Poop:

You're right, the political class had been pushing for globalization for decades without adequately supporting the inevitable domestic losers. I believe the reason the isolationists tended to arise on the right is because how moralizing the left had become. There are certainly people who are isolationists due to racism, but then anyone who took issue with the way globalization was unfolding was being told they're racist.

I should also point out that the right is culpable for this situation as well, as they quietly accepted racists into their ranks for decades.

Anyways, how the parties aligned historically isn't of much relevance-- due to their respective constituent parts, the seismic realigning that's been happening has tended to break in the direction of the right being isolationists. There were murmurs of isolationism on the right, and when it picked up steam, there wasn't a cudgel for the political class to check it with; on the left there was the accusation of racisms, which drove non racists to the right. The corporatists on the right lost control of the ship because their only argument, free market capitalism, rings hollow for people who are losing due to free market capitalism.

A lot of anti-globalisation is coming from racists and xenophobes imo. Most other people don't care if there's a world economy or not, except inasmuch as it affects their own prosperity.


Yeah, no. I think 10 years ago isolationists were likely mostly racists and xenophobes, but today it's become abundantly clear that globalization does have dramatic local effects on the poor, working class, and lower middle class.

As far as having a service-based economy versus a manufacturing-based one goes, I'd prefer the former myself. Not sure why people have such nostalgia about factory assembly line jobs, like these were some kind of dream job. I'd rather let other countries do the semi-skilled jobs and us do the jobs that pay better, are more interesting to do, and require some kind of education.


It's not that a service based economy is bad, but transitioning to one in a haphazard way is bad. It's like the early years of the industrial revolution before child labor laws were enacted. Previous child labor was standard. You worked on your families farm, in your families mill, etc as soon as you could-- it made sense in a predominantly agrarian economy, but it resulted in unconscionable conditions in an industrialized economy.