The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved: The COVID-19 pandemic proves that globalization is a failed experiment

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

COVID-19: Is globalization a failed experiment?On this episode of the Munk Debates Podcast, former World Bank VP, Ian Goldin, and economics commentator Marshall Auerback argue the motion Be it resolved the COVID-19 pandemic proves that globalization is a failed experiment.SOURCES:Sky News, Global News, Politico, The Whitehouse, Yahoo Finance, Deutsche Welle, France 24, RT AmericaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness to stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesman to statesman like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Welcome to the Monk Debates podcast. Every episode, we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. Free of spin, focused on the facts and animated by smart conversation to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind.

Today's debate, be it resolved, the COVID-19 pandemic proves that globalization is a failed experiment. This extraordinary alert that's gone out across. the NHS about an impending shortage of PPE, the government effectively confirming that there's a shortage of PPE. We will be denying entry to Canada to people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents. We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization. The EU risks failing as a project in the coronavirus crisis. That's what Italy's Prime Minister has told the BBC. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought our globalized world to a grinding halt,

borders have closed supply chains have vanished into thin air in the future of multilateral institutions like the WHO and supernational organizations like the European Union seem to hang in the balance. Skeptics of globalization say the pandemic has exposed the shaky foundations of our hyper-connected world. We have to bring our product back home. We have to make our product in this. country. We can't be hostage because that's what we are. We can't be hostage to other countries, China in particular, but also to other countries. Critics argue that globalization as we know it has failed to deliver critical health supplies in The Crunch. It is also a system that benefits

the 1% and multinationals at the expense of economic equality, the environment, and democratic institutions. Supporters of globalization believe that the solutions to the pandemic, whether they be economic, public health, or foreign aid lie not in de-globalization, but in fostering a more interconnected and inclusive world. Only through increased global cooperation, in effect, more globalization can we overcome the daunting challenges that lie ahead. On this installment of the Monk Debates podcast, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the resolution, be it resolved that COVID-19 pandemic proves that globalization is a fail. experiment. Arguing for the motion is Marshall Auerbach, a prolific writer and commentator on

economics and a critic of globalization. He's also a research associate at the Levy Institute. Arguing against the motion is one of the world's foremost authorities on globalization, an Oxford professor, a former advisor to Nelson Mandela, and a former vice president of a World Bank, Ian Golden. Ian, Marshall, welcome to the Monk Debates podcast. Thanks for having Yes. It's a pleasure to be part of the Monk debates. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. You know, if we think about all the issues that we're trying to wrap our minds around as this pandemic unfolds, the future and fate of the global economy is surely top of that list. And the idea is swirling around globalization in a age of the pandemic and what comes after is a vital question to consider. To have two people of your caliber available to us today to delve into this, to explore. these ideas and themes around where globalization is going after COVID-19 is a privilege indeed. So what we're going to do, as per all of these podcasts, is put two minutes on the clock for each of you for opening statements to debate our motion, be it resolved. COVID-19 proves that

globalization is a failed experiment. Marshall, you are speaking in favor of the motion. So as per debate tradition, you get to go first. Let's have it. Thank you, Rudyard. As you say, I am arguing in favor of the proposition. My only slight quibble with it is the argument that COVID-19 per se proves that globalization is a failed experiment. I think if you've been looking at what's been happening to the global economy over the last 20 years, there have been many warning signs suggesting that the model is flawed. And I think I would prefer to characterize COVID-19 as the straw that broke the camel's bat. If globalization was a military campaign, we would describe it as being guilty of mission creep, because what we mean by globalization has rapidly

changed over the last 20 or 30 years. So in the first instance, globalization was largely associated with free trade, trade of finished goods. That's certainly the way it was in the pre-World War I period. In more recent years, it has expanded in a much more destructive direction. We had the globalization of capital in the 1980s and 1990s, and that gave us our first warning signal. We had the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98. That gave us one sign that maybe globalization had gone too far. But in fact, that warning sign was ignored and we quickly went to the globalization of labor. a number of companies that began to take advantage of this liberalized capital and liberalized industrialization to offshore a considerable amount of their manufacturing facilities, notably in the

