Our Globalized World

Our Globalized World

         Globalization is defined as the three P’s according Muqtedar Khan, “Globalization is a phenomenon, it is philosophy – and it is a process.” Apart from Muqtedar Khan’s opinion about globalization, there are many definitions that come out of various people in this world today. There are many ways in which globalization has benefited us and has cost us many things. For example, globalization has benefited us in the way that productivity increases when countries produce goods and services. On the other hand, globalization has cost us because in several countries, “the third world”, there has been a major rise in unemployment and poverty. The costs definitely outweigh the benefits, because globalization creates pressure for more sweatshops, the decisions made aren’t helping those countries suffering from globalization, and the spread of culture has several negative effects on people in the developing countries.
         Richard Rothstein’s thesis in his article, Defending Sweatshops, is that suffering people who work in sweatshops is not necessarily the answer; if there were higher wages many employers would like their job and continue working. In this article Rothstein defends his thesis saying, “The requirement to pay higher wage gave many employers incentives to invest in training so that workers would become worth what they now must be paid. Resulting productivity increases more that offset the higher wage costs.” This quote essentially demonstrates what his thesis talks about. Not only is globalization hurting people in Cambodia and in the “rest of the world” countries but also there are solutions to improve globalization that the countries ignore. A different opinion on sweatshops is an article written by Nicholas D. Kristof named, Two Cheers for Sweatshops, it states how sweatshops are one of the most discussed problems. Kristof says, “Protests against sweatshops and the dark forces of globalization that they seem to represent have become common at meetings of the World Bank and the World Trade Organization and, this month, at a World Economic Forum.” He also defends sweatshops when he mentions, “sweatshops at least offer a precarious escape from the poverty that is the developing world's greatest problem.” That may be true but working in a sweatshop is not easy. In the article, Kristof states how sometimes the managers are brutal to their workers in the way they raise workers in firetraps, expose children to dangerous chemicals, deny bathroom breaks, demand sexual favors etc. So, these poor people may be making money, but the conditions need to be better as Kristof’s thesis goes. “… on these issues, by working closely with organizations and news media in foreign countries, sweatshops can be improved.”
Another way in which globalization can be improved, or at least to balance the benefits and costs of globalization is what Joseph E. Stiglitz says. In his book, Globalization and Its Discontents, his thesis is that globalization can be good for all of us. We just have to look before decisions and solutions are made, the different ways it can be seen. For example, how it will affect the people told to follow this rule or decision. Stiglitz says, “The decisions at the World Bank were often made because of ideology and politics,” also as Stiglitz says, “ones that did not solve the problem at hand but that fit with the interests or beliefs of the people in power (Stiglitz X). Stiglitz is right; we do have to look at the decisions made in different ways to see how it will affect everyone etc. IMF is not a private bank; it is a public institution that makes developing countries become worse off than how they started. Stiglitz thinks that “private is better than public”, because we need to privatize. “Today, the IMF has lost much of its credibility, not only in developing countries but also with its cherished constituency, the financial community (Ibid 222)” In Globalization and its Discontents, Stiglitz states an interesting solution to fix globalization, “The most fundamental change that is required to make globalization work in the way that it should is a change in governance.”
         In an article, found on the website of BBC, named In the Eye of the Beholder written by Clare Murphy, talks about how young girls in Africa, who model, are suffering because they want to stay thin in order to stay with the job of being models. Lerato Moloi, a South African model, said, “Young girls in Africa are increasingly concerned with being thin – the more exposed we are to western media, the more we buy into it.” In Africa, these young girls would starve themselves to have this job. What is interesting is that, the subtitles of this article explain what they are going to. For instance, one is “no spots, please”. This part of the article talks about how they have to have, “facial attractiveness, for their part, do not appear to have changed dramatically down the centuries, unlike the ideal body mass.” Another subtitle, says “we are what we eat”, they starve themselves or at least are careful to what they eat because they don’t want to get fired or told they are too fat to work for the job. An opinion on this article says, “If only globalization would stop bulldozing other people's cultures all this would stop. Women must stand up for themselves and their culture and realize that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and not decided by an editor in New York or Paris.” The spread of culture is hurting us, and in many of these poor countries having negative effects.
         In conclusion, globalization affects both developed and developing countries. It is as if, the bigger countries are pedaling over the smaller countries causing them to suffer the cost of globalization. We all need to work together to figure out a solution in order to save ourselves from ending up in a crisis that then we cannot find a solution for. We need to do what Stiglitz says in Globalization and Its Discontents, find a solution and look at it in different perspectives or lenses. There is a solution somewhere, we just need to reach out and find it. Globalization will one day be a benefit to the entire world.