quantum musings pt. 2: globalisation (re-edited)
After all the glory media flashes in front of our eyes.
Day in day out.
When ure eating in front of the telly, fliipin through channels, and shit Ive come to a (non comprehensive) conclusion that: We all know we live in a world of hypocritical paranoia. One can argue that we have come so far, and made progress only Sir Malthus himself dreamed abt.
We have come so far, yet we are living a life more backward than we think.
All hail America . Look at them ppl. We look towards being like our most prosperous, technologically advanced, socially integral nation. But then when activists point out blatantly that the very same country is being plagued by obesity/ill health, beauracracy within its medical care, government. That it is in fact a greedy tyrant w more political triblulations, social inequality, comparative poverty problems, unemployment and rising crime rates.
We then shut the fuck up.
We stop hailing and we look the fuck away.
Now, I cant decide whether these social ills are a cause or an effect.
But its there, every fucking day, right in front of your eyes. We just don’t choose to see it. America can be used to symbolize the bigger picture of the global economy.
And perhaps then we can see that (in lame men terms) that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer?
Yes? No? I don’t know? Go away pls, im watching O.C?
Now, then. Why is this so?
I believe that root of this problem lies within the phenomenon wed like to call globalization. Id say its globalization and its discontents.
Everybody whos somebody knows abt the IMF and the WTO and their pioneering advocation of free world trade and globalization in all its fucking glory.
Now.
Many ppl (especially if you are an average stupid American) look up to these figure heads and think “wow, they really did it for us, they are our modern day heros”.
Yes in the name of god, globalization hold within it many virtuous intentions of making the world a better place to live in.
Who wants to see a child die?
Who ever stood for poverty, disease,
and having to rob, and rape for satisfaction.
You see, in times of desperation like these alongside the G7’s growing concern towards the ailments of the developing world, the world top leaders, politicians, scholars, activists, and economists alike saw a need for a fairer parity in the worlds wealth if we were going to live longer than our evolved ancestors.
Globalization you nimwit. And the perceived good it brings.
-opening up for international trade has helped countries grow faster than they would have otherwise done.
-its aids economic development when growth is export driven. Export led growth was the centerpiece of the industrial policy that enriched much of Asia as we see it today.
-life expectancy has almost doubled since the last century, so much so govts in developed country are dealing w another problem known as the ‘aging population’. Now old hags are being shipped of to s. Korea to enjoy the rest of their days.
-standard of living has proved to be something most can be proud of nowadays.
-globalization has brought abt the much needed sectorial development, to both spur and sustain growth and development in developing countries. Yes. Ppl in the west may regard bigwigs like Nike and coke as exploitation, but in fact for the disenfranchised it provides a job alternative to slaughting all day in the farm/sea.
-it has indeed reduced the sense of isolation felt in much of the developing world and has given many ppl an access to invaluable knowledge only exclusive to the west before.
Look at India and how they became one of the smartest fucking ppl on the planet and decided to take on the world and migrate everywhere. *ananannanana*.
-globalization gives rise to new technologies and innovation, look at dell, Microsoft, McIntosh, IBM. They are the fucking reason your child knows how to surf porn at the age of 8.
-foreign aid, for all its faults still has brought benefit to millions, often in ways that are unnoticed such as guerrillas in the Philippines being provided jobs by WB financed projects as they lay down their arms.
The list goes on….. Now then.
why the hell are these international beauracrats-the faceless symbols of the world economic order being apprehended under attack everywhere? I mean after all our heros Mr. IMF and his counterpart, senor WTO are on a life long pledge to save to fucking world from eating itself up right?
I take a rather droll affinity towards scrutinizing the very fact that virtually every major meeting of the IMF, WB and the WTO is now the scene of much violence, anger, conflict and turmoil.
Why then has this phenomenon –a force that brought as much good akin to Luke skywalker restoring balance to the galaxy (for you star wars fans) Become the fucking pinnacle of controversy?
Yes. Those who vilify globalization often overlook the benefits. But the proponents of this very ‘hero’ have been if anything, even more imbalanced. To them glob. (which is typically associated w triumphant capitalism, yankee/soros/trump style) is progress .
progress that developing countries must accept if they wanna get out of the poverty trap. However. To many in the developing world, this just has not brought abt the promised economic benefits. Which just goes to show my fellow minion, that the US in all its yankee glory are just a bunch of hypocritical motherfuckers that gain media popularity by publicly addressing their plans to heal the wounded to save the falling.
So to speak. Speak?
