
What’s Our Duty to the People Globalization Leaves Behind? - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/opinion/whats-our-duty-to-the-people-globalization-leaves-behind.html
======
alwaysdoit
The reality is that people who are less well-off often do not have the
"liquidity" to rebalance their assets (educational, experiential, financial,
etc.) to take advantage of changes in the global economy.

On a macro level, society benefits from globalization, but on a micro level,
there are often very high personal costs. If you have spent all of your life
developing skills in one area, and that suddenly falls apart, it's going to be
very difficult to drop everything and start over.

As a society, we have the capability to use some of the gains to smooth out
the costs for the people that lose out here, whether it's through basic income
and welfare, or education and retraining.

~~~
nickff
I am a strong supporter of globalization, but pessimistic about government's
ability to help the people who you describe as being left behind. Retraining
has the worst record of the programs you describe, and 'education' usually
does little (probably because of signalling). I am most vigorously opposed to
government-backed 'education loans', which do little more than drive up
tuition. I am generally opposed to welfare, because is does little to
ameliorate the human issues related to joblessness, and basic income is little
better, though BI can give people some flexibility to make their own choices.
A globalization 'bonus' or temporary boost in BI might be worth considering
(and testing), but we should also encourage people to adapt to the new world
instead of building up resentment while refusing to change.

It also seems that we should each take some personal responsibility, and help
whomever we can. It is too often that we pawn off our responsibilities and
moral duties on society.

~~~
Outdoorsman
>It also seems that we should each take some personal responsibility, and help
whomever we can. It is too often that we pawn off our responsibilities and
moral duties on society.<

So very true...the single most important thing a person can do to strengthen a
community--interpret community as broadly as you like--is to spend time
helping those in your immediate vicinity...I'm prescribing this because of
it's accessibility; it's a course of action available to anyone, usually costs
little, and leaves you feeling pretty darned good...

First-hand case in point: A boy who lives a couple of miles away from me
started dropping by occasionally to visit...he'd pedal by on his bicycle and
stop to chat if I was out in the yard...

During our visits I learned about his circumstances...his father, a drug user,
committed suicide in the shower of their home when he was 6 years old...his
mother had had a series of boyfriends, and there were 3 partial families--14
people--living in his house, a 3 bedroom trailer...

As we got to know each other a bit better he asked me one day,"Hey, everyone
around here calls you the computer man; how could I learn about computers?"

I told him I could teach him a few things, and did...he would drop by when my
schedule permitted and was willing to sit for as long I was willing to teach
him things...just basics, a few tricks...

I could tell that he had a quick grasp of the material, and asked him how
school was going, his grades, etc...turned out he had around a 3.7 GPA, and
admitted that he never studied outside of school...

I told him one day that he should consider college...the next day he said he
had mentioned what I said to his mom and she flatly told him,"We can't afford
something like that".

To make a long story short, the state that I live in offers a program that
essentially pays (combined with grants, and college scholarships) for those
below a certain income level to attend 5 years of in-state college...I spent
several days gathering information, presented it to him, and told him I
thought he could do it...he just needed to sign up in the program right away,
and keep his grades up...

Rather predictably, his mother was initially skeptical, so at his invitation I
visited with her and explained how this would work...

I'll leave the story here...he's a junior in high school now and is on track
to enter college in 2017...he would have never become aware of the opportunity
if I hadn't mentioned it to him, and all it cost me was about 2 days of
research and another day helping him apply... we'll see how it goes...

~~~
sehr
From someone who was in a similar situation in high school: thank you. The
person who helped me out singlehandedly changed my life, I hope it works out
just as well for y'all

------
whack
It's worth pointing out that Rattner ISN'T calling for brakes on globalization
or free trade. He's calling for a stronger social safety net, in order to
better help those who aren't benefiting from the economic wealth that
globalization generates. This is a position that we can all get behind.
Regardless of the precise causes of income inequality, whether it's due to
globalization, labor automation, or industry cycles, there will always be
people who find themselves left out in the cold due to unfortunate
circumstances. As long as our society keeps getting richer, we should do more
to help those who aren't benefiting from the same changes that have benefited
the rest of us.

~~~
proksoup
Why? Our resources aren't infinite. Why is there any should about who gets to
live and who gets to die? We can't help everyone live without eventually
hitting resource constraints, can we?

~~~
apsurd
One selfish, and therefore easily understandable reason for helping those less
fortunate is because, left unchecked, there might be some tipping point for
these less-fortunate to rebel in the societal sense, out of necessity for
_their survival_. That's a problem for all of us.

~~~
atomic77
An even easier argument to make for the selfish and empathy-challenged is the
link between inequality and violent crime [1]. The more money and resources
you have to spend on walls and security guards the less you have for
investment and consumption on useful things.

