Arguments about international trade can get pretty lively. Globolog has touched on some of the issues in the past columns (see, for example, 20 May and 8 August). More recently, Globolog asked Katharine Ainger, an editor at New Internationalist, to report from the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting at Cancún. Her contributions have sparked a scintillating dialogue across three continents, bringing in the Secretary of the International Chamber of Commerce, a development worker from Mozambique, a conservative English philosopher and many others.
It is too early to draw conclusions from this dialogue: its an ongoing, living thing. But Globolog is reminded of the famous Japanese film Rashomon. As in Kurosawas movie, the participants in the Globolog Forum view what happened at Cancún and what it means very differently.
Some but by no means all of the discussion is quite abstract and theoretical. But what does globalisation mean in human terms? Here is a true short story. What, if anything, does it say to you about globalisation and its discontents?
A man from a rich country works in a poor country, running the national development programme of a large development charity. The economy in this poor country is in ruins: one third of the workforce has moved abroad. The man and his wife have a full time au pair to look after their two small children. They pay the au pair the market rate, US$150 (£100, Euro 135) per month. She has three years of mathematics at university.
The au pairs brother has a tiny clothes making business, barely surviving in very difficult times. Then, the business wins an order from a huge corporation based in a rich country to make uniforms for its European operations. But there is a catch. The corporation says it will only pay on delivery. But the small business, like so many in this country, has next to no capital and no credit, and if it takes on the order will not be able to pay its very poor female workers until it gets paid by the corporation.
Things are looking desperate. But then the man from the rich country and his wife lend the business $400 out of their own pocket. The local business fulfils the order promptly, and many months later long after receipt of the uniforms the huge corporation finally pays its bill, and the development worker gets his loan back.
Write to globolog@opendemocracy.net or make your point in the discussion forum.