Production wise, an economy that is not concerned with democratic institutions or reducing inequality will outperform one that is. With that in mind, globalization is basically a race to the bottom human rights wise.
Globalization is why extreme poverty has plummeted in the last few decades. Hundreds of millions of people chose to leave their subsidence farm to work long hours in a factory because it's still an improvement for the quality of life of themselves and their families. Sure it would be better if an Indonesia factory worker got paid $20 a day instead of $10, but nobody is offering them $20 and you can't force anyone to.
It's a political choice not to (for example) impose import taxes on goods based on the difference between wages in the two countries concerned.
Not doing this is bad for people, but good for capital.
Like, I'm Irish, so I have benefited from this trend for my whole life, but that doesn't make it right.
Literally hundreds of millions of people in the Third World to were able to raise themselves into the global middle class over the past few decades.
The main people hurt by the outsourcing trend have been middle-class people in wealthy countries who had well-paid, lower-skill jobs producing physical things which are now shipped in from far away.
Good for foreign labor, good for capitalists, and bad for the middle class in rich countries.
This could have even been a win-win-win, if managed more carefully — Germany had pretty robust job retraining programs for people who lost factory jobs. I'd imagine the UK did not.
We should be honest about who benefited, as well as who was hurt.
Yes. Trade is supposed to mean that no side of the bargain loses. If my country's working class loses, I'm losing. It's not our job to impoverish ourselves for other people's good.
Briefly, rising incomes under a non-democratic regime lead to a local maximum of growth, as totalitarianism is inextricably linked with economically inefficient institutions. As an autocrat, your top priority is to compensate those who keep you in power, which requires wealth extraction from the productive; this disincentivises efficient production. Unfortunately, nothing about rising wealth will necessarily lead to regime liberalization.
"Reducing inequality" is very different from democracy, and would probably lead to reduced economic efficiency, as it necessarily reduces the incentives for efficient production.
That cost is insignificant when the ruling nomenclature is a relatively small portion of the population and when basic workers rights are not respected. Especially in manufacturing stuff on a pipeline in huge quantities, a totalitarian system can be much more effective output-wise, at the cost of disregarding any environmental and human condition externalities.
This cost can be extremely high, as the autocrat has to pay off enough people to ensure that rivals cannot achieve an advantage.
this argument gets made a lot (for instance, re: the lower capital gains rate) because proponents want it to be true and its flaws are not immediately obvious, but it's unambiguously mistaken.
first, esteem from wealth is relative, and as long as there is a spectrum of wealth, the wealthiest will derive maximal esteem regardless of the absolute value of wealth. and that's the primary driver for the ambitious and greedy, not putting resources to highest and best use (which is at best a side effect). greater equality doesn't change that equation one iota.
second, it's plain to see that large accumulations of wealth are fairly unproductive, simply illustrated by the localized real estate bubbles driven by both wealth seeking safe harbor and PE-backed landlords seeking unproductive rents.
in fact, there seems to be a central optimum. relative to now, wider dispersion of wealth (less wealth disparity) seems to provide the best bang-for-buck when it comes to efficiency, putting more potential to work rather than mostly relegating it to the menial sidelines.
They are absolutely bound together. Ensuring that every person has the same power in the political process means that everyone has the time and energy to pay attention and be educated on what's going on the world, and that nobody has so much wealth that they can use it to buy influence. The trend towards more inequality while the working class has less and less political power is painfully obvious, especially in the United States.
The question is: How can the market be adapted to create a fair, innovative and sustainable society, globally?
How can a single government force any rules with these goals without lowering the welfare of its inhabitants and thus threaten its reelection?