Timothy Weber wrote:

> I find the global village concept attractive as well.  I was raised in
> America by Americans to believe that Americans are generally
> overprivileged and ought to do more to give back to the rest of the world.

By the way, I did not mean to imply that *only* Americans value the lives of 
their countrymen above those of other countries. Nothing could be further 
from the truth. Everybody does it.

Nor did I mean to say that *all* Americans think that way. But I watch the 
news, and I see the casualty figures for the most recent war -- and every 
dead American soldier is accounted for. There's no running total for dead 
Iraquis. I also see Russian news agencies reporting the number of Russian 
dead in a recent disaster; the news on Telemundo and Galavision is about 
dead Mexican miners, or the trapped Mexican climbers.

[snip]

>> Given this definition of "neighbor", your definition of the primary 
>> purpose
>> of a business takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it?
>
> First, I wouldn't say it's my definition, just one possibility.  It's
> one that's attractive to me, for sure.
>
> Second, while it's attractive to think of the world as a global village,
>  that concept can't replace the concept of the "real" village.  To me,
> diverse culture is a good thing, and it starts with local culture, in
> the real village - i.e., the people you physically see and interact with
> day to day.

The question is, where do you draw the boundary? Who lives in your village? 
Defining the boundary using the criterion of "physical contact" has 
interesting implications.

Does that mean that you should try to produce everything locally, using only 
people that you physically interact with? Obviously, your company can't 
produce everything it needs, so it cannot really be the village. Ok, so --  
same neighborhood? Same city? State? Country? Where do you draw the line?

[snip]
>  That is, human-designed abstractions have a way of collapsing when you
> lean on them in unexpected ways.
>
> Examples: Virtual online communities enable unprecedented cross-cultural
> contact; they also can give rise to bewilderingly violent arguments that
> would never happen if the antagonists were looking at each other in
> physical space.

And yet I think the benefit of virtual communities far outweighs their 
drawbacks. I find that I can express myself much better through the written 
(typed) word, and I can have a positive exchange of ideas with far more 
people, than I could in "real" life.

Take this discussion for example: would you call it bewilderingly violent? I 
think after the initial intoxicating feeling of freedom and impunity, people 
tend to come to their senses and realize that online discussions are not 
much different from the ones taking place in real life, and that if you want 
respect, you must give respect to others. In time, my "online" self starts 
to sound more like my "real" self.

>  Money is tremendously useful as a marker for value;
> confusing it with value - or treating it as the only value - has caused
> continuous trouble since its invention.  The rise of corporations,
> nations, and international organizations has allowed humans to
> coordinate their individual actions into incredible power; servicing the
> needs of these abstractions over the needs of the humans in them has
> squandered that power in wars and other conflicts.  SPICE simulators... 
> Etc.

Not too long ago, I too came to the realization that "it's all about 
people". Too much focus on the abstract leads to bad things -- compare the 
French revolution with its abstract ideas, to the American revolution with 
its emphasis on the rights of the individual.

However, you can't deny the value of money as a tool. And, as many other 
tools, it can be used to benefit or harm the humans.

> The real, physical village provides substantial social benefits to its
> members.  The global village made up of neighbors who have never seen
> each other and who interact only via abstractions may also have some
> benefits, but we need to be careful not to trust it to behave just like
> the real village.
>
> This is a complex topic and I think I can't shoehorn my views on it into
> a reasonable PIClist post...  "Think globally, act locally" points to
> it, but is almost uselessly general...
>
> I'll just assert the value of BOTH global equity AND working with people
> in the flesh whose kids play soccer with your kids.

I'm sure there are lots of people who are close to you geographically, whom 
you have never met personally. If you're a CEO, and your company is big 
enough, you may never meet some of your employees, and your kids will never 
play soccer with theirs. So why does it matter whether the worker lives in 
your town, or on another continent? People everywhere have families, 
children, and dreams of a better future.

Think of "outsourcing" a job to another country, as freeing up local 
resources for jobs where they can be used in a more productive way. Then 
some guy from Japan or Korea may decide to expand his company into San Diego 
or Montgomery, Alabama -- and use the local labor to design cell phones, or 
build automobiles. Wouldn't that more fun, than stuffing boards?

Vitaliy 

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