Prospect of globalization warrants caution

By Maryann Dakkak

Professor Lipton of Sussex University in the U.K. summed up globalization in the following manner during the World Food Day Teleconference last Wednesday: "Globalization of good things is good, and globalization of bad things is bad."

I believe no institution is intrinsically bad, but Jerry Mander would have to disagree. He believes that globalization is intrinsically flawed and must be changed.

I'm more in agreement with Thomas Friedman when he stated that globalization is inevitable. People tend to look for the easiest way to do anything. Sure, people get great pride out of working hard and seeing their final goal achieved, but if there's a much easier way to get those same results, it is human nature to take the easiest road.

So we trade. People specialize because everyone has different personal resources. I couldn't understand engineering if I tried my hardest, and most of my friends would never want to memorize the amino acids (I'm a biology major). And so be it - I don't fight my inclinations.

To take this to a more global level, countries have different resources. I spent this summer in Lesotho (a tiny country in Africa) and found it to be a great example of this reality. It has a huge abundance of water but is one of the poorest countries in Africa. So they trade water to South Africa (the richest country in Africa) in return for millions of dollars - which hopefully trickle down to the citizens of Lesotho.

If the trickle down effect doesn't work, it's not the system's fault. By all means, the exchange of water for money, if the money is used for better education or agriculture, would be great. The problem arises when the higher-ups get the money intercept the cash flow. It's people that tend not to let go of money and power, not institutions.

So my question is, how do we make sure we only globalize the "good things"? And secondly, who decides what is "good"?

If I was all-powerful, I could decide what is good, and that would be that. But I'm going to leave that particular evaluation up to the reader. I will instead focus on how to globalize those yet-to-be-decided matters efficiently.

First, I believe we have to look at everything relatively. Jerry Mander warns against privatization of public resources, such as health, education and water. In the case of the U.S., I agree that privatization is bad. I trust our government much more than I trust corporations or rich and powerful individuals. I believe that the media is so intrusive in government affairs that they couldn't get away with too much without the people fighting back. Privately owned companies, on the other hand, at least in the U.S., end up controlling not only lives of people, but the government itself.

But let's look at the Philippines. Their "developing" democracy has been very inefficient in distributing resources to their citizens (such as phone service). Many third world countries have similarly corrupt regimes that should not be trusted with the control of the majority of the country's wealth, making privatization a better option.

Being culturally sensitive and respecting each country as its own political entity ensures the manifestation of globalization's positive aspects. As long as rash assumptions are made (such as many U.S. corporations' "know-how" in saving the world, or so their Public Relations departments claim), globalization will not work.