Americanization, Westernization, and Modernization

I received a comment yesterday from a reader who said that the US couldn’t compete with India and China because those countries do not have westerns standards. I disagree. I think that the idea that China and India are not competing fairly and it is for that reason that the US should fear them is just erroneous and more important based on a view of the world that is ethnocentric. I am not arguing that there aren’t such things as human values and that human rights don’t matter because some countries have different traditions. I am arguing that the United States will never be able to make China and India apply its standards on areas such as labor and that even if it could, China and India would not be able to apply those standards. The key here is to make it possible for the people within that country to negotiate and to reach a bargain that work for employees, entrepreneurs and consumers. The standards that we have here get their legitimacy from the fact that they weren’t impose by another country but were negotiated, and bargained for by American workers and American businesses. I have been reading a fascinating article on Dubai and on the changes that are happening in that small part of the Middle East. It is a monarchy and yet, it is putting a lot of money into trying to make it a force in the region. Dubai is never going to be Western and yet, it is trying to be modern by liberalizing the economy and by giving more freedom to its citizens. Are going to say to Dubai that it will never be able to own anything of value in the United States unless it becomes Monaco? What does it say about the West when every time a country is not Western, succeeds in reaching the delicate balance between modernity and tradition that the argument becomes that it has to stop trying to find that balance and to start Westernize. Globalization cannot be about westernization or about Americanization otherwise we are really going to have a clash of civilizations between those who want the freedom to choose and those who want the freedom to resist in the name of tradition and/or religion.