r҉ustic cy͠be̸rpu̵nk🤠🤖May 18, 2017
Henry Rollins: Advice for young people https://mastodon.social/media/E2Gxi0jBwssPb4mYQMg
Show threadHallå KittehMay 18, 2017
> You're going to get a sense of what globalization looks like.

It's what enables people from privileged countries to take a summer, get a backpack, go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya, and have their mind blown.

It's what turns the local lower class to a global upper class that gets scared when people from other countries want a part in that privilege.

When people fight globalization because it outsources American jobs to China, they're fighting to retain that privilege, where you can get globally rich by being born in the right country.
Show threadr҉ustic cy͠be̸rpu̵nk🤠🤖May 20, 2017

@clacke I'm originally from Sri Lanka. I didn't really have the means to travel a whole lot, but going around talking to people did expand my mind. I was very fortunate to come to the U.S. which, I understand most people couldn't afford.

I think his message is that those who can should travel outside their bubble and see the consequences of the actions their leaders support. I know lots of Westerners who have traveled the world to return humbled

Show threadHallå KittehMay 20, 2017
@cypnk I'm happy that you were able to come to a place you feel fortunate to be! Did you come alone or with your family, if you don't mind me asking?

I think he is right that visiting places and meeting people opens your mind. I just instinctively lash out at "use the power of globalization to see how terrible globalization is". It could be regarded as a jujutsu move, I suppose. But the way he describes it really makes it sound like slumming.

LARP being in poor countries for a while, then withdraw to your own safe harbor and reflect.
Show threadr҉ustic cy͠be̸rpu̵nk🤠🤖May 20, 2017

@clacke Henry has traveled to more corners of the world than most people ever dream of. He's speaking from a place that I don't think is easy to grasp, but coming from one of those deprived places, I understand why he wants more young people to see the world. It's anything but slumming

I tend not to speak too much of my family, but I came here when I was 10 years old

Show threadHallå KittehMay 21, 2017
@cypnk Thanks for sharing! I'm not trying to speak for anyone, just describing how I reacted to the text.

I'm divided on the concept of backpacking, in particular from an environmental perspective and the perspective of how much of the world you really get to see. It depends a lot on how you do it and what you do with it. I do agree that it is probably good for the backpacker personally.
Show threadr҉ustic cy͠be̸rpu̵nk🤠🤖May 21, 2017

@clacke Backpacking need not involve another country. I've hitchhiked (not recommended BTW) quite a bit and seen what unbridled greed does to a community. I live in New York now and travelling a bit North is enough to show just how devastating globalization can be. Poverty, desperation, drug abuse, you name it

It's been enough motivate me to change the way I live my life

Show threadHallå KittehMay 21, 2017
@cypnk I don't know, man. Globalization just enables someone with maybe lower expectations of living standard, or maybe just better local economic policies, to benefit from that job instead of the person who had it before.

And someone with capital to profit, of course. Whether this is a problem is not something people can agree on.

Poverty, desperation and drug abuse is caused by local policy in response (or not) to globalization. Minimum wage, zoning, taxation, certification requirements, trade restrictions ... The locally unemployed can't get work because administrations protect the locally employed from the globally employed and unemployed.
Show threadr҉ustic cy͠be̸rpu̵nk🤠🤖May 21, 2017

@clacke In the case of New York, the Buffalo area was home to a lot of factories. Lots of jobs got outsourced so they went from having something to nothing

The drug abuse started when people were being over-prescribed opioid medications. They got addicted and moved on to heroin

As for benefiting from globalized jobs: Foxconn employees were jumping to their deaths in Shenzhen, China. There were factory fires in Dhaka, Bangladesh killing workers

They're being exploited too

Show threadHallå KittehMay 21, 2017
@cypnk At the same time, people from rural China were queuing up to start working at FoxConn.
Show threadHallå KittehMay 21, 2017
@cypnk Globalization is not Pareto-optimal, that's for sure. There are people gaining and losing from it. I just think people criticizing globalization are blind to the people gaining, except when they are people who already are rich.

Why should people in Dhaka and Shenzhen be denied job opportunities because Buffalo can't take care of its citizens? Is that ethical?
Show threadHallå Kitteh
I should say, not a Pareto improvement.
May 21, 2017 at 12:58amWeb