One more in our occasional ill-tempered and extremely unfair series keeping track of breathless and/or mendacious “Globalisation” commentary from neoliberal commentators. This time, we take a look at an interview in Reason magazine with Johan Norberg, a Scandinavian who “used to be part of the left but then saw the light and is now back with a book explaining it all” (where have we heard that before). I realise that some will call “no fair” on using a Reason interview, because it’s a bit of a libertarian house mag, but Norberg is unlikely to confine himself to the specialist media going forward, and I thought I’d get my retaliation in first. Besides, as a piece of Globollocks, this one is off the scale.
Scoring
(for detail on scoring, see here
HEALTH WARNING: The “Globollocks” scale is meant to rate pieces of journalism, not whole ouvres and certainly not people. This is an important qualification as Globollocks pieces are usually produced by people who actually understand the issues quite well and often by people who have written other works on the subject which are not Globollocks. It is particularly important to observe the distinction in this case, as this is an interview with Reason magazine, and it is thus wholly unfair to pin the whole Globollocks score on Norberg; a lot of the Globollocks in this interview appears to me to be responses to leading questions. But anyway, on with the show ….
Misleading characterisation of economies as “Globalisers”
Two points straight out of the box for saying that “Take just about any statistic, any indicator of living standards in the world, and you can see the progress that has been made over the exact period that worries globalization critics. In the last 30 years we’ve seen chronic hunger and the extent of child labor being halved. In the last 40 years, we’ve seen life expectancy going up to 64 years in developing countries […]”. This is exactly the sort of thing that my category “Reproduces ‘falling inequality’ results from Sala-i-Martin or similar without emphasising dependence on China and India” was meant to pick up.
I’ve worried about whether “Mentions Korea or Malaysia without qualification” was really such an awful sin as to merit 3 points, but as you’ll see below, there are enough unpunished offences in this piece that I’m happy to let it stand. After all, they got Al Capone for tax evasion, and his discussion of the Vietnamese doi moi program is misleading enough to justify this score on its own ….
We also have a case of “Identifies (Botswana) Hong Kong, Singapore as a development model”. Some commenters in the original Globollocks thread disagreed with me over specific questions of the economic history of Singapore, but I remain of the opinion that 1) you can’t argue from small dense populations to large diffuse populations and 2) the investment capital put into Singapore by the British was material to its development and it is not realistic for any other economy to expect this level of foreign investment. So two points here.
7 points
Equivocation between capital and goods market openness
I see here that the Globollocks scorecard unfairly discriminates against articles which engage with the technical issues. Norberg appears to be full of it on this one, but doesn’t make any really specific claims.
“General failure to distinguish between capital and goods openness” only gets you one Globollocks point, but “particularly egregious examples” has a tariff of up to 3 points, and I think the full 3 are appropriate here. Norberg has written a book about free trade and called it “In Defence of Global Capitalism”. The equivocation is right there in the title, and is ruthlessly exploited throughout the interview. Maybe this is the fault of the Reason interviewer (my past experience in this matters is the Ronald Coase/lighthouses affair, which certainly involved someone making claims in a Reason interview that he didn’t care to defend elsewhere), but I didn’t give Doug Henwood the benefit of the doubt, so I’m damned if Norberg’s gonna get it.
3 points
Conflation of WTO agenda with “openness”
I’m gonna give 1 point here for the sliding scale of “In general, argues back and forth between general statements about trade and specific statements about currently live negotiations” for the discussion of genetically modified food. This is probably a bit harsh, as Norberg does actually argue lower down for unilateral free trade.
1 point
World Bank and IMF apologia
None.
Europhobia and miscellaneous
I didn’t think I’d ever catch anyone with “Specifically in the case of Vietnam, says or implies that children working in Nike factories would not alternatively have been going to school”, but five points it is. Norberg apparently carried out some interview in Vietnam, but he’s equivocating madly between the adult workers in the Nike plants (young women whose alternative employment is probably agriculture) and the school-age workers (who would otherwise be in a government-run school).
There are also a few passages on “economic liberalism” which look like they “talk about privatisation of domestic industries as if it was relevant to ‘globalisation’”, but since the context is global capitalism rather than globalisation per se, I’m gonna let it ride.
5 points
Cliche points
One single paragraph just racks up the points here like a stuck pinball. Within a few sentences, Norberg “Says or implies that there is no anti-globalisation movement in developing countries” (2 points), “Says or implies that developed world antiglobalisation movement is opposed to trade (1 point) and “wants poor countries to stay poor” (1 point)” I’m also going to make an ad hoc award of two cliche points for what JohN Quiggin has correctly identifed as a “Sunday School conversion story”.