United States. This facilitated a global labor arbitrage, if you like, which had two effects. You had very significant rises of inequality in most of the developed economies and significant declines in living standards for many Western workers. We had the rise of the so-called precariet, which are people with characterized by virtually no income security, no employee benefits. And all of this was facilitated by the fact that if these workers didn't exceed to these lower labor standards, the jobs could easily be moved offshore. And that often comes at a cost of enhancing innovation, investment, and moving to the higher ends of the technology curve. And I think that's why companies or countries rather like Japan continue to prioritize manufacturing

closer to home. They do globalize to a degree, but they do retain significant clusters at home. Now, you notice I haven't yet mentioned COVID-19. I will do so because those very global supply chains, as we can see, have become vectors of contagion and have disrupted our capacity to provide protective equipment to help our populations cope with COVID-19. I think globalization has also contributed to the environmental degradation, which is another symptom of which COVID-19 is a part. You know, you've had localized farming being replaced by globalized, industrialized farming. Forts were being decimated through logging and the exploration for minerals and fossil fuels for the global economy. So you brought humans into formerly

remote areas and close to pathogens, which have been in wildlife for generations. So COVID-19 is one of those new pathogens which shows that as nature striking back. So as far as I'm concerned, it's hard for globalization advocates to claim success given these multiplicity of pathologies, which I've described. Marshall, thank you for that summation. Let's go to Ian now to get his opening statement arguing against our motion, be it resolved. COVID-19 proves that globalization is a failed experiment. Ian, your opening statement, please.

Thank you very much, Rodion. Far from COVID-19 proving that globalization is a failed experiment, it proves the opposite. It shows that globalization needs to be stronger. It shows that we need more connectivity. And, of course, that we need to harvest the goods of globalization while stopping the bads. In many respects, the world has never been more connected than is today, and this debate, online, digitally, is one representation of that. For me, globalization means the flows across national borders of goods, of services, of trade, and of course of ideas. Many dimensions,

and these are not new, contrary to what Marshall suggests, these have always been the different dimensions of globalization. And the digital space is soaring, something like 10 times the level of digital flows this month as compared to the same month a year ago. And we see it in different ways. We see in the worldwide response to Black Lives Matter, protests in over a hundred countries within one week, another aspect of globalization, the spread of ideas more rapidly than ever in the past. We've seen this in the past with the spread of the Me Too movement, of human rights, of democracy around the world. And so when we think of globalization, we should not only be thinking about financial flows or trade flows, we should be thinking about a much broader set

of different dimensions of it, ideas traveling. And we certainly are focused on the news reports of how COVID-19 has spread around the world from Wuhan into well-over-over-tubeen. 200 countries now. In that respect, we've never been more globally aware. And of course, we also aware that to resolve this, we need a global response. We need a vaccine. We need a collaboration of scientists around the world. And of course, to stop the next pandemic, which could be even worse than this, we're going to need much more global collaboration. There's no wall high enough that will protect us in our futures, that will keep out the threats posed by pandemic. by climate change and by the other great threats we face for our future.

But what high walls will keep out is the technologies, the export opportunities, the imported goods and services, the finance, the people, skills, and most of all, the ideas and the will to cooperate. And so we engraved danger by turning our back on globalization, that we turn our back on each other. We enter a Cold War, 2.0, that we enter a downward spiral of increasing nationalism and protectionism, and that would increase the risks of the next pandemic. It would increase the risks associated with climate change, and it would undermine the potential for resolving this pandemic. Globalization has brought more progress to more people more quickly than any process in history.

Over 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty over the last 40 years by this, not least in Asia, but also in many other regions. But globalization has not only brought progress. It is not only good. It's endemically also very bad and ugly. In my 2014 book, The Butterfly Defect, I predicted that a pandemic would happen and lead to the next economic crisis. And that's because my understanding of globalization is that it spreads bads as well as goods.

