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To: TobagoJack who wrote (19508)	6/7/2002 10:17:04 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

<Globalization took a direct hit on 11 September 2001. But the US and the global economy demonstrated a remarkable resilience in the immediate aftermath of this devastating shock. The ultimate impacts, however, may be much slower to emerge. In my view, there is still good reason to believe that the war against global terrorism could represent a significant setback for globalization.... > Jay, 400 floors of building and 3000 people killed is not even noticeable on the global economic scale. It's lower than trivial. For spectacular, on the other hand, it was one of the greatest impacts I have felt in my life. One of the images etched in my mind is the man falling head first, knee raised, after jumping. The symbolism in that is traumatic. It's end of the world stuff. For him, it literally was. The psychological impact is bigger than the economic impact and that psychological impact is purely a matter of what we choose to do. Plenty of people, including some in this stream, have tried to convince me that wars are economically productive, so they are arguing that the WTC destruction was economically productive. I still disagree about wars in general, but I can see that there might actually be psychological stimulus to action because of fear so perhaps I'm wrong in this instance and the globally trivial impact of the actual WTC destruction is outweighed many times by the psychological stimulus to action. For example, retail therapy on a large scale seems to have been one outcome and that seems to have kept the economy humming along. 3000 dead people out of 2 billion somewhat economically active or 1 billion economically active or 500,000,000 very, very economically active is only 3:500,000 or 1:100,000. That's almost none. Certainly not enough to make a measurable effect on the global economy. Apart from the people and buildings, it was only paper, desks, paintings and stuff which was destroyed - the computers kept humming without missing a beat for Cantor Fitzgerald in another office. It wasn't a few nuclear reactors or major car factories or steel mills [which some steel producers would consider no bad thing] or oil fields. Similarly, 400 floors of building out of all the floor space around the world is insignificant. So we can discount the actual physical and human damage as an economic impact and look at the psychological consequences and changes in what people do all day as a result. There was some military action in Afghanistan. There are more security people hired to annoy passengers but make no difference to security. No security is needed because nobody is going to succeed in hijacking another plane, even if they have box-cutters or even a gun because they will be attacked by the pilots with an axe and passengers and crew with duty-free bottles, and anything else such as blankets, pillows, belts, fists, shoes, hot water. There's less air travel [rumour has it anyway] but that might be a cost saving and waste reduction programme as far as the bottom line is concerned. Less waste on meals, less waist as a result, and less waste on hotel accommodation. The WTC attack won't reduce globalisation. It'll increase it. The moat around the USA has been shown to be of little effect. So the USA is reaching out to form associations and 'with us or agin us' global approaches. National borders have been shown to be leaky and the Albanian, North Korean island nation approach is shown to be bankrupt. Globalisation has got too much going for it. Countries which don't join the party will be like Albania and North Korea to a greater or lesser extent. Pathetic, backward dumps. Even China couldn't get anywhere during Mao's Great Leap Forward and only started making progress when Deng turned the black and white cats loose. Borders will become more friction-free as identification of people becomes more sophisticated and tracking of containers becomes serious. Passports will be artifacts of the 20th century as computers monitor irises, facial features and voice wave forms and are linked to government databases. It's a small world after all, Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (19508)	6/11/2002 9:49:19 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Of course there is a lot of affected interests that wants to pull the hand break on globalization. If you work for a state-owned telecoms enterprise, for electricity utility, state-owned bank those guys are scared shit-less of Globalization. If your work for a government-sanctioned cartel such as an airline, or the Post Office, you should be alarmed by globalization. But again, look what happened to the auto industry from the late seventies to the late eighties. Look to the rust belts of this world. They are all gone. Do anyone miss them? Not at all. economic and social changes move and people adapt. Globalization is unstoppable.