What Globalization Brings

Nationalism and Religion are the two deadliest diseases known to Man (i.e., more humans have suffered death, dislocation or physical or mental trauma as a result of these two diseases than any other known disease. They actually may be two different faces of a single disease, but this hasn't been fully demonstrated as yet). Therefore, anything that eases the suffering in the world caused by these two diseases (i.e., free international commerce) is likely a good thing. The problem is, conventional governments have limited ability to either regulate the actions of international corporations, or to claim their "fair share" of the revenues generated by international commerce- so, for the time being, these international organizations are going to be required to continue pretending they have a "home" country. It is an illusion, but one that is held by those that hold political power...

I tend to agree with you on Nationalism and organized Religion, but I think the situation with 'homeless' multi-national corporations is a little more complicated. First off there's the situation with such companies doing most of their business in one market (say the US), but locating their corporate offices in a post office box in a nearby country (say the Cayman Islands) with lax regulations or lower taxes. Then there's the issue of multinationals using public infrastructure, paid for by taxes they avoid. Then there is the issue of such businesses using their profits to influence the political landscape in countries where they have decided not to be 'citizens'. And of course they want some country to support a navy to keep their shipping free from pirates. Etc...etc... And of course the ability of capital to move across borders is not available to workers or consumers. While I agree with you that nationalism and religion are a blight on humanity, I think the idea that these multinationals don't have a 'home' country is itself an illusion. They have homes, but prefer to let others pay for the upkeep.

I agree with your assessment that multinationals have all sorts of schemes for "gaming" the system as it now works. Not all internationals are equally bad at this, and lumping all corporations into a single family is more of the "us versus them" mentality that will lead to even more ineffective control.

One of the issues that I personally struggle with is the issue of granting a corporation equal status as an individual person. The concept of the "Corporation" grew out of organizational devices originating some time in the 13th Century or so, evolving through the "Limited concept where the intention was to limit the liability of the investors, to the point now where one has absolutely no way of knowing who the real owners are, or where any potential liability should rest (ergo, it now falls on the shoulders of the public sector, either through the government or through the insurance system).

In effect, the "Corporation" IS an illusion. But, then again, so are many of our cherished beliefs in how things "really" work- beliefs valid only so long as we are willing to believe them...

With regards to Corporate taxes, who, ultimately pays these taxes? It is NOT the owners. It is the customers. For a business, tax paid is simply a cost of doing business, and it is added to the price charged the customer, not subtracted from the profits of the owners. And it is a whole lot easier to raise taxes on a "non-resident" than it is to raise taxes on the local populace- but it is still the locals that ultimately pay the tax through higher prices...

Of note the taxes paid by a corporation are attached to the business corporate overhead, but this does effect the botom line as the corporation has to remain competitive in the markets. Thus the corporate profits do get effected by the taxes unless all the corporations in that industry are all similarly effects by the taxation and were not previously so. If the other competitor corporations have already set a price point based on their own incurred cost due to such taxes, then people just buy from the competitors if the corporation just passes along the added tax costs.

I understand your statement that it is unfair and probably unwise to lump all multinationals and large corporations together, since not all 'are equally bad'. However it appears to me that to some extent they earn this. We seem to find out after the horse has left the barn that 'such and such Inc.' (Halliburton, BP, Enron, Countrywide, Lehman Bros., Madoff, Keeting, etc...) were bad actors. Certainly many people in the business world knew about these problems, and probably know about others that we 'little people' don't hear about because we play golf at the wrong courses. But when push comes to shove they always seem to circle the wagons, and are at least to that extent complicit not just in the rip-offs but in encouraging the 'us v them' mentality. We hear endlessly about how ending the tax cuts for the top 2% will hurt 'small businesses'. This is nonsense. A small business that does anything productive has expenses, and these are deducted from the gross income. What this appears to be about is to protect the Koch brothers, lawyers, lobbyists, investors and other megawealthy individuals who set up elaborate webs of S corporations to (as you say) avoid paying taxes on their incomes. Pro-business and anti-business attitudes are both bad economics: pro-business attitudes sustain 'zombie' and 'vampire' businesses that are a drag on the economy, and anti-business attitudes hurt productive businesses. As to corporations and their owners not paying taxes, I think Warren Buffet has addressed the owner's side of this pretty succinctly. The US Chamber of Commerce, who claim to speak for the business community are usually in the forefront of the battle to lower taxes. If they don't pay any why should they care so much? (I apologize for this all being in one paragraph - makes it hard to read. Since I installed windows 7 all my formating options have vanished from the CR4 page)

"Since I installed windows 7 all my formating options have vanished from the CR4 page)..."- another reason to abandon the product line from that mega-multinational corporation- they are insensitve to your personal needs!

