I, Nutella

That simple spread of hazelnut and cocoa that everyone loves has a cross-continental pedigree, as emphasized in a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Nutella combines vanilla flavoring from France, hazelnuts from Turkey, palm oil from Malaysia, sugar from Brazil and cocoa from Nigeria. The OECD used it as an example in a recent report to demonstrate global supply chains and it's gathered a lot of attention.

Nutella would not be possible without globalization. Like a famous essay said about the pencil, each jar contains the labor of thousands of people across the globe. There's no single location on earth that could ever make it without outside help.

Unlike other foods with a lot of ingredients, such as sour cream and salsa pork rinds, Nutella has a highborn reputation. It's artsy to like Nutella. The spread is borderline pretentious. That's very different from the low-status products that are usually associated with globalization like McDonald's food.

Globalization needs a new symbol that can engage people, and Nutella is a perfect choice. Globalization simply means the extension of human cooperation over international lines, instead of restricting it to the immediate area. Violent mobs and fringe speakers have given the word an unpleasant edge to the general public and not enough people name "globalization" as something they support.

Only a gullible fool would balk at spreading delicious Nutella across their bread. Nutella is the beautiful child of international cooperation, and people need to appreciate and understand that origin along with its captivating taste.
Read more...

Completely monsterous

An angry mob of anti-GMO Luddites in the Philippines pillaged an experimental crop of Vitamin A-rich Golden Rice, but as Mark Lynas reports, their supporters spun it into propaganda and said it was a spontaneous action by farmers.

The nature of the attack was widely misreported, from the New York Times to New Scientist to BBC News, based on false claims by the activists. But then anti-GMO activists often lie. In support of the vandals, Greenpeace has claimed that there are health concerns about the genetically modified rice. In fact there is no evidence of risk, and the destruction of this field trial could lead to needless deaths.

What's more, the stakes are incredibly high:

Although some anti-GMO activists dismiss the public health problem of vitamin A deficiency to bolster their case, the medical community agrees that it is a major killer, comparable in scale to malaria, HIV/AIDS, or tuberculosis. The World Health Organization estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 children become blind each year because of a lack of vitamin A in their diets, and half of them die within 12 months.

The need to resort to lies to win support should be a red flag that one is on the wrong side of an issue. I'm reminded of the masked anti-globalization protesters who pretend the bandannas over their faces have nothing to do with concealing their identity when they start a riot.

Once again, the combination of utilitarianism and ignorance is leading self-righteous people to do something they know is wrong - lying to the public - because they mistakenly believe their actions will make the world a better place. In reality they are breaking their own moral codes in a manner that harms the poor of the world. No one gains from this, but plenty of people lose.
Read more...

Two for one from Tyler

Tyler Cowen covers two popular misconceptions about multinational corporations in this new MRU video: The idea that they are often bigger than major nations and that they "exploit" poor workers in other nations.




The error of trying to compare GDP to profits or annual sales was completely lost on me. See the comments for a quick exchange on additional flaws in that line of thinking, and a plug for this Martin Wolf essay.

I plan to use the "exploitation" line about what happened in Haiti after the factories left in future discussions. He also nails it when he says that if they don't think the wages in third world countries are high enough, wouldn't they be driven up by encouraging more countries to compete for those workers?
Read more...

Anti-globalization dishonesty

I was recently lured into viewing an article on a series of photographs French artist Alain Delorme compiled that turned out to be bogus.

The article was titled "Look At These Chinese Workers Carrying Mind-Blowing Amounts Of Stuff" but it turned out the images were all fakes created in photoshop.

From an NPR interview on his website:

Turns out, Paris-based Delorme creates these spectacular towers of boxes, tires and blankets using Photoshop. As he exaggerates reality by meticulously stitching together the image, he tries to confuse the line between what is fake and what is real, and raise questions around the limits and rules of documentary photography. 

"Even pictures covering a story are retouched to look cleaner, more beautiful," he writes in an e-mail. "What are the limits when the search for perfect aesthetics hides a part of reality?"

So he thinks what he's doing is acceptable because other people adjust the lighting in their photos. Here's what he said his intention is with the series in the new piece:

Delorme alters the photos with Photoshop to exaggerate the loads his subjects carry and heighten that sense of consumption. "To what extent can we play with reality to get the viewer to ask questions?" He says the works investigate globalization and consumerism. "But it is above all a way to make people think about the consumer society we live in via the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon, with all its identical and exchangeable objects produced in big quantities."

