Article on the "global elite"

[bae]

I'm stuck on an iPad this weekend, not conducive to a thoughtful, extensive reply. More to come.

[loosechickens]

thanks, bae......we'll wait. ;-)

[bae]

Ah ha, an actual keyboard:

The short answer: I think most nation-states are an archaic relic of a violent, colonialist, imperialist past. I think and hope they are being destroyed from below, as increased localism/regionalism unites people who have shared cultures, trade networks, and ecosystems that do not necessarily coincide with lines on a map. I think and hope they are being destroyed from above by the forces of globalism - easy transport of capital, information, and goods, and reliance on supra-national organizations to regulate matters of global concern.

I think nation-states these days no longer serve the needs of the citizens within their artificial borders, and are going broke trying to do so, while supra-national organizations step in to fill the void. I also think many nation-states are of a size and scope that is not appropriate, or healthy, for most of us.

I think “the global elite” represent not the wealthy abandoning us, but rather the vanguard of a growing movement, empowered by newly developed technologies and processes of freedom, that will eventually allow all of us to realize our roles as world citizens, and participate in a peaceful global exchange of ideas, goods, services, and culture. I think nation-states are resisting this as much as they can, as they fade away.

I think corporate non-state actors present a great danger to us during this time of transition, during the dying throes of the old regimes. I think other non-state actors (Al Qaeda, for instance) also threaten us.

I think it’s an interesting time to be alive, and have great hope that we’ll muddle our way through this.

Here’s a (relatively) brief reading list.

Rosecrance, Richard. The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century
Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War
Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War
Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies
Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization
Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State
Thomas Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century
Jean-Marie Guéhenno, The End of the Nation-State
Vaclev Havel, Kosovo and the End of the Nation-State (speech)

[loosechickens]

WOW......thanks, bae. Not only for the thoughts, but the reading list, as all I've read on that list is The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and part of Peter Singer's One World: The Ethics of Globalization. I got that one from the library and timed out on it because someone else was waiting, so I couldn't renew it, and haven't yet gone in to reborrow it.

I'm surprised that my gut feelings from the little I've read, and now reading your post, seem very much in line with what you're saying. And, I too, think that it's going to be a rough transition as those in political power throughout the world attempt to consolidate their power, institute protectionalist policies, etc., but in the long run, for the human race, seeing ourselves as all global citizens on this closed system of Earth may be best in the end. I'm sure I'll be long dead before it sorts itself out, but.......

Thanks for taking the time to post this very thoughtful and helpful post. I've got a good reading list, now.

[peggy]

This is an interesting conversation. I think I agree although I must confess I haven't thought a lot about it. I"m afraid it will be more than a little bumpy since there is such a gulf of ideologies, laws and pockets of, as bae said, Al-Qaeda and like groups who simply won't let go.
I wouldn't mind really if it were just the gentle grumbling of Europe after they essentially dissolved their borders that I saw when there, but then those countries were/are pretty close in so many ways. Their standard of living, for pretty much everyone is comfortably middle class. From low to high, very not-american like though.

[Gregg]

Even now geographic/climatologic barriers seem to make more sense than lines drawn by conquest or political whim. It will be interesting to see if commodity trading of goods becomes more localized even as capital, information and other forms of intellectual sharing becomes more global or if the trade and transport of goods continues to increase. I think bae's statement that corporate and other non-state players represent a danger to a transition away from national states also makes sense. IMO various religious 'factions' may represent the biggest challenge to peaceful transition (but what else is new, right?). Corporate entities should be able to use their resources and the dependence on their products to span the gap and possibly emerge at the top of the global heap. Lets just say I won't bet against "BIG".

[loosechickens]

Certainly the imperialist habit of just drawing lines on maps and creating countries with no regard for bioregions, ethnicity, etc. has caused a huge number of problems........

I'd almost hope for multinational corporate control if religious factions were the alternative, because at least corporations want profit, and the most profit is to be had by lots and lots of customers buying products and there being a healthy trading and business climate. The religious divides seem so ideological and sometimes self defeating, that I'd hope those groups would not end up being the ones that ran the show. Many of them would sink the ship in an effort to be right and have their version of The Truth ascendant.

