Globalising public ethics and interests : policy alternatives for developing countries

Abstract

Since the end of World War II, trillions of dollars have been poured into development schemes by multinational development banks, bilateral aid agencies, and private enterprises. Revolutionary new technologies have transformed the at!agriculture industry and service sectors alike. Tariffs have been drastically reduced and vast transnational corporations have systematically replaced national corporations that catered for the domestic economy. Similarly, the nation states have largely replaced small companies that catered for the domestic economy and governments seem to have been ignored. If conventional wisdom held true, then the world should have been transformed into a veritable paradise. Poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, homelessness, disease and environmental disruption should be but vat!ue memories of an underdeveloped past. But, to the contrary, these problems have become more serious and more widespread. The service delivery and social welfare ideals of the traditional nation states seem to be far from being realised. This article explores reasons why the signing of the Uruguay Round of General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATI) by Governments has further stalled the envisaged accelerated global economic growth and development through the gobalisation process, by removing all constraints on trade, regardless of social, ecological and moral implications. Instead of accepting the incontrovertible empirical evidence that economic globalisation will only increase many of the problems that face the world today, governments under pressure from transnational corporations insist on pursuing it further. To solve these problems, society will have to follow almost the very opposite path. Instead of seeking to create a single global economy controlled by vast and ever less controllable transnational corporations, it should seek to create a diversity of loosely linked, community-based economies managed by much smaller companies and catering above all (though not exclusively) for local or regional markets. It is not economic globalisation that society should aim for but the reverse, economic localisation to counter-balance today's substantially unfettered globalisation.