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Yergin and Stanislaw
point to the new free market policies in Britain and
in Asia as the beginning of a new global critique of
nation-state control over the economy. By the 1980s,
a new consensus in favor of markets is seen to have
replaced the Potsdam consensus in favor of governmental
regulation over the economy. In describing changes that
have occurred since the 1980s, Yergin and Stanislaw's
story shifts to the narrative of globalization.
Yergin and Stanislaw seek to explain the bewildering
pace of change brought about by globalization by considering
the way the world looked just a mere decade or two ago.
It is at this point that Yergin and Stanislaw's story
shifts to the plot of globalization in the contemporary
era. Yergin and Stanislaw are global business enthusiasts
who see globalization of markets establishing a new
set of ideas and opportunities for the twenty-first
century.
Yergin and Stanislaw's cheerful slant on the globalization
of market activity fails to recognize its serious cultural
downside - namely, the loss of commitment to a real
community. Indeed, it is the loss of commitment to the
community that gives Yergin and Stanislaw reason to
believe that the nation-states will be less significant
in the future.
What Yergin and Stanislaw fail to see is that the same
information technologies, which create the "woven
world" experience, can also bring about frightening
new opportunities for nation-state control over global
information markets. For example, the global technological-market
nexus for the first time gives governments of nation-states
the technological capability to coordinate nation-state
regulatory systems necessary for global regulation.
Yergin and Stanislaw never consider this potential,
which exists in the collection of web information about
individuals compiled through computer-generated dossiers,
case histories, and databases. The privacy-free state
at the heart of the libertarian conservative ideology,
which Yergin and Stanislaw attribute to the free market
of globalization, may turn out to be less free and libertarian
than they think.
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