[1]
[http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01241/WEB/IMAGES/INE...](http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01241/WEB/IMAGES/INEQUALI.PDF)

------
ChuckMcM
The only sane answer is "Don't to put any roadblocks between them and catching
up." or in a more positive spin, "Make available, without constraint, any
resources they would need to catch up."

And it really does come down to morality, social and personal.

I am certainly in the "teach a person to fish" category of fixing societal
ills. But I get it when previous choices have left someone "stuck" and unable
to succeed.

Back in the early 2000's before we had all sorts of data[1] to back it up, I
could see that single parents were in a world of hurt. Married couples had a
much better shot at getting by. But you couldn't really fix that by demanding
people find some soul mate/life partner to marry in order to get out of
poverty. I suggested to my representatives and others we really could use an
institution that had the same benefits of marriage but was more contractual
than spiritual. If two single parents, regardless of sex, could enter into a
contract to work together to raise their children, it would encourage them to
do so. And by institution I mean the whole thing, rights of survivorship,
community property, shared health care information, joint filing status with
respect to taxation.

In my way of thinking that is removing a structural roadblock in the way of
those people stuck in poverty by their past choices.

At the same time, I have also met people who don't put any investment into
getting out of their circumstances. I realized there can be a learned
helplessness element here, but for folks who just don't want to, I don't feel
any guilt or remorse for them as they slide down the slope.

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/10/the-r...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/10/the-
relationship-between-single-mothers-and-poverty-is-not-as-simple-as-it-seems/)

~~~
Terr_
> The only sane answer is "Don't to put any roadblocks between them and
> catching up."

I like to phrase of it in terms of designing feedback loops and augmenting
existing ones when they aren't strong enough.

------
caethan
The problem is with the consistent hand-waving between economically efficient
- on average we've got more wealth - and we _all_ have more wealth.

Suppose my neighbor has a plot of land that he's not really using - it's
mostly idle, he's just got a little garden on it. I know that if I get it, I
could produce much more wealth - maybe I'm a skilled farmer and I could grow
high-value crops on it. It would be more economically efficient for me to own
the farm. We'd produce more wealth collectively that way. But there are
several ways to get to that more efficient state: 1) I could buy the land from
my neighbor for a fair price. He gets the money from the land, which is worth
more than he made from his garden. I get the land and produce lots of wealth,
minus the money I paid my neighbor. We're both better off, huzzah! 2) I could
steal the land from my neighbor. He's worse off - he no longer has his garden
at all. I'm much better off - I get the land and I don't have to pay for it
anymore!

Economically efficient moves by definition mean that there's enough wealth to
compensate everyone who loses. A lot of the anger about globalization is
people being pissed because they're losing - their job or their benefits or
whatever - and the folks who are winning respond by telling them that it's
economically efficient so they'll just have to suck it up. It's one thing to
say "Hey, change is inevitable, but at least we're all getting wealthier!".
It's another thing to say "Hey, change is inevitable, and we're getting way
more than you're losing!"

------
mc32
There is the local (domestic) perspective and the global perspective.

Globalization results in a move towards global equilibrium so that locales
with low cost workers will see improved financials and economics for their
workforce, locales with high cost medium skills workers will see a decline in
economic and financial outlook.

The question, is what's best overall for the global workforce versus what's
best for the local/domestic workforce.

Does the EU, Japan and the US among others "owe" third world nations
offshoring ensuring they, emerging econs, kick start their economies?

The first world could form a cartel of sorts keep all progress to themselves,
ensuring third work countries remain poor but also ensuring their own progress
is stunted perhaps net negative.

Could or should the first world and advanced economies provide some work
insurance to their low and medium skill workforce? If they can afford it, why
not?

------
sama
We have a somewhat relevant announcement to this tomorrow...

~~~
tuckermi
Nice little teaser that got buried here! I'm curious to see what gets posted
tomorrow...

------
mannykannot
While I have considerable empathy for people whose lives are being disrupted
by globalization, and I am not particularly happy about how globalization is
being pursued, we should recognize that anyone who, by accident of birth, is
allowed to live in a liberal, technologically-advanced and stable nation, is
the beneficiary of a considerable privilege.

------
paulpauper
What is often forgotten or ignored are all of the people globalization helps
lift up

------
bikamonki
None. The system will find balance on its own, as always. So, a big chunk of
US workers are left behind b/c their jobs are now in Mexico, China, etc. So,
capital owners have found ultra efficiency producing goods and services thanks
(in part) to Globalization. But now fewer people with stable jobs can buy them
goods and services. Oops! Ok. Let's give them credit cards. Ok that works for
a while but now they can't pay back. Boom! The system adjusts itself.

