One World, One People: How Globalization Is Shaping Our Future

One World, One People How Globalization Is Shaping Our Future by GREGORY C. DAHL

WILMETTE, ILLINOIS

Bahá’í Publishing 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091-2844 Copyright © 2007 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States of America All rights reserved. Published 2007 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ 10 09 08 07 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dahl, Greg (Gregory C.) One world, one people : how globalization is shaping our future / Gregory C. Dahl. p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-931847-35-3 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-931847-35-5 (alk. paper) 1. Globalization. 2. Internationalism. 3. International organization. I. Title.

JZ1318.D34 2007 303.48’2—dc22 2006051750

Cover design by Tracy Heckel of Guten Tag! www.gutentag.us Book design by Patrick J. Falso

Contents

1.

Introduction .................................................................................... 1

2.

The World Grows Smaller ........................................................ 25

3.

The Rise of Internationalism .................................................... 49

4.

Our Threatened Planet ............................................................ 107

5.

The Global Economy ............................................................... 151

6.

Economic Globalization.......................................................... 219

7.

Is Anyone in Charge? ............................................................... 245

8.

Global Governance ................................................................... 263

9.

The Challenge of Equality ...................................................... 293

10.

The Future .................................................................................. 321

Appendix ................................................................................................ 341 Notes ....................................................................................................... 357 Bibliography .......................................................................................... 381 Index ....................................................................................................... 393

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Introduction

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1 Introduction This age may one day be regarded as the most turbulent, dangerous, and promising of any period in human history. People throughout the world are experiencing an unprecedented and often disorienting pace of change affecting every aspect of their lives.

Our daily work, our leisure activities, the politics of our nations, our expectations for the future are all undergoing fundamental transformations. Many have found their lives dislocated and have been plunged into hardship. Shifts in economic structures and markets have left millions unemployed, even in some of the richest and economically most successful countries. The economic prosperity of nations has risen and abruptly fallen without warning or clear causes. Crises have struck without notice. Despite a continuing acceleration of scientific and technological progress, the seemingly unstoppable improvement in economic welfare enjoyed by the industrial countries for several decades after World War II has proven uncertain, and young people in many countries

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Introduction

are no longer sure they can count on a better life than their parents.

At the same time, large segments of humanity in the developing countries have found new employment and escaped poverty, but their livelihoods depend on a complex global economy that gives little assurance of security for the future. Although the world came to the edge of nuclear destruction and then serendipitously backed away, regional conflicts and nationalistic wars have proliferated, tearing apart the lives of millions. Tens of millions of people have been forced to flee their home countries as refugees, forming an enormous diaspora of displaced and often stateless peoples.1 Almost the whole of the sub-Saharan African continent has suffered decades of declining economic welfare per capita while the rest of the world has prospered. While those in the rich countries have enjoyed relative economic security, they have increasingly suffered from a spiritual malaise and sense of restlessness. Many in these countries continue to search for meaning and direction in their lives even as they have given up expecting to find them from their work or from the established institutions and leaders of society such as politicians, scientists, writers, the media, or the churches.

For a brief time the situation seemed much more positive.

The defusing of the nuclear confrontation between the Soviets and the West at the end of the twentieth century may well be regarded by future historians as the time when the greatest and most dangerous folly of human history was finally overcome. After decades of Cold War standoff between the superpowers, almost overnight the winds of change swept away what appeared to be an enduring and intractable confrontation. When I started working

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on this book in the mid-1980s, deep cynicism was the rule of the day, and any suggestion that the nuclear confrontation could have been so easily resolved would have been laughable. The sudden collapse of Communism thus created a sense of euphoria. But cynicism and indifference soon returned as it became clear that the world continued to suffer from a host of serious conflicts and problems.

More importantly, the fall of Communism was an event we neither understood nor controlled. It was not part of a conscious plan or the result of bold leadership, but rather came as a complete surprise. With a poor grasp of the underlying forces at work, we can have little confidence that we know what the future holds, or that we will be able to shape it. Reflecting this general lack of a sense of direction, many major issues, such as the control of weapons of mass destruction, open trade versus protectionism, the appropriate degree of help to be extended to countries in need, and the resolution of pressing environmental problems, continue to be hotly debated. We get little help with the “vision thing” from our world leaders, who generally appear to follow rather than lead events. Efforts of many well-meaning people championing a particular cause are frequently dissipated in conflict with often equally well-meaning people who hold differing views. A natural tendency in this confused situation is to sink into self-absorption, to become concerned mostly with one’s own private life, and try to cope as best we can with the effects we each feel from the maelstrom of change sweeping the world.

