{"id":37,"date":"2017-09-14T13:36:06","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T13:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/?post_type=chapter&p=37"},"modified":"2017-10-02T19:16:14","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T19:16:14","slug":"readings-and-resources-on-the-capitalistmerchant","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/chapter\/readings-and-resources-on-the-capitalistmerchant\/","title":{"raw":"Readings and Resources on the Capitalist\/Merchant","rendered":"Readings and Resources on the Capitalist\/Merchant"},"content":{"raw":"Readings and Resources on the Capitalist<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThere never has been a better time for capitalists.\u00a0 The world is full of investment opportunities, black boxes into which investors can put money and get more money in return.\u00a0 How and why this happened are the subjects of the following selections.\u00a0 In them we will focus on the following three questions:\r\n\r\nFirst, we have to ask how capital, that is wealth as defined in the culture of capitalism, came to be concentrated in so few hands and how the world came to be divided into rich and poor. There were certainly rich people and poor people in say 1400, but today\u2019s vast global disparity between core and periphery did not exist then.\u00a0How did the distribution of wealth change, and how did one area of the world come to dominate the others economically?\r\n\r\nSecond, we need to understand the changes in business organizations and the organization of capital, that is,\u00a0who controlled the money?\r\n\r\nFinally, we need to understand the increase in the level of global economic integration. Capitalists want the fewest restraints possible on their ability to trade from one area of the world to another; the fewer restrictions, the greater the opportunity for profit. \u00a0\u00a0How did the level of global economic integration increase, and what were its consequences?\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nA. The History and Expansion of the Capitalist World Economy<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nThe First Slave Auction in New Amsterdam (NYC)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nArguably the most important event in the early stages of the expansion of the capitalist world economy was the conquest of the New World.\u00a0 Among other things, it provided a market for slaves purchased and captured in Africa, increased the amount of gold and silver circulating in Europe, and provided new markets for goods manufactured in Europe.\u00a0 The following articles address each of these developments and their consequences.\r\n\r\nReading 1<\/strong>.\u00a0Gold, Greed & Genocide in the Americas\r\nhttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20160406160039\/http:\/\/saiic.nativeweb.org:80\/ayn\/goldgreed.html<\/a>\r\n\r\nThis article by by Pratap Chatterjee in\u00a0Abya Yala News\u00a0traces the relationship between the European quest for riches and the deaths of indigenous people in the New World.\u00a0 His major point is that these deadly consequences that began in the fifteenth century have continued to the present day.\r\n\r\nReading 2<\/strong>.\u00a0Loot: in search of the East India Company\r\nhttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20160305015114\/https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/theme_7-corporations\/article_904.jsp<\/a>\r\n\r\nThis reading by Nick Robins from the Open Democracy site describes the East India Company, the world\u2019s first transnational corporation. Robins \"argues that an unholy alliance between British government, military and commerce held India in slavery, reversed the flow of trade and cultural influence forever between the East and West and then sunk almost without trace under the weight of colonial guilt.\"\r\n\r\nReading 3<\/strong>.\u00a0The Growth of the Slave Trade in North America\r\nhttp:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/aia\/part1\/1narr5.html<\/a>\r\n\r\nThis reading is part of the PBS\u00a0Africans in America\u00a0Web Site that accompanied the documentary series of the same name.\u00a0 The article describes the early history of the slave trade in North America and what was required to maintain it.\u00a0 There are links to many other brief articles, maps, and illustrations.\u00a0 You can read about\u00a0The Arrival of the First African Americans to the Virginia Colonies<\/a>, or read a description of the\u00a0First Slave Auction<\/a>\u00a0in New Amsterdam (New York City).\u00a0 And you can browse the articles that trace the evolution of the slave trade through the end of the Civil War.\r\n\r\nB. The Era of the Industrialist<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAfter the expansion of global trade in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, industrialization was the next major stage in the economic development of the capitalist. \u00a0 There are various reasons proposed for what has been termed \"the industrial revolution,\" some of which are discussed in the readings in this section.