Myths and Realities of Globalization

By: David Miller

Sunday, March 31^st, 2013

            As I was drastically impressed by Adam Abelson’s blog, “What is the Cost of Globalization,” I was inspired to shine light his insights on globalization and build upon his previously existing perceptions.

 My blog aims to acknowledge globalization as a process with respect to how it affects the daily interactions within the modern world in regards to Adam’s discussion on the forums of economics and corporate control.  Globalization presents itself as an abstract notion based around global integration; which suggests that technology has eradicated borders and made the world seem substantially smaller, thereby allowing individuals to move around freely.  However, the tangible ways in which this occurs differ greatly from its abstract ideas, for globalization is not a process that brings equality to all, but rather supports specific groups of people amongst others.  As Adam had theorized in his blog, the occurrence of the world’s known globalization process has adopted three different forms of myth; that being the myth of inevitability/ equality, the myth of free trade and lastly the myth that suggests that globalization will rid the world of poverty on a global scale.

            It is claimed that globalization is considered to be progressive process; however in reality it is more cyclical than linear.  As time goes forward, the world does not necessarily progress; for global trade was far more integrated between 1880-1913 than it was between 1918-1973.  Copious amounts of examples in history indicate the same aforementioned ideal and suggests that the world is not necessarily made to progress as time carries forward.  One of such examples is shown by investigating the time shift between the 16^th through 18^th centuries, where there was a free trade amongst nations, however the late 19^th century took a step backward rather than forward as WWII brought a time where countries aimed to be self-sufficient.  During 1973 and onward, change was once again apparent as globalization has linked countries together and facilitated a global reliance on one another.  Although progress cannot be certain, one aspect is; being that globalization is not a natural process but is carefully controlled by policies enforced by large corporations and organizations.

            Globalization also succeeds in creating a myth surrounding the notion of free trade.  In reality trade is far from free, for although tariffs no longer exist countries favour their own farmers and producers by subsidizing them in the market in order to give them a competitive advantage.  Corporations affect policy makers and facilitate various other examples of non-obvious trade barriers in order to control the outflow of wealth and their countries economic position.

            Lastly the myth surrounding globalization`s ability to alleviate global poverty is a very unrealistic notion within modern times.  In reality there is an increase in inequality, a slowdown in economic growth and a decrease in life expectancy.  The gap between the richest and poorest people in the world continues to rise, along with the number of countries that are in far worse economic conditions that they were in 30 years ago.  Policies facilitated in our world seem to favour one class of people, while all the others slowly suffer.

            These myths have been put into fruition because of the emergence of multi-national corporations, such as the WB, IMF, etc.  These corporations account for virtually all of the world`s Foreign Direct Investments and mainly are based in either North America or Japan.  With this being said these countries experience economic boom for they take wealth out of several other countries and control it in a sort of vacuum cleaner effect.  With this power they are able to create policy and thereby control the economic positions in other countries in order to facilitate a mass profit.  Therefore, with this process taking place wealth is only increased for the multi-national corporations while the surrounding nations do not experience the same result.