ABSTRACT
There is no such thing as “globalization.” Almost no market or public good is really “global,” in the sense of covering the full area of the earth’s “globe.” Not even the Gregorian calendar is universally shared; it was enacted by the Pope in the late sixteenth century, but was only much later accepted in most parts of the world, and still now the Moslem and the Persian calendars are regularly used in certain areas. Also weights and measures are still diverse; the USA, for instance, officially adopted the decimal metric system in 1971, but Americans do not care very much. Perhaps the only really worldwide public goods are the world map and the World Wide Web – which are both provided independent of empires, states or nations.
