• Germany's Merkel laments fraying of multilateral order
    30 replies, posted
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics-merkel/germanys-merkel-laments-fraying-of-multilateral-order-idUSKCN1IT1GG?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5b0cdadf04d301165a2639f2&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook
Whilst I don't agree with her opposition to the gay marriage thing, I generally think Merkel has been extremely good for Germany and that she's a level-headed, pragmatic politician with the smarts to match. If only I could say the same for my country... I definitely agree with her on this, especially with Trump messing with Rwanda over the second-hand clothes thing recently. Also, obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LskvEAW62h4
If people think their lives aren't getting any better, then yes, international stuff goes on the backburner as countries face more immediate problems.
Backburner meaning straight into the furnace, huh?
We live in a globalized world. You can't ignore this, deny this, or act like this isn't true. We are a global community now. Time to start acting like it.
Speak for yourself. We are not and never will be a global community, that concept hardly exists outside of Western liberal-democracies, who themselves have competing interests between each other. Nobody is saying you should retreat into autarky, but national interests come before supranational unions and international economic ties that speak to economic and therefore political inequality.
Yeah, this is how the human race progresses By doing the same thing, over and over again, failing to recognize the faults of their actions, ways or decisions, and doubling down. I am speaking for you, because you are using a computer that uses minerals, components and pieces sourced from around the globe, and sold to you in the United States for your own consumption. It is a globally sourced device, that could literally not exist without a joint trade agreement between multiple nations, companies and otherwise. Regardless of whether you like it or not, the world IS globalized and many of our concerns will have to start extending beyond our immediate borders as the failings of one country can affect others very easily in a globalized world. The US Military relies on Chinese screens. There is no such thing as a independent state anymore, not really. Not truly.
I sympathize with what your intentions are. I think we need to do away with the idea of right and wrong side of history, it's an ideological conception that makes the world flat and does not address its complexity. Considering the faltering in the spread of liberal-democracy across the world since the 90s, the declining democracy index in the West and rise of political correctness, and the resumption of great power conflict, we can see evidence that our post-91 vision does not even come close to reconciling different interest groups (and the growing divisions between them) in a positive sum game. In fact, the zeal of globalization has created this triumphalist pace that quickly meant liberal-democracy is under its greatest threat since the interwar era, only 20 years after the end of the Cold War. Just look at how quickly people on the left and right took aim at 'neoliberalism' and interventionism. We've only become more liberalized on the issue of capitalism and arbitrary divisions in the market (borders), exaggerating class stratification and plutocracy while harming social cohesion. The state has only grown and pluralism of values has only declined with greater integration, suggesting something about a gap between social capital that democracy depends on and economic capital that the slowing growth rates of first world countries depend on. How we balance one with the other has been harmed by growing economic inequality. Nationalism is rising in response to the end of history being just another bubble, albeit social rather than economic, and related changes being forced through regardless of popularity. It's a class struggle, as always.
Sure, we live in a globalized world, but there is a thing called a country, and people inside countries don't really care what is happening in another country unless it is actually affecting their lives because they have their own issues. You can spout stuff about 'global community, time to start acting like it', but this global community stuff is a luxury good, whether you believe it or not, really does get put on the backburner as countries look internally to solve issues like rising inequality. No, as in, 'we'll come to it later', government spending and activities with the global community are hampered when internal issues are at large, for example, you can't justify increasing the refugee quota (global activity) while you have increasing homelessness, a struggling health system and increasing inequality (internal issues).
Yeah the digital goods and equipments our modern western economies literally rely on to function, are just "Luxuries". You're a character dude.
Taking active part in 'multilateral organizations and agreements' are luxuries, there are already established trade and standards for your 'digital goods' and 'equipment our modern western economies literally rely on to function', thus not a luxury in this case.
Have fun ignoring reality then because for the past ~500 years the global economy has only become more integrated and continues to do so. Post-Cold War globalization has been a venture by and for the wealthiest people on the planet, but neoliberalism isn't the only model.
They will die out in next 10 years, back into it's former self. And possibly replaced by Economical Progressive populism until next fiscal crash happens.
You're telling me countries with millions of citizens and thousands of government officials cannot handle domestic and diplomatic problems at the same time? What a load of shit. Stop detracting from the point with such a cowardly veil and tell us why you actually have a problem with what she's saying.
I never said we ignore them outright, they become less important in a countries priority as governments struggle to justify funding or attention given to them as they deal with issues that their population wants sorted first. Yes, its a balancing act, but as I said, its a luxury, it comes second.
I'll repeat it since you didn't respond to the point: You're telling me countries with millions of citizens and thousands of government officials cannot handle domestic and diplomatic problems at the same time?
It comes down to government agenda, and as I said, which you ignored, governments struggle to justify funding or attention given to those things. Countries issues get pushed to the front, external issues, unless security, pushed to the back, and even with thousands of government officials and millions of citizens, people know that government itself is quite slow at dealing with things unless immediate. A lot of the time parties are just looking for reelection and will focus on internal issues to maintain their vote share. It is not a case that they don't, its a case that they are slowed down as priority is moved elsewhere.
So you're denying the reality that different officials focus on different things. You're denying that people are even hired specifically for distinctly different governmental purposes. Okay then.
