Globalization

Globalization is a trend toward unification of the world economies. Two pros discussed in the chapter are Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) and merchandise trade. Two cons are cultural amalgamation and the per capita gap. Communications and transportation have facilitated the advancement of globalization.

In the last 150 years the capacity and ease of communications and transportation have, to use an idiom, made the world a smaller place. In the early 19th century a message or package from Boston to Beijing (then known as Peking) would take many, many months. Keeping in mind there were no good harbors on the West Coast, the package would go by ship around the Tierra del Fuego. And then, across the Pacific and then north along Australasia and finally through the South China Sea and Sea of Japan. Today ordinary citizens fly and send packages likewise in a matter of hours and days. Communications are now facilitated by the internet and satellite communications with a latency of about 800 miliseconds to just about anywhere in the world. (Zhang, et. al, 1997)The shattering speed of these new technologies have created a framework for improved merchandise trade and Transnational Advocacy Networks.

Anyone can join a TAN on Facebook or begin a trade relationship with someone in the Czech Republic, for instances. Last night I was looking for a platform for my mobile app and I came across a company in the Czech Republic that already makes exactly what I need. I sent them an email about a liscensing arrangement. Likewise, I joined the Facebook group for Doctors Without Borders a week ago. It was the first I had heard about the free trade agreement between the EEC and India and how it was going to impact the prices of the AIDS medicine they ship to Africa. I shared the article with my friends.

This is an effect of the per-capita disparity of EDCs and LDCs. If the large multinational pharmaceutical corporations in Europe made their medicines more affordable (to LDCs especially,) then Doctors Without Borders would not be buying black-market drugs from India. These drugs are unaffordable in Africa to families who make dollars a day.

When I was in Mexico the poolboy at the hotel offered me $50 for the shirt off my back. I paid $30 for it out-of-season and he would have paid $100 for the same brand in the store. Cultural amalgamation is Tommy Hilfiger in Mexico. It is McWorld, as the text calls it.

External links

Satellite Communications in the Global Internet: Issues, Pitfalls, and Potential. Yongguang Zhang, Dante De Lucia, Bo Ryu, Son K. Dao. Hughes Research Laboratories, USA. Retrieved from www.isoc.org/inet97/proceedings/F5/F5_1.HTM