Final score
This piece manages to rack up a staggering 16 Globollocks points and 6 cliche points!!!! I draw readers’ attention to the disclaimer at the top of the piece, however.
Confused — child labor is legal in Vietnam? Why? Is it one of those laws that’s on the books but never enforced? If not, wouldn’t the solution to kids working in Nike plants instead of going to school be: ban child labor and impose compulsory education?
Education in Vietnam is compulsory (an ambiguous benefit, of course, given all the connotations of “education” in a totalitarian state). It is not practical to have a blanket ban on child labour in what is still an agricultural economy, however, so it is extraordinarily difficult to enforce the laws as they stand.
In fairness to Nike, they do now (post-1998) have a quite strong policy against child labour, so it’s not really fair to pick on them. But Norberg’s comments would make no sense if one pretended that their scope was restricted to the single company Nike, and lots of the other “globalising” companies which have sweatshops in Vietnam have much worse child labour policies (mainly because they produce much lower value-added goods than Nike shoes, which in turn is because there are very few goods which are quite as value-added as Nike shoes).
So are you in favor of the Bush Administration’s protectionist anti-globalization policies?
“wants poor countries to stay poor” (1 point)”
I keep saying, that’s got to be more than one point. And if it’s tied to “look themselves in the mirror and see someone who wants to” (Brad DeLong’s favorite insufferabilism) more points still.
In the U.S., child labor laws have some well-defined exceptions (e.g. kids younger than 16 — I forget what the absolute minimum is — can work in family-owned businesses or farms). So while I can certainly understand why a blanket ban on child labor is not practical in Vietnam, what is the political barrier to a non-blanket ban?
The political barrier is that the Communist Party is very touchy about scaring off the small amount of foreign investment they’ve got.
“Reproduces ‘falling inequality’ results from Sala-i-Martin or similar without emphasising dependence on China and India” was meant to pick up.”
I’ll admit that my intuitions are often wrong about these things, but why would a reliance on China and India be bad? Are they not two of the largest countries? Are you complaining that the largest populations are ‘unrepresentative’? I don’t get it.
So I was thinking about this again the other day; are there any examples of countries that turned industrial without sheltering domestic export industries? I can’t think of any.
Great Britain? :)
why would a reliance on China and India be bad?
I am a child in these matters, but I was under the impression that d-squared’s point is that China and India did not attain their growth (over the measured time-period) via “free and open markets and the liberal political, economic, and social institutions that support them” (directly relevant quote from Norberg, and I assume he would include unfettered free trade in there). So they’re unrepresentative in the sense that they exemplify the phenomenon that they’re adduced to support. If I’m wrong on this, do let me know.
Perhaps OT, but I think I caught a good one:
Take the discussion that’s going on now in Saudi Arabia about whether women should be allowed to drive, which they can’t legally do now. While it’s unlikely the situation there will change anytime soon, it’s progress just to have the discussion. People are saying it’s extremely costly to hire drivers, often from other countries, to drive women around. You can see how basic economics, basic capitalism, creates the incentive to give women more rights.
Shouldn’t globalization reduce the cost of hiring drivers, and thus the incentive to give women’s rights? In fact, isn’t that why so many of the drivers are foreign? How on earth can Norberg possibly think this supports his point?
At first this struck me as a mystery. I went back and looked at your list of globollocks fallacies and was surprised at just how sharp a list it is — surprised because the occassional pieces derived from it are not only “ill-tempered and extremely unfair” as you rightly put it, but, IMHO, bloated and unenlightening as well. And yet everything else you write is concise and brilliant. So somehow the list seems to be twisting you. But how, if it’s inherently such a good list?
And then the obvious dawned on me: this is purely a list of minuses. A real evaluation, of anything, weighs minuses against pluses. Real pluses, precisely because they are original, can’t be scaled. But your scale erases even the stock pluses. It erases all pluses. It renders whatever you examine by definition virtueless. If someone wrote the wittiest and most incisive contribution to the debate ever, it would show up in your scale as a zero.
So it’s not at all surprising that’s the results are consistently unfair. It’s a completely rigged court. Anyone — and I mean anyone, including you — who is dragged before it will be rated. The only question is how much.