Yet they sit there flat on their fat white arses. All those Americans know shite abt any fucking thing that is going on other than their neighbors gossip. They are too fucking busy watching despo on Fox tv, while Mr. bush has plans to bomb Iraq , flat, overthrow Sadam and suck oil out of the ground from a silver straw.
So wot the flying fuck they on abt helping the poor and restoring balance to the galaxy they believe they dictate. Theyre paying homage to Hitler, and yet, they turn around and smile pretty for the camera saying they are all for world piece.
T
hose Yankees can go fuck themselves for all they pls. they already are anyway. Thanks to Lewinsky and Clinton
Cant they open their stoned eyes and see that ppl are fucking dying and collapsing of hunger everywhere?
I guess not.
Cos the last thing you’ll catch is fat Joe giving up his double cheese whopper for a donation to the poor.
A growing divide between the haves and have nots has left ppl in the 3rd world living on less than a dollar a day. And despite those poverty reduction schemes and promises, the last time I checked the no. of ppl living in this state has upped by 100 million the same time ttl world income grew by 2.5 percent a year. Check it out!
Those rich buggers really have it going for themselves.
In Africa high aspirations following colonial independence have been largely disgruntled. Instead the continent pluges deeper into misery while the scourge of aids continues to ravage the young, old, rich and poor alike. I once read abt a documentary going on in parts of Africa where poverty ruled high.
The cases of HIV had risen dramatically since the last few decades, and the latest trend had HIV positive males raping young female/male virgins and leaving them w the disease. Reason being tribes had a belief that if you were stricken w a deadly disease, sleeping w a virgin rid you off it. voila!!
This lead to something even bigger. Even though they had abandoned African socialism, managed to install reasonably decent govts, balanced their budget, and kept inflation down, the mere thought of AIDS scared away many of the vital, wealthy private and multinational investors.
And guess wot?
Without it you cannot have sustainable growth.
And it hasn’t done too well in ensuring stability either. If at all.
Crises in Asia and Latin America have been a threat to economies in trade partners and fellow developing countries and unions. There are fears of financial contagion spreading around the world. Take for instance wot happened in 1997/8, the Asian crisis when the volatility of the currency created a trauma so great that firms and households and governments alike are still cleaning up the mess.
The mess that was single-handedly sparked by our very favourite George soros.
The fucker that sold and sold the fucking ringgit till it fell overnight. Now hes another one of those sick bastards that treat trading in the stock exchange like some predatory game.
Yea well.
Go take the dow jones/nasdaq and shove it up his ass.
The introduction of the market economy promised to bring w it unprecedented prosperity, but instead it brought unprecedented poverty.
Look at post communist Russia . The pressing issue is not this, however.
We all know wot incompetent minions the west can sometimes be.
It’s the fact that there is an obvious contrast between Russia ’s transition as engineered by international economic institutions and that of china designed by itself couldn’t be greater.
The critics of the ill-handling of globalization accuse the west of hypocrisy.
And damn right y’all.
The west have pushed poor countries to eliminate their trade barriers while they kept their own. Resulting in a deprivation of much needed export income.
Export driven growth, my ass!
The US was of course one of the prime culprits. And they funny fact is that I wasn’t only hurting the developing world but its own domestic economy; it cost them as consumers, in the higher prices they paid and as tax payers to finance those extravagant subsidies. But even when they weren’t indicted for hypocrisy, they had ensured that the agenda garnered a disproportionate share of the benefits at the expense of the developing world.
Who else? Those Africans can go beating around the bush w their fellow argentinans and see who goes down first.
How you wonder?
Along w the unfair trade regulations they imposed, western banks benefited from the loosening of the capital market in Latin America and Asia , but those countries suffered when inflows of speculative/hot money that had poured in, suddenly reversed its course.
The result?
Collapsed currencies and weakened banking systems, bankruptcy and many a riot.
well intentioned efforts are one thing .
But having to clean up and eat up all the external costs is another. Environments have been destroyed
(go take a flight to brazil if you don’t believe me, and play “spot the forest” cos they have to rely now on fucking tourism to fund their govt defict. Cos of failed trade treaties and talks in just abt every WTO meeting).
Political processes have been corrupted. Hence leading on to the subject of terrorism which I wont go into cos its just no fun talking abt the Taliban. Cos the US will never leave them the fuck alone and that issue wont ever be dropped for as long as America is still floating around in the world map.
Pace of change has not allowed for cultural adaptation. Hey aborigines and Hawaiians have been up tourists asses since the brits invaded.
