Have to ask the obvious question: "What is globalization?"
Harry ****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 5:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] The Collapse of Globalism To the extent that "globalism" is a significant factor work work, this should be on-topic. I just found John Ralston Saul's 2005 book, _The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World_ [1] on the remainder shelf for a couple of bucks. (I guess I should get out more if the remainder shelf is the first I've heard of a new book by our former First Gentleman. :-) Has anybody (or everybody) else already seen and read this? If so, I'd like to hear comments. Browsing it in the store, when I saw that it had a chapter entitled A Short History of Economics Becoming a Religion, I was sold. I've observed before (possibly on this list) that one of the chief targets of 1950s rhetoric opposing "godless communism" was the allegation that communism made economics the foundation of civilization. Get labor, production, capital, resources, trade and bookkeeping all tidied up and and we'll enter the Eternal Golden Age. And of course, loyal Americans (Canucks, Brits et al.) knew that there's more, way more, to civilization than the least common denominator of economics. Fast forward to the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet empire. Then George Bush (41) is talking about "free markets and free men", in that order and the current dogma, spoken or unspoken, has become that free markets, unregulated trade and unrestrained capital flows will resolve all the world's ills and lead to democracy, liberty, wealth and [drumroll] the Eternal Golden Age [rimshot]. Anyhow, I haven't quite gotten to that chapter yet -- I find Saul a source both of fulminating ideas and insights and of rather hard to follow prose -- but I'd welcome others' comments on the book. It would be nice to believe the the role of ordinary people (vs. that of global "investors") has been upgraded from biomass to something more closely resembling citizenship. - Mike [1] Viking Canada/Penguin, 2005, ISBN 0-670-06367-3 -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
