[Moridin]

Sorry, must have missed this post…reply below

But I think that individuals can take their own small steps away from globalisation, and towards supporting their own local economies. One such step might be to buy from local producers wherever possible – where I live in Brighton, for example, and over much of the UK, it is possible to order boxes of fresh fruit and veg in season from local farmers, rather than stuff that has been shipped from the US, or New Zealand. Certainly there are many products that cannot be produced here, mangoes and pineapples for example! we don’t see many of those growing hereabouts, and it makes sense to buy these luxury goods from where they come from. But to buy US potatoes when they are growing locally, that seems like madness to me. (Not to mention environmentally a disaster!). With other products - well, if I'm confronted with apples in a shop, then I'd always rather buy the UK ones than those from far away. Same goes for almost any product, really, unless the one from far away really does have a strong reason to buy attached to it

What does buying from your local economy have to do with globalization? Globalization is not about the destruction of local economies, it is not about running ma & pa shops out of business, it is not about replacing all locally grown and manufactured products with foreign products. Globalization is about making any product, no matter what it’s point of origin, available to anyone, anywhere that wishes to purchase it. Take for example my state of Minnesota in the US. We produce a lot of beef, much more than we can eat locally. Therefore we export much of it, not only in the US, but also to places like Japan and Taiwan. In this case, globalization has helped the local economy, not hurt it.

Naturally people will purchase produce which is grown locally, merely for the fact that it is fresher. It seems like you are for globalization, but do not realize it. What would we do if there were no globalization? Would we have electronics plants in every county to produce our radios and tvs, would we put a car manufacturer in every town so we could buy local cars, what about oil, gas, plastics…you cannot be against globalization and then turn around and in good faith use the products that are only available through globalization.

Also can you point out to me what the ‘environmentally a disaster’ refers to?

if it's fairly traded, for example. Fairly traded foodstuffs usually can't be produced in the UK anyway - bananas, coffee, tea etc.

Before you go out and purchase that next bunch of bananas perhaps you should read the article at the following link
Banana Trade
Very good example of the misinformation of the public on these issues. Be careful about how you use the words ‘fairly traded’!


------------------


Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time