Open Markets Contra Globalization and Nationalism
Do critics of free and open markets really understand what market advocates are after?
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Open markets is a better term to describe the elimination of barriers that prevent the cheap and easy exchange of knowledge, goods, and services than globalism because it best describes what people are actually after.
What people think globalism is, for example, is the convergence of global markets into a mega-sized trading ground that only benefits tyrannical elites.
But proponents of open markets don’t want that.
Nor is that what open markets usually result in.
What proponents of open markets want is more commerce and business to take place everywhere.
Which results in more people being more productive and making more money so that more people can do more of the things they want to do.
Which, by most accounts, is mutually beneficial to everyone.
Even the nationalists who besmirch supporters of open markets as “globalists.”
Because open markets create prosperity around the globe and this affords those living under corrupt regimes the opportunity to legally migrate to better governed nations.
Like the United States.
And upon arrival those that have been graciously enriched by global market forces are supremely grateful -- and make for good, dutiful citizens who are eager to further enrich their lives and the new country they live in by following the law, paying taxes, working hard, and being polite.
Which is a win-win for good government and open markets everywhere.
And actually reinforces the economic, technological, and hence military strength of a nation.
Like when immigrants fled to the US and developed the bomb that ended World War II and many other wars since then.
The lesson, then, is this: when prosperity and people prevail so too does the fate of great nations. And maybe, one day, this idea will too in the mental marketplace of the American mind.
Zigmund Reichenbach has an M.A. in Philosophy from West Chester University and works as an advocate for less government by day.
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