\u00a0 The consequences, however, included the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, the greater exploitation of labor, and the increase of availability of goods to consumers who had the money to pay for them.\u00a0 We have also included a discussion of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which laid the ideological foundation for the culture of capitalism.\r\n\r\nReading 4.\u00a0Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations\r\nhttps:\/\/www.adamsmith.org\/the-wealth-of-nations<\/a>\r\n\r\nWe mentioned in the previous section of readings that the Communist Manifesto was one of the most influential documents ever written; not far behind, however, is Adam Smith's\u00a0An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations<\/a>.\u00a0 Written in 1776, the book has sometimes been called \"the Bible of capitalism.\"\u00a0 You can, of course, read the original version, but it is a little long to be included in a reader.\u00a0 (see also this\u00a0biography of Smith<\/a>)\r\n\r\nReading 5.\u00a0\u00a0The Capitalist Threat\r\nhttps:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/1997\/02\/the-capitalist-threat\/376773\/<\/a>\r\n\r\nGeorge Soros could be described as an arch-capitalist.\u00a0 His financial manipulations earned himself and his clients billions of dollars.\u00a0 But in this article from the Atlantic Monthly Soros argues that we may have gone too far, and that capitalism now represents a threat to the democracy that allowed it to thrive.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nC. The Growth of Corporations<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe next stage in the concentration of capital was the emergence of the corporation. \u00a0 We suggest in the book \u00a0Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism\u00a0that an 1886 United States Supreme Court decision gave corporations a way to use their economic power to influence the government that they had never possessed.\u00a0 It enabled capitalists, such as John D. Rockefeller and J. Pierpont Morgan, to amass wealth on a scale never before imagined.\r\n\r\nReading 6.\u00a0John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil\r\nhttp:\/\/www.micheloud.com\/FXM\/SO\/rock.htm<\/a>\r\n\r\nBritish philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested that Rockefeller in economics and the German leader Bismarck in politics refuted the liberal dream of universal happiness by substituting economic monopoly and the power of the nation-state.\u00a0 At this Web Site, \u00a0Francois Micheloud\u00a0provides seven brief hyperlinked chapters that cover nineteenth century oil industry technology, trusts and monopolies, Rockefeller commercial practices, and the development of the Standard Oil Company, among others.\u00a0A superb case study of how enormous wealth became concentrated in a few hands during the late 19th century and the earliest 20th.\u00a0 The text is translated from French and is a little rough, but quite readable\r\n\r\nReading 7.\u00a0The Corporate Century\r\nhttp:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/1999\/12\/corporate-century\/<\/a>\r\n\r\nRussell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman offer their view of the price we have paid for corporate dominance by outline what they see as the five greatest corporate scandals and their impacts on our lives.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nD. The Ideology of Free Trade<\/strong>\r\n\r\nCapitalists want as few restrictions as possible on their ability to trade, manufacture, and invest.\u00a0 For that reason, global economic integration is highly desirable.\u00a0 This enables the capitalist to seek out the cheapest source of labor, to manufacture with few environmental restrictions, and to easily move goods and capital from country to country in search of the greatest profit.\u00a0 However, there are arguments that global integration is harmful to people, to the environment, and to general well-being.\u00a0 The following articles address that debate.\r\n\r\nReading 8.\u00a0A Short History of Neo-liberalism\r\nhttps:\/\/www.tni.org\/en\/article\/short-history-neoliberalism<\/a>\r\n\r\nSusan George provides a superb history of neo-liberalism, the economic philosophy that is driving the ideology of free trade and globalization itself.\u00a0 As George points out, had the neo-liberal agenda been open proposed 50 years ago, it would have been readily dismissed as radical and dangerous.\u00a0 How then, in the space of those 50 years has it become the driver of economic policy for virtually every nation in the world?\u00a0 That is the question George attempts to answer.\r\n\r\nReading 9.\u00a0Fifty Years of the GATT\/WTO\r\nhttps:\/\/piie.com\/publications\/working-papers\/fifty-years-gattwto-lessons-past-strategies-future<\/a>\r\n\r\nIn 1944 at a New Hampshire resort hotel in Bretton Woods, financial leaders from the major industrial nations of the world met and proposed the establishment of a\u00a0World Bank\u00a0to provide funds for post-W.W.II reconstruction, of the\u00a0International Monetary Fund\u00a0(IMF) to help regulate currency dealings across nations, and the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to ensure the free flow of goods across international borders.