Nationalism and globalization
Here's another "Debate Discussion".
What do you think about nationalism (as in independence of the nation and not nationalizing the industry)?
Also, what do you think of globalization?
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Comments
Nationalism I can ever so slightly tolerate.
Globalisation is bound to happen with a majority of countries around the world being capitalist. Personally, I have no arguement for or against it.
Nationalism can be destructive or constructive. National pride is perfectly normal, as is putting one's nation first. It becomes a problem when national prejudices interfere with diplomacy and trade.
Globalization is good and bad. It helps bring the world closer together, but dilutes local cultures and sometimes encourages exploitation by multinational corps.
It depends what we're talking about. If we're talking about exchange of good, ideas, and news, then globalization is awesome. Like on this forum, being able to chat with people from all over the world, being able to hear about the issues going on in other countries as though they were in our own, and just in general getting to know about other cultures, that's great.
The problem with globalization is on an economic level, especially with capitalism. I have a theory that we've moved from countries having capitalists and a proletariat to effectively 'capitalist countries' and 'proletariat countries.' Obviously it's not 100% - you can't export a coffee shop - but there are countries, most notably the United States, which increasingly is deindustrializing and moving from production to financial capital. The production subsequently takes place in the global south, whose labor is exploited by the financialized countries.
Strangely, I see a mix of nationalism and internationalism as the answer. First off, free trade agreements need to be replaced with fair trade agreements. Too often countries use market forces to exploit other countries and take valuable capital which could be used toward development, or pay extremely low prices for the raw product and jack up the prices during manufacturing. For instance, when you buy coffee - the coffee beans are extremely cheap. It's taking off the shell and roasting them and turning them into the coffee you buy in the supermarket which really jacks up the value, the problem is a lot of the countries which produce coffee, such as Columbia and Ethiopia, don't have the machinery to mass produce market-ready coffee and so they ship the raw product for a low price and the majority of the profit goes to roasters in countries like the US.
However, on the national level (such as the United States), I think there needs to be a 'nationalist' movement focused on promoting manufacturing. Partly because in deindustrializing economies, the share of GDP shifts from agricultural and industrial sectors to the service sector - yet the service sector has the least rate of growth in productivity. Whether this is done by tariffs on foreign imports to incentivize domestic production, or direct involvement of the government promoting or even owning industry, it's something which needs to be done.
America needs to think about America. Not solve the world's problems anymore, and just solve OUR issues. Once we got our issues settled, then maybe in the future we can help others. We needs Sanctions on China Bad.