It is not surprising that trust in governments across the world is at a low ebb - Andy Brown

When Britain became the first industrial country it enjoyed a golden age of rapid economic growth that made a lot of people richer. That growth also came with significant problems such as child labour, polluted rivers, crowded poor quality housing, disease and extremes of wealth and poverty. Gradually the national government stepped in and introduced measures which protected people from those excesses and provided more secure lifestyles with good quality education and health care for all.

Much of the first part of that experience has been repeated with globalisation. Not enough of the second half has.

Child labour and appalling factory conditions have returned. They take place in sweatshops in countries like Bangladesh where luxury fashion items are produced by people working flat out in dangerous conditions for a pittance.

A lot of pollution has also become internationalised. Waste clothing is shipped around the world to end up in mountains of rubbish in Chile. A thin layer of microplastics has covered the entire planet. It can be found at the bottom of the deepest oceans and in the bodies of everyone alive today. Those who produce that pollution pay nothing towards the cost of the consequences.

Climate change is another direct outcome of a careless approach to global outcomes of individual gains from exploiting fossil fuels. Some very unpleasant regimes like Putin’s Russia or Saudi Arabia are making a lot of money out of destabilising the climate.

Efforts by individual governments to try and control extremes of wealth and poverty have become increasingly ineffective. Any nation state that puts up income taxes on the very wealthy risks watching that money simply being moved offshore by clever accountants.

Economic changes like artificial intelligence have a dangerous tendency to move income away from middle and lower income people and direct it into the hands of those who control the equipment or the licences for the software. No computer ever took home a salary but it can take your job and leave you struggling whilst lining the offshore bank account of a small minority of very rich people who control the equipment.

Some of those incredibly well-off people have achieved incomes that stagger the imagination and exceed any conceivable need they might have. Those who are struggling to maintain standards of living that were once taken for granted in the wealthier countries are seeing little of that wealth trickle down.

In such circumstances it is not entirely surprising that trust in governments is at a low ebb. Instead of being seen as providers of useful services like council housing, reliable health care and a pension towards the end of your life, many now feel that their government does little to help them. National governments don’t seem to understand what has happened in the real world nor show much capability to fix the problems.

The prime cause of this is that we have a global economy but we don’t have any effective global management of it. Nor do we have any meaningful ability to ensure that global action takes place to address international environmental challenges which are becoming increasingly pressing.

That gives rise to a sense of powerlessness which is fuelling a rise in extremism and has left many so desperate for different leadership that they would rather believe the illogical stream of self-serving lies coming out of the mouth of Donald Trump than trust their own government to take their problems seriously.

In such circumstances it is necessary to think and act both globally and very locally. It is at the most local level that it is possible to take actions that have a direct impact on people’s lives through such things as improved social housing, better education and better health care.

The more difficult challenge is to think and act globally. If we are not careful, more and more wealth is going to be sucked into fewer and fewer hands and we will find the Elon Musks of this world controlling even more of what happens in our lives.

The biggest lie of the past 50 years is that markets will always and everywhere succeed in solving problems and delivering resources to where they are needed. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Currently they are delivering far too much power and control to a very few wealthy individuals, corporations and oil states.

A ndy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.