Weapons & Movies: The Consequences of Globalization

America’s industrial base is as ruined as an armadillo, splattered on the highway, its squashed and bloody carcass embedded with the tire tread of an 18-wheeler—an 18-wheeler carrying jobs south to Mexico, Asia, and points beyond. 

  

In fact, in America, there are only two industries that still consistently provide the country with a positive balance of trade: Weapons and movies. 

  

Everyone knows that Hollywood movies dominate the global marketplace—which is really surprising: Filmmaking is an almost pure value-added business. You need relatively little specialized equipment—the majority of the cost of a film production is labor. Because of this, you would think that a lot of other places—not just India—would have their own home-grown film industries, and that American movies would be just a small fraction of those markets. 

  

But films made in Hollywood, U.S.A., account for over half of worldwide ticket sales, both in dollars terms and in number of spectators—and this is excluding the U.S. domestic market. Insofar as films go, Hollywood California is where it’s at. 

  

Everyone also knows that America makes the best weapons—as well as the most. Estimates are that the United States accounts for 41% of the world’s foreign arms sales, $156 billion—dwarfing its closest competitor, Russia, which has 17% ($64 billion) of the pie, or France, with a mere 8% ($31 billion). (Source is here.) 

  

Apart from making the most—and selling the most—American weapons are the best: The most sophisticated, the most advanced—American weapons manufacturers are the Rolls Royces and Ferraris of death delivery systems. 

  

Why do these two industries dominate their respective global markets so completely? 

  

Industrial policy is the answer: The markeplace was not allowed to trample these industries. Flying directly in the face of the Globalization mantra, when it came to weapons and movies, their respective marketplaces were managed and cajoled, and directed so as to foment these two American industries. 

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