The concept of globalization has sparked a huge debate. On one side, there is the utopian idea of a global village and on the opposing end there is talk of exploited labor and loss of cultural identity. Let's talk about this a little bit. What does everyone think?

I guess a good start would be to come up with a working definintion of what "globalization" means.

Is it governmental interests working together? Is it multi-national corporations working together? Charity organizations? Is it setting up new and additional world agencies to oversee international laws or business?

Let me think about this one for awhile....

I have mixed feelings about globalization. Especially from an economic viewpoint, since the US is whats dominating global economics, and we seem to be hegemonizing {er, I dont think thats spelled right at all} the world with our brands. I dont like the idea that people should adapt to a dominant culture, and thats what seems to happening somewhat.

Of course, I love the idea of a global community. Im sure there's a middle ground where people can be influenced by different cultures and still keep their own.

Why not use our own Constitution as a basic guideline for globalization? Each member "state" is granted equal representation and equal protection under the law. The law to be decided by the "Global Congress". I'm sure laws could be hammered out that allow for such a wide scale democracy and at the same time not interfere with individual cultures as they are now. (State's Rights)
I think one major thing that I would want to change, since the scale of the government's jurisdiction would be so vast, is to have more than a single individual in the executive branch. Perhaps 3, or even 7 people would probably be a little safer. Too much power in any one person's hands is a dangerous thing.

Anybody feel like drafting a feasable Global Constitution?

I'm not sure I like the idea of globalization or world governance. I'm not against working together for a better world, but how much sovereignty would we have to surrender?

Talk about a daunting task to assemble such a workable governing body, not to mention how to convince every nation-state in the world to join.

Interested to hear peoples ideas on this one.

Jaime - I'm not sure what definition to use either. Globalization effects many different things, and they are all intricately related. My definition, however, is the phenomena that occurs when the world becomes smaller via technology, economics, and government cooperation. Anything that needs to be changed or added to that in your opinion?

Globalization is, technically, making anything worldwide in its scope or application. So I guess it depends on the globalization of what. Government? Culture? Communication? Human rights? I would clearly favor some globalization and oppose it in other areas. Would you like to narrow the focus, Cyan, or just let everyone respond to the aspects which concern them?

For example...

I would also oppose a world government at this stage, largely because I think it would be unworkable - primarily due to the involvement of the US. We've seen how well some administrations take to the UN and things like the ICC or the Kyoto Protocol, never mind international treaties.

On the other hand, I'd much prefer an overt world governing body of some kind to the massive, clandestine world management organizations which already exist (and wield far more power than any one government - even our own).

I may regret this later, but for now, let's keep it open. My reason for making that decision is that each little piece of globalization effects another. Let's talk positives and negatives in general, and then if we need to, we can seperate out bigger parts into new threads. For example, if you want to discuss the details of Stefan's proposed system, then perhaps you could start a thread regarding the structure of a world governing body. This topic has the potential to open up many other topics, and this thread could act as more of a brainstorming thread. Does that sound okay to everyone?

Sounds good to me. I just wasn't sure if you had something specific in mind when you started the thread or not.

As with most things, the good comes along with the bad.

We can now get almost anywhere in the world within several days. However, we'll have to deal with the jet lag when we get there.

We can now eat exotic food from faraway places. However, exotic diseases also wipes away local foods.

We can communicate with people across the globe. However, we're inundated with spam email from Nigeria.

We are a melting pot of cultures here in the US. However, it's easy for terrorists to sneak in.

We can buy all sorts of $1 items from China. However, we're losing a lot of items bearing "Made in the USA".

Otseng, you have presented some very interesting points, and I would like to add to some of them,



Additionally, farmers in third world countries that provide exotic foods, may not be receiving the compensation that they deserve for their labors, and local farmers may not be able to compete with third world countries, because they can't compete with the low prices that the third world countries are selling thier products at.



Communication, IMO, is one of the most positive aspects of globalization. Even the spam that we receive from Nigeria tells us something.



This is the same situation as mentioned above. Big corporations can find cheap labor in third world countries, and thus American jobs are eliminated. Additionally, labor conditions in some of those countries are not good, and by purchasing products produced in those conditions, we only help to perpetuate them.

I think communication is one of the most positive aspects of globalization also. Prior to the Internet, it would have been much more difficult to even have debates like this.

It's fabulous. Since the advent of the internet, I have sustained strong relationships in Russia, Iran, Kuwait, India, Nigeria, and Israel. I have learned a huge amount through international dialogue, and it wouldn't have been possible without the aid of the internet, particularly in cases like Iran where the likelihood of the mail arriving intact is not high. Additionally, I think it's wonderful that we can access news sites from all over the world. "CNN says Iran...bla bla bla." Oh, really? Let's see what Iran has to say. By juxtaposing the two statements, we are more able to arrive at truth, IMO.

