The 6 perspectives "Rubik" model
Here I quote their main theses for the sake of brevity:
- "The Top Face of the Cube: Everybody Wins
According to some economists, if you think that globalization impoverishes countries and destroys communities, you have it all wrong. Sure, you may have lost your job because workers.
in other countries are paid less, but that is not at all different from losing your job because workers in the factory next door are more efficient or because technological progress has rendered your skills obsolete. The market is simply doing its work. You should improve your qualifications to get a better job; in the meantime, you still benefit from globalization since it gives you access to cheaper products. The process of adjustment may be hard at times, but it is a short- term cost that we have to accept in the interest of long- term prosperity. The end result will be a more efficient economy, lower prices, and more abundant consumer choice. In this view, the pushback against economic globalization by people who feel that they have lost out is simply a natural reaction to the creative destruction cycles.
We call this “everybody wins” view the establishment narrative, because it was the dominant paradigm for understanding economic globalization in the West in the three decades following the end of the Cold War. The view reflected a consensus of the main political parties in most Western democracies and beyond, and it has been espoused by many of the institutions that serve as the guardians of the international economic order, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the WTO. Many powerful actors still endorse this narrative, arguing that free trade not only increases prosperity but also supports other goals, such as promoting peace. Since the establishment narrative has been ruling the world and also represents the sunniest view of globalization, we visualize it as situated on the top of the cube.
The Four Sides of the Cube: Winners and Losers
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"The establishment narrative now finds itself besieged from all sides. Concerns about the impact of free trade on workers and the environment have bubbled up previously, but discontent with economic globalization tended to be suppressed in mainstream circles in the West. In the decade following the global financial crisis, however, narratives that highlight how economic globalization produces both winners and losers have returned to the center of political debate. These currents have pushed us off the sunny top of the cube, over the edges, and down to the four faces on the cube’s sides (Figure 1.2). Instead of relatively limited squabbles between the center- left and center- right
Proponents of the four challenger narratives do not necessarily contest that economic globalization has produced absolute economic gains at the aggregate level, whether measured nationally or globally. However, they focus on the distribution of those gains, both within and across countries, and derive much of their energy from channeling the disappointment, fears, and anger of the losers.
2. On the left of the political spectrum, we see two narratives that emphasize how gains from economic globalization have flowed upward to rich individuals and multinational corporations. The left- wing populist narrative focuses on the ways in which national economies are rigged to channel the gains from globalization to the privileged few.
Left- wing populism expresses itself in vertical hostility; its proponents stand up for the ordinary people who have lost out to the corrupt elite.
Whereas some proponents point the finger at chief executive officers (CEOs), bankers, and billionaires (the top 1 percent), others take aim at the educated professional class and the upper middle class more broadly (the top 20 percent).
Instead of singling out domestic elites, proponents of the corporate power narrative argue that the real winners from economic globalization are multinational corporations, which can take advantage of a global marketplace to produce cheaply, sell everywhere, and pay as little in taxes as possible.
The left-wing populist narrative zeroes in on domestic problems, highlighting the explosion of inequality within countries.
The corporate power narrative, by contrast, adopts a transnational approach and treats multinational corporations and the transnational working class as the key actors.
The two narratives are often intertwined in places such as the United States and the United Kingdom, where many on the left are broadly critical of owners of substantial capital, whether individual or corporate.
In many western European countries, by contrast, where levels of domestic inequality are lower, the corporate power narrative features more prominently, as was evident in the protests across Europe in 2015 and 2016 against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
3. In the right- wing populist narrative, workers, their families, and their communities lose from globalization, both economically and in a cultural sense.
This narrative’s emphasis varies in different countries. In the United States, where the loss of blue- collar jobs to China and Mexico has devastated manufacturing communities, the narrative has a strong anti- trade element.
In western Europe, anti- immigrant sentiment and concerns about a loss of sovereignty are central features of the narrative, whereas anxieties about the impact of international trade are less pronounced.
In the United Kingdom, for instance, many of those who voted for Brexit did not oppose free trade; they rebelled against what they perceived as dictates from the EU institutions in Brussels and longed to regain control over immigration.
