This is The International Week. Day 2.
There will be a short text here every day. Do follow me for finding a language defending very basic ideological and intellectual groundwork for internationalism!
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By any economic measure – any! – international cooperation and open trade has created prosperity everywhere.
Downsides? Oh, many. Environmental concern. Exploitation of rural areas where locals don’t get enough of the revenue from the mine, the plantation, the fishing industry.
But – imagine instead a world where all you eat in Norway is fish and potatoes and all you eat in China is rice and grapefruit. Imagine a world where lack of consumer choice and competition leaves us with more expensive things at lower quality and where poor areas of the world remain poor forever.
Also? You don’t have to just ”imagine” it. You can study history. It has been tried. Isolationism, communism, tariffs… It doesn’t work. It is as simple as that.
The future is about us talking, interacting, trading, making mutually beneficial deals. And we can make it hands on: It is the commodities that creates the common ground. The clothes. The food.
Here is my idea for the day: Have a meal tonight that is cross-over. Combine your Swedish meatballs with some French fries and some kimchi, or whatever the hell else you want. Find the common ground, identify the difficulties. Negotiate the meal. It all has one purpose:
To make strangers less strange.
