Many things have become more economical and accessible as a result of globalization. It aids productivity, reduces gender pay discrimination, expands possibilities for women, and improves the working environment and management quality, particularly in developing nations.
Of course, globalization has both advantages and disadvantages. But for some reason, little is said about the latter due to the fact that typical anti-globalists most often make arguments only at the level of social interaction and not on a global scale.
Why globalization is not as good as it is presented to us
Loss of sovereignty
Supporters of globalization say that the concept of borders has long been outdated and that they are not needed in the current realities. In principle, we can agree with them. But it is enough to look at the same European Union to understand that not everything is as smooth as it is described.
The fact is that globalization is followed by the loss of sovereignty of individual subjects who were once free to solve their own issues. This leads to the fact that national policy ceases to play any role, and the center determines the interests of the region and not on the ground.
But the loss of sovereignty of the subjects of the global world is only the beginning. This will be followed by the “capitulation” of the center to another enemy – transnational corporations, which will increasingly dominate the world stage, concentrating not only economic but also military power in their hands. They can easily afford to arm hundreds of thousands of people and bring any government to its knees.
The emergence of the hegemon and its satellites
No matter in which societies, culture, and political structure, no matter at what time, there has always been a center that prevailed over the rest. Nationwide, it is the capital that distributes benefits in most political arrangements.
With the growth of globalization, the division into such a peculiar capital in the form of a hegemon and its satellites will become more and more pronounced. At the moment, the United States still remains such a hegemon, but in the future, the laurel branch may move to a more dynamically developing China.
In fact, the situation with the British Empire of the 19th century and its dominions and satellites may repeat, but in a global sense, where no one can do anything without the consent of the center.
Transfer of production
One of the main problems of globalization, at least in the current capitalist formation, is that production is transferred to those regions that can provide cheap labor. This, in turn, leads to a production imbalance in the world and to the dependence of some regions on others. A snap of the fingers is enough to deprive an entire continent not only of technology but also of food.
In addition, the transfer of production literally turns some countries into huge factories, which artificially slows down the growth of prosperity. The thing is that where production is transferred from, workers no longer have such levers of pressure on the capitalist, and where it is transferred, workers are stimulated by speeches about the mythical queue of those who want to work for any money. As a result, this difference is blurred, and few people will be able to understand that there is something better.
Use only for First world countries
This is a consequence of the transfer of production. Who benefits from it? Only the political and financial elite of the first-world countries are the most affluent states. They don’t care that in the current post-industrial society, millions of people find themselves out of work and are forced to retrain or disappear, the main thing is the benefit.
But let’s omit this point because we are talking about benefits, not about the unemployed. In this case, the benefit is that goods become cheaper due to the exploitation of cheaper labor. However, they become cheap only for consumers in the first world countries, since for those people who produce these goods, they are expensive because of the same low wages.
The environmental situation is also improving due to the transfer of the dirtiest heavy industry. On the contrary, in the countries where production is transferred, there is a cumulative effect, because all the pollution is summed up in a relatively small area, which we, for example, can observe in China. As a result, we have several concentration points instead of a uniform distribution of pollutants across the planet.
Growing income gap due to uneven distribution of benefits
Another consequence of the transfer of production and exploitation of less-protected segments of the population. With globalization, it would seem that the part of the able-bodied population that participates in the creation of goods should have higher economic independence. However, it’s still the opposite. The income gap is growing every year due to the fact that corporations are increasingly monopolized and artificially create an even bigger gap.
The gap between the poor and the rich is only growing with the growth of globalization, and already less than 1% of the population owns more than half of all the money on the planet. As we mentioned above, benefits are distributed more or less evenly only in the first world countries, and in others, due to “economic inexpediency”, they are available to few.
The dominance of one culture over the others
As in the case of the loss of sovereignty, identity is also erased. On the one hand, this is good because humanity is becoming more and more monolithic, as a result of which the number of points of counteraction is decreasing. On the other hand, it does not lead to the creation of some new culture that accommodates all the good from others.
All other cultures are aggressively displaced by one, which, of course, dominates the rest, imposing its values and condemning others. At the moment, such a dominant culture has been American for several decades, but, as we mentioned earlier, it may later be supplanted by the Chinese.
Consumer attitude to resources
Capitalism does not imply concern for resources, because its main goal is competition, the provision of goods at more favorable parameters for the buyer, and artificial stimulation of demand. Even if today you think some product is unnecessary for you, tomorrow marketers will make it so that you can’t imagine your life without it (yes, it’s easy to manipulate you). This generates merciless exploitation of resources for production.
Unrealized demand leads to the destruction of unsold goods with the loss of resources already used in vain. All this is already happening with the current development of globalization. In the future, if the attitude towards resource exploitation and production does not change, we risk facing a rapid depletion of natural resources and the devastation of some territories in favor of others.
