A Future Perfect [Hardcover]

"Globalisation is the single most important force in the world today", write journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, both of The Economist (and coauthors of The Witch Doctors):

The integration of the world economy is not only reshaping business but also reordering the lives of individuals, creating new social classes, different jobs, unimaginable wealth, and, occasionally, wretched poverty. From Washington to Beijing, politicians are increasingly defined in terms of their attitudes toward globalisation. The key political arguments of the next few years--between Islam and the West, Eurosceptics and Europhiles, the new left and the old--will all be variations arising from one underlying conflict: the one between globalisers who want to see the world reshaped in their own image and traditionalists who want to preserve fragments of traditional culture and local independence.

Micklethwait and Wooldridge are advocates of the former, not the latter. In A Future Perfect--a rich synthesis of anecdote, analysis, and argument--they make a strong case both for globalisation's economic benefits and its classically liberal underpinnings. They acknowledge frustration with public debates over globalisation that "always seem to involve a shuttered textile factory in South Carolina, never a young African child sitting at a computer; always a burning Amazonian forest, never a young Brazilian investment banker; always The Lion King or the Spice Girls, never the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao." A Future Perfect relentlessly reports the upside of globalisation--the book is full of stories--and makes the vital point that more than economics is at stake. At bottom, write Micklethwait and Wooldridge, the issue is freedom. They bemoan "restrictions on where people can go, what they can buy, where they can invest, and what they can read, hear, or see. Globalisation by its nature brings down these barriers, and it helps to hand the power to choose to the individual." Like a good article in The Economist, A Future Perfect is well written and concise. It also renders complicated subjects understandable, and has the welcome effect of making readers feel more intelligent for having cracked its spine. Much has been written about globalisation; this book may be the best of the lot thus far. --John J. Miller

‘Makes a strong liberal case for globalisation…clear and even light-hearted…an excellent book.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘One of the few clear-headed books on [globalisation].‘ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘Persuasive…important…passionate and readable… they take up the argument for globalisation with refreshing candour and verve' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘Fills a yawning void with a magisterial case for the most powerful - and life enhancing - force on earth: globalisation.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘A spectacular success.’ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘This well-informed and often entertaining book will do much to build the Mickelthwait and Woolridge brand – globally of course’ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘Entertaining and instructive’ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

This text is a powerful, level-headed defence of globalization - a phenomenon which is enhancing our concept of individual freedom. It looks at the shanty towns of Sao Paulo and the London that has revolutionized the telecommunications industry, to answer questions about the future in this age of globalization. The book questions aspects of politics and society and unveils a new meritocratic global ruling class, which it dubs "Cosmocrats", as well as addressing the winners in the globalization process it covers the losers - from car workers in the US to the environment in Bangkok. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A powerful and important defence of the phenomenon of globalisation; a book that sets the agenda for debate on the most important social, political, economic and cultural developments of our time, in the tradition of Will Hutton's The State We're In. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

John Micklethwait is the London-based US editor of the Economist; Adrian Wooldridge its Washington correspondent. Their award-winning book on management gurus, The Witch Doctors, was an international bestseller and translated into eight languages --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Introduction:

This book has two aims. The first is to apply some order to the maelstrom of facts, images, and opinions concerning globalization. In part, that means unravelling some of the myths that have built up about it: that it is ushering in an age of global products, such as Coca-Cola (which, incidentally, has to tweak its formula just to keep the citizens of different parts of Japan happy); that it has killed inflation and changed the rules of economics; that big, global companies will crush their smaller rivals; and that geography means nothing in an age of rootless capitalism. Rather than treating globalization as one great coordinated movement—or, even more misleadingly, as an accomplished fact—we will argue that it should be seen as a series of waves, rather like the industrial revolution. The winds driving globalization—the digitalization of information, the collapse of trade barriers, even the spread of pop music—are real enough, but the world economy remains much less integrat!
ed than either the proponents of globalization or its critics admit.
By some measurements, the world is not that much more “global” than it was a century ago: Much of the final quarter of the twentieth century was spent merely recovering ground lost in the previous seventy-five years. And, even after that recovery, talk of a “global village” still seems far off the mark. In some cases, observers have ignored what might be called the undertow: the way in which the same tide that seems to bring people together can also divide them into ever smaller groups. For instance, multi-channel television has spawned not only global networks such as CNN and MTV but also countless small “community” stations.
The most common mistake of those who talk about globalization as a fact has been exaggeration. Capital slips round the world ever more easily but not in the frictionless way that Asian dictators fear. Most labour markets remain stubbornly national. Even in the richest countries, many markets for products still stop at national borders: A Canadian province trades twelve times as many goods and forty times as many services with another Canadian province than it does with an American state of similar size and proximity. In the supposedly open European Union, people are still six times more likely to trade with their fellow nationals. Industries have an irksome but entirely sensible reason for sticking to certain areas: For example, there are plenty of cheaper places to locate a film industry than Hollywood, but none of them has the same people. And a surprising number of basic products come from local sources. Nearly all of America’s lightbulbs are still made inside the country, !
largely because the transport costs are too high to justify moving the factories elsewhere.
No matter how many times American politicians summon up images of a world that has slipped out of their control, macroeconomic statistics tell a different story. Events overseas usually have only small direct bearings on jobs and growth in the United States. If, for example, Japan gave up buying American products entirely, it would knock just 1 percent off America’s gross domestic product (GDP); indeed, exports to the whole of Asia account for just 2.5 percent of America’s economy. When the economies of Asia collapsed in 1997, the Dow Jones Industrial Average juddered but then continued its upward surge. The chief significance of the event for brokers was not the “international” notion that exports would go down but the “domestic” one that it might dissuade the Federal Reserve Board from raising interest rates.
Yet if exaggeration is a problem, so is undue scepticism. Globalization might not be a fact, but something clearly has changed—or, more accurately, evolved. Bill Clinton’s first reaction to Thailand’s problems in 1997 was dismissive: He followed what might be called the Nixon doctrine, so memorably encapsulated in that president’s statement that “he didn’t give a f**k about the lira.” But Clinton soon had to admit that the problem was more “contagious,” and by September 1998 he was calling the Asian collapse “the biggest financial challenge facing the world in half a century.” Meanwhile, the chief executives of big Western companies had similar epiphanies. Many began by saying that Asia accounted for only a small share of their profits—usually no more than a tenth—but soon they confessed that they had been relying on it to provide a much greater proportion of their expected profit growth (often twice as much)….
Meanwhile, economic initiatives such as NAFTA are beginning to blur the boundaries between countries. As we shall see, that does not mean that the nation-state is doomed to wither away, but it does mean that politicians have to re-examine some of their assumptions about the role of government. Even without creating a borderless utopia (or hell), even without achieving full realization, globalization has clearly changed the points of reference of modern politics.
That brings us to the second aim of this book, which is to make the intellectual case for globalization. For many economists—perhaps too many—that project is too easy to waste time over. Of course globalization makes sense: It leads to a more efficient use of resources; any student who understands the basic tenets of comparative advantage understands that. Though hard to dispute, this argument seems inadequate for two reasons. First, it fails to confront the harsh questions concerning those people who lose on account of globalization, not just economically but socially and culturally. And, second, it undersells globalization: The process has not to do only with economic efficiency; it has to do with freedom. Globalization offers the chance to fulfil (or at least come considerably closer to fulfilling) the goals that classical liberal philosophers first identified several centuries ago and that still underpin Western democracy. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.