The Olympics: Globalisation Galore!
by Tibor R. Machan
Anyone who thinks globalization is some novel phenomenon in the world only needs to check in on the Olympic Games—indeed, think back to them in ancient and modern times, to realize how wrong is that idea.
The Olympic Games include nearly all the countries in the world and competitors from all take part in many of the events. And, yes, they all abide by the same rules.
If that isn’t globalization then I don’t know what is.
When we consider economic globalization, it’s all about how all the people around the globe need to play by the same economic rules—free trade. No one gets to enslave workers—they must be hired and bargained with. No one gets to violate contracts—they must be honored, and if not, the law steps in to rectify any breaches that have occurred. No one gets to deprive another of his or her property—only voluntary exchanges are kosher. And so it goes, into the minute details of commerce.
Critics of globalization complain that such general principles of commerce may not suit everyone, so let’s not attempt to make them ubiquitous as globalization would have them be. Why? Because of cultural differences that should not be destroyed.
Have the Olympics destroyed cultural differences? No. Of course, in some areas there has been uniformity, but by no means all. What people wear, the music they prefer, say in skating or synchronized swimming, will be different, and I am sure they also eat different foods and speak their own languages when communicating with others from their countries.
Which only proves that human beings across the globe can share many practices and also keep to their own special, even unique, ones, with no conflict at all. Just as the comic actor and novelist Steve Martin puts it in his most recent work, The Pleasure of My Company, "People, I thought. These are people. Their general uniformity was interrupted only by their individual variety." And not just individual but also innumerable group varieties. Both the attempt to make us all the same—the great fault of communism and other totalitarian ideologies—and that to keep us all different—which is what some of the modern subjectivist and deconstructionist schools promote—are off base.
Just think—most people around the globe communicate in language, write and speak it, yet these are different languages. They live in homes, yet their architecture varies enormously. The bulk get dressed every day but certainly their styles of dress are highly diverse. Cuisine, artistic styles, forms of dance—you name it, and it is both universal as well as incredibly varied.
Globalization, too, involves some practices that everyone would have to follow, without in the slightest depriving people of their individuality, cultural variety, personality types and so forth. All this is quite natural and there is no need at all for various lobby groups to butt in to make it work out their way. Not to mention the fact, stressed so nicely in Tyler Cowan's book, Creative Destruction, that there is so much interplay between all these different styles so that new ones come every day, while old ones disappear, all quite naturally.
Of course, the fact that people do wish to control how these matters proceed is also a fact of life, but it is not the same kind of difference as those mentioned above. In the cases of divers styles of dance, art, different languages and such, they came about spontaneously, at least often enough, without some dictator ordering how things should go. But when governments introduce protectionist measures, subsidies, price support programs and other restraints of trade, that’s different. Here we see the central uncivil element in human relations, the introduction of coercion, of some people forcing how others must behave. That is a difference that is insidious, hostile to human nature, not part of the natural pluralism of human life.
So what needs to be excluded from human affairs, the only thing the law should really worry about everywhere, is some people trying to take over the lives of others by compelling them to do as they would have them do. The rest will work out pretty well, with only the ordinary human failings upsetting matters, which cannot go very far without those perpetrating them having power over others.
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