Originally Posted by Relentless

Competition only works to a point. Just because North Korea is willing and able to provide slave labor to Russian lumber interests, that doesn't mean other countries should 'compete' to provide that service more effectively. Having corporate parasites infest countries that compete for them will not benefit the countries that 'win' their residence or 'lose' their interest. It will only benefit the tiny number of people at the top of that pyramid. You may recall a story where there were many slaves working for Pyramid owners. It supposedly didn't work out so well for anyone - in fact it turned out so badly that they wrote a fairly lengthy book about it claiming God intervened and slaughtered the first born of the haves in favor of the have-nots. The book went on to become quite a best seller.

Smart people live a life of luxury without making the masses want to behead them. When the gap between rich and poor becomes too wide, very bad things happen. That remains true every time throughout history. Not the gap between ONE rich person and ONE poor person, the gap between the economic layers of our society. That fact will stay just as true after globalization as it was before it - especially with regard to necessities like food, water, basic health care and energy which are becoming increasingly privatized and insecure.

We can produce all the food we need with a tiny number of people doing the work... but if two companies decide to shut down or sell their goods elsewhere we have an artificial famine nationwide in this country. We have banks too big to fail so our country is subject to the whims of their gamesmanship and unwilling to regulate them effectively, which makes all of our markets less stable rather than more stable. Energy has been outsourced to quasi-private utility companies that destroy entire mountain ranges, leave the east coast without power for weeks after a storm due largely to their own incompetence and get billions in tax incentives thanks to herculean lobbying efforts. The current course toward multinational corporate supremacy over representative nations is not a good thing and it won't last... but it will likely become a bloody mess before it resolves itself.