Finally, a well reasoned and historical critique of globalization.
Entertaining, too, as it lampoons Tom (he of the notorious "Friedman
Unit" ), who's view on globalization is completely fabricated.
Friedman has touted the idea of globalization to U.S. consumers for
years, evidently so we're more willing to see our trade deficit go up.
Friedman is actually a futurist, not an economist; he views the world
as if it were 2065. Speculating about the future is one thing, saying
you know what is going to happen is another.
Friedman is *not* the all knowing global events person he would have
you believe him to be.
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Tom Friedman's Folly: The Lies Behind 'Free Trade'
By Chalmers Johnson, Truthdig
Posted on February 5, 2008, Printed on February 5, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/75645/
Ha-Joon Chang is a Cambridge economist who specializes in the abject
poverty of the Third World and its people, groups, nations, and
empires, and their doctrines that are responsible for this condition.
He won the Gunnar Myrdal Prize for his book "Kicking Away the Ladder:
Development Strategy in Historical Perspective" (2002), and he shared
the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize for his contributions to "Rethinking
Development in the 21st Century." The title of his 2002 book comes
from the German political economist Friedrich List, who in 1841
criticized Britain for preaching free trade to other countries while
having achieved its own economic supremacy through high tariffs and
extensive subsidies. He accused the British of "kicking away the
ladder" that they had climbed to reach the world's top economic
position. Chang's other, more technical books include "The Political
Economy of Industrial Policy" (1994) and "Reclaiming Development: An
Economic Policy Handbook for Activists and Policymakers" (2004).
His new book is a discursive, well-written account of what he calls
the "Bad Samaritan," "people in the rich countries who preach free
markets and free trade to the poor countries in order to capture
larger shares of the latter's markets and preempt the emergence of
possible competitors. They are saying 'do as we say, not as we did'
and act as Bad Samaritans, taking advantage of others who are in
trouble." Bad Samaritans is intended for a literate audience of
generalists and eschews the sort of exotica that peppers most economic
writing these days -- there is not a single simultaneous equation in
the book and many of Chang's examples are taken from his own
experiences as a South Korean born in 1963.
..
..
One of the strengths of Chang's new book lies in the half-dozen lucid
chapters on particular, often rather technical aspects of development
and international trade. These add up to a jargon-free primer on
contem****ary economic thought leavened with a sound knowledge of
history. The best of these are on trade liberalization, foreign
investment, public versus private enterprises, patents and copyrights,
and macroeconomics. The most interesting of these are on trade
liberalization and what today are rather ostentatiously called
"intellectual property rights."
With "Bad Samaritans," Chang has succinctly and comprehensively
exposed the chief structures of economic imperialism in the world
today. What is now required is the leader****p to undermine and
dismantle the barriers that keep so much of the world so poor.
- more -
http://www.alternet.org/stories/75645/
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