Localization: A Global Manifesto

Rating:
Summary: Demonstrably wrong
Review: Apply the same logic to trade within nations (or between individuals) and you see how silly it is. Would Birmingham or New Orleans be better off if they became "self-reliant" and reduced trade with other cities? Would you be better off if you became self-reliant and made your own shoes & clothes, did your own plumbing, cured your own illnesses, and gathered your own food, rather than trading your labour in return for the services of a competent shoemaker, tailor, plumber, doctor and grocer? Of course not. You would become extremely poor and would be lucky not to starve to death within a few weeks.

By definition, a trade only takes place if both buyer and seller expect to benefit. This principle does not change just because the number of trades is very large or they happen to cross international borders. Therefore prohibiting companies and individuals in 3rd world countries from trading with the west is equivalent to prohibiting them from improving their economic position.

Read Bastiat's "Economic Fallacies", and you'll find that most of Hines' points were refuted over 150 years ago.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting about localization as opposed to globalization.
Review: Mr Hines has written an interesting book about localization as opposed to globalization. It may not be quite as good as Michael Shuman's Going local, but Hines gives us a viable alternative to the hypercapitalism which pits Third Worlds countries against each other in the race for foreign investments. ... there is an alternative to pro-trade economy, see for example Herman Daly (Beyond growth) or Hernando de Soto (The mystery of capital) for an excellent overview of why trade is not a road to proper development.

There is no spoon.

Rating:
Summary: Fast track to penury
Review: This is a confused book that attacks free trade and proposes instead an economic programme inelegantly termed 'localisation'. The kindest thing I can say about it is that its economic criticisms of globalisation are based on an extraordinary misconception.

The author spends much time castigating economic liberalism's supposed cult of 'competitiveness', which he rejects as destructive of Third World living standards, the environment, and the rest of the 'radical chic' catechism. But economic liberals, and orthodox economists more widely, don't believe in 'competitiveness' as a national objective at all. On the contrary, they have nothing but scorn for the notion: competition takes place among companies, not among nations. (See Paul Krugman's book Pop Internationalism if you doubt this.) The rationale of trade is not to compete but to allow specialisation (what economists term 'comparative advantage').

The benefits of trade are evidenced by the massive economic gains made by south-east Asia in the past 40 years. At the same time the strategy of 'localisation', which Hines supposes is novel, has been tried in the form of import substitution and indicative planning in such economic basket cases as Tanzania. Hines's proposal is the surest way of keeping the Third World in abject and deepening poverty, and is opposed by Third World governments. It is, in short, colonialist in its purest form of imposing western preferences on developing countries. Don't bother buying the book: try genuine economists such as Krugman, Jagdish Bhagwati and Diane Coyle instead.