What if you live in Ukraine and want to build microprocessors or live in China and likes to be well paid and have worker rights?
Globalisation creates more inequality.
Globalisation creates more inequality.
Of course this is partially a domestic policy thing, but how we view foreign labor now is not working.
The "stop exploiting poverty" sophistic frankly doesn't map to reality. If the US pulled out of trade in Vietnam they would get worse off instead of better. The issue isn't the result of an action to be stopped which turns the entire notion into dross covered up with guilt tripping.
It is the same "leave the cookies on the table to gather dust while trying to eat far richer imaginary cakes" mental pattern as IP zealots who snub overseas direct sales with things like region locks because they think they could get more selling distribution rights months.
Anyway, more problems come from market concentration and market power abuse by single companies than from international competition (except by the point that international market power abuse makes governments powerless).
Every resource is used optimally.
The argument for it is that the end result is more wealth for "everyone" (on average!)
Would you like to be used optimally? As in, extracting the maximum work possible for as little compensation as possible?
There are animal rights groups that won't let you do that to horses.
> The argument for it is that the end result is more wealth for "everyone" (on average!)
Looking at the average and not paying attention to the distribution is a mistake.
Note the quotes around "everyone" and the exclamation mark after average.
Non optimal resource allocation -> less overall wealth.
And free global market is the machine that has optimal resource allocation as optimization goal.
Unless the wealth is well distributed, it makes no difference for the bulk of the population whose bodies are being optimally allocated.
But I am arguing from the standpoint of "global-trade-as-a-machine". And in this case an idealized machine with only one dimension (fish or crops or labor).
Of course if you live in Ukraine and have only one leg and love developing microprocessors, the "global-trade-as-a-machine" will pick that up and let you work on that rather than work as a farmer (one-leggedness and interest/drive as two new dimensions). (Although just as likely it will allow you to move to another country to pursue your interest.)
And of course governments have noticed the inequalities produced by this machine and are doing its best to counter that with more or less enthusiasm.
That's not really how immigration and economic opportunity works. Our one-legged farmer would have to be astonishingly lucky for that to happen.
> And of course governments have noticed the inequalities produced by this machine and are doing its best to counter that with more or less enthusiasm.
It's more like they are taking measures against other governments that gain strategic relevance based on these factors. One way to counter China's advantage with manufacturing cost would be to force China to adopt and enforce better labor laws and increase compensation.
In fact, having a single global standard for compensation and worker rights would be a wonderful thing. As long as it's good and includes progressive taxes on the accumularion of wealth and a mechanism to compensate for undue political power from wealth.
Now just imagine what the rest of the world has to cope with.