If the world is going to be smaller in the realm of politics and economics, communication has to be strong. That is an important part of maintaining the balance. If we, living in a capitalist society, are able to gain an understanding and respect for other cultures, than we will be less like to take advantage of them.

I think that when we hear the word "globalization" in the news it is usually referring to the narrow idea of corporate globalization, an idea to me incompatible not only with the valuing of human life, but also to the very idea of a free market economy, certainly as Adam Smith saw it.

This is an extremely complex topic. It almost overloads my somewhat narrow mind.

Several points (please feel free to direct me or give advice):

Let's form a worldwide corporate/government entity called UNiland.

1) How would we stabilize UNiland's monetary system? U.S. Dollars are backed up with gold. If we have a "world monetary system" what makes it good?Who prints the money? What's it backed with?

2) Is UNiland capitalist? Maybe we don't have to worry about money if we become global Socialists. We'll just have the World Head Honcho dole stuff out.

3) Who's in charge? One world government. Based on what type of government? Democracy? Where do we vote on civil rights for the land mass formerly known as China? I want in line.

4) Does UNiland have a constitution? Let's just use the U.S. model. It'll make things easier.

That way when the people of UNiland spend their global UNiland bucks, it will be scrounged up by UNiland corporations, and used to support UNiland politicians who enforce their agenda on all of UNiland.

The first thing is......How do we get every country in the world to agree to round file their entire system and become UNilanders?

The second thing is.....Who does UNiland compete with?

The third thing is.... If you become tired of living in UNiland, Where do you go?

Globalization is already well underway in the arts - music, dance, theater, in general. There really is no such thing as Western music or Eastern music. Oh - there is but not exclusively. Calling music "Western" denotes where it came from originally, but not where it is accepted and performed today.

This has some wonderful aspects....let me expand if I may. In dance it is now happening that countries like China are beginning to add their folk tales and myths to the dance libretto. No longer is ballet confined to the myths and stories of the West - we are now getting subject matter (as well as dancers and choreographers) from everywhere. That's wonderful! Everyone is enriched. The same goes for music - for instance, Japanese musicians and conductors are making real names for themselves on international stages as major players.

However, the down side is that when this happens a country sometimes (actually all too often) begins to give the 'import' more importance than the home grown item.

I see two dynamics happening - on the one hand we are enriched by the infusion from other countries, on the other hand the originality of each country's contribution begins to get diffused as it all mixes. It tends to get homogenized.

But, I don't think it can (or should) be stopped.

In short, bad idea.

Take for instance, our beloved right to BEAR (Is that spelled right? ) arms. The US is one of the last countries on earth that allow private citizens to own guns. And i'm not talking about automatic or not, I'm talking about ANY gun.

If we have some kind of global gov't, the rest of the world votes "no guns", and we are forced to comply. *POOF* there goes our constitution...right out the window.

No thanks. I like my guns, I like what America is, what it was and what it still can be. I like my heritege the way it is, and have no desire to make my life compatible with the rest of the world.

I will not submit to the values of the majority of the rest of the world. The worlds hate for America will surely screw us over in the long run....

--cheers

Globilization, however you define it or apply it, is inevitable, and arguably has already been irreversibly in motion since the dawn of international commerce. I think that a new quesion is really central to the original question.

Instead of "How about globalization?", what about "What should we do first along the path to inevitable one-global-village politics and the economics/environmental opportunities/responsibilities which are already on our plate?"

First item in UNIlands international agenda - Universal quality of life assurance by virtue of economic homogenosity. No more cheap labor markets, no more exploitive mechanisms. Any further perpetuation of divisiveness or exploitation of any class or group of humanity, will inevitably sow more seeds of war. If that is acceptable to you, I do not want to know you. If you need cheap workers, as a business owner... I think a succesful re-assessment of your sense of need would be more accurately stated as "you need a high productivity methodology for your processes, i.e. cheaper means of doing more." One word here. Technology. One "tree shaking harvest robot" with one "Qualified operator" can replace an army of fruit pickers, create many other higher tech. jobs, which in turn re-inforces the global infrastructure to help guarantee the perpetuation of a pattern of increased leisure time for humankind, so's we can get back to enjoying life and the time we have for it instead of rat-racing our way into a disaster-bent global economic slippery slope towards more human misery and war (k - I admit to un-warranted sensationalism there...).