But did you know that its happening in G7 countries such as japan and france as well?
As we all know the French are anal abt everything, namely the language/culture. Don’t ever fuck around w their language. But globalization did just that. Now the French are demanding that a new rule be installed saying that “we shall not yield to the fat Americans. And we shall have a French word for everything in English. Even a French term for the mcdonalds hamburger”.
Beat that.
Well then back to the initial question. Wot have the IMF and WTO and WB been doing all this while? For starters they’ve locked themselves up in a box and are bickering (up till tdy) abt who is right and who is wrong.
Funny init.
Our only hope for survival are throwing tantrums abt who is better and who is smarter. While half the world subsists is starving their asses off , fighting AIDS like no bodies business.
And the Americans and sitting on their fat arses chowing down pizza after pizza, watching family guy and flippin the channel from time to time to see Mr. bush smiling pretty for the camera.
Over the years of inception the IMF has changed markedly. Founded on the belief that markets function badly, it had chosen to leave JM Keynes rolling over in his grave to see wot has become of his baby while it champions market supremacy with ideological fervour.
The mission statements between the IMF and WB were growing apart quicker than the the bloody Americans gaining their pounds. And they remained distinct even though they were both founded upon for the same cause.
And damn the fact WB needed IMF’s go ahead before any financial procedure.
And that often came w many imposed conditions. Now it seemed as though the IMF was the smart alec w all the answers (basically the same blueprints for every country, rich or poor). And while the WB debated over the best stance to take, IMF didn’t see the need for all this discussion that was going on, it sorta became like a vacumm to provide all the brilliant answers.
In their defence, they would use the fact that the WTO was busy spending money hosting forums in cancun and just abt any where else in the world that never came to any consensus anyway. and almost always ended badly.
Why? Cos the bloddy G7 leaders had all the fucking say and wouldn’t hear out any of their other humbler counterparts. It was basically an excuse for these leaders to go away for the weekend, get some sun, speak abt shit they didn’t even know wot they were on abt, and then appear on the media w a killer tan, expressing their ‘heartfelt sorrows on why oh why they couldn’t seem to stop the vicious cycle of poverty’.
Ah. The solution was of course to try harder.
Next time.
So IMF has failed in its mission. WB and WTO are both hiding behind it, shunning any questions. In spite of the fact that our understanding of economic processes have increased over the last 50 years. Well, I guess its just abt that we have achieved.
Why?
Cos world leaders just don’t understand that they need to view today’s problems in a dispassionate way.
Put ideology aside and base their policies on hard facts, evidence and statistics.
Too much politics! Don’t politicize!
Maybe there is a reason politicians are dubbed failed scholars or scientists due to their inability to engage in any sort of logical/scientific debate, but instead, followed their instincts and beliefs. And worse, many of these harshly forced policies have promoted global instability instead of growth and god forbid.
Development !
Today. we have no world government accountable to the ppl of every country to oversee this inevitable globalization process (which will happen in its own course anyway) Analogous to the way national govts guided the nationalization process.
Instead we have a system that I would prefer to refer to as “global governance without global government”.
-Maybe its high time to rethink, adapt, reinvent the rules that were once set so rigidly before. That were not flexible enough to complement many of these developing countries’ economic volatility.
-Think once again abt how decisions get made at an international level- and in whose interest. Cos “1size fits all” is bollocks .
-Place less emphasis on ideology and look more on wot works in the real world. And fast.
-Yea its safe to say that globalization can be remolded into something much finer, and deeper and perhaps more receptive.
And when it is, with all countries given a fair vote into the policies affect them and their generations to come, There is a slight chance that it might all just maybe……work out.
Then a new global community is born founded on economic stability and growth sustainable enough to witness the fruits of labor to be more equitably shared.
Oh yea. I forgot one thing! God bless America 
Now I am in no way trying to sound cocky or blatant. Maybe just a little. Nor do I think that im in any position to. since I am in fact a failed dubious mathematician that has resorted to home schooling herself. Just because. part of the reason probably lies within the fact I hate wasting time being preached to like some parrot in class abt analysis and linear algebra and then fail cos I sleep in class,
Hence before I rant on abt the education system, I must tell you this.
That being aware of wot is happening around you and asking why and seeking for an answer is just as important as any algebra you will learn in school.
That said.
I must say, girls pls be aware and go check BCBG maxazria’s and galliano’s spring/summer collection coming soon.
Amazing just falls short of expectations.
Enjoy! - -
