Globalization's Dirty Secret

There is a dirty little secret regarding globalization that almost no one is willing to talk about. The secret is that no matter what developing countries do, they can never hope to attain the same sort of lifestyle for the majority of their people as that currently being enjoyed by the developed nations. Indeed the problem is that even developed countries cannot enjoy their current lifestyle forever.

The reason for this assertion is that our civilization and consequently our lifestyles are based on a throwaway culture. Take an example from Pakistan. An ink-jet printer here costs approximately Rs. 3000 (roughly $35). This comes complete with a black and a color ink cartridge. If you add a mere Rs 100 (a little more than a dollar) to the cost of replacing the black and color cartridges, you can buy a brand new ink-jet printer. With these economics, it starts to make sense to throw away the old printer and simply buy a new one. And therein lies the problem. You end up throwing away a perfectly good and usable printer and unnecessarily buying a new one simply because the way the printer and the cartridges are priced. Multiply this across an economy and the problem emerges. Buy virtually any food item. Almost all come in nice, attractive packages which are designed to be thrown away once the item is consumed. Usually the containers are made of non-biodegradable materials. The result is overflowing landfills and more importantly an excessive use of resources.

Nowadays, we keep hearing of peaks for various kinds of commodities. There is peak oil, peak water and even peak soil. There is a sense that we are taking our the necessary raw materials from the ground at an ever increasing rate. The problem is that once the non-renewable resources are used up, they are gone forever. Once a particular seam of iron ore has been mined, it is gone forever. Even the renewable resources are being used up at a non-renewable rate. The question is why?

I feel that this issue goes to the heart of the problem with today's economic system. Every single one of us has been fed the mantra of continuous economic growth our entire lives. Recessions are bad and to be avoided at all costs. If they cannot be avoided, then steps must be taken to minimize their impact and restart growth at the earliest possible. Growth, growth, growth. At all costs the economy must grow. This is dinned into us from our earliest childhood and reinforced continuously throughout our education. What virtually no one seems to ask nowadays is what is the point of all this growth?

To come back to my earlier point; given the constraints on resource availability, there is simply not enough raw material left in the ground to catapult the majority populations of the developing countries into the kind of lifestyles that the developed countries currently enjoy. This is an issue that will increasingly come to the fore as these countries develop their economies using the same paradigms that the developed countries used at similar stages of development. And as this realization starts sinking in amongst the populations of the developing countries, the potential for conflict will start to increase. Unfortunately, given the myopic leadership that almost all countries currently have (barring a few individuals who probably will not have much impact on the sea of mediocrity that surrounds them), the chances of peacefully managing these conflicts appear to be remote at this juncture.