Why is it critics of globalization avoid coming out and saying what they mean? Globalization is the extension of human cooperation across international borders and protectionists like Delorme rarely say they oppose it, but claim their propaganda makes people "think" about the issue or study it.

Bottom line, when you have to lie to people to make your point the way Delorme did with his fake images you are admitting your case is weak.
Read more...

Outsourcing is not a scandal

Even though I have no intention of voting for Mitt Romney in this election, it looks like I have to defend him again.

President Obama's reelection campaign is trying to stir up economic illiterates by accusing him of being in charge of Bain Capital when some of the firms it dealt with outsourced jobs. That is to say, they are accusing him of giving jobs to foreigners when he should be reserving them for privileged Americans.

Romney's response was to say that he diverting all of his attention to running the Salt Lake City Olympics at the time and was CEO in name only, and the bickering is about how accurate that telling of events is.

What both sides are taking for granted is that outsourcing is some kind of scandal.

The American left seems to love foreigners when they want to move here and work, or stay in their place of birth, but the moment they try trade with us they become the enemy. The American right is different; they seem to dislike foreigners across the board.

Is there any trace of a legitimate scandal here? The only room for criticism I can see is that Romney is denying he was responsible for outsourcing, and if it turns out he is, the lie is the scandal, not the outsourcing. That's a pretty tall order, especially from people who are willing to overlook President Obama's Fast and Furious scandal.

Romney is accused of trying to cover up his role in giving jobs to foreigners. Obama is accused of trying to cover up his role in killing foreigners. Even if it's true, I have trouble seeing why he's the one I should be upset with.
Read more...

Boredom is for boring people

A few years ago when I played World of Warcraft, every so often someone would log in and announce that they are bored. That is to say, they were on a computer, playing a video game, and wanted us to find amusement for them. I always did the mature thing, of course, and mercilessly mocked them.

There is no excuse to be bored today if you have a computer with Internet access. There is a wealth of information several orders of magnitude above the Library of Alexandria free for the taking. If the written word isn't your thing, there are video versions as well. There are podcasts in purely audio form. All of this is available in every subject imaginable.

There's even flash games, blogging sites and forums to exchange ideas with other people.

And that's just indoors. Globalization has brought different cultures into everyone's grasp. There is ethnic food, obscure music and niche movies that were completely out of reach to previous generations.

The only people who could be bored with these opportunities are boring people.
Read more...

World Bank: In-game gold benefits third-world economies

A World Bank report claims that Asian economies are benefiting by about $3 billion a year in the sale of virtual gold. That is, the workers in nations like Vietnam log onto video games like World of Warcraft and "farm" for in-game currency. This in-game money is transferred to Western players in exchange for real dollars and euros.

From the BBC:

Increasingly, the report said, Western players who have limited time for gaming are buying game cash, gear and high level characters from people in China and Vietnam that are paid to play as a job.

Translation: American and European players are spending their time performing productive labor. Workers in poor nations have a comparative advantage in gold farming and can justify spending their fireballing online demon boars all day because the pay is better than most of the other options available to them.

The Western players value their free time more than the money they pay, and the Eastern workers value the money more than the time it takes to earn it. This transaction benefits both parties, and there is only one possible trade barrier: the selling of virtual gold is against the rules of games like World of Warcraft and there is a small risk of having ones account shutdown and banned.

This is not a traditional illegal industry like drugs or arms smuggling, but it is against the rules in the virtual world of the game. There have been a lot of complaints that gold farmers harm the in-game economies, but this report suggests that the trade-off is a huge benefit to the real world economy.

The whole report is pretty interesting and worth a read.

Read more...

Happy Thanksgiving

Of all of our naitonal holidays, Thanksgiving is the one I get into the spirit of the most. I celebrate it with no modern twists or wrinkles, and follow the celebration template to the letter. I eat a big stuffed turkey meal with my family and call it a day.

So as we all sit down to enjoy our traditional American Thanksgiving meal, if any of you have a twinge of fear that immigration is going to influence our culture, I have to say you're exactly right. That turkey you're eating is a Mexican immigrant, and if you're not eating a "Meleagris mexicana" today it's downright Un-American.
Read more...