Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World

Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World is a book by Benjamin Barber, which examines not only the economic, but cultural and religious aspects of globalization. He proposes one current of "a current narrowly conceived faiths against against every form of interdependence...against modernity itself as well as the future in which modernity issues. The second paints that future in shimmering pastels, a busy portrait of onrushing economic, technological, and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and and mesmerize people everywhere with fast music — MTV, Macintosh and McDonald's — pressing together into one homegeneous theme park....caught between Babel and Disneyland, the planet is falling precipitously apart and coming reluctantly together only at the very same moment.

Part I: the New World of McWorld

Virtual corporations are not just trite phrases but a real model, in which the ideal virtual labor is a robot. Full employment may be a national good, but it is not a corporate good. Business efficiency calls for downsizing, replacing permanent workers with temporary workers, robots, and subcontractors.

While firing permanent worker with benefits may have long-term negative benefits in reducing the consumer base, and short-term impacts on government and other sources of social services, most corporations have a short-term focus, and, if cost-cutting makes them more "lean and mean", their leaderships are rewarded.

Workforce cuts, however, are not completely irrational if technology, management methods, and economies of scale make individual workers more productive. Corporations, especially multinational, are simply not part of a social contract.

The Old Economy and the Birth of a New McWorld

===The Resource Imperative: the passing of autarky and the fall of the west