[Norman Ball]

Well if national borders have outlived their usefulness (and boy is that a mouthful worthy of a referendum or two), let's call off the G20 confab of national leaders. No matter how effectively it's been sold under more palatable auspices, ever-larger (and more bureaucratically remote) 'centralisms' simply won't deliver more democracy.

Capital wants a manageable flatland of seven billion ATM card carriers. Variegation, community character, ethnic distinction, borders, etc. impede optimal capital flows. Borders start wars, we keep hearing. Not so fast. Boom-bust cycles inflame people causing border frictions which start wars. War's an economic phenomenon, the last cycle in a secular trend when the planet finds itself gorged on unsustainable debt, precisely as it is now. The complication today is that we have existential warriors who view life as a niggling waystation. Anyway, those are your two in extremis factions: multinationals and jihadists. Neither camp is predisposed to idiosyncracy; one wants unwavering belief, the other, undifferentiated Return On Capital. The rest of us (99%?) are in the middle. It's a big middle.

By contrast, localism is thorny, unyielding, and all-too human. One neighborhood ends. Another begins. And you can feel the difference, the boundaries between sensibilites and communities. Human environs are chockful of starts and stops. This makes them both capital-inefficient and too heterogenous for radical monotheism. Perfect. I'll take it.

But don't believe me. Take a look at Nemo's NYC 'gentrification' pictures. That's a microcosm of the 'bad globalization' process. Chain stores. Dull gray economies of scale. Erased character. People don't live on an aggregated globe. They live in neighborhoods with weather, traffic jams, school referendums and corner stores. This whole globalism gig is catnip for megalomaniacs and completely excised of authentic human coordinates.

But I'm down with the Pope's polyhedron for which he clearly earns his hat.