I have never met a corporation, although I have at different periods in my life received pay checks that had the name of one corporation or another on them (of course, the checks were all signed by real people, who I could look up in the company telephone book and talk to if I had some issue with the check). But I have never met a corporation in person. I have had to adhere to Corporate Policy at times, and even contributed to some corporate policy documentation, although in most cases my contributions have been so heavily edited, I no longer recognize it as my contribution!), but I have never met anyone in a large corporation who would claim absolute authority for establishing or maintaining Corporate Policy...

Now, for personal reasons (which have nothing to do with tax liabilities), I have found it advantageous to incorporate my current business. Actually, from a taxation perspective, it would be far less burdensome to do business as an independent private party. My corporation is officially "International" because, although I am a elgal resident of the country where I do most of my business, I am not a citizen. None of my customers are "doing business" with the corporation, however- they are all doing business with Real People. When I do business with other International Corporations, I do business with Real People. Even if I wanted to do business with The Corporation directly, I doubt that I could do this without going through some Real Person. Of course, if something goes wrong with our business deal, it is NEVER the fault of the Real Person- it is the fault of the Corporation. But just try finding the "Corporation" to sort out the differences. Chances are, even if the disagreement ultimately finds its way into the court system for resolution, The Corporation will not show up in court to defend its position, but, rather, will most likely be represented by an army of lawyers.

So, although all evidence suggests that The Corporation is a fantasy, we still find it useful to blame this ethereal entity for all that goes wrong in the world. That way, the engineer that went ahead with sealing the Gulf well although there was strong evidence that the cementing job was inferior gets off the hook, and The Corporation gets the hit. Which ultimately increases my cost of doing business in two ways- BP's prices go up, and the cost of liability insurance goes up across the board for ALL companies, because someone has to come up with the money to pay for all this. BP may go down, or continue to function as only a shadow of its once great self, but the Real People are still out there, doing things the way they have always done them...

did you switch browsers? CR4 only supports IE or Firefox

Chrome or Opera require {p} except with square brackets to get a line break

Go to www.nader.org for some insight on multi-national corporations. I promise you that you'll find it quite enlightening.

Ralf Nader is one of those pseudo-experts that likes to build his cases on half-truths and misinformation, while actually knowing very little about anything. Take all of his expositions with a grain of salt...

Agreed - the last places I would ever go for unbiased information would be Fox news and Ralph Nader!

His staff feels no connection with the real world whatsoever!

Mr. Nadir's reputation was built on half-truths regarding the American automobile industry--read "Unsafe at any Speed" sometime and show it to someone familiar with the industry. He is simply an attorney with a cause, and like some attorneys, will say anything to make his case or further his cause. This may be an urban myth, but rumor has it that he tried a case against one of the "big Three" and lost, then wrote the book as revenge.

I have no objection to Mr. Nader's motivations, but his targets and strategies are quite frequently wrong. The Chevrolet Corvair is probably the best example of this. The Corvair was an innovative, game-changing auto, much, much safer than some of the existing options at the time, and including some of the feature Mr. Nader lobbied for. Much of the "science" he used to destroy that brand was plain fabricated. Mr. Nader seems to have no moral compunctions against utilizing psuedo-science as a smoke screen to promote his political agenda, which seems to be focused on the concept that none of us are ultimately responsible for our own decisions or responsibilities. When one can win a law suit against McDonalds because one has spilled a cup of coffee while driving down the street, obviously this philosophy is winning the day...