The super spreaders of the goods, like airport hubs, are also the super spreaders of the bans. And we don't resolve that by stopping globalization. Resolve that by working together. This pandemic could have been stopped if we had worked together. If we had resourced the WHO effectively, if we had worked with the international institutions to stop pandemics, just like climate change can be slowed and we can move to zero carbon, just like poverty can be overcome. I think we need to understand that globalization is both the source of progress and the source of danger. What we need more of is globalized politics, working together to stop

the threats, to harvest globalization and ensure that it's more inclusive and benefits everyone in the world. Thank you, Ian. A compelling opening statement in defense of globalization. globalization. Now, look, it's an opportunity for this audience, I think, to hear both of you kind of rebut each other's opening statements. So I'm going to put a second two minutes on the clock for both you, Marshall, and you, Ian, to hear what you'd like to challenge coming out of the opening moments of this debate. So Marshall, I'm going to come to you first. What did you hear in Ian's opening remarks that you'd like to take exception with? Well, a few things. He's right. It's wonderful that we have a globalization of ideas. And I don't think there's anything during the

say the 1950s, 1960s, which prevented a free flow of information, and I'm all in favor of that, I'm more concerned about the downsides that I think Ian chose to allied somewhat, namely financial flows, trade flows, because, yes, black lives matter undoubtedly, but one of the things that would help enhance black lives would be better quality jobs for the black underclass in a lot of these countries, and I think globalization has often worked against it. we've had a very selective interpretation of globalization. There has been an emphasis on the harmonization of industrial standards, the protections afforded by intellectual property rights and global trade agreements. There's been very little harmonization of environmental

standards or labor standards, but it seems to me that globalization has actually facilitated not only labor arbitrage, but the lowest form of regulatory arbitrage in the form of environmental standards. As regards the health issues that he's raised, I have not been as impressed with the response that the WHO has given. I don't want to go all Trumpian about this, but I do think that their lack of disclosure in the first few months or the first few weeks of the crisis was unconscionable. And it is true. We often hear it being said that viruses don't respect borders. Yes, as far as it goes, that's true. It's a bit of a fatuous idea. though, because viruses might not respect borders, but people do. And it was the shutting down of the borders

that actually helped to bring the pandemic to a halt to a large degree. Had we just persisted with continuing everything as it is, the contagion effects would have been much worse. I would also point out that in Europe, where we do have a quasi-globalized or regionalized structure, the European Union, the responses to the pandemic have been pretty ineffective at a supranational. level. By contrast, I think the countries that responded vigorously at a national level did a much better job at containing the virus. So that would be places like Germany, for example. But my point is that when push came to shove and we got to crisis point, people didn't say, my God, I've got to look to Brussels, I've got to look to the World Trade Organization or the WHO for help. They look to the nation state,

and that's where they largely got the response or they didn't. Thank you, Marshall. Let's bring you in. and for your rebuttal of Marshall's statement. Is there a particular point or two that Marshall's made and also in his response to your opening marks that you'd like to draw a line under? Yes, thank you very much. I don't think that I could ever be accused of aligning or not focusing on the downsides of globalization.

I mean, I've written numerous books and all my work is how to make globalization better. It's extremely imperfect. But one doesn't make it better by killing it. One doesn't solve the problems of climate change by killing globalization. One doesn't solve the problems of pandemics by killing globalization. One resolves these things by working together more, by ensuring we have rules and regulations that operate for the world and that the biggest powers, not least the U.S., abide by these rules.

We need to close the tax havens. We need to ensure that the WHO, H.H. show is reformed. The whole multilateral system requires urgent reform. It requires not only the reforms needed to ensure they fit for 21st century purpose, but they require the resources as well. They require the leadership. But that doesn't come from withdrawing from them. It comes by being active shareholders. These are institutions which are owned by our governments. These are institutions which can only be as good as we allow them to be. Global rule. can only be as good as we allow them to be. And the reason we have tax havens and the reason we have

a weak WHO and the reason why we aren't able to manage it more effectively is because our governments are deliberately allowing these supranational institutions to whither, not least the US and the UK where I am based. I also would strongly contest the idea that the European Union has shown itself ineffective. If you compare the European Union country's responses to COVID-19 to the rest of the world, it's no accident that they're opening up. Britain is months behind, partly because it's left the European Union. The European Union through Brussels has given over $3 trillion of support to countries and has also stopped countries like Italy going into financial ruin. It's kept the spread low on the Italian bonds relative to what they would have been.