Unless I'm mistaken, no where do I state that those things are stopped. What I'm saying is the government agenda determines focus and while government does all of those things, priority is given to things over other things, staff are moved around, cut, hired etc, so if you got issues at home, more staff will be dedicated at the government to sorting that out as that is priority, meaning the international stuff in this case will move at a slower rate or maintain certain focuses that don't align with the multilateral orgs or agreements that Merkel speaks of.
Boilrig is right. Problems like growing wealth inequality and stagnant living standards are always perceived as domestic. The media either shouts down or denies a platform to anyone who calls out neoliberal economic policies, so naturally politicians like Farage are swept into power on the backs of foreign scapegoats.
Nationalism isn't the answer, a different kind of globalism aimed at benefiting all of humanity instead of perpetual competition between arbitrary lines on a map is.
Unless you want world communism or something, it kind of is. Anyway, I'm not arguing against the concept of a global economy. What I'm arguing for is the idea that we should keep social capital in mind, and this implies placing value in our ruling ideology on the nation-state and the social fabric over the current atomizing philosophies we hold, and which are mostly products of past 20th century political conflicts where we needed to more greatly contrast ourselves to the other side and are thus antiquated. Much progress fostered by capitalism, having essentially resumed an old course (what you call neoliberalism), has not been realized by many everyday people. Instead what they are witnessing are greatly exacerbated social divides and breakdowns in other forms of enfranchising social organizations, way of life, and 'metanarrative' (i.e. God, civics, national identity, the family, the community, what have you). The pace of material change has become so rapid and total in scope that the push to liberalize socially on top of it has finally evoked a particularly acute reaction in the form of conservative populism, which outright rejects universalism, egalitarianism, and cultural relativism and mocks what it sees as the absurdities they lead to in order to stay consistent (see: anti-PC culture). This kind of reaction is to be expected, considering humans evolved in conditions of small, related tribal or band societies where a way of life was shared across generations and the class structure was very simple. The premier feature of post-modernity is entropy and breakdown into constituent parts mixed with greater social division, which is particularly scary in postcolonial Anglosphere societies. The rise of left-wing identity politics or right wing identitarianism is in response to the same thing, the erosion of the unifying, middle class individualist civic identity, the realization that the end of history never happened, and the sense we were just living on a 'high' in the late 20th century that gave us (and the communist East) rosy ideas about us and our future. Given the disappointment of our material systems and the sense of a dystopian future, people are returning to idealism of left and right varieties, with both usually utterly disillusioned with 'bourgeois' Western society. I'm not the one ignoring anything, I would suggest there are just people in power taking things for granted. The events of the early-mid 20th century can be summed up as one (mainly continental European) explosion against intolerable conditions and contradictions associated with globalization, creating fascism and communism. We are living in a repetitive cycle of capitalist political and social crisis, in each we increasingly see the limits of liberal philosophy in solving the world's problems. Thus conservative reaction and left-wing radicalism coming back once again.
The hollowing out of the middle class is an inherent feature of neoliberalism. Any system where capital is more mobile than labor leaves labor at a massive disadvantage. Nation-states are the problem.
I disagree. This gives labor a vested interest in the nation-state as a vehicle. Even if you wiped away borders, money is still more mobile than people.
Then labor should take that vehicle and drive it into a brick wall. The recipe for neoliberalism is nationalism for the proletariat and internationalism for the bourgeoisie. This way transnationals can make governments dance at their behest while maintaining convoluted tax avoidance schemes to steal from the public.
Alter-globalism are ideas on globalism that incorporates a market economy that benefits the greater of humanity without going full communist internationalism.
That will never happen. The idea that I have more in common with a laborer in Asia compared to my local boss is a lie. You will never abolish the nation-state and create an international class of proles to compete with international capitalism, I have no idea why communists still believe this. Your best bet is lobbying the elite on the basis of shared values and identity. Also, unrelated to you, but HumanAbyss' idea that globalization is fostering greater social integration towards one human order simply isn't uniformly true. Besides it heightening our own existing divisions, it also rewards regionalism and other niches. Entropy and branching off is a state of nature as much as consolidation and centralization, just look at linguistics, religion, etc. We can see this elsewhere. When, for example, the sexes are given maximum negative and positive liberty, they paradoxically become more different rather than converging. Women are less likely to choose STEM fields in liberal-democratic countries with strong welfare states compared to developing ones. Similarly, the future class ladder is going to be highly mobile yet very stratified, since the future middle class job will be more defined by creative or intellectual work, the natural ability for which is less evenly distributed compared to what factory work depends on. This is why UBI and family/community structures are important, I would argue, since the former depends on social capital which is captured by the latter. The latter also, in turn, ensures that growth is a positive sum outcome and does not leave people behind, since it encourages gifted individuals in the new economy to care for their families (historically the only retirement option and safety net) and engage in philanthropy for the locales that raised them.
And how is this to be implemented in light of growing apathy from below and increasing resistance from above? What would benefit the "greater humanity", and for what reason would such people give up their selfish reasons?
Contrary to the username/avatar combo I've been using for the past ~decade, I'm not a communist. Socialist, maybe. I don't think I have more in common with Asian laborers than local bosses, but I certainly do compared to Jeff Bezos and I think those working in Amazon's warehouses would attest to that. I also think commonalities are between labor forces of different regions are going to increase as globalization continues to run its course and advanced consumer economies develop throughout the rest of the world. I don't see any reason that, sometime in the future, the UN couldn't follow a model similar to that of the EU.
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