Although we no longer live under the threat of superpower conflict, in fact the stakes are just as high as before.We still have, on the one hand, the astonishing ability to obliterate most human life and civilization on the planet, a process which might take only

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Introduction

a few short hours. And on the other hand, we have it in our physical power, within the span of a generation or two, to extend to all mankind the benefits of extraordinary scientific and technological progress, virtually eliminating man’s age-old struggle with survival. While it is true that man has always had a choice between cooperation and conflict, building up or tearing down, we have never before had such remarkable power over our own destiny—a power that springs directly from the feats of scientific and technological progress. We can poison the atmosphere, land, and seas for millennia to come; or we can conquer disease and the plague of poverty. We can destroy not only our civilization but our environment as well, laying waste all that we hold dear; or we can give every human being the education and material means to develop his or her higher capacities and abilities.

With power, of course, comes responsibility, and it is here that we have fallen short. Instead of understanding and facing squarely the great challenges of this critical epoch in human history, we have instead occupied ourselves in trying to resolve one crisis or confrontation after another, without getting an overall grasp on the endlessly confused affairs of the age.

In the course of my work as an economist with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—an international civil servant position in which I found myself for twenty-seven years at the front lines of the daily struggle to keep the world’s economy afloat and prospering—I often wished that my colleagues and the government officials with whom I dealt had more time to focus on fundamental principles and ultimate objectives. The world’s political and economic system has all the characteristics of a pilotless ship

Introduction

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being tossed about by random events, with the world’s leaders gathered chaotically about the rudder, often pulling in opposite directions and canceling each other’s efforts. The daily crises are so urgent and preoccupying that there is little or no time or mental energy left for considering the general direction of things. The crisis atmosphere of most government decision-making is like a motorist being faced with a continual series of hair-raising near accidents on the road. If a truck is heading straight for you on the wrong side of the road, the first priority is to get out of the way.

The thought of the final destination vanishes into the background in relation to the immediate imperative of survival. If as soon as the errant truck passes there is a fallen bridge, and then a blinding dust storm, and then the urgent necessity to find gasoline no matter in which direction in order to continue the journey at all, it is understandable that the notion of the purpose of the journey, of finally getting somewhere, might entirely disappear. The pressures of their daily concern to negotiate one crisis after another gives government decision-makers little time or mental freedom to contemplate the “big picture,” the ultimate aim and consequence of their actions. Thus we see that on retirement, the same political leaders and bureaucrats who caused or perpetuated our problems often become prolific writers of good advice and farsighted wisdom, when they no longer have the power to do anything about their perceptions. Meanwhile the next generation of leaders is too enmeshed to pay much serious attention to their counsels.

While leaders are caught in a continuous and often frantic cycle of crisis management, the populations of the world are mostly either preoccupied with immediate material concerns or, if they

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take an interest in larger social issues, are bewildered by the complexity of the problems facing their countries and the world. Leaders and common citizens alike have become increasingly preoccupied with trivial pursuits and endless details and have forgotten our true objectives and lost sight of the fundamental principles governing our lives. We have been overwhelmed by the deluge of information, self-serving propaganda, and advertising that our information age has poured upon us, and have increasingly ignored the artists, thinkers, philosophers, and religionists who in other ages helped steer society toward meaningful goals. Given the enormous powers of self-destruction we have unleashed into the world, we can ill afford to continue much longer in this unthinking state.

The world is full of brilliant analytical minds occupied with defining problems and criticizing other peoples’ proposed solutions, but few have the ability or vision to create new ideas or propose new solutions. It is easier to be pessimistic than optimistic, easier to criticize than create, easier to demolish than build. Moreover, cynicism in society can be self-fulfilling. They say that hangglider pilots and high-wire artists are advised not to look down because they are apt to find themselves going in the direction they are looking. For societies, too, it is essential to raise the collective sights and keep a worthy objective in view. To do so we need a clearer idea of where we are going and how we intend to get there.

It was with the hope of contributing to an answer to these fundamental and urgent questions that I undertook to write this book.

