I think globalization is actually detrimental to progress. In a globalized world, technological innovations spread around so quickly that whoever fronts the initial investment in capital and effort will be the sucker left standing in the rain. China’s entire success story is based on this.
You’re looking at the fate of individuals (both people and companies). The overall system seems to be flourishing. China has made more growth in absolute terms, and very high numbers in relative terms, than any nation in history. You might notice how Amazon and Alibaba are now flooded with China giving back in the form of innovations. Yes, these products are frequently of questionable quality but even that is a form of experimentation. (how cheap can we make it and it still gets sales...)
Not necessarily. Globalization has had many negative second-order effects. For example: As much as air connectivity has helped us travel across the world, it has also increased the risk of infections travelling longer distances quicker than if we had a localism-based model. If we are epistemically humble enough, it is not difficult to see how many COVID-like events might have happened in the past in various isolated parts of the world, that we do not know of, but never ravaged the entire world.
Globalization has benefits, not saying that it is not useful, but describing progress as a function of globalization is what I take issue with. Progress is a multiscale phenomenon. You need a strong localism-based core for innovation and you also need decentralization to accentuate the process, and then you can use globalization to scale. And then there is also the part where you need a lot of wisdom to know what should be scaled and what shouldn’t be.
I stated that real global progress had been made. China has not “taken” business away from the USA in a sort of mercantile “zero sum game”. They have taken a lot, the USA has gained some, and the global economy is bigger than ever.
I think globalization is actually detrimental to progress. In a globalized world, technological innovations spread around so quickly that whoever fronts the initial investment in capital and effort will be the sucker left standing in the rain. China’s entire success story is based on this.
You’re looking at the fate of individuals (both people and companies). The overall system seems to be flourishing. China has made more growth in absolute terms, and very high numbers in relative terms, than any nation in history. You might notice how Amazon and Alibaba are now flooded with China giving back in the form of innovations. Yes, these products are frequently of questionable quality but even that is a form of experimentation. (how cheap can we make it and it still gets sales...)
Not necessarily. Globalization has had many negative second-order effects. For example: As much as air connectivity has helped us travel across the world, it has also increased the risk of infections travelling longer distances quicker than if we had a localism-based model. If we are epistemically humble enough, it is not difficult to see how many COVID-like events might have happened in the past in various isolated parts of the world, that we do not know of, but never ravaged the entire world.
Globalization has benefits, not saying that it is not useful, but describing progress as a function of globalization is what I take issue with. Progress is a multiscale phenomenon. You need a strong localism-based core for innovation and you also need decentralization to accentuate the process, and then you can use globalization to scale. And then there is also the part where you need a lot of wisdom to know what should be scaled and what shouldn’t be.
I can’t see any structured reasoning steps in your argument.
I stated that real global progress had been made. China has not “taken” business away from the USA in a sort of mercantile “zero sum game”. They have taken a lot, the USA has gained some, and the global economy is bigger than ever.
At this point good faith has broken in this argument, we should stop.