GLOBALIZATION: THE HARMS AND BENEFITS

Hey everyone! Welcome back to my blog. After a short hiatus taken for my college-apps, here is an longer-than-usual blog I wrote:

Globalization is a highly debated issue in the status quo. Although the general theory of globalization seems to be positive, considering its benefits for innovation and global trade, there are a myriad of disadvantages to it as well. In the end, I believe that the costs of globalization do indeed outweigh the benefits, and the costs are often unfortunately concentrated in third-world-countries. 

In particular, globalization leads to disproportionate environmental harms in third-world countries. The Harvard Business School finds that since more developed countries offshore their labor to developing countries, environments tend to be most destroyed in those very developing countries. To make matters worse, while developed countries such as the United States are more industrialized, those developing third-world-countries tend to be more lush and filled with nature. Thus, globalization harms what used to be the most healthy environments, and in doing so, it leads to significant biodiversity loss in environmentally sensitive reptiles, amphibians, fish, and mammals.  

Additionally, Harvard Business School also finds that globalization can accelerate climate change. The effects of factories and other industrialized methods common in globalization include greenhouse gas emissions, ocean acidification, and deforestation, and other forms of habitat fragmentation or loss. 

Furthermore, globalization also exploits workers in third-world-countries. The Constitutional Rights Foundation finds that workers in third-world-country sweatshops are extremely underpaid and exploited, further supporting the fact that third-world-countries face significant harms from globalization. The fact that developing nations, with already weaker economies than developed ones, are subject to further economic exploitation by the stronger countries is inherently unfair. 

However, some may argue that globalization leads to some benefits in third-world-countries. For example, the Constitutional Rights Foundation finds that developing nations are opposed to the removal of sweatshops from developed countries offshoring in their countries. Despite wages being quite low, they still are something for the citizens; without the sweatshops, they would be completely impoverished, with no source of income. 

However, this is an unethical argument to make. The fact people in developing countries are so reliant on inhumane economic systems is a direct reflection of the structural violence globalization causes. Rather than justifying globalization through the fact that inhumane sweatshops are a lifeline (which shouldn’t even be a reality), we must make change instead in order to create stronger economies in these countries so that we can safely get rid of sweatshops and unethical labor without completely impoverishing those in these nations. 

All of you reading this have the privilege of being an individual in the United States with adequate access to the Internet, technology, and more. We aren’t subject to rely on child-labor on sweatshops for a basic economy, and we have a fighting chance to vocalize our opinions on environmental concerns. The developing countries ours and other developed countries are exploiting don’t have that same choice. It’s time for us to educate ourselves; our privilege allows us to reap the benefits of globalization, but we must take a step back and ask ourselves: is it fair to subject already poorer countries to even more struggle?