Customer Reviews

Case Against the Global Economy And For a Turn Toward the Local

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I'm just finishing the first year of a 2-year International MBA program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and have found this book to help restore some balance to my studies. It definitely was NOT recommended to me by my faculty, but caught my eye when I came upon it because I remembered meeting Mr. Mander when I studied with his son at UC Santa Cruz (Kresge) in the mid-1980's. There is so much hype, especially in the business world, that the global economy is not only inevitable, but good. And if you don't examine it very much, the assumptions seem solid. Well let me just say that reading this book helped me radically rethink my plans once I finish my MBA. I don't plan to promote global corporate integration, and I will do my best to influence international business to take the long-term consequences of their actions into account. I'm glad I'm studying the international business canon, though, because then I hope I'll be able to communicate some of the concepts presented in this book and actually get those with their hands on the pursestrings to listen.

Try to get this into the classroom--we need more business and economics students reading this book!

The media assure you that this ever-accelerating trend towards globalization will lead to a new era of prosperity for everyone, a rising tide that will lift all boats. But somehow that doesn't ease the pit in your stomach when you read about factories moving south, economic meltdown in Asia, Russia and Mexico, massive plundering of the environment, and the increase of poverty.

The (corporate-owned) newspapers, TV and polititians all speak with one voice about the wonders of free trade. If you want to hear what other voices have to say, read this book.

The authors explain what GATT and NAFTA are really about, how they undermine democracy, and how they invalidate many national and state laws protecting workers or the environment. The book discusses the impact of globalization, from many different perspectives, and reveals how the economic theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo have been misapplied by modern economists to reach conclusions not supported by the theories and to justify policies that Smith strongly disapproved of.

The doctrine of free trade is so taken for granted these days that few people stop to think about it. Whether you consider yourself for or against free trade, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Unless you hear both sides of an argument, how can you decide who's right?

Mexican-Scottish economists notwithstanding, Mander (an angst-ridden student? Come on; he was in his third career writing about the false notions of "good" and "bad" television during the Carter administration; if folks like the poster above (below?) are in their first year of economics school, they likely weren't even an embryo when Mader began solidifying these localist notions...notions that make sense.

The question that's being argued is not "Is globalism bad or good?" Rather, its "Globalism for WHOM, exactly?"

When we look at the costs to most of us, and the resultant so-called gains (in the short term) for a small, statistically insignificant few (the interlocking elites), you realize that if most of us, for the beneift of most of us, were to manifest "globalism," it certainly wouldn't look like it does today.

In fact, as the book makes inferentially clear; the only reason we have the form of globalism we have is due not to owners of the system, but rather to "wanna-be" owners of the system who, in their hopes and dreams of one day being on "top" of everyone like their "mentors" they perpetuate the system with more vigour (upside-down "U" of pollution, my eye!) than the owners themselves...

Read Mander, grow up, and face the truth, or at least one truth: globalisation is the setting forh of large-sclae systems of explotation for a few, at the expense of the local existences of the many. Welcome to Coca-Cola, McDonald-land...who cares if oyur child can think independently? That's not needed in this brave new world, and besides, cream rises to the top, don't it?

Puh-leese. This book debunks all that supposes that a capitalist, economic way of being in the world is anything BUT impovrished, period end of discussion.

(...)

A well-written and well-thought out "CASE" against the very scary and very real up-and-coming global economy. The essays by Vandana Shiva, Ralph Nader, David Korten, and Edward Goldsmith are especially impacting and informative. The book describes all aspects of globalization and what it means to us as citizens of this earth. Most of the essays leave one feeling impassioned to do something to change the course of the way things are going. I wish everyone would read this book... it would help to end a lot of the apathetic ignorance that is out there.

I take the same title as another reader, but obviously for a completely different reason. Everyone should read this book because then they can see what those anarchist Genoa protesters are unintelligently screaming about: nothing.

Some of the brilliant ideas contained in this book is that we should use oyster shells as currency, and that the United States should demolish these political boundaries and instead use the boundaries that, for example, the Indians used (because the Iroqouis Confederation wasn't politically motivated when they played the British and the French against each other).
This book was given to me after I finished my first year of study of economics by a friend who considered himself an anarchist (actually was just rebelling against his parents). I read it to put my beliefs to the test, just like I read "No Logo" (you can read my recommendation for that one too).

This book only solidified my beliefs. As for the "pit in my stomach" concerning the environment, well it doesnt exsist because I know that pollution levels have a upside-down "U" pattern: in the beginning the more developed, the more pollution, but continue with development and the pollution levels decrease, and the end result is everyone wins: high wages and low unemployment. Is this accomplished with the protectionist, Genoa, anarchist views? No, with free trade.

To end, yes, everyone should read this book, but not for the reason stated in the above review, but for the fact that this book prove that this "movement" is really just a jumbled horde of angst-ridden students.

-student in Scotland

(wait, a student in a European country has these views)