The better we can balance the productivity enhancing and quality-of-life side effects of the capitalist mechanism with the "fair distribution" concepts behind the idea of socialism, and the sooner we can temper that with the purpose of incorporating into that all manners of environmental improvement, the less need we will see for so much "crisis management" in the world...

In globalization, which I obviously hold to be inevitable, there is an opportunity to re-invent the economic machine into something that is beneficial to all people and the world in which we live. We just need to build the appropriate rules into it.

I would propose that the Global economy be constrained to products which can PROVE they are environmentally benevolent or even beneficial. Let local economies around the world run their little courses... but dis-allow the global one to be driven by anything less than purely altruistic visions of the future of humanity. Some of our "markets" are incompatible with a great deal of the rest of the world.. like the ownership of land and vicious monetary cycles related there-to... Dont get me started on my thoughts about "milker industries" which are leeching us to death... effectively mis-appropriating all our "globalization potential" funds... real-estate... for profit... Utterly distasteful and morally unconscionable... IMO

I am down with that!

Welcome to the forum, BTW

Thank ye sir!

Just stumbled into this today... got hooked immediately... Im so full of opinions hahah...

Let's face it - Globalisation as a political label is little more than a buzz-word that lets unscrupulous profit-obsessed multinational leviathons exploit Third World nations and populations, thus supplying the minority in the West with the indolent luxury to which we have become accustomed.

In the Third World globalisation means poverty line wages, sweat shops, indentured labour and ficed term slavery, resource stripping, dangerous working conditions, and Western corporate support for oppressive but politically and economically agreeable regimes.

Globailisation could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity, but it until corporations are bound by world-wide legislation and governments open themselves to the benfits of co-operation over competition it will never be more than a white-wash word for economic subjugation.

The typical left-wing assumptions that economics is a zero sum game. Nothing can be further from the truth. Laissez fairre capitalism consists entirely of voluntary transactions. Leftists attempt to substitute government coercion for voluntary free market transactions. Governments role should be limited to preventing or reducing third party costs e.g. pollution.

Yes, Free Trade is based on voluntary transaction of free choice - the choice, for instance, between working in a Sweat Shop or an Open Cast Mine for subsistence level pay without rights or legal protection, or alternatively starving on the streets.

If Global Free Trade works so well for the benefit of all, then why are so many people and countries in the Third World so poor, whilst so many Western multinationals and nations and individuals so rich?

Corrupt dictatorial regimes with little or no regard for human life, standard of living, or property rights.

Corrupt dictatorial regimes are not the only form of government in the Third World.

Those that do exist are a symptom rather than a cause of Western economic exploitation of those regions.

Many of thse regimes are in any case kept in place through the economic benefits of trade with Western multinationals.

Does anyone have any examples of anything they have to say here? Maybe a little reading we could do on this subject to further this debate?

"Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman, "Free to Choose" by Milton and Rose Friedman.

The fact is whereever masses reside in poverty it is due to government. Where men are left free, and property rights respected, prosperity ensues. Socialism replaces voluntary relationships with coercion. Socialists try to have it both ways. They cry workers overseas are being exploited in order to protect unskilled labor here. They are actually attempting to stop the spread of wealth overseas. Globalization will result in the long run with wages being much closer together, for similar occupations, throughout the world. If you are an unskilled worker in the US, let me give you some advice; acquire some skills.The individual working in the sweatshop chooses to do so. This individual sees this as his best alternative. In a free democratic society child labor and sweatshops will disappear within a generation ,or at most two, look at Hong Kong. Any attempts to shorten this initial phase of capitalism with socialism will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Seems like society in general at the level of "body politic" runs a lot like an "operating system". We got yer "programs" and the various "subroutines" running therein, but what we got here is multiple operating systems trying to dominate the same CPU. It seems that the only operating system that will ultimately succeed is the one which has modularized its interface functionality such as to enable ALL of the subroutines AND other operating systems to contribute meaningfully... Kind of like "grid computing" which has become a popular concept.

If a new operating system was designed to "assimilate" (like the Borg analogy?) Microsoft Windows operability & Unix operability & Lenix operability & ??, that would be an analogy to what needs to happen to the multiple economies in the world to successfully get some "reigns" on globalization. I suspect that the main difficulty anybody has with it is that it is hard to "get yer hands around" the issue, and know just where everything is at, coming from and going to. So.. perhaps the sooner the process can kick into high gear and define itself, the better IMHO.

Is it inferred anywhere that uniformity of economy is something that can't be successful? I believe here that uniformity of economy and therefor of opportunity is what globalization ultimately represents.

