Worlds
Apart
Rev.
Ron Sala
Unitarian Universalist Society in
Stamford
February
24, 2002
We’ve
all seen it. On our TV’s and in our newspapers the now familiar scenes
of street protest in Seattle; Quebec City; Washington, DC; Prague, New
York. Thousands marching to call attention to inequities in the emerging
one-world economy: students, trade unionists, hippies, anarchists, religious
groups, and just plain concerned citizens worried about poverty, the
environment, and the future of democracy in the face of something called
economic globalization.
Our
denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, has decided to
devote two years toward the study of economic globalization and what
our response to it should be as concerned, religious people. Out of
all the issues UU’s could have chosen to begin focus on this year, globalization
was number one. After this sermon, there will be a period of congregational
discussion. Hope Russel, our Denominational Affairs coordinator, will
convey comments from the discussion to the UUA for the writing of a
draft resolution about globalization, which, after an other year of
study and comments, will be voted on an upcoming General Assembly. If
approved, this document will present the official position of our denomination.
After the service, you’ll have the opportunity to sign up for a taskforce
to look into the issue further and possibly take action.
Why
should an issue as seemingly secular, political, and material as economic
globalization be discussed in a religious service? you might ask. The
answer is that it matters on the deepest levels. Whatever you like to
call what it is you and we do here on Sundays—spirituality, philosophy,
religion—the whole ball of wax is worth
nothing if it doesn’t have an effect on what we do the rest of
the week at home, at work, in the world. So much is at stake in the
economics of the world. One point three billion people today earn less
than one dollar a day, and thousands of children die daily from preventable
disease and malnutrition. We can no longer pretend that these problems
are not our business—if we ever could.
Economics
is part of everything we do.
Every
time we make, buy, or sell,
Every
time we enjoy the produce and riches of nature
we
are encountering an economic system.
So
important is our relationship to the economic system that if we are
without resources we will suffer and perhaps die. Robert Anton Wilson,
in a section of his book Prometheus Rising, calls money bio-survival
tickets. How those tickets are distributed affects the life and death
of entire nations.
I
find it striking that our word “economy” comes from the Greek
oikonomos, meaning household manager, composed of the
words oikos house + nemein
to manage. Those of you who were lucky enough to have home economics
classes in school have some sense of that original meaning of the word.
(I never did. We boys were too hung up on traditional gender roles to
take home ec. Sometimes I wish I would have, since I’m sure it would
have been more useful, in my daily life, than the ability to make plastic
ashtrays in shop class!).
But,
returning to the meaning of “economy,” it’s no wonder that we use similar
language to talk about both the management of households and nations.
In some long forgotten time, one’s family (or perhaps tribe) must have
been the size of one’s entire economy. “Income” came from hunting and
gathering. One’s expenses were the using up of energy that came from
the simple, natural food thus hunted and gathered. As humanity’s numbers
grew, and the food available to hunting and gathering became scarce
in some places, some clever tribes developed weapons, medicine, art,
agriculture. It quickly became apparent that there were three ways to
get something you wanted: produce it, fight for it, or trade for it.
The decisions made about which of these three to choose (producing,
fighting, and trading) and how to go about it were the basic economic
decisions of the family and tribe and, eventually, of the nation.
But
now, for the first time, these decisions are being made on a worldwide,
a global, level. Such a thing would hardly have been imaginable in the
day when most of humanity roamed seemingly endless forests, prairies,
and deserts for plants and game. Now the world has been shrunk to the
size of a mouse-click. As never before, the economy of the family household
and the economy of the earth household (to use Gary Snyder’s phrase)
are intricately linked. By sitting at your computer, or going to the
local Wal-Mart, you can buy food, clothing, and gadgets from nearly
every corner of the world. When you arrive home today, perhaps you’d
like to follow UU minister Andrew C. Kennedy’s suggestion to see just
how connected even the clothes on your back are with the whole world.
He writes, “Simply go through your clothes closet sometime reading the
labels indicating where each article was made—Costa Rica, India, China,
Italy, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, and so forth. Similarly with
our cars, our furniture, our cuisine, our computers” [he concludes].
This is indeed a remarkable and unprecedented time. This huge world
is rapidly becoming a single marketplace.
