World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It

Chapter Three

Borders, Differences, and the Law of Distance

THE LAST CHAPTER examined the cross-border integration of markets and concluded that the world economy is still only semiglobalized. This chapter digs into the barriers that underlie observed levels of cross-border integration—the borders, differences, and distances that still separate countries in our semiglobalized World 3.0. This chapter identifies the barriers that would have to be removed or reduced to increase integration—a possibility highlighted by the diagnosis of semiglobalization in chapter 2 and pursued further in chapter 4. It also indicates that instead of the Heideggerian vision of a world in which “everything is equally far and equally near,” countries are better thought ...