Way, way back in 1997, a former Rolling Stone and Washington Post Investigative reporter by the name of William Greider wrote a book. It was called, “One World, Ready or Not.” You can still read this book by ordering from Powell’s Books in Portland, or go to your local bookstore and have them order it for you. I would avoid Amazon, personally.
Greider’s thesis, which was praised and panned at the time by the usual Liberal Supporters and Free Market Conservative Apologists, was that there was no stopping the International Economy. It is a product of International Communications at the speed of light; money transfers, deals, information, insider trading, capital shifts of Trillions of Dollars in the blink of an eye. And it is subject to NO Democratic Governing Principles. There is no voice, input, legal mechanisms for the people whose jobs, land, homes relationships and possessions. Democracy has been effectively overthrown by International Market Forces, under no authority, no governing idea, no feedback loops for what has been done to people in Springfield, Mo, or Baku, Azerbiajan, or Santiago, Chile. In effect, we are One World now, bound to each other by invisible strings of transactions occurring at millions of events per second, and matter not as individual persons to any existing democratic governing ideal. That ideal died with the advent of the Internet as the governing authority of market economics.
Democrats AND especially Republicans have looked on in wonder, and precious little else, at the creation of the UberWorld State of Economic Free Market, let’s coin a new acronym now; (UWSEFM).
It has such majesty, such power, so many new and exciting royal Uberstars created each year with billions in income IF you can figure out how to get in between the producer, the consumer and the information flow, because it is UnRegulated and Untaxed by any governing legal mechanism or democratic feedback loops, or, Democracy. It is the Wild West, with all the benefits and consequences of that time and place.
It is literally the First opening of the resources of the New World all over again, this time on a global scale. Trillions are being made in the reshuffle from National economies to International economies, and it all depends on shifting your costs to someone else, and in this case, someone else is Labor. Everyone in the world who Works for a Living is now on the chopping block because a transaction made in the blink of an eye gives your job to a Malaysian former rubber tree cutter, or a contract for salmon to a Chilean one-boat hand troller because he MUST work at a dollar per hour and you cannot.
Staring us right in the face is the obvious notion that if we want to have Democracy, just as the Thirteen Colonies wanted to have Democracy, rule of the people over their own economic lives, they must band together against the forces which they themselves unleashed, the free exchange of products and services, within guided limits and standardized rules, also called Government.
Our own history teaches us what must be now done. There is no stopping International Markets. When Donald Trump went to Carrier and “saved” 800 jobs for a few months at the cost to the Government of 7 million dollars, he also LOST 1200 to Market Forces more powerful than any demogogue or democratic politician. Our laws only extend to our national borders, and that is only good enough to partially save, for a short time, some jobs, by begging Corporations to adhere to a National agreement we might make.
The United States must now take the lead in the next Great Liberal Project a Democratic Federation of Nations. If, by creating autonomous and independent nation states within a structure of a Democratic World Federation, we can make sure that cotton farmers in New Mexico are not suddenly extinguished by new plantations in India at one tenth the operating costs and the flick of a transaction by a finacial bank in Honk Kong.
Trump’s solution has been to rile up an old Nationalism and Protectionism and HOPE that it will be enough to bring prosperity back to American citizens. It most assuredly will not. We will become more isolated, more ignored and more feared because of military power in the short run, and in the longer run we will not be able to afford 11 aircraft carrier fleets and 38 Nuclear Submarines. The economy will drift away, Corporations and jobs and taxes and ideas will move offshore faster to avoid paying ruinous Military Taxes to keep the Former Empire afloat, and we will be worse off than before. We must, we have no choice, but to open a new conversation with our Trumpista opponents, because we must not call them enemies.
We must take the lead in creating a Democratic Federation of Nations, focused on democratic process and procedures, with the New International Economic Opportunity and Dislocation as the focus of the New Democracy. TPP was a gesture in this regard, but it focused controls and feebacks in the privy councils of the Corporations it was supposed to standardize and regularize. There was precious little democratic process embedded or envisioned, but rather a Star Chamber of horrible outcomes divorced from view and in the pockets of the Corporate Authority. It was no democracy. It was a shift toward World Corporate Governance. But we shall not speak ill of the dead, very much.
Greider wrote in The Nation on November 8, 2016 on Trump’s “populist” victory.
“The media have tossed around the “populist” label this year to identify these small-d democratic intruders. But the reporters (and many scholars) are quite stupid about the true meaning of populism. They should read Lawrence Goodwyn’s enthralling history of the original agrarian movement in the 1880s, The Populist Moment.
Goodwyn explained that ordinary folks typically develop their knowledge from everyday experience, not from schoolbooks or learned professors. The original populists were farmers and self-taught thinkers on economics—critical of banks and railroads and private enterprise, but also of government. So they had to develop their own commonsense ideas for how the economy should function. Many of their original concepts were forerunners to the great reform legislation of the 20th century, including the New Deal.
As Goodwyn taught, plain people sometimes get to the truth about things ahead of the experts but are typically ignored by the authorities. On Tuesday, these self-taught citizens spoke thunderously to the nation. They found their democratic power. We should listen respectfully to what they said.”
Their solution: more Nationalism, retreat into protectionism and more militarism. Our solution: More democracy, more power to people who Work for a Living, and more opportunities to make our own lives meaningful. To those on the Left, the choice is clear.