Globalization and Nanotechnology

Taking a long view of history, identifying strong underlying trends, trying to understand where current events are taking us and how we might influence the course of change — such is the challenge for an organization like CRN, and for anyone else who hopes to have a meaningful impact over the long term.

One of the trends that must be assessed is globalization…

The notion that we live in a global economy is now a commonplace. Supply chains extend halfway around the planet, and no respectable corporation would dare show its face without at least pretending to have a well-defined global strategy. The funny thing about the global economy, though, is how much of the globe has been left out of it. Four billion people still earn less than four dollars a day, and as far as the global economy is concerned they hardly exist—except, of course, as cheap labor.

A recent commentary in The New Yorker magazine suggests that global consumer capitalism can be seen, however, to have beneficial effects, at least in certain circumstances.

Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most part it’s the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price. In a market economy, the best thing to be—aside from an oil company, perhaps—is a customer.

Consumerism, of course, has its pitfalls and is hardly a cure-all. But if companies started trying to sell things to the poor it would have immediate consequences, chief among them a reduction of the so-called poverty penalty. It’s expensive to be poor. Poor people pay more to eat, buy, and borrow, because they have so few choices and so little bargaining power, especially in the developing world. Moneylenders, purchasing agents, and retail stores typically have local monopolies that allow them to gouge their customers. If more companies reach these customers, prices will fall.

In the near future, when molecular manufacturing reaches the stage of exponential proliferation and has general-purpose application across nearly all segments of society — then the question of how (or whether?) to extend its benefits to the 2/3 of the world’s people who live on less than four dollars a day will confront us.

Better, though, that we consider this challenge now, that we learn what we can from history, consider the strength of underlying trends, and begin putting in place solutions that will avoid the greatest risks of nanotechnology while maximizing the great potential gains for all humanity.

Mike Treder

Comments

[Mr. Farlops]

As someone just left of center, I have a lot of compliants about globalization but I admit that there really isn't much we can do to stop it. The environment, human rights and labor issues can't simply swept aside with the technological handwaving that some on the right side of the transhuman seem to favor. Globalization is very complicated and seems to defy everyone's thinking about it, especially the thinking of the VIPs who attend Davos. Which is part of reason why I think we can't leave it all to them to decide how it happens.

But even before the arrival of nanotechnology there are some encouraging signs that high technology can find a place in the developing world. In fact, I get the impression that the WorldChanging site (Which CRN mentioned a few entries ago.) talks about nothing else near.

Check it out! It's always good to find technophilic stuff on the left side of the aisle. Sort of reminds me of old days of Whole Earth Review.