From The Knowledge Wars (Peter Doherty, 2015) pp160-2
The inevitable consequences of the globalisation of labour were pretty obvious from the outset, though we may have underestimated the extent to which individuals and groups with political and economic power were prepared to (or forced to) sell out the citizens of their own countries. But the ‘greed is good and nothing else matters’ ideology has not been the only cause of this revolution, or wealth concentration if you prefer that terminology. There was also a major science-based driver that took everyone completely unawares and has contributed enormously to the gathering of even more financial power into the hands of a few individuals and global conglomerates. That subversive ‘stealth factor’, or ‘disruptive technology’, has been the rise of the internet and the enormous advance in international communications. Nobody predicted this, and we are still working our way through the implications. And, while many city dwellers in what might be termed the middle classes may have been fairly indifferent to the fates of blue collar workers who lost their jobs in manufacturing, neither they, nor the businesses of the time, realised that much of what white collar employees do for a living, along with many main street-retailing activities, can also be outsourced online, and globally.
The first warning came with the internationalisation of call centres. Suddenly, when we tried to make contact with a representative of our local power company or telephone service provider, we would find ourselves talking to some nice person in India or the Philippines. In fact, anything that has a major requirement for data handling and processing can potentially go this route, providing there is no overwhelming concern about security. Even some types of medical practitioners are not immune, with radiology scans and the like being read by registered doctors based in far-distant countries, an approach that (with time differences) means the results can be processed more cheaply overnight and are back the next day. What governments and established businesses also failed to predict was the rise of online sales and marketing. Apart from compromising many traditional retail models, the capacity to buy online from competitive overseas outlets has led to protected retailers, especially in countries like Australia, losing the generous mark-ups they’d long been imposing on imported goods. Then there’s the decrease in sales tax revenues that are often used to support state governments in the United States. Many traditional department stores and the like are struggling to reposition themselves for online sales, and they are competing against well-established, albeit new, providers.
Though the ideological commitment of governments to the idea of planet-wide free markets, the availability of cheap oil to facilitate air and sea transport, and the enormous power of the internet to enhance communication and transfer large data sets has led to the progressive globalisation of labour, there has been no compensatory rise in international governance structures. Conservative national administrations that went gleefully along with this as a way of subverting the power of trade unions and empowering corporations have seen a substantial erosion of their tax base, as massive conglomerates that don’t really call any place home shift manufacturing, assets and head offices to avoid making any decent contribution to human wellbeing. The lesson that if ordinary people have no money to spend you have a very diminished economy and tax base, is just beginning to dawn. The linked ideas of mutual interdependence and obligation that fostered the mechanisms of civil society are under threat everywhere. If you no longer live in the neighbourhood and don’t need to visit it to enjoy services like shopping, why should what happens to those who remain be of concern to you? Particularly in the United States, many of the old industrialists shared the same small town with their workers and met them regularly at church or on the main street. That element of personal contact is gone. Much of the implied social contract that sustained civil society is increasingly fractured. The opulent ‘air people’ retreat to exclusive high-rises, or to gated communities in manicured suburbs. True, these different groups may connect online, but don’t expect any of your new Facebook ‘friends’ to help if you are in financial trouble, and they won’t come to your funeral!
Then it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to get meaningful international co-operation and/or regulation to, say, limit greenhouse gas emissions, or to correct over-fishing and protect marine environments. Governments sign on to the IPCC process and then choose to ignore the findings. Part of that reflects the blatant self-interest of global conglomerates that command resources greater than those of many national economies. A further driver is that the changes that need to be made would, in the short term, be expensive to implement, though nothing like the costs that climate change is predicted to inflict on future generations.
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