Globalization Makes the World a Better Place

It's taken as gospel by most pundits today that we live in an increasingly dangerous, deadly and unstable world -- with Haiti's horrific earthquake serving as the latest, irrefutable data point. We are told that ours is a planet at perpetual war with itself, locked in a global conflict that is not only cast in civilizational terms, but superimposed over a landscape chock-full of never-ending combat and ever-rising death tolls. The end of the Cold War superpower rivalry, rather than pacifying the world, actually unlocked a Pandora's box of tribal hatreds. In retrospect, the Cold War has even taken on a nostalgic hue, reminding us of simpler, more manageable times.

Continue reading this week's New Rules column at WPR.

Comments

[Mary McKinney]

You continue to bring hope amidst apocalyptic naysayers.Thank you, thank you.

[Gilbert Garza]

I read Tom's WPR column and the overview and conclusion from the report that he mentions/cites. As it is, I am left with the question: Are the machinations of the current globalization (in all its aspects) and of a postulated current long global war (in all its aspects) being taken as one thing in comparison and contrast to what there was in the previous Cold War period, claiming that the former has better net outcomes? Of course it has! I can appreciate the effort and the data, but I am not sure that the arguments from the data are valid and complete enough. Maybe the body of the report would make it clearer. As it is, I find reasons and ways to doubt and argue against what I already believed intuitively and from other sources especially Tom’s analyses. (And yes, I do see what makes it necessary for Tom to keep hammering at this.)

[Georgina Bailey]

Thomas Wrote that immunization "Coverage in developing economies has skyrocketed from less than 10 percent in the 1970s to roughly three-quarters of the population by the middle of the last decade -- thanks to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and a vast army of non-governmental/private voluntary organizations."

I wouldn't call it a "vast" army, but a small army. A medium sized hospital in America has a larger budget than the entire World Health Organization. Imagine how much better the outcomes in the 3rd world would have been in that time frame with a budget double that size - which would still be a pittance.