Science & Tech Quote by Jeffrey Sachs

Sachs is doing something sly here: he’s laundering a political argument through the language of inevitability. “Deep trend” is the key phrase, a rhetorical sinkhole that swallows agency. It implies globalization wasn’t primarily a set of contested choices - trade treaties, deregulation, labor arbitrage, the design of the WTO - but a geological force. If you’re looking for the intent, it’s to reframe globalization as structural rather than ideological, which conveniently narrows who can be blamed for its wreckage and who gets to claim credit for its gains.

Then comes the tell: “technology and right ideas.” Technology is the classic alibi, the neutral engine that makes outcomes feel natural. “Right ideas” is the moral payload. Sachs isn’t just describing the spread of markets; he’s defending the intellectual architecture behind them: liberalization, comparative advantage, integration as a path to development. The phrase carries a quiet rebuke to critics who treat globalization as an elite project; he’s saying it was also an argument that won on the merits, not just on power.

Context matters because Sachs sits at the fault line: the post-Cold War triumphalism that promised convergence, followed by the backlash that linked globalization to inequality, hollowed-out industries, and political anger. This line reads like a preemptive clarification from someone trying to rescue the pro-globalization case without denying its turbulence. It’s an economist’s move: shift the debate from villains to vectors, from outrage to mechanisms - and, by doing so, keep the policy conversation inside the bounds of what feels “realistic.”