So I think it maybe it acted too late, but that requires political consensus. But I think if anything, what the European Union has proven is that it can be effective. Under this plan, the European Union will borrow 750 billion euro on the financial markets. This would actually mark the first time that EU countries have jointly issued debt at any kind of scale. The reason we have a disastrous global economy at the moment, the reason we have unprecedented levels of unemployment is because of these closures.

If we want to restore the global economy, we're going to have to restore travel and trade and investment and all the other things that globalization has brought. And as I'm sure Marshall would agree, that is what needs to be done urgently. We need a better globalization if we are to try and bound, forward to a better world in all respects. So I don't see COVID-19 showing that that's a failed experiment.

I think what it's proven is that we need to rethink globalization and have better globalization in the future. Thank you, Ian. Well, look, now we get a chance to dive into a lot of your key arguments and kind of pressure test some of the assumptions that both of you have made in your opening statements and our rebuttals. And Marshall, let me come back to you with and kind of, you know, push you a little bit on Ian's key point here. Because again, I wonder resituate this debate a little bit around where we find ourselves right now facing this pandemic. Ian is making a compelling case here that the way out of this pandemic, or at least the way to mitigate its worst effects, is to double down on globalization, to resist the desire to huddle

within our nation states. Instead, we should be uploading to supernational organizations, to a global concerted response that uses the institutions, the, the, the, the, you know, knowledge pathways that globalization has built over the last 50 years. Why isn't that the right way forward, Marshall? Well, the answer to that is because it hasn't really worked so far. I support the aspirations, but, you know, as I indicated in my opening statement, we've had one global disaster after another. We liberalized capital flows in the 1980s and 90s under pressure from Wall Street and global financial institutions. That led to a disastrous economic economic outcome in Asia. And it was only when these governments responded with a more nationalistic

response and actually turned off these globalized flows or mitigated them to some degree that we were able to get resolutions. And likewise, I think, you know, we had the same problems in 2008, 2009. And I also worry about the lack of democratic accountability in many of these organizations. The protesters' message is loud and clear. They don't want to be a lot. They don't TTIP. The plant-free trade agreement between the EU and the USA is meant to create economic growth. The talks are secret, a fact that troubles many. Not even members of parliament are allowed to see the documents. We have trade agreements that are being, they're being slammed through national parliaments without any kind of real democratic oversight. We have local authorities within smaller jurisdictions who,

legal systems are effectively undermined by these global framework, which actually tend to prioritize the interests of large multinational corporations rather than many of the smaller countries. So the kind of globalization that we have as opposed to the kind that the in desires has actually exacerbated problems and not solve them. As far as the European Union response, let's see how things are in another year from now. I think countries like Italy and Spain, for example, have been absolutely devastated by COVID-19. And I think it's far too early to say that there's been an effective response given. It's true that the UK and the U.S. have been uniquely dysfunctional.

But I would argue that countries like Germany, for example, have managed the response to the pandemic much more effectively, but they've done so at a national level. This hasn't been done at a global level. Thank you, Marshall. Ian, let me kind of unpack, I think, one of Marshall's key arguments here that would resonate with a lot of listeners is that there's a lack of trust in globalization. There's a perception out there that globalization is really unfolded in the service of capital,

big capital, and primarily elite interests. And I think what many people have seen in the context of the public reaction to this pandemic is, as Marshall has described, a kind of rush back to this perceived safety and coherence of the nation-state and what's really driving it? Is it these altruistic values and narratives that you've subscribed to it, Ian? Or is it something more self-interested, less connected with the interests of average people who have to now live with this pandemic? I think the answer is that it's both.