Whats next? Who knows. Maybe universal minimum wage. Maybe resource-based
economy. Maybe modern socialism. Who knows. But something WILL happen.
Meanwhile, our duty is with our own.

~~~
llamataboot
That's silly though. It's like saying, well, even if we nuke the earth and
kill all humans that live on it, the radiation will eventually disperse and
something new will evolve. Yes, that's fundamentally true on a birds-eye
level, but that doesn't mean it's a sane or moral choice. If we know dynamic
systems with feedback loops and delays tend towards overshoot and collapse,
and collapse will really suck for a lot of people, we should try to build
other feedback loops that make that collapse less likely, etc. Saying there is
a self-correcting system in place doesn't mean that we should let all current
trends just continue because they will eventually somehow correct. Violent
revolutions are also a correction of sorts...

Also, not sure with "our duty is worth our own" \- who is "our own" and what
social fiction is it built on? Family? Community? City? Nation-State? Race?
Favorite board game? I think widening the empathy gap until you can view the
people that grow your coffee as "your own brothers and sisters" is the name of
the game for human evolution at the moment.

~~~
bikamonki
By our own I meant family, I do not think it is a social fiction as human
beings are born helpless and would just die if there is no family to take care
of them. I do not mean family from a cultural perspective, I mean family from
a biological perspective.

Now, my comment may sound silly to you because we are comparing apples to
floppy disks.

Have you read GED? One interesting understanding I gather from that book is
the concept of "levels of meaning". His example goes along these lines: an ant
colony seems to act with intelligence from our point of view but such
interpretation is out grasp from an ant's perspective; though a smart ant
could imagine the colony viewed from above! Therefore, what you call social
fictions have a meaning in the layer we all call society and if such layer was
our only reality I would definitely agree with any moral argument against
Globalization and Capitalism. But if you just move one layer above, if you
switch your perspective a bit higher and see our species interacting with
millions of other species in a planet with a certain expiration date: morality
has no meaning. In that layer of meaning, the goal of each and all species is
one: survival. This ecosystem couldn't care less if we leave the economically
poor behind.

In conclusion, I was commenting from a layer above, you replied from a layer
below. If we both speak on the same layer most likely we would agree. If we
speak from different layers (perspectives) time is lost.

Now, speaking from my perspective, my best guess is that we humans are
evolving from bio to bit. We know now the planet will be gone and at some
point we would want to leave looking for a new home. These bodies are not the
ideal spaceship. A computer is a good alternative. The drive to evolve and
develop the technologies that will make this space trip happen may be out of
the control of ourselves and our consciousness. It may be genes programmed to
do so. It may be bacteria in our guts driving us to do so. I do not know.
However, it seems that whatever the social system we invent on the layer below
in order to keep us ruled and moving forward, that invented system simply
responds to a higher drive.

------
agorabinary
Poverty is the natural state of things. Those that exist in a state of poverty
exist in the natural state of things. It is only through globalization and
development that some people free themselves from this natural order. This
phenomenon is the only known on record to lift people out of poverty, and it
so happens that this phenomenon allocates this wealth unequally. No
alternative method has ever succeeded in both creating wealth and allocating
it equally.

If all the effort expended on arguing about this magical "other path" to
prosperity was spent on actually generating prosperity, I think we would find
that many of our former grievances would resolve themselves..

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
If you study the behaviors of pre-agricultural societies, you will find that,
although life was less comfortable for hunter-gatherers, they tended to be far
more egalitarian than agriculturists or anyone beyond.

Poverty is NOT the natural state of things. The adoption of agriculture
enabled property ownership which led to the owner-worker dynamic that persists
to this day.

In fact, examinations of certain agricultural civilizations, like in the
ancient Indus Valley, show a distinct lack of poverty. Perhaps instead of
calling poverty "natural" we can examine it for what it really is: cheaper for
the owners than broad prosperity.

~~~
awinter-py
And if you look back even farther than that, the atmosphere was made out of
lava for about a billion years. If we're voting I'd just as soon not go back
to the natural state. In the cretaceous high concentrations of oxygen produced
giant insects.

------
billybilly1920
I think for each person who doesn't want to constantly move with the times,
there is another person somewhere else that does, so we just swap those two
people and call it good.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Calling actions and decisions of humans "the times" does not make them a force
of nature.

~~~
billybilly1920
things move forward; like it or not. Some people spend their entire lives
trying to live the same moment over and over because that's what they know.
The factory you worked at shutdown; you need to move on, and if that means
moving to another town to find work, then do that. Don't just hunker down and
demand everyone help you. (unless you are asking for help to move and find a
job.)

~~~
theandrewbailey
> The factory you worked at shutdown; you need to move on, and if that means
> moving to another town to find work, then do that.

Therein lies a big part of the problem. You're asking families who've lived
somewhere to abandon the place they've called home and established for decades
when the only big employer in their small town closes. This is a big problem
when you have an entire region of a country that is nothing but small towns
with only one (now no) big factory in them. Michigan says hi.

~~~
nitrogen
I think this is a flaw in human nature -- continuing to put too much weight on
the past and one's roots when the future is harmed by doing so.