\u00a0 This article by C. Fred Bergsten represents an unabashed defense of free trade and the continued implementation of GATT and its more powerful offspring the World Trade Organization (WTO).\u00a0 Bergsten refers to various \"rounds\" of negotiation in GATT; these refer to major gatherings of member states to negotiate less restrictive national trade policies.\r\n\r\nReading 10.\u00a0GATT and Democracy\r\nhttp:\/\/davidkorten.org\/06korten\/<\/a>\r\n\r\nThe article by David Korten offers a stark contrast to that of C. Fred Bergsten. \u00a0 Korten argues that the provisions of the WTO will allow businesses to challenge laws that seek to protect the environment or that seek to protect people from harmful substances on the basis that they represent an unfair restriction on trade.\u00a0 In\u00a0Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism<\/a>\u00a0we also discuss Korten's concept of \"corporate libertarianism\" that characterizes the culture of capitalism.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nE. The Effects of Globalization<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThere is little doubt that globalization, the integration of the world capitalist economy, has been good to investors.\u00a0 The question is how good has it been to everyone else?\u00a0 Worldwide, some one billion people live in poverty; the environment is being destroyed; in spite of modern medical discoveries, infectious disease remains a greater problem today than it did twenty years ago; social unrest and protest continues to plague nation-states.\u00a0 Are these problems a consequence of globalization, or are they disconnected from it?\u00a0 This is the major issue addressed by the following readings\r\n\r\nReading 11.\u00a0Global Debt and Third World Development\r\nhttp:\/\/www.mtholyoke.edu\/acad\/intrel\/globdebt.htm<\/a>\r\n\r\nArguably the single largest factor in promoting poverty, hunger, social unrest, and environmental devastation is the global debt, that is the money that poor countries owe to rich countries.\u00a0 In this excellent summary of the problem, Vincent Ferraro and Melissa Rosser describe the origins, extent, and consequences of the \"debt crisis.\"\r\n\r\nReading 12.\u00a0The End of a \"Miracle\"\u00a0\r\n<\/em>http:\/\/www.hartford-hwp.com\/archives\/54\/124.html<\/a>\r\n\r\nIn 1997 the collapse of currencies in Thailand initiated a chain reaction of economic crisis that soon spread to Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia, and beyond.\u00a0 Economists still disagree over what led to the collapse, but Walden Bellow in this article offers, we believe, one of the best explanations.\u00a0 It revolves around the role of \"capital controllers,\" those individuals or institutions who control vast wealth, and freely move (or remove) it from country to country in search of the highest possible return\r\n\r\nReading 13.\u00a0\u00a0The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress\u00a0(PDF)\r\nhttp:\/\/cepr.net\/documents\/publications\/globalization_2001_07_11.pdf<\/a>\r\n\r\nThis article by mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, and Judy Chen examines how countries have fared economically in the last twenty years during the height of the expansion of neoliberal policies, and concludes that most countries have fared poorly.\u00a0 There are lower growth rates, higher disease rates, slashs in education budgets, and lower per capita incomes\r\n\r\nReading 14:\u00a0T<\/strong>he Theory of Comparative Advantage Explained\r\nhttp:\/\/mbaeconfall2011.wikispaces.com\/file\/view\/The+Theory+of+Comparative+Advantage+-+Why+It+Is+Wrong.pdf<\/a>\r\n\r\nDoes so-called \"free trade\" really work?\u00a0 That's the question that Ian Fletcher asks in this article, based on his book,\u00a0Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why?<\/em>\r\n\r\nReading 15.\u00a0The Biology of Globalization\r\nhttp:\/\/www.ratical.org\/LifeWeb\/Articles\/globalize.htm<\/a>\r\n\r\nIn this challenging article, biologist Elizabeth Sahtouris examines how the expansion of free trade is affecting the biology of our planet. \u00a0 She argues that that \"communal values have been overridden in a dangerous process that sets vast profits for a tiny human minority above all other human interests.\"\u00a0 Globalization, she says, will continue, but it must be based on sounder democratic and environmental principles.\u00a0 She examines some of the ways this might be done.\r\n\r\nExercise 1: T-Shirt Travels\r\nhttp:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/tshirttravels\/track.html<\/a>\r\n\r\nThe film, T-Shirt Travels, examines globalization through the life course of the common T-Shirt.\u00a0 In many ways the T-Shirt is an apt symbol of the global expansion of trade.\u00a0 Cotton itself fueled the expansion of industry in England, as well as slavery in the U.S.\u00a0 It has continually been responsible for the conversion of farm land to cotton production and the exploitation of labor.\u00a0 And, finally, it leads to the collapse of textile industries in poor countries.\u00a0 You can trace the travels of the T-Shirt in this exercise from PBS.","rendered":"

