.  To free market fundamentalists, someone who is displaced by market competition should simply retool and re-skill for another job.  To me, this is too narrow and economistic.  There are some things in society that are worth saving, even at the cost of market efficiency, from a social health perspective.  You see, I am of the mind that economic efficiency may produce wealth but it can never produce a good society on its own.  This is where government is important.  A representative government allows the people, as a collective, to pick and choose the things that economic efficiency can be allowed to destroy (even whole domestic industries) and those that are deemed of too great a social value to be torn apart (like the whole of small town America)

Free market fundamentalists do not see things this way.  They view the market as a "spontaneous order" whereby the aggregated individual decisions of people in the marketplace lead to a self-governing philosophy.  The right views this as perfect freedom, I view it as tyrannical.  It is akin to submitting oneself to golden handcuffs, they may be very valuable, but they still restrain your freedom.  For me, freedom is not the absence of government regulation or the submission to an amoral market order.  For me, freedom is my ability to participate in the life of my community, to have my voice heard, to vote and have that vote really mean something.  Globalization, for better or worse, often takes the decision away from the people and puts it in the hand of the soulless market.  There is something that just feels wrong about this state of affairs.  People feel powerless, they do not feel like their decision matters.  This may be wealth, but it is not freedom.  In my view, there is nothing "spontaneous" about a spontaneous order, we still have the power to decide what we can let the market destroy, how we can compensate for this destruction, and what is too important for our communities to be put on the chopping block at all.  Nothing is inevitable.  However, when faced with the overwhelming power of the global market, many simply say "I give up."

This brings me to my vision of the good society versus what I see as the Right's vision of the good society.  I see the Right trying to take more and more decision-making power from us, the people, and putting in the hands of an impersonal market (ostensibly for our own good).  This shrinks the range of things that were can actually influence in our society, and jades the individual from the community that he/she relies on for support.  I'm alienated from my community when I have no stake in that community, when what I do has no effect on my community.  The unregulated market makes community difficult to maintain at all.  I'm not saying that as a community of people, we cannot decide to submit ourselves to the market for economic reasons, I'm simply saying that this should be up for negotiation.

I see the Right-wing solution to the global economy as stepping on the gas pedal of impersonal market dominance over our lives.  They want to improve our competitiveness by appealing to the lowest-common denominator.  If we can't compete with the Chinese because they will work for a pittance, then we too need to work for a pittance.  If we can't compete with the Chinese because they don't allow unions, then we too must disallow unions.  If we can't compete with the Chinese because they have no economic security, rights at work, and are so desperate that they will do anything for a barely subsistence wage, then we too must take away economic security, all rights at work, and make our people so desperate that they too will work for a wage that barely gets them by.  In fact, we really ought to do them one better.

My solution is that we reject the race to the bottom and try to compete for the top, that we educate and provide health care to our people so they have the physical and mental skills to compete not for the crumbs of the global economy, but for the icing on the cake.  To do this we need to maintain communities that produce children with a healthy sense of themselves and their relation to others and to their community, only then can we raise the necessary funds (yes, I'm not afraid to say it, taxes!) that can provide the type of existential security that liberates people from the vagaries of their condition.  In this type of society, its true that people would have to give up some of the material benefits of the market and one cannot have the benefits of property all to himself, but man does not live on bread alone, and no you cannot eat money.