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A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Promise of Globalization

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Despite the hyperbole of the title, John Micklethwait and Adrian Woodrige strive to make this a book that does not take on of the extreme positions on globalization -- IE, neither an attack on it, like One World Ready Or Not, nor a full on, pie-eyed endorsement, like The Lexus and The Olive Tree. This is kind of a head fake, because really they are pretty much in favor of liberalizing trade as much as possible. They acknowledge potential problems, but almost always explain them away with a pro-market argument. If you're a fan of the Economist (I am) you'll enjoy the book no matter what your views on globalization, because it's written with the smarts and humor of that magazine. It's also lucidly argued, and packed with solid research and interesting anecdotes collected from every corner of the planet, even if they do cut corners from time to time when the facts aren't going their way, and are kind of cavalier about the losers in globalization. The biggest blind spot -- and of course it's easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight -- is that the shrinking of the world via increased trade etc. is much more fragile than it seemed a couple of years ago. They do acknowledge this to some extent -- there's a lot of good historical examples sprinkled in -- but the current environment feels more like one of fragmentation than oneness. (The paperback version is worth picking because the new introduction at least deals with Sept. 11.) Nevertheless, A Future Perfect is a solid introduction to a topic that is still incredibly important.

GLOBALIZATION is a process where people, things, ideas, capital and commerce is able to freely travel anywhere in the world. As a result, the notion of comparative advantages are becoming far more frequent. More people are exposed to competition than ever before, and this has been a good thing for most people (i.e., witness the cheaper and better American cars). Globalization has been very helpful in attacking the status quo -- entrenched, pesky bureacratic public sectors unions, who take their job as a right, not a privilage; getting workers to think more about productivity, since, if they do not succeed, operations can move elsewhere.

Most important, I would say that globalization has reformed governments. As the book explains, there are still extremes on the left (Nader) and the right (Buchanan) who don't understand economics and are perfectly willing to harp on the same old course they've been on. But as this book explains, many governments are learning that they too are not immune from competition. Countries must open their borders up to foreign capital, privatize state services, come up with more flexible labor laws (i.e., France's radical law that forbids anyone from working more than 35-hours a week. However, without such a law, the average person in the U.S. works only 34 hours a week).

I am even more excited about globalization after reading this book. It's very timely, written in the familiar prose found in The Economist, and well worth the money!

Micklethwait and Woolridge go through great lengths to explain globalization in terms that support an American slant to the phenomena and provide a great counterargument against the global view of Americanization. The views and examples provided enlighten the reader through real people and events that reads like a novel. The authors provide great insight about the effects and consequences of globalization on the underdeveloped and poor. They reject the myth of the evil markets and explain the real problem of subsidies, government mismanagement, and inefficiencies. They detail successful recipes and inevitable failures with discussions on education, political systems and monetary reforms. The Future Perfect should be a must read before becoming a protestor or supporter of Globalization.

You'll have to read "A Future Perfect: The Challenge and the Promise of Globalization" to find out. The authors examine the central forces behind the globalizing of the world's economy circa 2003, employing an analytical and cheeky style reminiscent of The Economist, the magazine for which they both write.

Along the way, they check in with the haves and the have-nots at places as disparate as Silicon Valley, the Rust Belt, St. Petersburg, Hong Kong, and Tangier, and share cautionary tales from managers in industries as diverse as pornography, electric motors, and children's toys. They find reason to believe that the nation-state is not dead and that geography still matters, while listing factors that threaten to slow globalization and suggesting policies designed to ensure that the benefits of globalization flow to a greater number of people.

A more sober take on where things are headed than "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Lord Williams Rees-Mogg (see my review of that book).

Fans of the Economist, like myself, will likely enjoy this book; however, like The Economist, there are a few chapters that I had to struggle to get through.

Globalization has been presented in the major news channels as the Outsourcing of Jobs, which is like judging a car by its cup holders. Only when the stock market turned bearish and Clinton moved out of office did I begin to hear so many complaints about global competition. So, this book is a welcome change from the usual rantings.

