Global Trade Is Not New

Here is a worthy opinion piece in The New York Times about globalization:

For many years the word “globalization” was used as shorthand for a promised utopia of free trade powered by the world’s great centers of technological and financial innovation. But the celebratory note has worn thin. The word is now increasingly invoked to explain a widespread recoiling from a cosmopolitan earth. People in many countries are looking nostalgically backward, toward less connected, supposedly more secure times.

But did such an era ever exist? Was there ever an unglobalized world?

You can read the rest @
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/opinion/sunday/clove-trees-the-color-of-ash.html

The author seems to be saying that we cannot stop tyrannical monopolies from controlling trade, so we might as well enjoy the benefits.

The way I see it, modern corporations will soon make the Dutch East India Company look like a tree-hugging charity in comparison to their robotic rapaciousness. I can live without nutmeg, if it means a life free from oligarchs, bankgangsters, corporate CEOs, and their collaborators in the one percent. The rest of us can no longer afford spices anyway.

By the way, those of us who can afford it will soon be able to "3-D print" (or its culinary equivalent) just about anything right in the comfort of our own homes, so trade in the context of moving objects from one continent to another may become obsolete. All we'll need is a printer (synthesizer) and a store of raw materials which probably can be grown anywhere.

Unfortunately, we'll still have to pay someone to license the plans (recipes).

Unless we all become pirates.