Globalization

If you think about it on a purely objective level, allowing companies and people who manage large amounts of money to move their operations wherever they please so as to increase efficiency makes sense.  It also makes sense that large companies exert a fair amount of political power as well; after all, they manage the majority of the commodity that makes the world function, money.  This, of course, is fair under hypothetically objective terms.  Commerce is vital to the function of our social world; people who control it should have power to advance commerce as much as possible.  An oligarchy makes sense, on paper that is.

People who approve of globalization speak of it in these terms.  Unfortunately, they tend to leave out the fact that it is really not as simple as it seems.  When ridiculous amounts of power and money are put in the hands of big business owners, it seems to be ignored that these business owners are not reasonable and fair people.  If they were reasonable, they would run their businesses without hierarchical influence.  Workers and executives alike would be paid fairly, each receiving compensation due for their job.  This would create a much more equal distribution of wealth in the world and would seriously improve the terrible living conditions of laborers in third world countries without seriously harming anyone.  The C.E.O. of Nike could take a salary decrease of at least a few million dollars and still live comfortably.  However, the current situation is not as a reasonable, logical person would expect.  Laborers work fourteen hour days, living in squalid shacks, walking to work bare-footed while the money made off of their work is in the hands of a few Ferrari-driving, mansion-owning executives.

            It seems to me that any attempt to correct or rectify globalization has failed miserably.  This is because most attempts have disregarded the fact that most individuals, when given power, abuse it.  The system is broken.  Globalization starts to get out of hand, the wealth is horribly distributed, what do we do?  A group of seemingly reasonable people band together, forming some type of organization typically named with an acronym, and they say: we are putting a stop to the injustice that is globalization.  Their plan looks great on paper, much like the original plan of a globalized oligarchy; but once again, they ignore the effect of selfish and greedy individuals.  In regulating globalization, the distribution of power is not corrected; it is simply shifted in favor of those who regulate it.  Any organization attempting to fix the problem is prone to bias.  For example, the WTO set out to create “fair-trade” but many of their laws and regulations seem to benefit certain groups of people over others.  So what do we do when our equality regulators begin to perpetuate the unfair distribution of power?  Typically, we create a new organization (also named with an acronym) to stop the previous regulators from being selfish and greedy.  This new acronym is a mighty advocate for freedom and justice, until its motives become beneficial to a few individuals and we must create a new organization to shut their operation down.  It is a vicious cycle.