One of the major criticisms that you can level at the anti-globalisation crowd - if not the primary one - is their protectionist recommendations (anti-sweatshop and anti-child labour), instead of helping the third world, actually depress their economic growth.

But at least they were sincere. It’s distasteful to support child labor, even while you know that in so many cases, it is work or starve. (Education, obviously the preferred occupation for a child, is often not a choice.)

And now comes this Guardian story about ‘Nick’:

[Nick] is one of a growing army of concerned individuals who have begun to turn away from international flights to exotic hot spots because of the global impact of the current boom in world air travel.

These people have decided that, although travel to Third World countries may bring unexpected boosts to local economies and even stimulate an increase in eco-friendly tourism, the environmental price can no longer be justified.

Well - ignoring the strange use of the world ‘unexpected’ - Nick’s story describes a victory for petty self-righteousness over any desire to encourage 3rd world countries lifting themselves out of poverty. Thankfully, their attitude is probably not shared by any significant portion of the population. Listen to this quoted girl:

‘Flights are now unrealistically cheap,’ she said. ‘It makes it so difficult for people to say no to them. The government should take that decision away from people.’

Not an opinion I expect is shared by many citizens.

Sidenote:

Its not particularily relevant, but how peculiar is this metaphor?

‘The recent White Paper on energy was at great pains to outline the government’s commitment to reducing global warming, but its White Paper on aviation, also published recently, drives a coach and horses through it.”

This article demonstrates quite clearly why economic reform is so hard. The Age (via the AAP) is reporting that John Howard cannot guarantee that some employees of Telstra will not lose their jobs.

In what universe would a Prime Minister actually give such a guarantee?

This is jaw-dropping (PDF). John Bolton, the new US ambassador to the United Nations has taken his whiteout and changed virtually every point on the draft UN summit agreement - or at least every point and phrase which clearly originated from a transnational progressivist mindset. (The Guardian is naturally quite upset)

He covers, obviously, the big topics - Kyoto, Millenium Development Goals, urges for greater corporate social responsibility - but what is most interesting is the small changes. For instance the goal of

Promoting equal participation and representation of men and women in government decision making bodies

becomes, after Bolton’s edits,

Promoting equal opportunity for men and women to participate in government decision making bodies

The emphasis is now on equality of opportunity, rather than equality of outcomes. Read it - it clocks in at 40 pages, but it’s worth the effort.

Just finished Martin Wolf’s Why Globalization Works (you can see the controversy books like this create at the Amazon review section). Wolf’s book is highly readable, and honest - when the evidence is not clear for advantages or disadvantages of globalisation, he is not hesitant to say so.

One of the major things I took out of his book was his insistence that, even when so many boundaries are dropping as various technologies become ubiquitous, geography still matters. I’m sure that even though I can probably order milk from Boliva, I’m not going to. But more importantly, many services can only be consumed (is that the right word?) in a certain radius of your home. In other words, while he is scathing of advocates of ‘localisation’, it is clear that countries, regions and local areas aren’t going down the gurgler just because your ISP has a call center in Bangladesh.

Wolf’s book is a fantastic run down of the arguments against the anti-globalisers. His section against the Naomi Klein school - i.e. the ‘everybody-is-brainwashed-except-me’ school - is classic.

This is strangely flattering - I now have my own SourceWatch page, linked to by the IPA’s SourceWatch page. No less than Bob Burton, SourceWatch’s editor, wrote the very very short bio.

The real question is: How do I get them to link to the blog? Is it rude to edit my own entry?

One of my aims this year was to be abused in the press, or at least recieve abusive emails. Until now, I had not been successful. (The strangest response I have had to something has been after the Phillip Adams interview: I received an email the next day reading ‘I heard you call yourself a libertarian… have you read any Chomsky?’)

But now, I have. David Forman, Executive Director of the Competitive Carriers Coalition begins like so:

Chris Berg’s absurd “Splitting Telstra is not the right move” (Opinion, August 22) demonstrates that Telstra and its increasingly rabid cheer squad of hangers-on continue to deal in assertions and ignore facts.

He goes on to argue that I display either “profound ignorance or misrepresentation of the facts”.

So a tick in the box for that one. (The full letter is available here, although I have no idea how long it will be active.)

This one’s sort of experimental:

I had an interview on the Vega radio station - a new station from the owners of Nova and only in Sydney at the moment, but I’m told it is coming down to Melbourne - on the topic of my AFR piece this morning at 10am. I’ll post a transcript or recording if possible, but they don’t yet have a proper website, the only thing available being this spartan page.