Most young professionals are reasonably comfortable. If they can avoid the roads, most probably feel that globalization is a good thing.
There are, however, two areas in which globalization has played a darker role, having to do with unbridled capitalism and political corruption. And the two are related.
When Mongolia opened up to the world after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, it also opened itself up to new investment, especially in its vast stores of mineral wealth. A $5 billion dollar copper and gold mine is being constructed at the rich Oyu Tolgoi deposit in the Gobi desert, and a new rail line is coming from China. The plundering of Mongolian resources is moving at a breakneck speed.
Mongolians receive cash for this exploitation, of course. And it's easy to see where much of the money has gone. I counted six Lexus SUVs and two Hummers one evening while stuck in a traffic jam. Hermès and other luxury stores crowd the downtown area, and fine dining is available on rooftop restaurants. Gleaming new hotels eclipse the elegance of the Chinggis Khaan Hotel. Gated estates have emerged in the foothills east of the city.
It's also easy to see where the money has not gone. As bad as the city's roads are, in the countryside they collapse into muddy ruts. The main highway, the east-west trunk road, is one of the few that's been paved but it's already full of potholes. Most other roads are dirt trails across the plains.
Money is not going into social services either. The end of the socialist system also ended free health care, university education and guaranteed jobs. The masses of ger camps surrounding Ulaan Baatar are filled with the underemployed. In the countryside, people still live, as they have since the time of Chinggis Khaan, in gers alongside their goats, yaks and camels.
The government should be gaining from the resource development, and it does exact fees for licenses and mining operations. But where the money goes is a matter of contention.
One of the country's most prominent politicians, N. Enkhbayar, has been convicted on corruption charges and is serving prison time. He was accused of lining his pockets with bribery money and absconding with payments for mining rights. Even his supporters acknowledged the corruption. But all politicians were, they added, and he was no better or worse than the rest.
The hopes for democracy, when 20 years ago deans wanted to know how to elect their university president, have been replaced with patterns of crony capitalism. The university president is appointed by the Ministry of Education, and some claim that the choice can be influenced by a substantial bribe.
What happened in Mongolia has happened elsewhere in the world in the post-Cold War era of globalization. Two political systems have merged, and the Mongolian case exemplifies the worst features of both.
In the West, exploitation was tempered by democratic control, what theologian and intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr called the "countervailing power" of labor unions and government regulation. In Communist counties the autocratic rule of a managerial society was tempered by an ideology of social service and equality.
Today we see the merger of managerial socialism without the socialism and democratic capitalism without the democracy. It's the emergence of a managerial capitalism, a system with few checks or balances or controls.
Today's Mongolia demonstrates a trend found in other post-socialist countries and promoted in the political ideologies of American and European right-wing parties - a managerial capitalism bereft of democratic moderation or social aspiration. What it means for Mongolia, and for much of the world, is a future with plenty of cell phones, Facebook users and Lexus SUVs, but also with brown air, bad roads and astounding economic inequality.
