What do Australian Historians and Intellectuals Have to Say About Globalisation?


WHY ANTI-GLOBALISATION 

by Mick Coleman

First, this debate is a lot more interesting than the capitalism vs
socialism rubbish we had to force ourselves through when we were young
idealistic kiddies. Socialism turned out to be an oppressive,
environmentally destructive, unattractive, mind-numbingly dull and
conformist crock of shit. Capitalism turned out to be good at creating a
reasonable standard of living and encourages education, knowledge,
participation in the economy and all those productive things but
unfortunately leaves a lot of scope for really ugly behaviour by selfish
individuals, companies and crap governments who think their job is to make
life easier for their mates. 

Second, I hate McDonalds and Coke but noone is forcing me to buy them. What
do these people protesting about them want to do, make it illegal to sell
American hamburgers? That would be a pretty stuffed way to go about
creating utopia. Let people vote with their feet, and if they want to buy
American crap, I dont think there should be a law against it. 

Third, democratic capitalist countries are mostly reasonably good at solving
real problems. Once enough people are concerned about nature conservation,
you start getting national parks. When people are concerned about air
pollution, you start getting emission controls. If enough people were
concerned about McDonalds there would be a law against it. Sadly, this is
not the case - only the S11 protestors really hate it enough to want to
outlaw it, while the rest of us either go there to eat or put up with it.
What can you do? Sometimes the mass of the people are bloody stupid but it
is hard to come up with a system where someone other than the mass of the
people gets to decide stuff, without it turning into some kind of fascist
dictatorship. 

Thirdly, freedom to trade is a human right, not up there with freedom from
arbitrary imprisonment but up there with, say, freedom of speech - you only
ban it where it is really necessary to do so. If something is really
harmful, like DDT or nuclear waste, then government should step in and make
a law preventing it being unleashed on our population. If something is just
annoying, then making it illegal is kinda harsh. 

Fourthly, the countries who have succeeded in anti-globalisation are really
crap role models. What countries have successfully banned advertising,
overt consumption, international brands, and all that stuff the S11 hates?
Burma, Afghanistan, the old Soviet Union, North Korea, China, Sudan, Iraq.
They are all rooted places to live.

This is the question - what is the opposite of globalisation, ie what is
anti-globalisation trying to achieve? If you could sum it up, it would be
something like "Tribalism" - every community sets its own agenda. That can
be really a bad system. Ask a lower caste Hindu, or a Muslim woman, or a
Tutsi in Eritrea.

It is not a good answer to this that these countries and communities are not
doing it properly, they are rejecting globalisation but not in the right
way. That argument is the same old rusty one that the socialists used to
explain why Russia wasnt real proper socialism. In the end, you have to say
that if this whiz-bang anti-globalisation system that you want is not
possible for anyone to actually implement, then it is not a good system. 

Fifthly, my main interests in life are human rights, conservation and
ecological sustainability. I am yet to hear a single way that
anti-globalisation advances any of these things. WRITE SUGGESTIONS HERE.

It gives me the shits that:

- when Jiang Zemin, President of China, visits Melbourne, 400 hardcore
human rights campaigners turn up. He is the butcher of Tiananmen Square and
head of a fascist repressive regime that occupies and brutalises Tibet,
threatens to invade Taiwan, arrests and tortures elderly Falun Gong
practitioners, outlaws free speech, democracy and opposition. 

- when Bill Gates and a bunch of businessmen turn up to talk about mobile
phones and computers and bank loans and stuff, people think there is
something really evil going on and turn up in their thousands. These people
are trivial - they have no sense of what matters in this world. 

Finally, where S11 has it right is that the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund are a bunch of arseholes. These unaccountable global
organisations should be scrapped, no doubt about it. Then individual
companies and Governments can make their own decisions about loans, foreign
aid and the like. They might look a bit harder than the World Bank does,
before funding dams and population resettlement programs and trying to
restructure economies.

Liberdade. Or as the Tibetans say, Rangzen.