Readings and Resources on the Capitalist<\/strong><\/p>\n

There never has been a better time for capitalists.\u00a0 The world is full of investment opportunities, black boxes into which investors can put money and get more money in return.\u00a0 How and why this happened are the subjects of the following selections.\u00a0 In them we will focus on the following three questions:<\/p>\n

First, we have to ask how capital, that is wealth as defined in the culture of capitalism, came to be concentrated in so few hands and how the world came to be divided into rich and poor. There were certainly rich people and poor people in say 1400, but today\u2019s vast global disparity between core and periphery did not exist then.\u00a0How did the distribution of wealth change, and how did one area of the world come to dominate the others economically?<\/p>\n

Second, we need to understand the changes in business organizations and the organization of capital, that is,\u00a0who controlled the money?<\/p>\n

Finally, we need to understand the increase in the level of global economic integration. Capitalists want the fewest restraints possible on their ability to trade from one area of the world to another; the fewer restrictions, the greater the opportunity for profit. \u00a0\u00a0How did the level of global economic integration increase, and what were its consequences?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A. The History and Expansion of the Capitalist World Economy<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The First Slave Auction in New Amsterdam (NYC)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arguably the most important event in the early stages of the expansion of the capitalist world economy was the conquest of the New World.\u00a0 Among other things, it provided a market for slaves purchased and captured in Africa, increased the amount of gold and silver circulating in Europe, and provided new markets for goods manufactured in Europe.\u00a0 The following articles address each of these developments and their consequences.<\/p>\n

Reading 1<\/strong>.\u00a0Gold, Greed & Genocide in the Americas
\nhttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20160406160039\/http:\/\/saiic.nativeweb.org:80\/ayn\/goldgreed.html<\/a><\/p>\n

This article by by Pratap Chatterjee in\u00a0Abya Yala News\u00a0traces the relationship between the European quest for riches and the deaths of indigenous people in the New World.\u00a0 His major point is that these deadly consequences that began in the fifteenth century have continued to the present day.<\/p>\n

Reading 2<\/strong>.\u00a0Loot: in search of the East India Company
\nhttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20160305015114\/https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/theme_7-corporations\/article_904.jsp<\/a><\/p>\n

This reading by Nick Robins from the Open Democracy site describes the East India Company, the world\u2019s first transnational corporation. Robins “argues that an unholy alliance between British government, military and commerce held India in slavery, reversed the flow of trade and cultural influence forever between the East and West and then sunk almost without trace under the weight of colonial guilt.”<\/p>\n

Reading 3<\/strong>.\u00a0The Growth of the Slave Trade in North America
\nhttp:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/aia\/part1\/1narr5.html<\/a><\/p>\n

This reading is part of the PBS\u00a0Africans in America\u00a0Web Site that accompanied the documentary series of the same name.\u00a0 The article describes the early history of the slave trade in North America and what was required to maintain it.\u00a0 There are links to many other brief articles, maps, and illustrations.\u00a0 You can read about\u00a0The Arrival of the First African Americans to the Virginia Colonies<\/a>, or read a description of the\u00a0First Slave Auction<\/a>\u00a0in New Amsterdam (New York City).\u00a0 And you can browse the articles that trace the evolution of the slave trade through the end of the Civil War.<\/p>\n

B. The Era of the Industrialist<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the expansion of global trade in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, industrialization was the next major stage in the economic development of the capitalist. \u00a0 There are various reasons proposed for what has been termed “the industrial revolution,” some of which are discussed in the readings in this section.\u00a0 The consequences, however, included the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, the greater exploitation of labor, and the increase of availability of goods to consumers who had the money to pay for them.\u00a0 We have also included a discussion of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which laid the ideological foundation for the culture of capitalism.<\/p>\n

Reading 4.\u00a0Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations
\nhttps:\/\/www.adamsmith.org\/the-wealth-of-nations<\/a><\/p>\n