The right-wing populist narrative shares with the left-wing version a deep distrust of elites, but the two narratives part company on what they blame the elite for.
whereas left- wing populists fault the elite for enriching themselves at the expense of the working and middle classes, right- wing populists denounce the elite for failing to protect the hardworking native population from threats posed by an external “other.”
The right- wing populist narrative thus has a strong horizontal us- versus- them quality, whether expressed through concern about protecting workers from the offshoring of jobs or guarding them against an inflow of immigrants who might compete for those jobs, live off the welfare system, or threaten the native community’s sense of identity.
The right- wing populist narrative also highlights geographical divisions within countries, such as the diverging fortunes of thriving cities
The geoeconomic narrative also focuses on an external threat, but of a different kind: it emphasizes economic and technological competition between the United States and China as great- power rivals.
Although the narrative features most prominently in America, it is gaining ground in other Western countries as well, where China is increasingly regarded as a strategic competitor and a potential security threat rather than merely as an economic partner. Instead of applauding trade and investment as enhancing economic welfare and increasing prospects for peace, the geoeconomic narrative emphasizes the security vulnerabilities created by economic interdependence and digital connectivity with a strategic rival.
Although both the right- wing populist and geoeconomic narratives emphasize external, horizontal threats, they differ in key ways.
The former focuses on cultural as well as economic losses, while the latter is more mindful of relative economic power of countries and its capacity to undergird political and military power.
The former primarily laments the loss of the manufacturing jobs of the past, while the latter focuses on winning the race in the technologies of the future, such as fifth- generation (5G) networks and artificial intelligence.
And the former targets Polish plumbers who undercut local workers, whereas the latter casts a critical eye on Chinese scientists and engineers who might steal Western technology.
"on the bottom face of the Rubik’s cube, we locate narratives that see all of us as at risk of losing from economic globalization in its current form. These narratives portray economic globalization as a source and accelerator of global threats, such as pandemics and climate change.
Some of these narratives focus on how global connectivity increases the risk of contagion, both of the viral and economic kind.
Others warn that the skyrocketing carbon emissions associated with the global diffusion of Western patterns of production and consumption are endangering both people and the planet.
Interesting comments and debate
Get the book
My Review of Six Faces of Globalization
The Rubik analogy is a rich and thought-provoking
framework to "frame" political and social reactions
toward globalization. The book presents five reactions to the "mainstream"
idea of globalization as "faces" or "sides" of the Rubik
cube. The Rubik analogy frames the analysis within certain constraints or pre-condition
that can help or hinder the search for practical problem-solving alternatives:
1. There
is no one "optimal" "win-win" but 6ⁿ possible
options. The Rubik model presents the non-zero-sum, "win-win"
option as "the establishment narrative" (two popular populist derogatory
terms) and "the dominant paradigm" (another). To find a "win-win"
option within the tangled Rubik model, all other facets must be fulfilled on
their terms -whether they might be objectively correct or wrong, feasible or
not. Everybody has to be happy to find a happy ending, or at least, the problem-solver
has to conciliate six positions at politically, ideologically, and socially odds
with each other.
2. All
six facets are presented antagonistically, which defeats the purpose of the
Rubik model, which has multiple collaborative solutions to "fill"
the six desired sides' optimal" (no facet can have "mixed" or
blended elements).
A All six "facets" in the Rubik model are political and ideological "narratives", not objective country/ industry ./ social segment, region objective P&L data
3. There
is a "lose-lose" mandatory option to solve all other five, and
Rubik's simplistic logic does not have a 'losing side."
The Rubik analogy is academically
and visually attractive but intrinsically drives to endless unsustainable "solutions"
unless there is an optimal "win-win," non=zero-sum alternative.
Such an alternative requires "mixing"
elements of each side
And also to have a "guiding
star": a solution that is not "a side" but a multi-dimensional "win-win"
optimal, like the Prisoners' Dilemma.
How about a Minimal Ideal Vision
(MIV) for a shared, sustainable human future?
That goes beyond quick fix
diplomacy and appeasement. We got one in 1945-48 after two World wars. And a
third, with the fall of the USSR.
We must find a new MIV or get entangled in an unsolvable, unstable mess of a self-made maze.
