Reddit reviews Globalization and Its Discontents

>And I think that North Korea would be a lot better off if they had a few Wal-Marts and McDonald's and Costcos.

The Mexicans should consider themselves lucky to be catered US products by US corporations, right? They should be thanking us that we give them the opportunity to beg for a living in our great superstores, yes? ...Disgusting. That is the height of arrogance. "External influences" also can (and, often by design, do) reinforce a dictatorship and dis-empower the greater population. Wal-Mart, McDonald's & Costco may marginally improve the quality of life from one shade of bare-survival to another, but at what cost? Corporate influence simultaneously engenders dependence, which is the source of hierarchy, which in turn is the foundation of authoritarianism. Thus, their long-term influence is as helpful as US aid to Africa: negligible at best, destructive at worst.

I'm certainly not arguing that we should isolate ourselves from these countries; but we should not be invading them with our unilateral exportation of products and dependency. Again, guns and information are the only things capable of devolving power to the people and giving them a chance to enjoy real gains in livelihood for themselves and for their grand-children.

Like so many things, American foreign policy is framed on solid ideology; take "free trade" as an example. Unfortunately, the execution of policy is often diverted to nefarious ends. Whatever eloquent justifications and rationale invoked by the politicians and businessmen, the consequences of US "external influence" speak for themselves. Joseph Stiglitz' Globalization and its Discontents does an expert job of characterizing the effects of Western influence (and particularly Western financial influence) across the globe. Suffice it to say, Stiglitz writes that the countries that disregard solicitations and "guidance" from the US or the IMF or the World Bank, and forge their own path (e.g., China, Japan, and others) fare much better than those supplicant countries which simply obey orders (e.g., Russia, Ethiopia, and others). All of these financial "influences" are out in the open, clear as day in the public record. We need dig only a little deeper to find military "influences" with similar high-minded goals (e.g., exportation of "democracy") that ended up doing far more harm than good (e.g., in Ecuador, Guatemala, Argentina, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. etc.).

So to answer your question: do I think Cubans are better off without the US corporate influence? Fuck yes. I'm no apologetic for Castro's regime; there are more flaws than virtues, for sure. But corporations dicking around in Cuba would not improve matters a whit, unless your conception of improvement means "making that autocracy look more like my own".

I really feel weird commenting on people and events like this. 'Alleged whistleblower blowing the whistle on dirty, dastardly deeds! Now at the top of the best seller list!' I remember hearing about it when it first came out, but I never really buy books from/about these types of people, so all my knowledge comes from the brief summaries I read and whatever little videos I watch. I feel that if anything he did and say was true, he probably would've been assassinated long before he wrote and published his book.

I also know that a lot of the alleged 'hits' he might have made were done at a time when the advanced countries truly believed that all developing countries had to do (to become advanced as well) was privatize their institutions and throw open their borders to free trade and foreign investment. This idea was backed in most all academic and research circles, and I can see how it would make sense at the time. Worked pretty decently when they were advancing, right?

But that became a disastrous road for a lot of countries, and we now know a whole lot better about how developing countries have to structure and run their economies to further their growth. A lot of major advances in modern economics happened over that same time frame, but I think development economics really took quite a few huge leaps forward out of its classical, traditional stance from just a few decades ago.

If you want to read a really good book on these organizations (and globalization and development in general) I highly recommend Globalization and Its Discontents, written by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former Chief Economist at the World Bank. He goes into full detail of the field, its history, the major players, his work in it, and delivers both the good and bad sides of it all. I felt like most of the book was largely critical actually, both surprising from a man of his office and stature and with how unhesitatingly he pointed out all the failures he saw around him in his time. I highly recommend it, as I think it's one of the premier books for anyone wanting to know more about these organizations and what they do.