There
have been similar times on smaller scales when single economies form
in large portions of the globe: the Hellenistic and Roman empires in
the ancient world, the Chinese, Japanese, and various European empires,
and then the Western and Soviet spheres of influence closer to our own
time. Looking back on the brutality that accompanied each of these consolidations
in the past, we do well to examine the current, ultimate, attempt now
in the form of economic globalization. We are justified in adopting
what is sometimes called in the ivy towers of academia, a
hermeneutics of suspicion. That simply means taking into account
that things are not always what they seem when power is involved. A
hermeneutics of suspicion includes the application of a type of protective
memory of past injustice in order to prevent its recurrence.
Getting
back to the protests, I find it regrettable that news coverage often
reduces one of the most complex issues of our time to caricature. During
the recent meeting in New York of the World Economic Forum (or WEF),
Brian Lehrer of WNYC Radio lamented that much of the media was covering
the WEF like the WWF (the World Wrestling Federation)! Instead of focusing
on the vital issues at stake—jobs, the environment, hunger, foreign
policy—what was grabbing headlines was speculation about violent clashes
between protesters and police. So much has this media-driven obsession
with a very few black-clad protesters smashing McDonalds and Starbucks’
windows, that our whole idea of protest and progressive political dissent
has been affected. For instance, before I departed to march for campaign
finance reform at the Republican Convention with the group Billionaires
for Bush (or Gore) a few years ago, an elderly member of a previous
congregation told me, “Just don’t throw any bricks!” Do I look like
a brick-thrower?
The
protesters at recent World Bank, International Monetary Fund, or World
Trade Organization meeting have been dubbed an “Uncivil society” by
some globalization enthusiasts. They are also generally called “anti-globalization”
protesters in the media, despite the insistence by many of its leaders
that it is a “World Social Movement,” stressing that it is not a movement
against globalization per se, but rather for the inclusion of
human rights and environmental concerns in world economic policy.
Passions
run strong on this issue, and that is understandable, given that the
stakes are so high. Some say even national sovereignty and security
are in doubt. Exuberant protests have done us all the service of spotlighting
this issue. And until policies are reformed to the satisfaction of a
large portion of the public that is currently disillusioned those protests
should continue to focus international attention on what is happening.
At
the same time, those with more sanguine opinions about globalization
as it is currently being practiced are demonized as well—as greedy or
deluded. Many sincere and compassionate people working at such organizations
as the World Bank no doubt truly believe that what they’re doing is
to the ultimate benefit of all the world’s peoples. And many in the
general public honestly believe they’re right.
It
can be easy, to jump to conclusions about a highly complex issue such
as economic globalization. When I decided to preach on this subject,
I thought my views were fairly well set. I had been on a panel as a
student at New York Theological Seminary on the issue of “The International
Debt Crisis.” Our panel unanimously came to the opinion, after a good
deal of collective research, that the activities of the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund had caused a great deal of suffering in
many of the poorer countries. Some of what lead us to that conclusion
was their funding of environmentally damaging projects, insisting on
structural adjustment measures that hurt poor people most, allowing
and even encouraging poor nations to fall into crushing debt while American
corporations profit. (If you’d like to read the paper I wrote as part
of that panel, I’d be happy to provide it to you).
But,
as I researched for this sermon, I discovered how much more globalization
is than just third world debt and the Bank and Fund. Globalization touches
trade and investment, multinational corporations, free trade zones,
workers’ rights, environmental regulation, taxes, social safety nets,
hunger, terrorism, development, health, foreign aid, religion, culture,
education, and much more. I began to see the intricacies and ambiguities
of this incredibly complex system of the world economy.
Some
examples of my ambiguity:
Workers
in the factories set up by multinational corporations in the developing
world typically only earn only pennies an hour—often making products
that will be sold to rich country consumers at prices scores of times
higher than the workers are made. And yet, research shows that foreign
companies setting up show in poor countries pay an average of twice
the local manufacturing wage. As one example of this, according to Edward
Graham at the Institute for International Economics, “wages in Mexico
are highest near the border with the United States, where the operations
of American-controlled firms are concentrated. Separate studies on Mexico,
Venezuela, China and Indonesia have all found that foreign investors
pay their local workers significantly better than other local employers.”1
Workers in poor nations often strongly desire jobs with foreign firms,
because they are better than any other alternative. And the higher wages
multinationals bring raise incomes across the board for workers in those
countries. If multinationals were somehow prevented from establishing
factories in those poor countries, workers there would be in even more
desperate straights.