If you believe in finite resources, then it seems that you must believe that ultimately we are trying to delay our ultimate doom.. and your argument will likely be based on a lot of pessimism, and that doesn't usually fly very far with the human spirit.... as I speculate pessimistically about pessimistic nay-sayers to globalization.... Nobody fell off the earth sailing around... Therefor it's too late to stop globalization.

globalization is a bad idea, here's why: think about the world as a seagoing vessel. if you have a ship with hull, and no internal compartments, one hole in the hull will cause the entire ship to sink. if there are several compartments that can be sealed off, an there is a hole in one compartment, you can seal it off and only that compartment will flood. this is importance of dorders and seperate economies. the keep aconomic disasters localized.

and the problem with a one world government: imagine for a minute that the world was under a one world government. now say someone like hitler took complete control of this government, and thus the world. he would be nearly impossible to stop. (it took an alliance of of several governments outside hitlers control to stop him)

the idea of a one world economy and government is noble, and would be nice if it could work. unfortionately we would need a perfect or near perfect system, which we are nowhere near.

If you're going to read Friedman or Friedrich von Hayek, just be sure to temper it a bit. There is another side to the story. There are many good books critiquing neoliberalism. Try J.W. Smith's Economic Democracy, David Korten's When Corporations Rule the World, or Chomsky's Colonialism to Globalization.

There are many economists who feel that von Hayek's neoliberalism is NOT truly free trade, particularly in the model of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which describes a much more localized idea of trade without tariffs or regulation. What's happening in the world to day more closely resembles monopoly capitalism, or mercantilism. Look at how fast huge corporations are merging into mega-huge corporations. The global market is being controlled by fewer and fewer companies.

The warping of the Keynesian model of regulation (as was embodied by the Bretton Woods institutions created in 1944 (IMF, World Bank) into von Hayek's and Friedman's "neoliberalism" (liberalism here refers to the "liberation" of capital) has resulted in a widening gap between the rich and poor around the globe. Instead of being an equalizer, what we call "globalization" is increasing disparity.

Hugo, when you blame the governments of these developing nations, I don't believe you are hitting the mark. While that could be an element of the problem in theory, in practice, there is a "race to the bottom." Our trade policies are centered around seeking countries that have the least labor regulations, countries which are anti-union, which do not have minimum wage laws, countries which still allow child labour.

For all the glory of the theory of the free market, it does not exist on a global level today. And the problem is, economics and global trade is quite an oblique thing; it's hard to understand without some serious study and reading, so it's easy to tend to ignore it.

"When the blatant injustices of mercantilist imperialism became too embarrassing, a belief system was imposed that mercantilism had been abandoned and true free trade was in place. In reality the same wealth confiscation went on, deeply buried within complex systems of monopolies and unequal trade hiding under the cover of free trade. Many explanations were given for wars between the imperial nations when there was really one common thread: "Who will control resources and trade and the wealth produced through inequalities in trade?" All this is proven by the inequalities of trade siphoning the world's wealth to imperial centers of capital today just as they did when the secret of plunder by trade was learned centuries ago. The battles over the world's wealth have only kept hiding behind different belief systems each time the secrets of laying claim to the wealth of others' have been exposed." -- J.W. Smith, Economic Democracy; The Political Struggle for the 21st Century, (M.E. Sharpe, 2000) p.126


Check out "Globalization and its Discontents" by Joseph Stiglitz, while you're at it. Stiglitz was the chief economist of the World Bank, and a Nobel Laureate in economics (as was Friedman), and has become one of the most vocal and learned critics of economic globalization.



"[I]f a society spends one hundred dollars to manufacture a product within its borders, the money that is used to pay for materials, labor and, other costs moves through the economy as each recipient spends it. Due to this multiplier effect, a hundred dollars worth of primary production can add several hundred dollars to the Gross National Product (GNP) of that country. If money is spent in another country, circulation of that money is within the exporting country. This is the reason an industrialized product-exporting/commodity-importing country is wealthy and an undeveloped product-importing/commodity-exporting country is poor."

"Developed countries grow rich by selling capital-intensive (thus cheap) products for a high price and buying labor-intensive (thus expensive) products for a low price. This imbalance of trade expands the gap between rich and poor. The wealthy sell products to be consumed, not tools to produce. This maintains the monopolization of the tools of production, and assures a continued market for the product. [Such control of tools of production is a strategy of a mercantilist process. That control often requires military might.]"

--  J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994), pp. 116, 127, 139.

Here's an example of what globalisation as it operates at the moment is doing for the Third World

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2745629.stm