Globalisation: advantages and disadvantages

Even though we believe that globalization is a new concept, it is worth noting that it existed 60,000 years ago when our ancestors moved from one place to another to exchange goods. We have only perpetuated this tradition and made it faster.

So, we can say that globalisation is the connection that different parts of the world establish to communicate, spread products or information, even jobs and technologies. It is consequently a way to interact with other nations more easily than in the past with the arrival of transports, computers, the Internet... 

Our village or city is not enough, we need to cross the borders and see what lies beyond. For the best but also for the worst as we are going to see.

Culturally, globalization is good because it has increased cultural exchanges in the last few years. Indeed, we can now travel faster and more easily to discover new people and different cultures. Expatriation and migration have developed, too and have contributed to the development of these cultural exchanges. New customs, habits and beliefs have been introduced and shared among local communities. 

Distances are no longer a barrier, and people can wake up in a country and go to bed at night in another one before packing again for a new continent. People feel less attached to the nation of country and claim they are citizens of the world.

In this way they are more concerned with what happens at the other end of the planet because they have been there and they feel preoccupied with issues that matter a lot like global warming and the melting of the ice cap, deforestations, floods, epidemics...

As far as economics is concerned we have noted that world imports have increased 33-fold in the past fifty years. For instance goods which do not grow in our countries (avocados, coffee...) can be consumed everywhere in the world. It is the same with books, films or music which are instantaneously available thanks to new technologies.

To finish, we can also talk about the importation of traditions which now take place everywhere in the world whereas they used to take place in one country only (St Patrick’s Day, Halloween, the Brazilian Carnival...)

Unfortunately things are not all rosy when dealing with globalization. We know for example that in the sector of economy, not all the actors of globalization are equally treated since 82 % of the world’s wealth goes to 1 % of the population!

Another negative aspect concerns children’s work in underdeveloped who do not go to school and are forced to work for almost nothing because big companies have their products made there, regardless of the children’s health and welfare. Their only motivation is a cheaper workforce. 

Globalization has of course negative effects on the environment because of the development of transport that has caused serious problems recently such as the greenhouse effect, global warming or air pollution.

As for health we have seen that globalization can have tragic consequences with the spreading of viruses which affect the world.

One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs and globalization clearly illustrates the proverb. If you want good things to happen you must make sacrifices, every silver lining has a cloud. Let’s hope that, one day, globalization will only have positive impacts on the world’s population.

It is very difficult to say that globalisation is good or bad. It has critical effects on lots of domains but the benefits of globalization still remain a priority at the international level.