Globalization or Nationalization

OP-ED

There is no shortage of questions nowadays, but there is a paucity of answers. For instance, which is more dangerous: the microbe on the offensive or us on the defensive? To compensate the sense of uneasiness here, we at least know that the government and our medical corps have our vital interests at heart.

Although the current situation has turned our conventional judgments on their head, it is still expeditious to carry on thinking of our post-viral economic life. After all, our curiosity lies not in the onetime defeat of the virus, but in keeping it away forever. As trivial as it may sound, the most effective driver of our wellbeing is our ability to manufacture a product that lavishly and profitably sells worldwide. Another way of qualitative survival is our self-efficiency, meaning indigenous production and consumption of all the goods and services needed to live on.

If the globalized world is still functional despite the scary pandemic, then consideration of the former makes sense, although the latter sounds practicable too. That said, Georgia must not concentrate on the prospect of dominance of only one of these two vectors of development: global and local. Georgia should focus on both likelihoods, globalized and nationalized economies.

In principle, being part of the globalized economy would be impossible without enhancing the national capacity for producing globally sellable products. National economies in general have a propensity to merge, thus increasing the reciprocal flow of goods, exchange of services, cadres and ideas, sharing capital and dispatching other aptitudes and facilities across their frontiers. While we are still constrained within the limits of the global quarantine and enjoy plenty of time for overall contemplation, let us try to look into the future, making some educated assumptions in favor of the once failed and insolvent state, and let us embark on the decisions that might work to the best of the nation’s advantage.

To put this more succinctly, we are in bad need of new ways of looking at reality and the tricks of the trade and the bricks it is built from because we continue living, breathing, eating, drinking, sweating, having children and bringing them up, burying our dead and taking care of our sick.

At this time of grandiose alterations and alternatives, we need to know as much as possible, because informational privilege is the mother of competitive advantage. Let us therefore, at the moment of this induced surfeit of leisure, give more thought to the way the world works; let us study the whims and appetites of the potential investors into our hungry-for-new-blood economy; let us research the demands of our presumable clients around the globe; let us also better understand the most valuable local consumers; let us reconsider the psychology of money, brooding over the good and the evil it usually brings; let us involve the entire nation in the system of lifelong education, thus taking care of skills fit for our incipient dealings with the rest of the world; and most importantly, let us improve our knowledge of the English language: today’s international lingua franca; let us not give up on anything that might be helpful now and right after we are done with this treacherous infection. If as a result, we find ourselves capable of producing something that the world is asking for, our people’s ability to serve the nation and the world will be enhanced tremendously, which will gradually be translated into our increasing productivity and higher salaries for all of us in Georgia.

You see how easy it is to make good use of a viral pandemic? I love the long-awaited virus so much! Doesn’t it look like genuine salvation? Yes, salvation, not annihilation! And this is just another viewpoint that deserves our deliberation. Down with the unnerved hibernation! Long live the notion of making the best out of the worst that humankind is now faced with! Ahead might be an era of wonderful opportunities for the world economy and the economy of this country. Colossal changes might already be on their way which might turn out to be absolutely stupendous. Who knows?!       

Op-Ed by Nugzar B. Ruhadze