Globalization can and has been manipulated, and I would agree with Marshall, and I was also deeply involved when I was Nelson Mandela. as economic advisor, I advocated that we did not simply liberalize capital controls, for example. There are aspects of it, not least in finance, which are deeply destabilizing, not only the financial flows, but also things like tax haven't been. But when you ask why these haven't been reformed, and I've been part of numerous reform efforts in different areas, the G20 and others to try and reform. Companies should pay taxes in the country where they made the profits. That's the principle behind the G20 communique calling for a crackdown on tax avoidance by multinational firms.

It all comes back to the US vetoing the reforms by the fact that the US won't allow the OECD agreement, which is on the table and ready to be implemented on tax evasion, to be implemented because the US is vetoing it. When you ask about the pressure placed on countries by the global institutions like the IMF for capital account liberalisation, Is it coming from? It's coming from the US Treasury. So to suggest that somehow the global world is worse than the national world is to not understand the power play here. These global institutions and global rules are only as strong as the players that make them. So it requires management. There are many brilliant aspects of it. The United Nations could be much better.

And that's obviously one aspect of it. And yes, it does in the end involve nation-stays. saying they'll abide by global rules. It's like being part of a sports team. When the referee shows the orange card or red card or blows the whistle, everyone has to follow the rules. And if the big powers, like the USA, we will just ignore these rules, then we shouldn't expect them to work.

If we ignore the rules of the WHO, for example, we shouldn't expect our pandemic management to be effective. The reason why Germany has been amongst, the most effective countries, and this is true of all the countries, including Vietnam, for example, which has had zero deaths, is that they implemented the WHO guidelines very quickly, very early, and followed them assidiously. The countries that ignored them, like the UK, the US and Brazil, have done the worst. Germany has done well, but it's done well as part of Europe, not against Europe. And so I don't see this trade-off. Europe is composed of nation-states that are working together,

in many, many areas. So my own view is that, yes, it is certainly the case that there are many areas of globalization that need improvement, that have to be improvement, and finance is certainly one of them. And there is a lack of democratic accountability in institutions because of who's making the rules often. But that is not resolved by killing globalization. That is resolved by fixing the system. And if one wants to go the alternative route of killing globalization, there'll be even less rules. Then you are in a world of survival of the fittest, the world of the jungle,

where you have global bullies basically setting the rules. You're back to a world like the world of the Cold War or like the world in the interwar period. And that's not a world which is any better. The idea that somehow if you abolish globalization, the world would be in harmony, is a complete fantasy. We'd have much worse climate change.

We would have much worse pandemics. we'd have more financial instability, and we'd have much higher levels of poverty, because the people that still haven't climbed the development curve would be condemned to stay at the lower rungs for their futures. So I don't see how abolishing globalization if one had that magic wand would solve the problem. I think the only solution is to fix it. Marshall, let's hear you come back on those points. They're key. Look, one of the most successful responses to the pandemic was in Taiwan. I think they've had about seven deaths. They are, as Ian knows, pretty well issued from within the WHO because of

global politics. That is an instance of one example of global bullying by the government in Beijing. I'm not against forms of global collaboration. I mean, I look at something like NATO, where you have a series of nation states that together have decided to form a collaborative defense alliance. And yes, the U.S. dominates that. But it is a fundamentally good example, I think, of globalized cooperation, but it's largely done at the nation-state level. You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. Be it resolved, the COVID-19 pandemic proves that globalization is a failed experiment. Speaking for the motion is Marshall Auerbach, economics writer and commentator and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard

College. Arguing against the motion is Ian Golden, former vice president of World Bank. Bank, advisor to Nelson Mandela, and a professor at Oxford University. Now, back to the episode. Ian, talked to us a bit about the rise of populism, and it's less attractive, variant, kind of authoritarian movements on the right. I mean, these were becoming more entrenched prior to the pandemic. And now, arguably, that the pandemic seems to have accelerated and emboldened a lot of these autocrats or want to be autocrats in their ability to use national governments, national tools to

implement and mold far-reaching responses to this pandemic, further entrenching their power. Why isn't that just a profoundly negative scenario for globalization going forward? On the increase in populism and the political changes that COVID-19 has accelerated, I think what we need to understand is that it's accelerating on all dimensions, changes that would have occurred over a longer period of time. It's certainly done that in the digital space. I think it's doing that in the protest space, and it'll do it in different dimensions of globalization. I think like all other dimensions of fierce senses of injustice, the pandemic is accelerating inequality. And this inequality is making people understandably angry, and we've seen it not least in the fiercely justified, in my

views, protests against what we saw the killing in George Floyd. This discrimination. I think the potential for a new world, the potential for the pandemic bringing change has certainly grown. And there's a real danger, as you point out, that that will not be towards a more open, inclusive society where we overcome inequality and where we make globalization work for everyone and for the planet, but rather more populist and autocratic. This is up for grabs. And one of the reasons I feel so strongly that we need to defend openness and integration coordination is that I think this response of hunkering down is one, and we're hearing it in many ways from Marshall, is one that people are making, but it leads to a downward spiral. It leads to a downward spiral. It leads to a

downward spiral in which we are less able to work together. We enter Cold War 2.0. The world economy slows down and we have escalating threats of pandemic, climate change and other risks and, of course, growing inequality within countries and between countries. And that would be a very dangerous world. It would be a world heading towards, in my view, a dystopian future. And so the stakes are very high that we are able to see this pandemic as an opportunity of solidarity,

solidarity between the young and the old, solidarity between communities and within countries and between them. So, Marshall, before I go to closing statements, I want you to respond to this point around the kind of the future and fate of democracy, of openness, of pluralism in the context of the future of globalization, because you have a contrary view,

you actually think that there could be a flourishing of traditional democracy in an era of de-globalization. I think our listeners, would like to hear how that, in fact, could be the case. Well, there's a few points, I'd make. One is that populism, I think, is a direct reaction to the kind of, you know, globalization, Ubalah's mentality that has sort of taken over the world in the last 30 years. I don't think that it's any accident that during these high watermarks of globalization

that we saw the rise of Brexit and also the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency in November 2016. I think he became the voice, sincerely or not, for an increasing number of Americans who count themselves among the biggest louis of globalization. The Rust Belt came out in full force for Donald Trump last night. It seems in four years the Rust Belt has made a real sizable shift to the right. Every four years, we have an election in this country. There's always promised to do something for them, but nothing ever happens. We talk about retraining them. We never do. They are dismissed as what the economists like to call a negative externality of free trade, which to me sounds a little bit like, you know, what the military describes as collateral damage

when one of their bombing missions goes astray and they accidentally kill a bunch of civilians rather than a military target. I'm not talking about putting up walls, although I do think that we could start thinking in terms of manufacturing. There's no reason why we couldn't, for example, introduce more local content requirements into manufacturing processes to ensure that there's a degree of high-quality jobs that are left on the home shores. We used to have these things called national industrial policies. They were very, very positive outcomes. During the 1950s and 1960s, in the 1980s, market

fundamentalism and the enthusiasm for globalization really took off, and these types of ideas became discarded. And I would like to see us turn back to that. That would entail some intelligent collaboration among labor, governments, and businesses together. Thank you, Marshall. Let's go to closing statements now. You both, I think, provided us with the key pillars of your arguments, pro and con, our motion today, be it resolved. COVID-19 proves that globalization is a failed experiment. So Marshall, let's have your closing statement now and your thoughts for our audience in terms of how they should be thinking about this issue, the future of globalization in the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic. What do you want our audience to

take away from this debate? I think that in some ways I view globalization and the negative pathologies. We've constantly watched them grow. We've had constant warning signals, and there is never any inclination to say, hit the pause button. It's more, let's do more of the same and let's expanded. And to me, that's just a wrong approach. If you've got a disease embedded in your system, you don't simply say, well, I'd like to let the disease run rampant to you, try to stop it and isolate it. And that's usually the starting point for a cure. And as I pointed out earlier, the other problem I have with globalization today is that it does not largely address many of the issues that matter to the vast majority of working people. The emphasis on

