Globalisation needs no defence – it needs to be questioned
By Richard Tomkins
The main point of the globalization argument is that trade liberalization drives economic growth and economic growth raises living standards. Its supporters say that on a wide range of measures – poverty, the age to which people live, health, education – more people have become richer at a faster pace in the past 60 years than ever before. However, globalisation’s opponents would claim that this success has had its negative sides: that the increases in prosperity have favoured the rich far more than the poor, that trade liberalization has encouraged the growth of bad working conditions and child labour, that lifting the barriers to the free flow of international capital has increased financial instability, and so on.
Globalisation’s enthusiasts are so good at cataloguing globalisation’s benefits while ignoring its costs. And I am referring not just to the flight of jobs from developed countries to less developed ones or the environmental damage caused by the developing world’s rapid industrialization, but to globalisation’s social and cultural effects.
After all for those of us in the developed world, there is hardly a part of our lives that globalization has not touched. On the plus side, for example, it has greatly increased consumer choice: Britons can now buy strawberries all year round from their local supermarket, drive a Czech-built Skoda, wear trainers made in Vietnam and spend their holidays in China. But while their power as consumers may have grown, their power as employees has probably diminished as globalization has increased competition and work pressures, and heightened job insecurity.
What I would like to see, therefore, is an attempt to weigh up the costs and benefits of globalization to decide whether, on balance, it is making the world a better place or a worse one – not just economically, but across a range of issues. Economically, it could start by asking whether globalization is a good thing because it offers the hope of lifting millions out of poverty, or whether it is a bad thing because, as is often claimed, it is widening the gap between rich and poor. It would also have to ask whether the drive to increase living standards through ever-greater levels of industrialization and consumption was making unsustainable demands on the earth’s resources.
Personally, however, I would be more interested in reading its cost/benefit analysis of the social and cultural questions. Does globalisation, for example, increase our access to the arts, or are we suffering from a global pop culture easily sold everywhere? Does globalisation enable more people to experience the surprises and pleasures of cultural diversity or is it leading to the elimination of differences and the mixing of national and local cultures into a global, mainly American, stew? Are our lives made more interesting and exciting by globalisation’s destruction of old traditions and communities or are we made more miserable by the loss of the cultural individuality that gives structure to our lives?
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Task 1. Look through the whole article. True or false? Give arguments to support your answers.
a) The first paragraph talks about argument for and against globalisation.
b) The second paragraph refers to some of the costs of globalisation.
c) The third paragraph gives some examples of the benefits of globalisation in a developing country.
d) The fourth paragraph is only concerned with the advantages of globalisation.
e) In the fifth paragraph, the writer says he is mainly interested in the economic effects of globalisation.
Task 2. Match the nouns 1-7 to their meanings a)-g).
1. trade liberalisation a) obstacles that stop something from happening
2. economic growth b) when trade is made easier by reducing quotas, import taxes, etc.
3. poverty c) when people are poor
4. prosperity d) when the economy gets bigger
5. child labour e) when people are rich
6. barriers f) when conditions change very fast
7. instability g) when children work
Task 3. Choose the best alternatives to complete the statements about the expressions in italics.
a) If you catalogue the benefits of something, you
i) list its advantages.
ii) list its disadvantages.
iii) write a book about its advantages.
b) If you ignore the costs of something, you
i) think about its negative effect.
ii) think about its positive effect.
iii) don’t think about its negative effect.
c) If A touches B, it
i) ignores it.
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ii) influences it.
iii) has nothing to do with it.
d) If something diminishes, it
i) gets smaller.
ii) stays the same.
iii) gets bigger.
e) If A heightens B, it
i) decreases it.
ii) leaves it the same.
iii) increases it.
Task 4. Look at the article. Match the verbs 1-5 to the expressions a)-e) that they go with.
1. weigh up a) millions out of poverty
2. lift b) living standards
3. widen c) unsustainable demands
4. increase d) the costs
5. make e) the gap between rich and poor
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