Review - One World

Peter Singer is a controversial philosopher (see Wikipedia for a summary of his work and what he's stirred up). I won't be getting into the problematic parts of his writing; instead, this is a review of his 2002 book, One World: The Ethics of Globalization. Coming off reading The World Is Flat, I was interested to see another take on globalization.

I like philosophy, though I can hardly claim to have any expertise in it. There is value in carefully making arguments, in precisely defining words, even when the conclusions derived are unremarkable. The problem is that this kind of thinking can easily lurch into sophistry, or a self-conscious kind of satisfaction with a well-constructed, if empty, argument.

Some of One World can be seen as the latter. Worse yet is the suspicion that Singer is working toward a pre-chosen conclusion. The whole book is encapsulated on p. 171:

...the complex set of developments we refer to as globalization should lead us to reconsider the moral significance we currently place on national boundaries. We need to ask whether it will, in the long run, be better if we continue to live in the imagined communities we know as nation-states, or if we begin to consider ourselves as members of an imagined community of the world....Our problems are now too intertwined to be well resolved in a system consisting of nation-states, in which citizens give their primary, and near-exclusive, loyalty to their own nation-state rather than to the larger global community, and such a system has not led to a great enough will to meet the pressing needs of those living in extreme poverty.

This is, I think, the crux of everything that comes before and after, and, had this been stated at the beginning, would save a lot of reading time. Each of the four major issues discussed by Singer (climate change, the economy as regulated by the World Trade Organization, human rights, and foreign aid) have a logical "solution" if seen as the result of global decision-making. In each case, those who have less should be given something by those who have more, and that transfer should be mediated by some global group.

There are any number of people who have been disturbed by the dominance of decision-making by the nation-state. And many of them have been led to believe that some form of world government will be necessary to deal, at least, with cross-border issues. One of my favorite writers and teachers, Isaac Asimov, advocated that (a summary of his thinking can be found here), and he was certainly not alone.

I'm not going to fully explore my feelings on this subject today. It is fairly clear that we need something more than good intentions to resolve issues that cut across borders, and I have doubts that the United Nations is equipped to take on that role. At the same time, adjudicating transfers from rich to poor in an equitable way requires systems that do not currently exist, and I frankly don't know how we get there.

When Singer talks about the necessity of a country as rich as the United States to give foreign aid to a poor country like, say, India, he blows past a raft of problems that seem insurmountable, certainly politically, especially at a time when India seems to be on the rise (largely with our help). Laissez-faire doesn't seem effective when dealing with an issue like global warming, but we have a long way to go before we can establish some omniscient body to figure out who gets how many carbon emissions.

Since my own thoughts are so ill-formed, I'll just confine myself to commenting on One World. As I stated above, the book really does just boil down to justifications for Singer's idea that there has to be global control of global issues. If you already believe that, this book may give you some small extra justification. If you don't believe that, if you think that his four issues (and others) can be resolved within the current framework of self-interested nation-states, Singer's arguments will almost certainly not convince you.