An economy has a wide spectrum of activities including government control, trade, capital flows, markets, consumers, labor among many other aspects. However, two aspects of an economy are the basis for the whole economy: trade and capital flow. Trade is the purchase and sale of goods and services and their subsequent payments.
Capital flow is the procurement of factors of production and the payments of their rewards. This creates a research question: although globalization is harmful, it has more advantages than disadvantages. The focus of the research question is the effect of globalization. Further, the answers to this research question include share new technology, Try new food, Cultural product, and services exchange, share knowledge.
Therefore, the thesis statement is although globalization is somewhat harmful it has many advantages, for example, sharing new technology, sharing knowledge, cultural export and food export (Rifkin, Spiritual Perspectives on globalization).
Drivers of the globalization agenda are multinationals corporations, international financial markets, and transnational agencies. Given that, no country can fully satisfy all its needs: imports, exports, and capital flow from others and to other countries are essential for sustenance of an economy. Globalization, however, has a negative cultural impact.
Globalization leaders are American firms, which integrate their cultures with local ones. However, American culture promotes individuality consumerism and materiality, in contrast to close-knit cultures in developing countries. Further favoring the rich is the commoditization of basic needs like water, housing, security, healthcare or even education.
Wealth gain in globalization accelerates capitalism enlarging an income gap where the rich become richer and the poor poorer (Pew Global Attitudes project, World Public welcome Global trade- but not immigration). Globalization increases trade in cultural goods and services including films, music, and books among others. This trade of cultural products exposes people to foreign cultural practices.
This leads to people to have a more open cultural view, thus opening local cultures to integrate with other cultures; thus influencing local cultural aspects of traditions and values. Considering, trade partners of developing countries are mostly western countries, the local cultures gain from this cultures; considering the growing influence of emerging countries such as India and China, which are leading exporters to western nations, western nations also receive elements from this cultures (The Levin Institute. Globalization and Local Culture).
Globalization has led to the sharing of new technology. Production is expensive in western countries. Thus, industrial hubs are moving to develop in countries thus requiring technical expertise to move to such countries to facilitate production. Further, the impact of globalization has led to middle-class growth. With more trade and industrialization, the beneficiaries of jobs creation have been the middle class.
The embracing of consumerism by the middle class has led to emergent economic sectors brought about by an increase in wants such as cars, luxuries, and shopping malls. This has fuelled the increase in trade and industrialization, in developing countries, to meet the increase in consumer wants. New technology flows from western nations is necessary to enable local industries to meet these wants.
Thus, developing countries growth comes from both internal and external capital flows (Knickerbocker, If poor get richer, does the world see progress?) Multinationals are firms, which operate in more than one country; an example is McDonald. Food has a pivotal role in most cultures. It brings people together to have meals together, thus providing room for family and friends to interact.
At such interactions, views and habits learning takes place. This mostly affects children. French, for example, love their cuisine and see it as a reflection of their culture. McDonalds’ effect on Chinese culture includes the introduction of the celebration of birthdays. Children in Chinese culture should eat what their parents provide; however, McDonald’s slowly had an effect of changing this through its provision of food choices for children at its restaurants.
Considering McDonald has over 31000 restaurants worldwide its cultural impact has been enormous (The Levin Institute, Globalization, and Local Culture). Sharing of knowledge to developing countries such as in healthcare and education has been of the essence in developing countries in areas such as in reducing maternal deaths, ending endemic diseases such as the recent polio elimination in India and improvement of family planning among others.
Knowledge sharing impact has also been in fields such as infrastructure and mining, where locals have received massive investment in capital and expertise from multinationals, which in turn train the locals. Further, governance improvement through assistance by Breton Woods institutions, which are transnational agencies and organizations such as IMF and World Bank (Ma, Paths of globalization from the Berbers to Bach).
Modern globalization is a child of the Breton Woods 1944 meeting: the meeting led to the establishment of IMF and World Bank to aid the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. To grow European industries and trade, they facilitated opening up of markets, provision, and movement of finance. Big European and American firms spread first within the western countries, where they underwent competition; some fell by the wayside while others grew stronger.
With western markets being highly competitive, developing countries were the next course of growth. The spread to developing had negative impacts such as the diminishing of local culture. Withstanding of the disadvantages of globalization, it has benefits including share new technology, share knowledge, trying new food, cultural product, and services exchange.
References
Knickerbocker, B. (2004). If poor get richer, does the world see progress? The Christian Science Monitor.
Ma, Y. (2008). Paths of globalization from the Berbers to Bach. New perspectives quarterly.
Pew Global Attitudes project. (2007). World Public welcome Global trade- but not immigration.
Rifkin, I. (2003). Spiritual Perspectives on globalization. Skylight Path Publishers.
The Levin Institute. (2004). Globalization and Local Culture. State university of New York.