Once upon a time there was a small village called Earth. The inhabitants of Earth had been living in their village for a long time. In the beginning they were all keeping to themselves. Each villager had his own fields and his own herds and fed himself as best he could. But one of them, let us call him Europe, was very ambitious. He worked hard and made inventions that made the work easier and more efficient and soon he became rich and powerful. Europe had not been a mean person until then but his new wealth made him greedy. He now knew a life different from the hard farm work and soon he wanted more. One day he set out to subdue his neighbours who did not stand a chance against his predominance. Long and sad years of oppression followed until one of them finally could break free. His name was America and he did not only defeat Europe, but it was not long until he had caught up and they were on a par. Both of them profited from their progress as they started to specialise and to trade. Eventually Europe had ceased suppressing his poorer neighbours and left them to their own devices. But they were still in a bad condition and Europe and America took advantage of their situation by exploiting them on an economic base. Especially the poorest, called Asia and Africa, suffered enormously. Dissatisfaction and riots grew. When they saw what they had done Europe and America felt guilty. To clean their conscience they decided to make up for what they had done. They supported their poor neighbours and shared their wealth with the whole village. From then on peace and harmony reigned Earth and none of the inhabitants ever attempted to seize the predominance again. And they lived happily ever after…
Does that sound familiar to you? That might be due to the fact that some parallels can be drawn to the tales of the most blue-eyed cheerleaders for globalisation. I mean those people who keep telling us that globalisation is the ultimate solution to all our problems. They call you myopic if you try to object that globalisation has its dark side, too. Take offshore outsourcing, for example. This problem clearly shows all the aspects of globalisation that do not work out yet. As a matter of fact companies that outsource their production to low-wage countries increase unemployment in their home country and promote exploitation of workers in poor countries. But even if the storytellers admit that this might be so they will still insist that outsourcing also mysteriously manages to strengthen the world economy in the long run. Or that giving developing aid to a country and then charging it with unaffordable interest rates is a good deed. Or that unregulated competition and a night watchman state will lead to flourishing trade and world-wide wealth.
This is a nice illusion as it would mean to kill two birds with one stone, but it is just that: an illusion. Free market economy only seldom promotes equality and especially in global trade it is often a question of might is right. Developing countries just cannot compete in global competition and the multinationals’ investment in their economies weakens them even further in the long run. The only ones profiting from low wages and the lack of labour protection are the multinationals themselves. And what is good for the multinationals is rarely automatically good for everyone. More often than blossoming landscapes they leave scorched earth behind in the Third World.
And we cannot even blame them because competition is getting tough for them as well and the main aim of a company is and will be making profit, not playing the development aid volunteer.
So does globalisation have to widen the gap between rich and poor? Does it necessarily mean progress at the expense of the developing world?
Far from it. But at the moment it certainly does and to a substantial proportion this our fault. We as customers benefit from the effects of globalisation. We have access to a broad range of products from all over the world. We pay incredibly cheap prices which are only made possible by the companies doing what we accuse them of: exploiting their workers. As long as we continue our ambivalent behaviour of criticising the method of production but nonetheless buy the cheap products the companies will not change their modus operandi because they would suffer from serious sales slumps if they had to raise their prices. As long as we are only talking a lot of hot air, absolutely nothing will change.
This is exactly where the fairy tale factor comes into play. In a fairy tale the multinationals would feel responsible for treating the developing economies fairly, the customers would only buy products from firms that pay appropriate wages and the developed countries would of course spend their money on developing aid. Because in fairy tales there are only two possibilities for the bad guys: they discover their nice side and join the good guys or they die. However there is always some supernatural power interfering to assure that the good always wins. But if we rely on this supernatural power in reality we will wait in vain. We cannot simply wait for our happy ending, we have to get involved and to create an instance to assure that on our own. We have to impose rules and restrictions on ourselves in order to create a fair and peaceful world and to make globalisation work. Because it can work out and it can provide a basis for world peace, progress and wealth if we only believe in it and act accordingly to it.
If we can manage this, we may indeed live happily ever after.
© Lea Hartwich, 2009
