Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 13:15:21 +1000
Subject: Re: Greenspan: Globalisation vs Terrorism.


Glen wrote:

> I wonder what he means by "further exploitation of the values of
> specialisation"?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He means the Adam Smith concept of assembly line manufacture.  Each employee
perform
a specialzed, simple task.

Making nails. Instead of  three persons making each nail,  one cuts wire,
one shapes
the head of the nail, one sharpens the point of the nail.  Their total
output is much greater than it would be if each person performed all three
tasks using all the tools/machines required.

Specialized machinery enables  inexperienced workers to make shoes and
clothing, many other household and commercial items with very little
training.  This was the basis of the Industrial Revolution which, with
Enclosure Acts and Corn Laws ended cottage industry, forced rural people
into mines and city factories, produced child labor and other horrors
described in Dicken's novels.

That process continued domestically in countries that are now leading
industrial nations.
In the decades after WWII preceding end of the Cold War, labor unions and
democratic action in Western Europe and the U.S. greatly improved wages and
working conditions, workers rights and entitlements.

In those years there was significant international trade, some in
manufactured goods, much in raw materials.

Expanding air transport, computer and communications technology, made
investment and control of operations in third world countries a real
opportunity, especially after the Cold War ended.

You could call the begiinng of globalization:  IR2, or the Second
Industrial Revolution.
Third World countries could get their populations off their homelands into
mines, timber harvesting, massive, mechanized,  farm operations,  factory
operations, and thus they have become, are becoming, industrialized..

There is an important difference.  Most of the raw materials, most of the
manufactured
products and most of the profits are sent to industrial nationsother
countries half a world away.  This is Globalization.

In a book called "The Trap", Sir James Goldsmith explains how high
unemployment in
France and other European countries came about because 50 or more workers in
poor countries can be employed for the cost of one worker in France.  Other
G-7 countries have
similar experience.

This situation encouraged  specialization in investment.  Factories and
funds are exported to those countries whose workers can produce the highest
quantity and quality of exportable goods at lowest cost.


regards,
Hugh









That's why factories are exported, and most U.S clothing are
part of globalization.