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Is globalization a good thing?

Is globalization a good thing?

  • Yes, it is generally good

    Votes: 12 33.3%
  • Roughly half good, half bad

    Votes: 11 30.6%
  • No, it is generally bad

    Votes: 13 36.1%

  • Total voters
    36
Is evolution a good thing?

If you go extinct, no, evovle yup.

Still, I try to live out of this fight.
 
The key thing that bothers me about globalization is how logistical supply chains have changed. Incorporating JIT principals into the globalization framework has allowed firms to completely outsource a great many parts of the supply chain and to do so on a very timely basis. What happens when there is a major natural disaster and because of your JIT processes, you have essentially no inventory and your suppliers are thousands of miles away? A natural disaster could rip the heart out of your supply chain with no quick way of fixing it. Even with mitigation such as lots of suppliers for the same good, no individual supplier can make up for a massive loss of other suppliers. Integration which breeds efficiency can also breed serious vulnerability.
 
Which makes the jobs of Americans a lot more dependent on such a complex international framework and large international corporations.

Things have been reliant on on vast networks since the before the birth of capitalism. I'm sure that you've heard the story about the pencil. The graphite has to be mined. The machinery for that has to be made. The trees need to be cut. The ropes for this need to be made. The rubber for the erasers has to be grown. Food needs to be grown by farmers. It goes on and on. A vast network has been around and usually growing since man first settled in groups. American style libertarianism says nothing about people being islands, just that their choices should be voluntary
 
It is bad for us because manufacturing creates long term jobs and security.

You do know that American exports of manufactured goods is actually on the rise no?

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.pdf

The dollar value of US goods exported has nearly doubled since 2000.

People have this strange view that manufacturing is dead in America. The $1.2 trillion in goods we exported last year suggests otherwise.

What you mistake is the problem of automation rather than trade. Instead of hiring 500 people to make a product, they automate and hire 5 people. More goods with higher values are being made, just by fewer people.

Automation is far more of a threat to the number of manufacturing jobs rather than anything else.

Service jobs are outsourced to india or insourced from Mexico.

And why shouldn't they?

Service jobs depend on cheap products from other nations, and thus will be severly hurt by any price fluctutions. I am not saying we should be China, but we should make sure our economy is multiversed (No Eggs in one basket). The US policy should be one that protects our workers, and our business's. free global economy does not help us at all, it helps large international corporations and 3rd world countries.

Come again? The managed global economy (free trade does not exist) has highly supported US exports. Let's just look at NAFTA. NAFTA was enacted in 1992-1993. In 2008, Trade of exports has tripled.

Tell me, does the quality of your life go up when your purchasing power goes up? After all, imports of high quality cheap products means you can buy more with the same dollar. How is that bad for the country?

Surely not, but it is an important factor so is manufacturing.

See data:
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.pdf
 
I'm not particularly a fan of it, myself. It's seems to be leading to cultural homogeny in the West, with everything that made our own native cultures unique being watered down.
 
I'm not particularly a fan of it, myself. It's seems to be leading to cultural homogeny in the West, with everything that made our own native cultures unique being watered down.

That actually is a pretty depressing prospect.
 
That actually is a pretty depressing prospect.

Yep. And that's not to say I think there's some cast-iron never changing concept of every nation's specific culture, because time and new ideas and immigration naturally change a nation as it is. But those are natural changes, really. They tend to add something new to each nations culture, while globalisation seems to just water everything down, making it bland and rather similiar wherever you go.
 
Cultures intermingle all of the time. They have been since before the invention of the sail. Globalization is just a continuation of that process. Even then, can one say that the cultures of MA and TX are completely the same?
 
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Cultures intermingle all of the time. They have been since before the invention of the sail. Globalization is just a continuation of that process. Even then, can one say that the cultures of MA and TX are completely the same?

It's a continuation that's quite different in nature, though, and of much greater scope. Whether or not that's a good thing really depends on whether or not you feel a greater aspect of homogeny between different nations and cultures is necessarily a good thing.
 
It's a continuation that's quite different in nature, though, and of much greater scope. Whether or not that's a good thing really depends on whether or not you feel a greater aspect of homogeny between different nations and cultures is necessarily a good thing.