Well he is a attorney, and not a Physicist or Chemist, so some psuedo-science is expected. Plus being much safer than some at the time sounds like a very extreme qualifier to justify something being wrong, but acceptable because of the period in which it occurred, much like many of the tenants of Nazism were accepted in numerous places, and some nazi applications were actually better than other governments practices at that time, even the genocide paled in comparison to Stalinist Russian activities let alone some of the secret (not so secret, but blind mouse syndrome) practices in the US and England. However, all would be horrific to a modern public.

Except the Corvair was actually a significant improvement on the other products available at the time...Note that, after the Corvair died, Volkswagen invaded the US market with similar technology that was definitely inferior to what Chevrolet had offered, most likely resulting in more death/injury than would have resulted had the Corvair remained a viable product...In this particular case, Mr. Nader seems to have caused more harm than he prevented.

Ralf Nader needs to fall off the face of the Earth.

How many perfectly good candidates has that turd screwed out of political opportunities. It seems that every time someone who can actually do some good starts making headway that @$$ has to step in and screw it all up. Not to mention all the other things he just had to stick his big ugly @$$ into. That man is unsafe at any speed.

that's it blame Ralph for the vagaries of the supreme court & electoral college. was there more than the 2000 election?

Of course you could say the same about Teddy roosevelt, after all he "screwed" and incumbent president who would have won out of office, and the political backlash from his running for office independent of the two parties effected the candidacy of both parties. The democrats running the extremely liberal Woodrow Wilson to offfset and compete with TRs liberalism, which they never would have done without some outside pressure beyond the Republicans, who ran the incumbent, William Taft, who was a standard corrupt old party line conservative.

A lot of things would be different had TR not run as a third party candidate. Third Party Candidates are the way in which we pressure the two parties to adapt and change. With just two parties they tend to polarize about minor non-sensical issues of their internal special interests and lobbyist. The Third parties cause one of the two to come to a realization that they may be losing constituents because of their stagnant politics and thus they are losing too many votes. this leads to change in their political agendas.

All Nader did was show a significant flaw in the Gore campaign that Gore was unable to address to the satisfaction of those constituents. Had Gore been more astute and competent he would have addressed those issues. Clinton never seemed to have that problem. What about Gore was so polarized and less palatable. Maybe some people could see through the facade. Unfortunately there was not a similar third party candidate against Bush, or maybe Bush was more politically astute and knew how to deal with the competition in a manner that gained him the constituents. At any rate Gore is and never was much of a candidate with very exteme unsubstantiated views that were not financially beneficial to his constituents, which was obvious in the end, since he lost to a relatively minor political player in a really close election (close elections for either politician really meant a loss in a general sense, as neither would have had popular views then).

Gore managed to do the impossible and lose when the office was handed to him on a silver platter by Clinton - good economy and everyone smiles.

Unfortunately, for Gore, he has all the charisma of a toilet seat.

What was really bad was his whining in the aftermath.

Previously H Ross Perot distorted an election - now there was a real crook!

Ross Perot just demonstrated a weakness in the Republican Parties agenda. Unfortunately, they really didn't fully address it and in some cases went even further towards the fringe. Though I guess the fringe element is not stagnant, maybe ignorant and reactionary, but not stagnant. Plus gore's exageration of his claims to fame and causes really didn't help his political campaign. Probably would not have helped Eisenhower to claim to have cured Polio because he was on a committee that authorized funding for underlying research programs, Truman to have claimed to have invented or even been instrumental in the invention of the atomic bomb, or any other candidate to exagerate their roles. And, when you are making apocalyptic claims that you plan to solve for the benefit of humanity you need to have some direct obvious enemy to confront that is readily believable. Most people need to see the bad guy in a black hat to know there is danger, and see an unimpeachable good guy in a white hat who is the solution to that danger.

I concur. But how to we convince all those zealot's and globalists to change there ways?

Obviously we can't duplicate their approach ( mass murder) aside from the ethical repercussions thats a lot of digging.

That is the wisest bit of writing I've seen in a while! excellent and thank you.

"a hangover of ridiculous unfounded political and economic 'theories' that have developed during the 'fat years' on both the right and the left."

... like Palin's "proven principles"

Chris

Thanks. Yeah, a lot like that, and also such stuff as 'people are poor because the system keeps them down' and 'lower taxes creates jobs'.