Indeed,
it might be that the developing world would be better off with more
of globalization’s foreign trade, not less. For instance, in recent
decades, China has opened itself a great deal to the world economy,
much more than the African countries. In 1975, the average American
earned 19 times the average Chinese. In 1995, the ratio had been cut
to six in one. That’s still a big gap, but it definitely beats 19 to
1. Meanwhile, Africa, many of whose governments elected to be more closed
to the global economy, went the other way in relation to the US. From
1975 to 1995, their income gap rose from 12 to 1 to 19 to 1.2
Globalization
does cause some Americans lose their jobs as they’re moved where labor
is less expensive, but the lower labor costs mean that consumers have
more real spending power. And those who lose their jobs tend to find
new work quickly as, even in recession, the unemployment rate has remained
fairly low.
On
lighter note, Thomas L. Friedman, in his book,
The Lexus and the Olive Tree, writes about what he calls “The
Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.” Friedman writes,
No two countries that both
had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its
McDonald’s.
I’m not kidding [he continues].
It’s uncanny. Look at the Middle East: Israel now has a kosher McDonald’s,
Saudi Arabia has McDonald’s, which closes five times a day for Muslim
prayer, Egypt has McDonald’s and both Lebanon and Jordan have become
McDonald’s countries. None of them have had a war since the Golden Arches
went in. Where is the big threat of war in the Middle East today? Israel-Syria,
Israel-Iran and Israel-Iraq. Which three Middle East countries don’t
have McDonald’s? Syria, Iran and Iraq. How about India-Pakistan? I’m
convinced [Friedman goes on] they could still blow each other up, because
they both now have nukes, but only one of them—India—has the fries to
go with them. India, where 40 percent of the population is vegetarian,
has the first beefless McDonald’s in the world (vegetable nuggets!),
but Pakistan is still—dangerously—a Mac-free zone.
[A bit later, he states,] …
I offer “The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”—which stipulates
that when a country reaches the level of economic development where
it has a middle class big enough to support a McDonald’s network, it
becomes a McDonald’s country. And people in McDonald’s countries don’t
like to fight wars anymore, they prefer to wait in line for burgers
[Friedman concludes].3
That
brings us back to the three basic ways of getting what we want discovered
by our long forgotten ancestors: produce it, fight for it, or trade
for it. Given the choice, I’ll take production and trade over war most
days of the week. I don’t think most people around the world, if given
an even choice, would decide differently. Could it be that knitting
the world together economically is the best way to prevent war and raise
standards of living. I’d like to think so, but often feel ambiguous.
It calls to mind “that marvelous UU phrase—on the other hand.”
Economic
globalization has plenty of problems. And leading them is who is currently
calling the shots. Organizations like the World Trade Organization,
World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Economic Forum desperately
need more transparency and broader input in their decision making. A
large and growing portion of the public are applying their hermeneutics
of suspicion to amount of influence large corporations have in setting
trade policy, regulation, and the electoral process. This skepticism
has reached a new high in the wake of Enron’s collapse. We need a new
day in which all the world’s people are consulted in the decision making
about and share in the benefits of the world household, the global economy
in which we live—not just wealthy elites and large corporations.
I
don’t know what all the answers are, but I do know that the values we
share as Unitarian Universalists are desperately as part of the debate
as we each do our best to create, in the spirit of our sixth Principle,
a “world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.” I don’t
believe it is enough to be “for” or “against” globalization. We must
do our best to understand it, with all its benefits, problems, and ambiguities,
and be part of the ongoing debate. I don’t believe there is a more important
issue today, because it impacts so many other issues: the environment,
war, poverty, culture, and much more.
I
urge you get involved with the UUA’s study action issue about globalization,
no matter what your initial position. Part of what brings us together
as UU’s is our commitment to learn from each other and act according
to our conscience. And, in this time of rapid and often alarming change,
learning and conscience are more important than ever.
I’ll
conclude with the words of economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He writes:
The liberal views of Robert
Montgomery, professor of economics at the University of Texas, made
him unpopular with the Texas legislature. An investigation was set in
motion. When he was asked if he favored private property, Montgomery
replied, “I do—so strongly that I want everyone in Texas to have some.”4
In
that spirit, may each of us do our part in ensuring that everyone in
the world, no matter their circumstances, has access to the rights and
benefits of being a part of the earth household.
1
The Economist, 13.
2
Ibid, 12.
3
Friedman, 195-96.
4
Singer, 18.