The end of internationalism: Are rich nations turning their back on the world?
smh.com.au
smh.com.au
>there is a gap at the global governance level. Who's in charge of that? Where do you address yourself, you know?
What is it with the international elite, looking down at the world from their quaint old chateaus and cushy jobs, who believe all the worlds problems will be solved if someone could give them more money for their advice and add another layer of government/bureaucracy on top? Why is the ICRC pushing this agenda?
Stop it, firstly stop the interventionism! Military and economic. Stop bombing the ME, stop acting holier than thou and imposing this narrow globalist set of ethics onto the world. Stop trying to grab power and pretend it has some altruistic component. It's causing chaos.
These problems are not going to be solved by a world government.
Quite contrary to the opinion expressed in the article that Brexit and Trump are symptoms of a problem, I consider them symptoms of a public trying to stop these crazy globalist agendas.
That international cooperation has undoubtable made the world a safer place. It has seen the expansion of the middle class in BRIC. Between 1981 and 2005, poverty dropped from 84% to 18% in China, 80% to 42% in India, 17% to 8% in Brazil. Between 1990 and 2012 the average global life expectancy jumped by a full 6 years! Hell, if you lived in Liberia, it was 20 years!
Compared to the chaos of the first half of the 20th century (not to mention parts of the second half), the world is absolutely peaceful and a better place for just about everyone.
Not saying it's a bad thing, just saying that the hippies were wrong and we got a lot further by threatening each other than we ever did holding hands and singing songs.
It's the withdrawal of colonialism (due to WWII exhaustion, national freedom movements, and political pressure) and the end of the 2 superpowers Cold-War peripheral collusions, that gave those countries a better chance to catch up and develop themselves.
Not some "international co-operation" coming top-down.
I'm not sure either that ICRC people encouraging more of this is the problem or Trump vacillating between isolationism and threatening to "bomb the shit" out of countries represents anything that vaguely represents a solution.
Before we had Pax Britannica and Pax Romana. Now we have Pax Americana. But probably Pax Americana will go just like Pax Britannica and Pax Romana. I don't think we've reached the end of history yet.
1981 - 2005, also known as the period when the US and Russia couldn't maintain their hegemony over B, I and C anymore.
No, there are just people thinking for themselves.
Elite just means "the small minority of people with big power/wealth".
And "globalist elite" just means people in power in governments, multinationals, etc, that are in favour of an extension of their power and reach etc through global treaties, etc -- to the detriment of regional governments.
That's par for the course for having power, and how the world has been running since forever.
Except if you also think that 10 countries having 2/3rd of the world as slaves in their colonies up to merely 5-6 decades ago was also a "conspiracy theory" or "paranoid rhetoric".
In which case I salute the historical ignorance and naivete.
Alright. How do we deal with global warming?
Shouldn't international laws and co-operation between nations, naturally develop into a global government?
All it will achieve is the greater concentration of power in the hands of even fewer people.
The potential solutions that come to mind range from, on the pessimistic end, apocalyptic, to technological if we are to be optimistic. We'll either think our way out of the crisis with cleaner sources of energy, or nature will have it's way and our population will dwindle.
Taxes are not the solution to every problem.
A tax on BS consumption won't "disproportionately affect the poor". The poor have vastly more basic needs to be concerned with a tax on all kinds of consumerist crap.
The atmosphere and oceans are a common good, and it's hard to see how we'll stop polluting without enforceable agreements. And that means some entity has to do the enforcing.
Global warming denial seems to be an ideological necessity to the right-wing because they can't accept a problem exists that can only be solved by global governance. Witness the poster you're replying to, suggesting we accept human extinction rather than taxes and regulation.
Straw man or False dilemma?
That was the original statement. To me, the fact that 'range' is included, means there's more than just two choices implied. I do believe it misrepresents the argument to suggest that there's only two 'extremes' of "taxes and regulation" or else "we go extinct."
In an ad-hoc manner? We have lots of global bodies like the UN, and numerous ad-hoc global treaties.
Global cooperation doesn't have to be global governance, and involve everything and the kitchen sink.
>Shouldn't international laws and co-operation between nations, naturally develop into a global government?
No, they shouldn't.
We have different cultures and different preferences in our different countries, we don't want powerful bully countries coercing us in what to believe, including countries so backwards as to still practice the death penalty or to think "welfare" is some dirty word.
If you believe in the principles of decentralization as they relate to technology, can you not apply the same axioms to the world?
To me it seems intuitive that the world is better off governed as a web of many different institutions (nation states) with varying interests, as opposed to hierarchically under a singular power attempting to coalesce around an impossible consensus.
Of course, not all the "nodes" (states) are equal, which is why we have "spheres of influence." Western powers as of late seem to be pushing for a singular sphere of influence, as opposed to accepting the bipolar or tripolar world that has naturally developed after World War II. You don't see China or Russia trying to export their hegemony onto the rest of the world, yet the United States continues its attempts to "export democracy" into areas like the Middle East. Why not let the Middle East develop into its own pole of power along with the US (the "West"), Russia, and China (the "East")?
The world would be much better off if the global elites allowed the spheres of influence to develop naturally and peacefully, without trying to push those in the middle one way or another. Some cultural differences are simply impossible to overcome, and any attempt to ameliorate them only ends in violence. One might argue it's not even in the world's best interest to "overcome" cultural differences. One of the great tragedies of globalization is the emergence of a monoculture (go to any club in the world, for example, and you hear only American music) that could cause people to sleep walk into the control of a single world power.
You and I must read very different parts of HN, since in every article concerning globalism, the top comment, or one of the top comments criticizes globalism.
If there is one phenomena that does permeate HN, it's 2edgy4me contrarianism-for-the-sake-of-contrarianism, and even that isn't very strong here.
I wouldn't say there was anything natural about the bipolar post-WWII world. It was the result of both sides striving to be dominant, coupled with nuclear weapons.
You'll never have a country willingly cede advantage to another -- only transient configurations of alliances, agendas, and resources that lead to temporarily stable multipolar scenarios.
1) Ensure free movement of people and goods
2) Ensure no unambiguous human rights abuses (like genocide), though this actually could be arguably fall under (1)-- if people are free to leave, human rights abuses don't necessarily have to be policed.
This would help ensure a network of competitive governments.
No wonder the rich world is retracting, there is little to gain and much to lose: now the strategy is closed borders, strong security policies, withdrawing from international programs, and fight by proxy with the existing and upcoming world powers for areas of influence, without being directly involved in order to avoid the backslash that the increasingly harsh policies that will be required in order to continue exploiting world resources will cause.
The rich voter demands from its government only one thing: increase our standard of living, whatever it takes.
Compared to the era where they carpet bombed the world, had 2/3 of the global population as slaves in their colonies, etc?