Behavioral Immune System

Globalized society isn't a given; it isn't like the world doesn't work with nations maintaining domestic manufacturing capability.

In fact, the biggest push to economically globalize was actually a strategic move to spread influence in the Cold War era, and a means to the end of international peacekeeping through economic interdependence.

This pandemic in particular has highlighted some of the fundamental flaws in that model, however. Namely that if you don't have maximum commitment by all members (to help, and to not hinder), it leads to decisions being made that are worse for everyone globally.

For instance; Chinna may have completely shut down, and allowed western help if they did not feel it would unduly threaten their national security; and that they could with full faith trust that other nations would not exploit the period of temporary weakness while the virus was in the process of being contained.

That did not happen, nor will it likely ever. The fact is, globalization is only touted it seems by idealists, and capital wielders looking to stretch the buck that much further. In terms of local sociocultural security; it tends to be a non-starter.

It's a pity really. I can understand and see both sides of the issue's sentiments. I'll be damned if I can figure out any way to reconcile their contentions though.

You can observe a bunch of people and say, "they are not talking to each other because they are strangers". But if you observed a randomly selected group over a decade, you would see that some of them talk to strangers now and then, and those are the ones that have a tremendous advantage in creating new relationships, whereas the ones that never talk to strangers might even be handicapped/pathological.

Like, there's a huge difference between someone who, on average, consistently starts a conversation with 1 of 1000 people they meet vs. someone who does that with nobody. But observing people for a minute or two at a time, you wouldn't see the difference.