Open societies under siege all over the world

WHEN, in 1993, Hamid Biglari left his job as a theoretical nuclear physicist at Princeton to join McKinsey consulting, what struck him was that "companies were displacing nations as the units of international competition". This seemed to him a pivotal change. International corporations have a different lens. They optimise globally, rather than nationally. Their aim is to maximise profits across the world - allocating cash where it is most beneficial, finding labour where it is cheapest - not to pursue some national interest.

The shift was fast-forwarded by advances in communications that rendered distance irrelevant, and by the willingness in most emerging markets to open borders to foreign investment and new technologies.

Hundreds of millions of people in these developing countries were lifted from poverty into the middle class. Conversely, in Western societies, a hollowing out of the middle class began as manufacturing migrated, technological advances eliminated jobs and wages stagnated.