Excellent! Not only well-written, well thought out as well. A dose of reality ig good medicine. Why aren't you running for President?

GA

I am concerned with unethical behavior in places of power. And that happens to be both Government and Corporations. I don't trust either. Globalization happened, in a catastrophic way, because of the abuse of these two entities. (Guns don't kill people.) Books have been written about the unethical partnership of the two. It would be hard to make the case in a short post here.

Another example, though, of unethical power. The banking industry.

I wouldn't dismiss all information from Fox or Ralph Nader. Just look for corroborative evidence.

Dear posters

I started writing a book about just this topic in 2004. When it reached 80.000 words, 2 years later, I had to rewrite it, nearly completely. It had the title "The Twain Has Met". Matters are changing fast and are getting less transparent by the day. It was to be based on facts but they kept changing or maybe it was me.

Not to have wasted my time I have decided to turn it into a novel. Fiction, non fiction, science fiction, still can't make up my mind. I have several endings but the real thing is playing itself out more horrid than I can bear to witness. In the end it might turn into a 24 page children s book with pictures easy on the eye.

All the Kings soldiers and Humpty Dumpty kind of stuff. I think the brothers Grimm had a similar problem way back then, where reality beats fantasy. The song remains the same. I'm stumped but still keep working on it, so human, so full of belief in balanced justice and wishing for the punishment of the perpetrators of globalization.

^{"Trumpets and violins I can hear in the distance. I think they are calling my name" J.H}

We should all bear in mind globalization is not new, the early to middle British Empire was actually a series of corporations. Eventually the queen had to step in in the mid 19th Century as the corporations became to corrupt and misused the British military for frequently highly immoral corporate, sometimes personal, gains not necessarily advantageous to the British subjects. The main difference now seems to be a stronger orientation to seeking locations for more favorable cost reductions more directly through cheaper labor and lax regulatory policies than more generally through cheaper resources and transportation.

Before the Brits, one had the Hanseatic League, and before the Hanseatic League, one had the Italians...I do believe the Italians took international trade away from the Arabs, who controlled it for many years...

Don't blame the Brits- they were only following what everyone else was doing, taking their turn at the helm...

GA. The world has been moving towards globalization since the beginning of history - ever larger empires, longer trade routes, bigger markets, etc. I think the difference now (if there is one) is the scale of things, and that fact that very few people alive today are self-sufficient in the way small farmers, herders, and crafts people used to be. There's not much chance of escape.

Wow! Looks like a lot of you do not agree with Ralph Nader on globalization. I wonder how many took my advice and actually read his views as I suggested. I would be interested in any opinions on actual statements from the website, not unfounded generalizations about him personally. I would also be interested in factual information about exactly what makes Ross Perot a "crook". Was it the fact that he tried desperately to stop NAFTA or the fact that he spent his own self-made money to rescue POWs from Vietnam when our own government wouldn't? ... interesting.

H Ross Perot was nothing but a money grubbing, self promoting ex IBM salesman with the business ethics of a Wall Street banker.

Why read about Nader's views - I have been doing so for 45 years now - since I was going to the university - nothing has changed.

interesting?

As long as we're bashing Ross:

• My memory may be imperfect, but I believe Ross made much of his fortune selling computers and software to the federal government. I don't remember ever hearing about how well government computer systems work (with the possible exception of Social Security).
• I also seem to remember that he had a major role in developing the software used by California during their ill fated experiment with deregulating the electric power industry. I remember hearing audio tapes of Perot explaining to the fuel providers how they could game the system.
• I was initially impressed by his act when he first hit the tv with his charts and 'giant sucking sound', but after a short while it was clear that he was just a 'one note Johnny'. Can't say I miss him much.
  

In my youth, I "followed" Ralph Nader with interest. As my education improved, I began seeing more and more flaws in his presentations of his perception of "truth". One could say I am a disillusioned former believer. He is not the worst there is at promoting his personal "alternative reality" (Jeremy Rifkin or Al Gore come to mind), and he is a bit more entertaining than some of the others, but over the years, I have developed a gut-level negative reaction to virtually anything he has to offer. Once one loses confidence in a source, it is pretty much gone forever...