It's a lurch forward, but it's been happening, usually unabated, for millenia. If any good comes out of it, it might mean fewer wars over petty things like ethnicity and the like
 
It's a lurch forward, but it's been happening, usually unabated, for millenia. If any good comes out of it, it might mean fewer wars over petty things like ethnicity and the like

Plus, even still I think people around the world will still view things through the same eyes. The people of Afghanistan still wont be simply Afghanis, they will be Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara, etc.
 
Globalization is good!!! It advances the efficiency of production by utilizing the peak of production technology, driving down the wages of the working people of the world and finding the workers who live in conditions closest to slavery. This in and of itself is bad of course. The workers of the world are being driven into worse and worse poverty, working harder for less and less money while the elite capitalists are raking in more obscene profits.

At the same time, the construction of infrastructure of international capital fortifies the collectivization of the workers. The establishment of third world without borders will cause and has already to a very limited extent caused the re-emergence of some class consciousness and the formation of a world view in opposition to the neo-liberal doctrine of crushing unions, lowering wages and treating workers as sub-human appendages of the machinery.

The effects of globalization in human terms are quite terrible. Its emergence is making this the generation of the sweatshop, of a speedily growing class divide, of the concentration of all real wealth in the hands of a few. But the historical effects of globalization are promising. If the whole world exists under the conditions of advanced capitalism, revolution will come more easily and win more completely. Global capital requires the creation of global labor. And global labor is the force that can win the world.
 
If the whole world exists under the conditions of advanced capitalism, revolution will come more easily and win more completely.

unless the capitalism is Hitler style, which is where we're headed.

real capitalism implies little to no government. we have an ever increasing government headed towards a world government. it would theoretically have little power but in practice through its connections to central banks and corporations would have unprecedented power that people like Hitler would not dare dream of.
 
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Things have been reliant on on vast networks since the before the birth of capitalism.
Not really, not to the same level.

I'm sure that you've heard the story about the pencil. The graphite has to be mined. The machinery for that has to be made. The trees need to be cut. The ropes for this need to be made. The rubber for the erasers has to be grown. Food needs to be grown by farmers. It goes on and on.
A vast network has been around and usually growing since man first settled in groups.
This is not an argument because it ignores the obvious enlargement and differences I was talking about. It is simply not true that so much control of economic decisions was outside local and national control before, that is rather the point of globalisation. You seem to be saying that there is no such thing as globalisation.
American style libertarianism says nothing about people being islands, just that their choices should be voluntary
Aside from the fact that the latter taken to extremes leads to the former there is too much of the 18th century liberal view of man in American style libertarianism.
 
Cultures intermingle all of the time. They have been since before the invention of the sail. Globalization is just a continuation of that process. Even then, can one say that the cultures of MA and TX are completely the same?
This is completely a hyperbole as your idea of supply networks were. It reminds me of open border people who talk about how immigration always happens. Well yes it does and so do cultural exchanges but the point is the magnitude and rapidity, these are higher than in most periods in the past, certainly most stable periods.
 
I'm not particularly a fan of it, myself. It's seems to be leading to cultural homogeny in the West, with everything that made our own native cultures unique being watered down.

överens med. the same thing happen i n EU. this i s easy to go from different countrys when you have same money. Norway is smart to not go in EU.
 
Globalization is a very good thing. Without it, we wouldn't have todays standard of living. Who's going to make our bananas, sweaters if we didn't have globalizaton. The truth is, the west has benefited a lot from it. By exporting high-tecnology goods, we can then import goods that require a lot of labour.

However, we are going to see a change in the future. If the west accepts the globalization, then China and India will become richer, demand more goods and start exporting high-technology goods too. This is going to raise import prices, decrease export prices and make americans export more goods and import less. It will hurt the OECD countries, but it is a good change, because 1 billion people get a better standard of living.

If US doesn't accept the globalization and start subzidizing their goods, then we will be punished from the rest of the world. This will only lead a lower global growth and it will also hurt the US. That's why globalization is a good thing.
 
Globalization of the free market increases competition, which lowers prices and raises quality.

This is a good thing.
 
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