I would hope for a later edition that explains more about the impact of electronic commerce on globalization, as well as an explanation of the international commodity markets as they work today.

For a book that lacks charts and graphs, the process and wholesale impact of globalization is covered well and fairly.

This book is a wonderfully complete analysis of the causes and effects of globalization. It examines the benefits, the winners and losers, and the facilitators or impediments of globalization. The authors take a truely global stance themselves by examining cases around the world, describing both the glorious benefits and the much more publicised unfortunate consequences of the evolution from local to national to global economic competition. A must read!

Micklethwait and Wooldridge have written a crucial work on globalization, drawing from a wide array of current and recent events. It is hard to see the forest when you are in the midst of the trees, but these two lead the reader to reasonable perspectives about the current evolution of the world. Years of editing and reporting, under the aegis of the highly reputable British magazine, the Economist, has rendered they two young writers nothing short of wise at an early age. They write in general with more permanence than journalists do generally. Their inherent alienation from US precepts, as foreigners, makes their perspective on that country more vivid than one might expect. This book is essential equipment for the informed adult.

[...]
Although globalization, the latest theme to embrace the academic and journalistic worlds, is the subject of these two very readable books, it is handled very differently in both. Zachary, a senior writer for the Wall Street Journal, propounds the thesis that a new cosmopolitan figure is emerging on the world stage. This figure is equally at home in Japan or Ireland and is unencumbered by the prejudices of the past. This a new kind of Superman, who treats the world as his oyster and is as happy eating oysters as he is drinking pints of Guinness or bottles of sake. He is the true cosmopolitan and tomorrow, if Zachary is to be believed, belongs to him.

To make the same argument on a global scale, he introduces us to a host of globalized characters. We meet Barry Cox, an English kid from Liverpool who sings pop songs in perfect Cantonese; Vince Morabito, a nomadic farm expert who is equally at home in the wheat fields of Nebraska, the vineyards of Moldova or the rice paddies of Southeast Asia; Soo Ing, the German-educated, Canadian-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, who ranges the Mongolian plains on horseback studying the uses and abuses of fire. These super human characters all seem to be modeled on Indiana Jones, Laurence of Arabia or other such folk heroes. They certainly seem to travel a lot.

Micklethwait and Wooldridge, who both write for the Economist magazine, pursue a broadly similar path and also introduce us to an array of cosmocrats who are spearheading this revolution from one end of the world to the other. The authors introduce us to a range of people who are exporting Southern California's pornography to the four corners of the earth. We meet traditional Moroccan perfume sellers who export their fragrances to the entire world. We also meet Zambian-born economists, German and Japanese auto workers, Singaporean math teachers, Indian entrepreneurs and a galaxy of other characters drawn from just about every nation in the world showing us the benefits of this globalized age. Although the authors also show us some of the downsides, the overall message is clear. Globalization is the way of the future.

Despite articulate prophets like these, that future will be a long time in coming even in export-oriented countries like Japan and Ireland, which remain prisoners to the fortunes of the international economy. Countries and nations will continue to nurture their different cultures and opposition to the pronouncements of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other messiahs of globalization will remain as perennial as the economic insecurity globalization has visited upon most of the world's communities.

People, in other words, will still strive for meaning and a sense of belonging in today's global village. This need to belong will ensure that conflict will remain as perennial as attempts like these two books to reduce all of our desires and experiences to a simple cocktail of clichés. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, belief in Marxism waned. Many of Marxism's apostates have now embraced this new credo. Unfortunately, it explains as little as did the writings of the cosmopolitan Karl Marx, who is used as a straw man in the last chapter of the book by Micklethwait and Wooldridge. Ultimately, theories like globalization, which purport to explain everything, explain absolutely nothing. The same goes for these two books. Although they give us a nice overview of what the authors do with their time, they leave us none the wiser at the end. Worse still, by marginalizing the very real social and economic problems globalization begets, they help to guarantee that they will continue to fester in the years to come. Individuals like Osama bin Laden, who think globally and act locally, will see to that. There is, in other words, nothing new, noteworthy or novel beneath the covers of these and similar eminently readable but ultimately disappointing books.