Monday, April 26, 2010

Globalization

From what I’ve read, globalization should hardly even be considered a problem. On the surface, there sounds nothing wrong with the world’s countries integrating their economies in order to increase foreign trade and spread newly discovered knowledge and technology. In fact, it seems like that without globalization, humans would not be able to advance our understandings and technologies at an increasingly rampant rate.
Unfortunately, there is a downside to globalization. For example, many people worry about companies outsourcing jobs from one country to a third world country thus the company saves money on paying their employees while jobs are taken from the original country. And with the unemployment rate relatively higher than normal, many people are becoming worried for their jobs thus there are surprisingly many vocal opponents for globalization. For this reason, I view globalization as a benefit for the greater good: the spread of knowledge, technology, and economic integration is worth a few people losing their jobs.
It does seem somewhat silly to oppose globalization. I mean it is somewhat impossible to negate our world’s advancements in transportation and communication. If anything, opponents of globalization should be trying to figure out how to prevent it from spreading and becoming even more rampant, because one would have to complete destroy all means of efficient transportation (planes, cars) and efficient communication methods in order to negate some of globalization’s effects.
If anything, wouldn’t globalization encourage growth in developing countries? It seems like the poorer countries would be able to benefit from outsourcing in addition to the spread of information and technology. However, I have heard sob stories about how some people in India or Africa only make a few cents a day on some specific outsourced jobs, but it seems like paying someone a few cents for eight hours of work is just criminal, so certainly this is only happening illegally. If this scenario isn’t illegal, then I would have no problem if governments began to regulate this kind of abuse.
The other types of opponents to globalization that I read about where certain religious groups (like those in the Middle East) that are opposed to anything related to Westerners. Apparently, these certain groups feel invaded as western customs are forced into their culture thus many religious groups in the Middle East (and probably some other parts of the world) will actively protest globalization in order to preserve their culture. This issue sort of goes back to the idea of the greater good, and it is somewhat impossible to make everyone happy. What we can do is cater to the majority which is to continue a mostly unregulated globalization.
So I guess in the end, it seems kind of unreasonable to stop globalization, because it is an extremely daunting task to regulate business practices in every single country, because I am sure that the people in charge of whatever billion dollar corporation will try anything to maneuver around any detrimental rules. Globalization is just something that people will have to learn to live with.

1 comment:

  1. Well my Internet isn't working so I am going to attempt to comment on Brian's blog using my cell phone. First off, I like how Brian brings an informal tone to his blog; it makes it a lot easier to understand and more entertaining to read. I agree with Brian saying that even though we have relatively low unemployment rates and globalization feeds jobs to other countries, that it is worth the communication, technology, knowledge and economic integration. Next, I also agree that globalization should help develop poorer nations by sharing info and technology and providing jobs, however when workers are getting paid just a few cents a day, it highlights the possible negative effects of this policy. We should start to regulate how much they get paid but it is benefitting both American and the foreign businesses by paying such low wages. The overly protective Middle Easterners feel threatened by any type of western involvment and often oppose this policy. I, however, agree with Brian when he states that not everyone can be pleased and we should continue our policy in order to please the majority. Well there we have it, the first comment written using an iPhone, maybe someday through globalization people all over the world will be able to do just that.

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