The World Grows Smaller

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2 The World Grows Smaller One of the undeniable features of the modern era is its rapid pace of change. My parents witnessed the birth of the automobile and the radio, in an age before television, commercial airlines, satellites, or the atomic bomb. Their parents experienced the era before the First World War, when optimism reigned, when one could believe that man was about to come to the limits of discovery and solve all problems, when a leading physicist could declare in the most prestigious scientific forum that his field was now mature and all the major problems of physics had been solved.1 In this short period of one century, the modern problems of world war and global struggle, of massive social dislocations and suffering, of globalization and increasing global interconnectedness, seem to have sprung forth, full-blown, from nowhere. A relentless and accelerating tide of change has swept across the globe, transforming daily life, throwing together populations who previously cared little about or for each other, altering human and political relationships, and greatly improving material well-being, but at the

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same time threatening us with the disruption of established social orders and the possibility of cataclysm and extinction.

And what has caused this often violent tide of change? It seems clear that its main impulse and driving force, and its central characteristic, can be found in the explosive pace of innovation in the physical sciences and technology—in our understanding of the substances of which our earth is composed, and our increasing mastery over the physical forces of nature which that understanding has made possible. Rapid progress in the basic scientific understanding of matter has provided the necessary foundation for the innovation and invention which has so transformed our lives and prospects during the last two hundred years or so. Extraordinary, even revolutionary, advancement of means for transport, communications, health, and the accomplishment of all kinds of work have, in turn, affected virtually every other aspect of human life. With ever more tools at his disposal, man’s productivity in the accomplishment of a wide variety of tasks has grown by leaps and bounds, both in traditional types of physical work, and increasingly in mental and knowledge-based endeavors. It seems fair to say that many changes we are experiencing in modern society— in family life, diet, health, entertainment, the workplace, politics, education, law, etc.—have been the result of challenges to existing social patterns and attitudes posed by changing technologies.

The story of this process of technology-driven change and its effects on human life, institutions and values, is so remarkable and so central to understanding our changing world that we need to devote a few pages to a brief review of some of the milestones along the way. Each step in this unfolding process has had pro-

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found implications of its own and has led to further steps with an ever-increasing momentum. An understanding of this process will, in turn, lead us into our further discussion of its implications for our social structures and institutions in the following chapters.2

*** The history of science and technology begins with the history of man, but a useful landmark from which we can begin our review was the invention of the steam engine, generally regarded as a central feature and symbol of the industrial revolution. The Scottish inventor James Watt, who was instrumental in the early development of the steam engine, produced his first two working engines (improved versions of earlier efforts) in 1776. When his patent ran out in 1800, the technology began to spread more widely. Soon the new engines were introduced into ships, and then into locomotives. Steam engines were rapidly and widely adopted in areas such as transportation and manufacturing. Between 1840 and 1880, total world steam power rose from 2 to 28 million horsepower. The new technology replaced work previously done by human, animal, wind, or water power, and also made possible the extension of human activity into new fields.

Rapid progress in metallurgy, mining, and machine tools ran parallel to the increased use of mechanical energy, and both contributed to its acceleration and were impelled by it. The new machinery associated with steam power required manufacturing methods capable of precision not previously dreamed of, and progress in manufacturing made more progress possible, since the

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new tools for the making of machines were also used to make more such tools.

The most spectacular application of the steam engine was in the field of transportation. Steam power, and the materials with which to build metal ships and railroads, made entirely new methods of transport possible, while the need for raw materials and wider markets for the newly emerging factory-based industries also stimulated rapid progress in transportation technologies. The volume of travel and trade grew quickly, both within nations and between them. In the U.K., installed railway track increased from 6,620 miles in 1850 to 21,855 miles in 1900, and the number of passengers carried increased from 73 million to 1,142 million per year. In the United States, railway mileage also increased dramatically, from less than 10,000 miles in 1850 to 198,964 miles by 1900.

Similar growth also occurred in continental Europe and in other parts of the world. We have no way of knowing how much of this increase reflected a shift from older and slower methods of transport, and how much resulted from—or made possible—an increase in the movement of people and goods. But it seems obvious from the figures that total travel and transport increased sharply as the services offered became faster, cheaper, and more convenient. In fact, vast stretches of continents that were previously isolated and unpopulated were opened up to settlement and to economic intercourse through the availability of rail transport, and distances began to appear much shorter.

New forms of transport were, by this time, also emerging. In the 1860s, a Frenchman, Pierre Michaux, began manufacturing bicycles, and during the next three decades their popularity spread

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