globalization tends to be very very much tilted towards that which benefits our elites. The harmonization has been on common industrial standards, the liberalization of financial systems, intellectual property rights, including pharmaceutical patents. And as I said, these kinds of harmonizations benefit transnational firms, investors on Wall Street or the city of London and the holder of intellectual property rights in Silicon valleys, but not the vast majority of people. There's a degree in which I think we have to take a step back in order to establish a better foundation going forward, not necessarily putting up walls so much as pausing and having the humidity to consider that there may be an alternative approach that eliminates many of the pathologies that globalization had presented over the last 20 or 30 years. And I'll conclude it at that. Thank you, Marshall. Ian, I'm going to put two minutes or so on the clock for you. Let's hear your summation of this debate. What are the key points that you'd like listeners to leave this conversation with a new appreciation and understanding of?

Globalization, the flows across national borders of goods, services, trade, and ideas is a vital dimension of the world. And it's important that we understand it better and that we manage it more effectively. It has many good aspects, but also, very dangerous aspects too. It's certainly the case that the financial crisis of 2008 was badly managed by the financial experts globally. And if it had not been for that, we wouldn't strongly not have President Trump in the White House or Brexit in Britain. But some countries handled it very, very well, and were not as negatively impacted. And that leads us to a very important conclusion that national policies matter when it comes to the management of globalization. If you compare countries in the world all under the same global system, you'll see very different outcomes. Compare China and the U.S., for example, both in the same globalized world,

handling it very differently. Within Europe, you can compare Denmark, which has one of the lowest levels of inequality in the world and very satisfied people, and the same is trying to, of many Scandinavian countries, with people in Britain and inequality here is extremely high and rising. And of course, we have high levels of dissatisfaction on many dimensions. Same system, different outcomes. And that points to the importance of national policies. But global policies are also important. And we really need to have global rules which ensure that finance does not hide its taxes and tax havens that ensure that we stop climate change. and as we dramatically see today that we stop the next pandemic.

This will not be done by countries becoming more nationalist and protectionist and undermining global institutions. That would lead to far worse outcomes. What we've seen with the pandemic, whether it's the range of food on our supermarket shelves, whether it's getting face marks from abroad, whether it's seen that our future lies in trying to revive our economies by reintegrating with the world, that we need others. We need them for our health to stop the next pandemic.

We need them to stop climate change, and we need them in order to ensure that we all thrive as humanity. So if we want to prioritize people and our planet, it's important that we work more with others, share more with others, and by working together create a better world. And that, for me, is the benefits of globalization. It's good, it's bad, and it's ugly.

But one doesn't harvest the goods by killing it. That would only escalate the bad and ugly aspects. We harvest the goods and improve globalization by working together. Thank you. Well, Ian Marshall, I want to just on behalf of our audience express my appreciation for a civil, substantive, enriching debate. This is one of the big issues that we're all grappling with now. It's complicated. it's nuanced. And both of you brought a lot of hard-won experience. And more importantly, I think

the tone of trying to reach for shared understanding, reach for an appreciation of the bigger issues and ideas that are driving the public conversation around globalization. So on behalf of the Monk debate audience, thank you both for being part of this debate today. It's been a great pleasure. It's been a great pleasure. And thank you again, Rudyard, for doing such a great job of moderating. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank Our participants, Ian Golden and Marshall Auerbach, they certainly gave us a lot to think about a real treat of a debate in terms of opening our minds to big issues, the big forces that will shape the debate around globalization in the months and years to come. The Monk Debates podcast is that place, that special place for civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. To listen to more debates on everything from climate change, to religion, to geopolitics, to the future of human progress, visit our website.

monk debates.com. You can also find show notes on today's debate. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public debate one conversation at a time. I'm your host, Rudyard Griffith. The Monk Debates are produced by Antica Productions and supported by the Monk Foundation. Rudyard Griffiths and Christina Campbell are the producers. The Monk Debates podcast is mixed by Philip Wilson. The president of Antica Productions is Stuart Cox. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thanks again for listening.