Resistance — Book Notes

Resistance¶

The first chapter opens with the observation that globalization has already permeated all of our lives — but when it comes to who actually benefits, it is primarily the top 1% of wealth-holders, not everyone.

The book goes on to illustrate: media penetration, capital exploitation of weaker nations operating on the margins of the law, declining biodiversity (externalized social costs), climate change, terrorism, nationalism (Britain's accidental Brexit), and neo-Nazism (Nazi sympathizers in Germany can no longer speak openly — they risk being picked up by the CIA).

Refugees are another problem spawned by globalization. Countries oscillate between humanitarian duty and the fear of being overwhelmed. Immigration, on the other hand, can replenish the workforce in aging, post-industrial nations and boost national competitiveness — immigrants tend to be younger and have larger families — but they can also displace part of the local workforce.

There is a biting irony: in the age of social media, condemnation has essentially one real effect — more interaction and more exposure.

In the chapter on a divided America, one argument notes that whether it's Hillary's or Trump's campaign slogan, for a coal miner it comes down to choosing between two liars. America's democracy has stumbled into the predicament of choosing the least-rotten apple.

The explosion of social media information, combined with the low cost of producing misinformation and the incentives to lie for profit, has produced a culture of distrust and skepticism — where people trust their feelings over data.

Having read the whole book, I see it as a journalist's observation of contemporary history. Human history has always been in flux — there are always new difficulties to grapple with: from slavery to racism, from globalization to the refugee crisis and the threat to the middle class and the rise of nationalism, from technological development to fake news to science denial. Historically, optimism has consistently outperformed pessimism. Humans keep encountering problems and keep overcoming them. Whether there is some insurmountable wall ahead — we can only keep forming bold hypotheses and testing them carefully. #history