I can't picture the great military powers of nation-states going down without a big fight......although perhaps the process of government being co-opted by corporations has really already begun in a big way and we don't even realize it.

It's a fascinating subject to me, and one of the things that is really bothering me about getting older (I am 69) is that for the first time, I realize I won't be around to see many of the things I like to speculate about.

I won't bet against BIG, either, nor against that drive to make a profit. While war is profitable to some corporations, in general, having a healthy global trading and business climate would seem to be in their long term best interest, so although taking this global view may mean that some of the "haves" nations may see a big slide downward, looking globally, in the long term, becoming citizens of Earth may end up being in our best interest.

Although unless aliens land and make war against us, it's hard for me to see Earthlings as a group, working together.......

[Dharma Bum]

One of the more pithy criticisms of anarchy is that if people could live without government they would have done so by now.

The way you arrange things does matter. Krugman's recent article on the Euro crisis is a good reminder that there are consequences to misaligning governmental systems with societal units. There are also some advantages to scale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/ma...pagewanted=all

[bae]

One of the more pithy criticisms of anarchy is that if people could live without government they would have done so by now.

I am not arguing for anarchy. Simply for organizations and processes that are appropriate for scale and location, and that meet the needs of the people they exist to serve.

I live right on the border of the US and Canada, in the Salish Sea, in a county made up of hundreds of small islands. There are similar islands off Vancouver Island in Canada, an easy kayak paddle or dory row away. I share much more in common with my Canadian neighbors there than I do with the people who live down Puget Sound in Seattle/Tacoma, or with people who live in Washington DC.

Pre-9/11, I used to travel relatively freely to the small villages in the nearby Canadian islands - they are in fact closer to me in some ways than the US mainland. Yet, since 9/11, due to faceless officials in Washington DC, 3800 kilometers away, I cannot easily do so. My freedom to economically and socially interact with my neighbors, who I can wave to across a narrow stretch of water, is restricted by people on the other side of the continent(*), who have little knowledge of circumstances here, who are prepared to use force against me to compel my compliance with their will. This seems to me inappropriate, and immoral. It has had a huge impact on our local economies.

It's absurd. And this is a border region between two countries that *like* each other.

Now, consider what cultures and watershed/bioregions that are more seriously split by lines on maps have to go through. The Kurds, split between Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, for instance.

(*) And these same people sometimes herd me, at the point of a gun, into a razor-wire-topped enclosure when I am travelling back to the US mainland, travelling to an adjacent county within the USA, entirely within US waters. To ask me a few questions to make sure I'm not smuggling in Mexican lettuce pickers, or Islamic terrorists.

These same people were also seriously proposing to regulate how I raise small numbers of chickens on my own land, to require filing all sorts of paperwork, microchipping/tagging, and to pay outrageous fees. They also claim the right to regulate and prevent me growing crops on my land to feed my own animals (see Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)). These do not properly seem like matters of national interest.

[loosechickens]

Since we've been interacting on and crossing and recrossing the Mexican border for more than thirty years, bae, we've experienced much the same thing.

In AZ, the Tohono O'Odham indians, who have traditionally lived both in Mexico and the U.S. and for the past hundred years have gone back and forth freely, now, since both 9/11 and the high levels of anti-illegal immigrant feeling in this country, which have closed the borders in so many ways, now find their nation cut in half, with family on both sides of the border, and that artificial line between them that was never a problem before.

Going back and forth across the Mexican border used to be pretty open.......workers came north and crossed the border, worked the crops and then went home to their villages. Although technically "illegal", nobody made much of it, and it worked pretty well. One side effect of having made the border so difficult to cross has been that workers can no longer go back and forth freely, so when they come here, they stay, and often bring or send for their families as well, because they can no longer just go home in the off seasons.

We make it difficult if not darned near impossible for them to come legally, but have that "attractive" work for them still. There's got to be a better way.