"The Great Expulsion: Uncovering the Cruel Truth of the Global Economy in the 21st Century" Post-reading Notes

Just finished watching Shakespeare. Sassen's book The Great Expulsion: Uncovering the Cruel Truth of the Global Economy in the Twenty-First Century. This book points out that in the context of economic globalization, or the trend of liberalism from the 1980s, a variety of phenomena have emerged. Essentially, as the title of the book, it is "expulsion".

What is expulsion? The author cites different examples from different countries, such as the unequal social distribution, which has led to a shrinking middle class, a wide gap between the rich and the poor, and high unemployment; the increasingly complex financial means has led to the collapse of credit and the inability of ordinary people to repay their property loans; Due to factors such as taxation, subjugation and tyranny, foreign mergers and acquisitions of land to develop economies of scale, government deficits are increasing and social functions are decreasing due to the "strong branches and weak branches". As a result, large-scale "losers" are driven out of their original homes and lost. After losing their original socio-economic status, they are displaced and hopeless. Those who take the risk are even more imprisoned. As the "customer source" and cheap labor of private prisons, they are imprisoned and driven indefinitely;

In addition to man, the natural world has also become the object of expulsion. In the era of economic globalization, land in developing countries is more likely to be acquired, resulting in the merger of agricultural land to develop large-scale farms with a single crop, and the soil force is more likely to be exhausted. In addition to agricultural land, similar situations also occur in mining, energy, In terms of industry, water use, etc., fishing is exhausted, and soil and water are depleted. "A part of the biosphere is being driven out of the space of life—turning into dead soil and dead water," the author said. Moreover, this trend goes hand in hand with the aforementioned expulsion of people. Therefore, the author believes that these kinds of expulsion do not come from individual wills, but from "predatory formations", "increasingly, those who oppress others are a complex system, combining individuals, networks, and machines, There is no obvious center.” “… is actually a convergence of larger institutional changes. The name of the drive for change is 'the way the economy works'; a concept that dates back to the 1980s and is now global.” By It can be seen that the author has great reservations about the thinking logic of the liberal economic concept implemented by governments in various countries since the 1980s, focusing on private efficiency, reducing government functions as much as possible, cutting welfare expenditures, and advocating the growth of economic GDP data. And the whole set of "expulsion" mentioned above, intentionally or unintentionally, acted under the control of the above-mentioned logic. Expulsion is very different from the “inclusion” under the Keynesian model dominated by infrastructure in the 1980s.

My impression is that the current development, whether it is unfair distribution, the disparity between the rich and the poor, etc., is accelerating the social division, and various terms have arisen, such as the Matthew effect, the winner takes all, the strong eats the weak, and in recent years the so-called "" "Lying flat", etc., are all products of this trend. Social differentiation is somewhat similar to the stratification of water. Without the agitation of external forces, the lighter ones float up, while the heavier ones settle down. From a historical perspective, the current situation has its own rhythm, land mergers, social contradictions intensified, the government's tax base is shaken, and it is increasingly incapacitated, which eventually leads to political instability and social disintegration. In light of the past, if the current trend continues, the world may indeed be heading for disintegration. There is a time of birth and a time of cessation, these are the stages that everything must go through.