I like words but, there are some words that need replacement or redefinition. A fine example is the word 'hacker'. If you ask a hundred people on the street or peruse the mass media, they will tell you a hacker is a computer criminal. But, if you talk to experienced programmers and engineers who were around at the beginning of the computer revolution, they will tell you the word originally referred to a knowledgeable cleverness, a wit with computing machinery, an accomplished programmer, an explorer of the electronic and logical frontier. You can still find such usage in the subculture and such classics as The Hacker's Dictionary or Steve Levy's book Hackers . The sociological implication of this shift is that anybody who knows how these complex systems work is up to no good.
I don't know what word might replace hacker. Some have tried to encourage the use of 'cracker', to little effect. Such slang is rarely consciously initiated. It has to have just the right zing. How this will shake out in a hundred or two hundred years is anybody's guess. For now one has to be careful about context when using the word.
Another word ripe for replacement is 'globalization'. On the face of it, being against globalization is absurd. You might as well be against the law of gravity. We live on a planet where you can have breakfast in London and supper in San Francisco. We regularly watch TV from the other side of the world. The world wide web organized protests against globalization would seem to be silly. Globalization is a fact. So what are these protestors on about and who hung that moniker on them?
International trade is the pry bar the corporate elite use to crack open the legal and social systems of vulnerable countries around the world. Two primary tools used are free trade agreements and the policies of the IMF/World Bank. Most such trade agreements are designed to allow corporations to challenge native laws and remove inconvenient social contracts. They certainly do nothing to foster environmental stewardship or promote worker's rights. The IMF has an explicit policy requiring 'structural reform' in client countries which want a loan. These reforms inevitably require reducing social spending and increasing privatization -- in short, making it easy for foreign corporations to plunder the nation. It is ideologically driven. The countries invariably do worse after such reforms because now besides being poor, they are being screwed.
We live on a planet where half the people are underfed and half are worried about obesity. The countries where people are hungry may have environmental difficulties or be mismanaged, but almost invariably their agriculture has been undercut by subsidized food from the first world and their land directed towards supplying the first world with special foodstuffs such as coffee, cocoa. or bananas.
And being opposed to such practices is called 'anti-globalization'? What PR genius dreamed up this phrase? What we have here is a fine example of governance by clever choice of terminology.
Imagine how different the situation might be if the IMF had an explicit policy of enhancing independence and self sufficiency!
The fundamental problem is that the corporation as currently configured is a mechanism designed to avoid legal responsibility. Their primary concern is making money. And so their behaviour is frequently sociopathic. The laws defining their role need to be redrawn.
Of course, the corporations control the governments, so there will be no initiative to change the laws from that quarter. I am not talking about a conspiracy although are undoubtably some. It is simply a matter of competence and convenience. The same people move back and forth between the two realms. They are married at the hip. It is up to the people to push for change.
So remember, the next time you see 'anti-globalization' protestors out on the street, they are really 'anti-corporate privateer and plunder' protestors.
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