We mentioned in the previous section of readings that the Communist Manifesto was one of the most influential documents ever written; not far behind, however, is Adam Smith’s\u00a0An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations<\/a>.\u00a0 Written in 1776, the book has sometimes been called “the Bible of capitalism.”\u00a0 You can, of course, read the original version, but it is a little long to be included in a reader.\u00a0 (see also this\u00a0biography of Smith<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Reading 5.\u00a0\u00a0The Capitalist Threat
\nhttps:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/1997\/02\/the-capitalist-threat\/376773\/<\/a><\/p>\n

George Soros could be described as an arch-capitalist.\u00a0 His financial manipulations earned himself and his clients billions of dollars.\u00a0 But in this article from the Atlantic Monthly Soros argues that we may have gone too far, and that capitalism now represents a threat to the democracy that allowed it to thrive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

C. The Growth of Corporations<\/strong><\/p>\n

The next stage in the concentration of capital was the emergence of the corporation. \u00a0 We suggest in the book \u00a0Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism\u00a0that an 1886 United States Supreme Court decision gave corporations a way to use their economic power to influence the government that they had never possessed.\u00a0 It enabled capitalists, such as John D. Rockefeller and J. Pierpont Morgan, to amass wealth on a scale never before imagined.<\/p>\n

Reading 6.\u00a0John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil
\nhttp:\/\/www.micheloud.com\/FXM\/SO\/rock.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

British philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested that Rockefeller in economics and the German leader Bismarck in politics refuted the liberal dream of universal happiness by substituting economic monopoly and the power of the nation-state.\u00a0 At this Web Site, \u00a0Francois Micheloud\u00a0provides seven brief hyperlinked chapters that cover nineteenth century oil industry technology, trusts and monopolies, Rockefeller commercial practices, and the development of the Standard Oil Company, among others.\u00a0A superb case study of how enormous wealth became concentrated in a few hands during the late 19th century and the earliest 20th.\u00a0 The text is translated from French and is a little rough, but quite readable<\/p>\n

Reading 7.\u00a0The Corporate Century
\nhttp:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/1999\/12\/corporate-century\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman offer their view of the price we have paid for corporate dominance by outline what they see as the five greatest corporate scandals and their impacts on our lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

D. The Ideology of Free Trade<\/strong><\/p>\n

Capitalists want as few restrictions as possible on their ability to trade, manufacture, and invest.\u00a0 For that reason, global economic integration is highly desirable.\u00a0 This enables the capitalist to seek out the cheapest source of labor, to manufacture with few environmental restrictions, and to easily move goods and capital from country to country in search of the greatest profit.\u00a0 However, there are arguments that global integration is harmful to people, to the environment, and to general well-being.\u00a0 The following articles address that debate.<\/p>\n

Reading 8.\u00a0A Short History of Neo-liberalism
\nhttps:\/\/www.tni.org\/en\/article\/short-history-neoliberalism<\/a><\/p>\n

Susan George provides a superb history of neo-liberalism, the economic philosophy that is driving the ideology of free trade and globalization itself.\u00a0 As George points out, had the neo-liberal agenda been open proposed 50 years ago, it would have been readily dismissed as radical and dangerous.\u00a0 How then, in the space of those 50 years has it become the driver of economic policy for virtually every nation in the world?\u00a0 That is the question George attempts to answer.<\/p>\n

Reading 9.\u00a0Fifty Years of the GATT\/WTO
\nhttps:\/\/piie.com\/publications\/working-papers\/fifty-years-gattwto-lessons-past-strategies-future<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1944 at a New Hampshire resort hotel in Bretton Woods, financial leaders from the major industrial nations of the world met and proposed the establishment of a\u00a0World Bank\u00a0to provide funds for post-W.W.II reconstruction, of the\u00a0International Monetary Fund\u00a0(IMF) to help regulate currency dealings across nations, and the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to ensure the free flow of goods across international borders.\u00a0 This article by C. Fred Bergsten represents an unabashed defense of free trade and the continued implementation of GATT and its more powerful offspring the World Trade Organization (WTO).\u00a0 Bergsten refers to various “rounds” of negotiation in GATT; these refer to major gatherings of member states to negotiate less restrictive national trade policies.<\/p>\n

