Deviant Globalization

Forwarded from Randall – “an address on "the Global Illicit Economy" by Nils Gilman to the European Futurists Conference last month. In it he sketches the outlines of what he calls "deviant globalization:"” Well worth watching here.

Nils scopes out an overview of deviant globalization (the “global illicit economy”) with examples from human organ harvesting to narcotics to software and shipping. From those examples he builds a few principles of how this global economy works.

Nils seems to have two main points. First, crackdowns and uneven global regulation serve to create opportunities, drive innovation and professionalize deviant industries. He uses malicious software development in Brazil and anti-drug policing in the US as examples, among others.

Second, Nils postulates that professionalized deviant economies create powerful non-state actors (e.g., “big men”, “tribal leaders”, “business networks” etc.) that take over sovereign state activities such as providing security, black market health care services etc. Tribal leaders in Nigeria are an excellent example of this. Ultimately, Nils believes these deviant non-state actors present a real threat to legitimate sovereign states. So much so, that in the future the delivery of traditional state goods and services (again, security, education, social welfare etc.) in developed nations might end up resembling today's so-called “failed states” and not the other way around.

There’s a lot there to react to. The first overarching point makes a lot of intuitive sense, but begs the question what to do about it. Specifically:

• While there might be subsets of the deviant economy it makes sense to decriminalize (many would say narcotics), are there effective vs. ineffective ways to do so?
  
• Are the pragmatic difficulties in regulation and policing an adequate argument that all of these activities should be decriminalized? Of course not. One could use Nils' same logic to argue that outlawing homicide professionalizes the “hit man” economy, with all of the same unforeseen negative externalities of other deviant economies. Even if that were so, it is not an adequate argument to decriminalize. Other examples that anyone with a grounding in Judeo-Christian ethics and liberal democracy would surely include are: selling organs, human trafficking, malicious software development etc.
  
• Given that, are there examples of regulatory and policing actions that do work? Examples of cross-border state cooperation that are effectively retarding the development of deviant economic flows? Are there ways to use the same principles of globalization to effectively align incentives against these deviant economies?

The second argument – that deviant economies create “tribal leaders” or "business groups" which threaten to supersede the functional role of sovereign states – also has much to react to:

• Nils' implicit assumptions about the role of sovereign states seems pretty expansive in the first place. I’m not sure I have a problem with non-state actors (e.g., churches are a specific example Nils mentions) providing social welfare and education. With the proper checks and balances, a lot of security and infrastructure development could be effectively subcontracted out to corporations as well. The point here is that Nils has created a bit of a straw man for the de facto functional role of sovereign states that “giving up” might not be a bad thing.
• Second, before deviant actors and tribal leaders take on too powerful a role in global life, I presume an equally strong reaction to strengthen governments (even at the expense of individual liberties) would take place. This is analogous to the world Hobbes was living in when he wrote the Leviathan (warring, tribal factions, little security, continual threat of upheaval etc.). While we might drift back towards a nastier, shorter, more brutish existence, the Leviathan (e.g., strong government) would presumably push back. Again, we see this today when we look at the response of the Bush administration to global terror – increased wire tapping, less civil liberties etc.