And yet, there’s no denying the original list is great. It shouldn’t be just tossed out. So I have a suggestion. I think you should repackage it. You should change it from a scale to a checklist. And you should get rid of the numbers. Instead, you should link a short paragraph to each fallacy, explaining concisely, in your inimitably wry way, just why it’s false.
Because every day I run into people who say “I just read this article that says globalization is the greatest thing since effective contraception. I feel he’s pulling several sleights of hand that I’m just not detecting. But I just can’t find them. Is there something I could read that would allow to just right see through things like this?
I would love to be able to say: Yes. Just search out Daniel Davies’ The New Quintillian: A Checklist of the Most Common Logical Fallacies of Globalization and Why They’re Wrong.
Just a suggestion of course.
Keep up the great work,
Michael
I will second Mr. Pollak’s suggestion.
I don’t see how calling it a checklist, on which some things are more important than others, makes it differently useful than adding up points. If I were buying a used car, I’d have a checklist, but “Brakes don’t work” would count for more than “Funny smell.” Indeed, d^2 is being kind in reading all the way to the end even when he hits fallacies of the worse type.
Well, not kind, but fair.
I’d like to second Jason M’s observation. What I know about the rise of the “Tigers of East Asia” seems to entirely refute the idea that other countries can match their success by following the World Bank — WTO — IMF rules.
Has anyone here read Palast’s work on the WTO, etc.? He has very strong opinions but seems to be very sharp. He recently co-authored an academic-looking book on the economics of government regulation.
hmmm yeh, that would be more useful for other people than just pointing the finger and going “yah, boo, Globollocks”, but tragically it wouldn’t be as much fun for me so I don’t think it’s going to happen.
That would seem to the last word, unfortunately, but could someone recommend some good stuff that’s critical of globalization and/or for protectionism, written in terms relatively comprehensible to a simpleton such as myself, by someone who is not vulnerable to “he’s not a real economist/I did some back-of-the envelope calculations/this is Econ 101” (or “his complaints aren’t intellectual…but are complaints about implementation” [Delong on Stiglitz]) -type attacks?
True enough. But it’d be a lot less work than writing a book. And it might make you just as famous.
But yeah, you’re right, it’s easy for me to say that.
Still, it needn’t be that much work to start. You could post it pretty much as is without any explanatory links for beginners, just with a new introductory paragragh, and it’d still be an addition for the numerous intermediates in the world who have yet to make your acquaintance.
And if you were ever moved to make the explanatory links, I suspect most of them could be cannabalized from the lengthy articles you’ve already written.
Not to mention how much time you’d save not writing the next one :o)
Anyhow, if you’re ever game to do your half, I’d be glad to take over publicizing it.
Perhaps it is possible to include a bit more explanation of the scoring system without reducing the “yah, boo” level hardly at all. Comments like “Botswana’s development model (discover diamonds) is hard to reproduce” did the trick fine. I’m just saying—obv. I don’t have to do the work, either.
Globollocks Watch certainly needs a thorough overhaul; Michael is absolutely right that the actual list is quite fun, but the pieces derived from it are lumbering and terrible (they’re not all that much fun to write either). But on the other hand I’m still in love with the idea of a numeric points scale, because it allows me to pretend that I’m the Grand High Duke of Splat, awarding marks out of ten to people who are far more prominent and better paid than myself. I’m gonna think about this a bit …
Maybe rather than space invaders scoring you should blow up quoted one-liners into full-bore attacks on the theoretical foundations. I’m not sure if it’s the most convincing stuff you produce, but it’s amusing.
As to Michael Pollak’s and Jeremy Osner’s suggestion, I would suggest a visual component. I’ve had good response from my college writing students to my annotating texts in color with a color-coded legend along the side.
I’ve used this technique to highlight logical fallacies, or to demonstrate techniques in narration.
With a lot of the crap that’s out there these days color-coding of the text can oftentimes demonstrate how little of worth remains.
But Norberg, Kamm & Henwood aren’t famous.
You probably make more money than they do too.
I know, I know (Kamm actually earns a lot more than me but there you go …). But Friedman and DeLong, the actual source of the problems have been unaccountably quiet in supply the raw material, thus leaving me with no option but to launch ill-considered attacks against a hastily assembled “Axis” on the basis of no very good reason.
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
Roger Gathman
Michael Green
Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
David Hildebrand
John Holbo
Christopher Grau
Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
Karl-Friedrich Lenz
Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Andrew Gelman
Christopher Genovese
Moment, Linger on
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
Just Tenured
Playing School
Professor Goose
This Academic Life
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Boston Review
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review