Reading 10.\u00a0GATT and Democracy
\nhttp:\/\/davidkorten.org\/06korten\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The article by David Korten offers a stark contrast to that of C. Fred Bergsten. \u00a0 Korten argues that the provisions of the WTO will allow businesses to challenge laws that seek to protect the environment or that seek to protect people from harmful substances on the basis that they represent an unfair restriction on trade.\u00a0 In\u00a0Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism<\/a>\u00a0we also discuss Korten’s concept of “corporate libertarianism” that characterizes the culture of capitalism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

E. The Effects of Globalization<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is little doubt that globalization, the integration of the world capitalist economy, has been good to investors.\u00a0 The question is how good has it been to everyone else?\u00a0 Worldwide, some one billion people live in poverty; the environment is being destroyed; in spite of modern medical discoveries, infectious disease remains a greater problem today than it did twenty years ago; social unrest and protest continues to plague nation-states.\u00a0 Are these problems a consequence of globalization, or are they disconnected from it?\u00a0 This is the major issue addressed by the following readings<\/p>\n

Reading 11.\u00a0Global Debt and Third World Development
\nhttp:\/\/www.mtholyoke.edu\/acad\/intrel\/globdebt.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

Arguably the single largest factor in promoting poverty, hunger, social unrest, and environmental devastation is the global debt, that is the money that poor countries owe to rich countries.\u00a0 In this excellent summary of the problem, Vincent Ferraro and Melissa Rosser describe the origins, extent, and consequences of the “debt crisis.”<\/p>\n

Reading 12.\u00a0The End of a “Miracle”\u00a0
\n<\/em>http:\/\/www.hartford-hwp.com\/archives\/54\/124.html<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1997 the collapse of currencies in Thailand initiated a chain reaction of economic crisis that soon spread to Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia, and beyond.\u00a0 Economists still disagree over what led to the collapse, but Walden Bellow in this article offers, we believe, one of the best explanations.\u00a0 It revolves around the role of “capital controllers,” those individuals or institutions who control vast wealth, and freely move (or remove) it from country to country in search of the highest possible return<\/p>\n

Reading 13.\u00a0\u00a0The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress\u00a0(PDF)
\nhttp:\/\/cepr.net\/documents\/publications\/globalization_2001_07_11.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

This article by mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, and Judy Chen examines how countries have fared economically in the last twenty years during the height of the expansion of neoliberal policies, and concludes that most countries have fared poorly.\u00a0 There are lower growth rates, higher disease rates, slashs in education budgets, and lower per capita incomes<\/p>\n

Reading 14:\u00a0T<\/strong>he Theory of Comparative Advantage Explained
\nhttp:\/\/mbaeconfall2011.wikispaces.com\/file\/view\/The+Theory+of+Comparative+Advantage+-+Why+It+Is+Wrong.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Does so-called “free trade” really work?\u00a0 That’s the question that Ian Fletcher asks in this article, based on his book,\u00a0Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why?<\/em><\/p>\n

Reading 15.\u00a0The Biology of Globalization
\nhttp:\/\/www.ratical.org\/LifeWeb\/Articles\/globalize.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

In this challenging article, biologist Elizabeth Sahtouris examines how the expansion of free trade is affecting the biology of our planet. \u00a0 She argues that that “communal values have been overridden in a dangerous process that sets vast profits for a tiny human minority above all other human interests.”\u00a0 Globalization, she says, will continue, but it must be based on sounder democratic and environmental principles.\u00a0 She examines some of the ways this might be done.<\/p>\n

Exercise 1: T-Shirt Travels
\nhttp:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/tshirttravels\/track.html<\/a><\/p>\n

The film, T-Shirt Travels, examines globalization through the life course of the common T-Shirt.\u00a0 In many ways the T-Shirt is an apt symbol of the global expansion of trade.\u00a0 Cotton itself fueled the expansion of industry in England, as well as slavery in the U.S.\u00a0 It has continually been responsible for the conversion of farm land to cotton production and the exploitation of labor.\u00a0 And, finally, it leads to the collapse of textile industries in poor countries.\u00a0 You can trace the travels of the T-Shirt in this exercise from PBS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47552,"menu_order":4,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[]","CANDELA_OUTCOMES_GUID":"","pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-37","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47552"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37\/revisions\/62"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-plattsburgh-anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}