Chapter 19
Global trade

It is time to shatter the myth of competitive advantage, and therefore of massive free trade, by noting that in practice, this just amounts to favoring social and ecological dumping.
For this, let's give the floor again to Alain Supiot at the end of the 8th lesson of the series Legal figures of economic democracy, given at the Collège de France in 2017. He cites Maurice Allais, and his book Globalization and the destruction of jobs and growth: The empirical evidence : “The fact is that throughout the world, only a few small groups, and especially the leaders of multinationals, benefit from the globalization of economies. These groups have immense financial resources, and through intermediaries, they dominate all the media, press, radio and television. This is how, to a very large extent, the indoctrination of opinion is achieved. This is how we make people believe that globalization is inevitable, necessary and beneficial for everyone. »

Now, we saw at the beginning of this third part, more precisely in the paragraph 'Why limit the concentration of wealth?' of chapter 13, that the need for deregulated globalization is caused by the proliferation of non-production personnel, i.e. non-directly productive jobs, which we described in chapter 2 regarding Parkinson's law.
However, not only does deregulated globalization not limit the generalized nepotism associated with these jobs, and therefore the additional stress on all individuals, but in addition, it is a paradoxical remedy which aggravates the disease at the same time as it hides the short-term effects. Indeed, globalization is accompanied by a relocation of the proletariat towards Asia and Africa, which not only creates poverty there close to what Marx denounces, which we ignore with the greatest cynicism, but also, what we are not aware of, it simultaneously causes a veritable explosion of jobs that are not directly productive. So as emerging countries reintegrate design, management and marketing to meet the social aspirations of their population, we will find ourselves importing finished products, therefore losing the strong added value that we previously obtained. cheaply, and moreover, find ourselves with the result of years in which we did not fight effectively against the proliferation of useless and well-paid jobs that we will no longer have the means to finance.

Simply put, with the current system, our biggest future problem is not the financing of social protection for the most deprived, but the impossibility of financing the middle classes who have become accustomed to working in mythical sectors. and non-productive described in the article by Meyer and Rowan.
At the time of the Greek crisis of 2008, the world discovered that far from producing the expected economic recovery, the subsidies provided to Greece following its accession to the European Union had encouraged corruption. The same kind of phenomenon is happening with relocations from Europe and the United States to Asia and Africa: in appearance everything works better since there is growth and improvement in margins, but in reality, a progressive subversion of the production system takes place, which is not fought effectively because too many people find it in their immediate interest. In the context of relocation, the main problem is the multiplication of useless and well-paid jobs, while the only perceived one is the loss of industrial jobs.
A very important point to understand is that, currently, in the event of restriction at the level of a company or an administration, one could naively think that it is the non-directly productive jobs which are eliminated, and that the core profession is preserved. The reality is quite different, because the less the jobs are really useful, the more the individuals who exercise them spend energy maintaining their social position, therefore in intrigue to pass off as essential what is accessory, or relates to a general organization of the inappropriate activity. Parkinson shows very well how underemployed people create activity to justify maintaining their position. The method is generalized nepotism (chapter 2), which ultimately produces an exacerbation of struggles for social positions, as well as increasing pressure on operational staff. Cognitive dissonance also comes into play heavily at this level, in the form of lying to oneself. Indeed, because they forget to remove from their work justifying remuneration both what is in fact useless and what is plot-related, these people consider that they work a lot, therefore that their remuneration is justified.
However, even if we saw in chapter 13 that we propose to move towards a society where work will become more and more marginal, nevertheless, goods and services must be produced, certainly with maximum assistance of computing and robotics, but products all the same. In addition, it is important that each community can produce locally what can be produced locally, and in addition some other more specialized products or services, to be able to balance exchanges with other communities, and thus obtain access to the set of products and services which require a particularly large concentration of resources, therefore specialization and exchanges over greater distances. As a result, it will be very difficult to move cohorts from largely useless jobs into the new system, both because of their reluctance and because of their difficulty in finding a satisfactory place there.
In the end, whether we switch to the new system, or whether we remain in the current capitalist system, the multiplication of useless jobs formerly called bureaucracy, today generalized under the name 'bullshit jobs', noted by Parkinson , analyzed by Meyer and Rowan, and accelerated by relocations from the 1980s, is the biggest danger weighing on our economies. We don't have too many public services, but too many useless or not really useful jobs, in both the public and private sectors. Even if in the end you reject all the propositions in this book, if you understand this, then you will not have wasted your time!

Then comes the problem of exploiting raw materials. Currently, three systems exist. The first mainly concerns former colony countries where corruption has prevented the establishment of a political system making it possible to effectively take advantage of the resource, which is then plundered. The second concerns countries which have transformed their raw materials into rent. The third corresponds to China, which uses its raw materials to impose a de facto monopoly on processed products.
The subject of world trade should be to set a price and a stable rate of exploitation of raw materials, which provides a real benefit to the populations concerned, while limiting the temptation for other countries to ensure access to the resource. through the game of geopolitical influence.
Let us note, however, that the majority of current international agreements are established contrary to this objective. Indeed, they aim above all to ensure access to external markets, both in terms of goods and capital. However, we saw in the second part of this book that hyper-specialization is a bad idea: we must produce locally everything that can be produced with a reasonable level of productivity, and not carry out large-scale exchanges. only concerning what requires a significant concentration of resources. Indeed, it is both more ecological and more stable from a social point of view. Healthy international agreements will therefore be based on respect for common rules of access to raw materials, in exchange for access to international trade in products which require a significant concentration of resources. In other words, our vision is not that of an international market covering ever more products, and its corollary of an ever greater specialization of regions, and of the instability which occurs on a large scale, but that of an international market where the exchange of the few raw materials poorly distributed on the planet is balanced with the few products requiring a significant concentration of resources.

Anyone who reads only this chapter might conclude that what we are recommending is a return to protectionism. What is important to understand is that the limitation of exchanges, to be positive, must follow the implementation of the new organization of production presented in the previous chapters, with the aim of limiting the quest for power by limiting the size of organizations, therefore widespread nepotism and permanent stress on individuals. Conversely, a return to protectionism within the framework of the current capitalist system would result in an increase in generalized nepotism, in the form of an increase in agreements between actors in the same sector, and therefore ultimately greater stress on individuals. .