Did Globalization Fail to Deliver on its Promise?

Let us count the ways.

Photo by Simone Busatto on Unsplash.

Though it wasn’t billed as such, in retrospect globalization was really a form of communism-lite. The idea was to take manufacturing and production jobs provided by wealthy American corporations and spread them around a bit to emerging nations; grow the companies, grow the Middle Class worldwide — grow the world’s economic pie, so to speak.

Globalization was billed as the ultimate modern panacea; we were invited to, “Imagine all the people, sharing all the world,” as John Lennon wrote.

Decades later, it seems globalization has failed for the same reasons communism always fails. Eventually, greed, self-interest, and cupidity collect at the top of the distribution pyramid, perpetuating — and worsening — the same inequality the system was designed to address.

For example, globalization was supposed to make the Chinese people more free; instead, the Chinese people and the American people are less free.

China has been turned into the world's most sophisticated surveillance state. The Chinese Communist Party can use technology pioneered by American companies in Silicon Valley to find anyone, anywhere in China in under three minutes. The CCP calls this system, non-ironically, “Skynet”.