The Effects of Globalization

Watching the video (Miniature Earth) should not have been surprising to me.  I have seen other videos like it, and have heard statistics like the ones presented in previous classes.  Unfortunately, it is all too easy to forget about the people in the world that are hungry and destitute when I never have to worry about things like that myself.  What jumped out at me from this articular film was the statistic that nine out of every one hundred people are disabled--something I had not really considered.  I also learned that only twelve percent of people in the world are white.  This came as a bit of a shock to me, because of the way "race" is portrayed by American media.  Once you step back and think about it, that number makes sense; but I think many people would assume, as I did, that there is a greater world population of white people just because caucasians are treated as the "majority" in American culture.

I believe that many Americans have misconceptions about the world concerning population vs. wealth distribution.  These misconceptions are due in part by the pervasiveness of American media and a lack of education.  Someone may hear the word "globalization" and think it could only be a good thing. What could be bad about giving agrarian farmers in third world countries work?  They do not see that more often than not, the third world countries get the short end of the stick when doing business with developed nations, such as the United States.  A perfect example of this can be found in the article 'Cocaine and the Economic Deterioration of Bolivia', by Jack Weatherford.  Although cocaine trade is illegal, it still serves as a legitimate example for how American (or "The West's) seemingly harmless demand for a product may force another nation into extreme negative circumstances, both economically and culturally.  Weatherford himself states "... I assumed that if Americans and Europeans wanted to waste their money on cocaine, it was probably good that some of the poor countries such as Bolivia profit from it." (CC, p. 158)  Through his research, Weatherford discovered that not only did the increasing cocaine market damage Bolivia's legal economic endeavors on a large scale, but that it also disrupted everything down to family dynamics in many cases.

Yes, good things can come out of globalization (such as the availability of resources like the internet spreading to all ends of the Earth). Benefits can also be seen to a certain extent in the video we watched in class about the Lost Boys of Sudan.  Without a global network, many of the young men that had immigrated here may not have been given the opportunity to do so (although numerous boys in the film voiced frustrations that America wasn't all that was promised).  I would argue that in most cases, however, the costs that globalization takes on developing or third world countries strongly outweighs the benefits.  Aside from being manipulated and exploited, the peoples and cultures of these varying countries lose their distinctiveness. If standards are not set for working conditions world wide, how can "developing countries" continue to develop?