Pro Globalist and Anti Globalist View from Developed Country Perspective

This essay will focus on the two following views; Pro Globalist and Anti Globalist and how they can be viewed from two different perspectives, one of a developed country and another of a developing country. Both perceive globalization as opportunity and threat in their own context. While discussing the pros and cons of globalization, we need to keep context on the impact of globalization on three different aspects: economic, political and cultural.

Pro Globalist View from Developed Country Perspective:

Globalization from an economic perspective will result in optimal utilization of resources across the world. Commonly, the cost of resources is high in developed countries. Companies can get resources from anywhere in the world wherever the cost is minimal and cheaper. This helps to reduce the cost of manufacturing and will be in the benefit of the customer. Ultimately, the customers will get cheaper products and that will improve the standard of living by increasing the buying power. Globalization from an economic perspective is that it allows companies to increase their sales by taping new markets. With multiple markets across the world, companies will have sales cycles running across the year. This makes companies remain competitive.

If companies need a specific skill set, which someone elsewhere in a different part of the world is, globalization allows companies to hire that person. They do not need to depend on their local human resources. This again will be an economic advantage for the companies even though it is at an expense. With globalization, the people will speak common languages such as English. When people from different areas speak the same language or can teach each other their own languages, culture spreads more easily, this can bring in a new form of trust in trading with other countries. This also leads to a lot of movements of people from one country to another in pursuit of their career goals. This will result in cross-cultural bonding being developed between various races of people interacting with each other. With globalization, lots of countries are merely dependent on each other. It creates increased interdependence on each other and countries will think twice before starting a war because warring countries will mean potentially losing investors and that then means markets can adversely affect their economies. This, in turn, brings, if respected, the political stability across the world.

Pro Globalist View from Developing Country Perspective:

The most important point from a developing country’s perspective is that it helps in the economic growth of developing countries. Opening economies of developing countries will help foreign investors to invest freely into these markets and will make the local manufacturers competitive at the global level. Globalization also enables the spread of technology advances across the entire world. Typically, developed countries invest a lot in research and are the hub of most of the inventions we have today. With globalization, the same technology can be available to masses across the world at the almost the same time. This enables developing countries to operate on the same level as of developed countries. This leads to a huge economic advantage for the developing country as the “technology divide” between the developing country and the developed country has been reduced.

Globalization will create new employment opportunities in developing countries. This, in turn, will lead to a flow of foreign exchange into the economy which is a huge bonus point. A higher inflow of foreign exchange will boost the economy as a whole. Boosted economies lead to a higher standard of living with better living conditions, better health, and civic amenities. The political perspective tells us that this will enable developing countries to establish and make ties with developed countries and make allies in the international forum.

Anti-Globalist View from Developed Country Perspective:

Creating new job opportunities for those living in developing countries comes at the expense of existing jobs in the host country. Companies who shut down their employment operations in the host country results in people being laid off and are forced straight into unemployment. Because of this, the people in developed countries are at loss, they are not benefiting from the cost saved from offshoring jobs in the developing countries at all. The widespread technologies, globally, leads to competitive advantages for developed countries. The majority of the research that has been done on the technological front was aided by the government and was done on tax payer’s money of developed country’s population. Since developing countries now have access to the same technologies, the economic gap has been narrowed down with their developed counterpart. This now leads to the loss of further jobs where developing countries build upon technologies to provide competitive products in the developed country’s markets. Ironically, it seems that developed countries themselves in a sense financed their downfall.

Due to globalization, people from one country who still wants to make further steps within their career path, for example, those who are from the developing countries, have moved to settle in the developed countries and instead of pursuing with their exact country culture, they bring along their own culture, this then results in culture shock for the original inhabitants of the country. With the initiation of developing countries like India and China, developed countries have lost their usual bargain power in the international exchange due to their long dependence on these economies but for example a country such as Zambia was stuck in debt because of the natural resources and agriculture the land had to offer, they were offered loans to pay their way out of their debts but were led further into debt and the people of the country were forced either to work with the new terms and conditions or flee the country and to go from being an extremely wealthy country in sub-Saharan Africa to be in debt was quite shameful for the country. The debt kept on rising from (1) US$814 to US$3,244 in just the space of ten years and then furthered to being even more at US$6,916 which was appalling but they had no other option but to take loans from the IMF and World Bank. The reason for Zambia’s debt crisis was merely because of the means and demand for oil. The “Oil Crisis” because an issue when importing cost of oil increased, this then pushed for answers on what would happen next if the cost went too high for oil and it did get extremely high and Zambia was unable to keep up with costs.

From this a striking pattern emerges, to summarise, the very same points which are proponents of pro-globalist view in the developed country leads to anti-globalist view in developing country. Similarly, same points which are proponents of pro-globalist view from developing country leads to anti-globalist view in the developed country. When the developed country sees as optimal use of the resource, the same is viewed as draining of natural resource by developing country. When developing country sees as the creation of job opportunity, the same is viewed as a loss of jobs in the developed country. The weakness of one is the strength of another. It is not questionable that, globalization has brought extreme competition in the market and too much change in social fabric. Globalization has an exceptional advantage but at the same time is uncontrolled therefore meaning globalization can cause more harm than benefit. Globalization leads to sudden change. Managing and surviving the change is extremely difficult. There is a need of gradual approach for globalization. Globalization should be done in step approach both in developed countries and developing countries. Developing country should provide enough assistance to their local industry so that they should not buckle under global competition. Similarly, if the job needs to offshore to developing countries, enough opportunities should be created in first place. Unless the positive results of globalization outpace the negative consequences of growth, sustaining economic growth will remain a problem in the future.

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