Pessimistic

Generally speaking, I am a “globalization pessimist.” I concur that globalization has the potential increase the welfare of most of the world’s citizens. I support trade between international businesses. I dream of a world capitalist system that allows for private ownership of business, and nurtures small business initiatives, encouraging trade between them. In my mind this would be a kind of utopia that would benefit all. However, in the end I am pessimistic about the realistic possibility of this utopia, and I am convinced that the corruption, imperialism, environmental destruction, and violence potential of both multinational corporations and governments destroy this ideal.
My reading this week highlighted some concerns for me about some of the more realistic byproducts of globalization. I agree with Arthur MacEwan that those with the capital have the power, and this power imbalance between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is a human rights warning signal (2000, “Free Markets, International Commerce and Economic Development,” Real World Globalization, p.19). I am also pessimistic about the role of the US military, which could be motivated by protecting global business interests by force. Finally, I suspect that globalization puts cultural variety at risk, which does not enhance the welfare of the world’s citizens.
Capitol is Power
Even though globalization increases the ranks of the middle class, those middle class workers are at the mercy of the factory owners and MNCs. They have very little power over their own means of production and survival. The threat of jobs simply moving to a less empowered place in the world limits these workers’ abilities to organize, negotiate or democratically participate in their livelihoods. “Free Markets, International Commerce, and Economic Development,” by Arthur MacEwan, points out how globalization gives ultimate power to the owners of capital:
Power in economic life means primarily an ability to shift more and more of the value produced by society into one’s own hands. In this way, neo-liberal globalization is a de facto formula for shifting income to the owners of capital, that is, for increasing inequality in the distribution of income (2000, Real World Globalization, p.15)
In his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, C.K. Prahalad describes the danger of corruption in a globalized world. Many developing countries such as China do not have protective laws and institutions and “farmland can be appropriated for other uses by bureaucrats without a legal recourse for the farmer”
(2006, p. 80). Those with capital and the bureaucracies that support them have power over those without capital.
Protecting Business Interest by Force
MacEwan’s interview article “Rich and Poor in the Global Economy” points out that globalization optimism may be used to “placate critics of the present world order”
(2005, Real World Globalization, p. 19). When globalization is analyzed free of politics, power imbalances and human rights violations can be ignored. In the real world, however, we are facing a world order dominated by the US, which has a foreign policy of doing as they like without regard to international opinion or law.
“The Political Economy of War and Imperialism” by Alejandro Reuss sarcastically mocks the likelihood of the US government to support freedom, “as if that were what the US government were really after” (2003, Real World Globalization, p.303). “The Business of War in the Democratic Republic of Congo” provides a direct example of where US military intervention was needed to protect US corporate investment at the expense of the citizens of the DRC (2001, Montague and Berrigan, Real World Globalization p. 42)
In contrast, Thomas Friedman’s chapter “The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention” shows an example of how he as a globalization optimist naively discounts the responsibility of US foreign policy for world violence and acts of terror, instead blaming Al-Qaeda alone for “geopolitical instability” (2007 The World is Flat, p. 595). He writes:
In The Lexus and the Olive Tree I argued that to the extent that countries tied their economies and futures to global integration and trade, it would act as a restraint on going to war with their neighbors (p. 586).Though I wish that this were the case, he is ignoring historical situations such as the American Revolution, where the colonists were dependant on trade with England yet staged a revolution, or the Central American revolutions in the 1980s that risked losing lucrative cash crop customers such as Dole. In this theory he admits that he doesn’t count border skirmishes and civil wars (p. 586), but part of the new world order strategy is low intensity warfare, in which powerful nations prop up revolutions or civil violence in the hope of destabilizing a government under attack. Terrorism warfare can also not be included in his assertion that “no two countries that both had McDonald’s had ever fought a war against each other” (p. 586).
Cultural Disintegration
“Cultures that are open and willing to change have a huge advantage in this world,” Friedman applauds, quoting Jerry Rao, MphasiS CEO (2007 The World is Flat, p.422). Of course, all cultures change over time, but the rapid influences of globalization (and its global warming effects) threaten the destruction of many traditional ways of life. This replacement of traditional culture with consumer or corporate culture is a serious concern that I have about globalization.
"Retailing analyst Victor Lebow articulated the solution that has become the norm for the whole system (of globalization). He said: “Our enormously productive economy…demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buy and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”(The Story of Stuff)

Recently, I heard a news report on National Public Radio that described potato farmers in Peru who were losing many of the hundreds of varieties of potato plants due to global warming:
Alejandro Argumedo is a plant scientist and social activist (who)…says climate change threatens not just farmers like Baca Huaman, but Peru's whole native culture.
"Potato is not just food. Potato is also spirituality; it's culture," Argumedo says. "There are songs, dances, ceremonies…They (mountain farmers) turned down new varieties the government offered because the plants would need fungicides, pesticides and fertilizers. They preferred… varieties that have been boiled, fried, mashed and poached for centuries. (NPR Website)
Though they were offered “high tech” solutions of modern varieties of potatoes, the farmers rejected the MNC influenced additions of poison products that were necessary for that option. Unfortunately, I think it is an unusual to choose traditional culture over “progress” in a globalizing world.
I believe that globalization as we know it now works because of a manufacturing economy based on waste and consumption. The assumption that consumption and monetary wealth determine global citizens’ self-worth and wellbeing, is seriously threatening to our world wide environment and the earth’s safety.



Referrals
Friedman, Thomas, The World is Flat, 2007, Picador; New York, New York.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87811933

http://www.storyofstuff.com/pdfs/annie_leonard_footnoted_script.pdf

Prahalad, C.K., The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, 2006, Pearson Education, Inc; Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Rakocy, Betsy, Reuss, Alejandro, Sturr, Chris, ed, Real World Globalization, 2007, Economic Affairs Bureau, Inc; Boston, Massachusetts.