Evolve

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 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.



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