A Tricky Balance

The other day, David Simon—creator of HBO’s The Wire and former writer for the Baltimore Sun—came to speak to the Johns Hopkins and greater Baltimore communities about his thoughts on the state of the media in America. Surprisingly, given the changes that the Internet and digital cable have brought in expanding the variety of options people have, Simon was quite pessimistic. He painted a depressing picture of the media (one of the beauties of HBO is the fact that no one has to worry about commercials and how the viewers will react to a commercial break). On a larger scale, however, he was pessimistic about the future of the city that he loves and, to an extent, the country.

Why does Simon, known more for the unique characters and plotlines he devises in The Wire than for his political savvy, believe Baltimore is headed (or already in the midst of) a downward spiral? According to him, it is no longer guaranteed—as he thinks was the case fifty years ago in this city—that people who work hard and honestly will be better off than their parents and grandparents were. Industries (like some revolving around the longeshoremen in the Baltimore ports that Simon covers in Season Two) are going by the wayside, and there don’t appear to be replacements at the ready.

Technology and globalization were two of Simon’s reason for the stated trend. With cheaper labor elsewhere and mechanized labor in other places, it has become easier and easier to lay workers off and replace them with others in other countries. Globalization has obviously been a big boon for the world (and certainly most Americans); we can buy more goods at cheaper prices, and our quality of life has risen accordingly. Thanks to globalization, most members of American society can do things we never could have dreamed of in the yesteryear to which Simon refers. In addition, many members of world society have prospered and owe their newfound wealth to what Thomas Friedman would call the “flattening” of the world.

But what about those other people, right here in our own cities, our own country? What are we to do with those who can’t hold on and are living in an endless cycle of poverty and despair? One answer might be to just let them go, but that seems—to me at least—to be too easy. The question, then, is what do we do, and how do we balance our desire for a globalized world with the need to protect our own country’s citizens? Or do we actually need to, if we truly consider all human beings equal? Is there a difference between hardworking man in Nairobi and a man looking for employment in Baltimore? To be honest, I’m not sure, but it’s a question that we as citizens of the United States (but also of the world) will have to grapple with in the 21st century.