As observed by no less a personage than Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics "there needs to be a better balance between the role of markets and the role of government. Simplistic reforms based on free-market ideology don't work. The way that East Asia managed globalization, which combined an export-orientation with policies aimed at poverty reduction, worked even for the poor people. These countries did liberalize trade, but only as they created jobs," jobs that were permanently rooted in the local infrastructure of the nation, rather than dependent upon other nation's conglomerates.
The political benefits gleaned by Friedman will also have little benefit, even for the United States, moreover, if economic benefits are not similarly reaped -- after all, the terrorists that attacked the World Trade Center, filled with hatred of America's power, wielded IBM laptops in their service of Islamic power, in defiance of Western values. Moreover, neoliberal economic globalization encourages the pursuit of profit regardless of social and environmental costs. Such globalization "is associated with increasing levels of inequality, both between and within countries; the concentration of resources and power in fewer and fewer hands," ultimately resulting in an...
It provides a quick economic fix in the short run. In the long run, it creates a world of economic, social, political and economic exclusion and spawns economic and political instability, to say nothing of the spiraling rates of natural resource exploitation and a loss of biological and regional diversity that will result in a poorer world, monetarily and culturally.
Works Cited
Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. 2001.
World Bank, "Globalization," Report Published by the World Bank Group, 2001.
Porter, Keith. "Poverty or Prosperity: Is Either Caused by Globalization?" About.com. 2001. Retrieved online at http://globalization.about.com/cs/whatisit/a/gzpoverty_2.htm
World Bank, "Globalization," Report Published by the World Bank Group, 2001.
Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 2001, Preface.
Keith Porter, "Poverty or Prosperity: Is Either Caused by Globalization?" About.com. 2001. Retrieved online at http://globalization.about.com/cs/whatisit/a/gzpoverty_2.htm
