Journalist Confirms: Globalisation Exists, Affects People!

Nothing in globalisation is in any way new. In the Roman empire citizens were worried that cheap tunisian olive oil and wine would undercut their own agriculture. In Louis XIV’s Dutch wars those crazy profiteering protestants actually used to sell food supplies to the enemy army besieging their own city. Hell, no modern company has the kind of very literal Bang that the British east india company used to wield quite casually. It’s just speeded up like everything else, to make a pun: globalisation has gone global. Problems remain.

I consider myself to be reasonably pro-capitalist (it’s the best system there has been so far) but there is a problem that deeply worries me in the sentence “Evolve, or get left behind”; that is that we as a species are completely unable to steer the course of development of our civilization and culture in any meaningful way. Whole peoples are merely specks of driftwood in the overwhelming tide of history, off the map and lost without rudder. No meaningful decisions can be made in the face of the fury of the mighty, inhuman Market Forces. The only way to get ahead is to try to make some poor schmuck somewhere take the bullet that was meant for you. A sad image, I think.

I just don’t buy it. This is not the end of history. There are still idealists around, and I’m quite trusting that some of them will come up with the Next System, The System of the Future. What kind of upheavals that transition will generate, I shudder to think

Ah well, this remains a zero society anyway.