Global trade is a Faustian Pact

The world has not gotten better because we're all able to buy more cheap stuff.

Cheap stuff increasingly pollutes the planet; it hasn't eliminated poverty; and it replaces living-wage jobs in rich countries with Dickensian ones elsewhere.

But the most pernicious effect is that we no longer have any HUMAN connection with our goods. Everything is now produced by nameless, faceless automatons thousands of miles away.

We have a name for this: We call it Progress.


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I wrote this to the NYTimes in response to this editorial.