Critical Essay on Globalization

Critical Essay on Globalization

Pros and cons of globalization in a post-pandemic world

In the middle of the 20th century, in the heart of Western civilization, a process that had been slowly building for several centuries since the years of the Silk Road was formalized. In the contemporary era it was given the name of globalization, and consists of the integration of economies premises in a single and great world market, in which capital circulates more freely even than people, and the consumer society reaches its largest and deepest dimensions.

Many have criticized and praised this trend for almost a century of existence. Some see in it a consolidation of liberal economic projects, which give large transnational business consortia a leading role in the world; while others highlight its democratizing tendency by allowing the free flow of information and downplaying national borders and political projects. Be that as it may, the idea of ​​inhabiting a “global village” was never so close to being realized as in the times when, unexpectedly, the Covid-19 pandemic broke out.

The (darker) side of the global pandemic

The pandemic, as is known, is also an element of the new global dynamics: the rapid movements of tourists and travelers from one side of the world to the other allow germs to also find niches suitable for their arrival. And yet the world's enormous socio-economic inequalities make it difficult to implement a unified strategy.

The industrialized countries and high-income, thus, they not only possess the technology and the resources to find a solution to the health problem, but they can also face restrictions, quarantines and supply chain disruptions in a better way, being able to serve their working populations and resist better The hit. This is not the case with your business partners. Third World, where to the hardships of the epidemic must be added those of the productive and socioeconomic collapse.

While one segment of the world recovers with better footing, the other remains sunk longer. And while the industrialized world debates the psychological effects of confinement, the inhabitants of the third world yearn for greater margins of protection that allow them to avoid imminent contagion, or to protect them in case of to get sick. While the first world debates whether to get vaccinated or not, and undertakes campaigns to counter the infodemic produced on social networks, the third world cries out for greater access to the vaccine.

Also, while the first world slows down its sales machine to wait for the wave of contagions, unemployment is skyrocketing in the third world and the fight against poverty has been scandalous recoil. Apparently the interconnection and interdependence that globalization produced, considered in ordinary times as a win-win mechanism, does not brought with it some possibility that, in exceptional times, this interdependence implies greater quotas of support for the less favored.

The consequences of this global functioning, on the other hand, transcend the borders of the national. It is enough to observe the shortage of microchips that afflicts the booming European industries, the result of the collapse healthcare in India, to realize that global problems require, as obvious as it may seem, solutions global.

However, what happened has been exactly the opposite: the strongest nations have taken refuge in the hardening of their borders and have ignored the cheap labor of their partners commercial. For example, industrialized nations have proceeded to monopolize the majority of available vaccines, to the point that in the developed world a significant percentage (close to 50%) of the population It has already received the complete scheme of some vaccine, while in other nations that figure does not even reach 10% of the total population.

Many, faced with this scenario, predict the death of globalization, that is, the return to nationalist schemes of industrial development, of the hand of state financial aid, that is, procedures very different from those that various international organizations recommend to developing nations: the liberalization of their markets. And meanwhile, in the face of the first attempts at disaster, powerful countries jump ship and leave millions without jobs.

A golden opportunity

The worst thing is that, given the circumstances, the crisis triggered by the pandemic and the respective quarantines entails a global opportunity unprecedented to establish a more equitable productive dynamic, which helps to solve the brutal inequalities that afflict the planet, and not just that: a solidarity dynamic that serves as a precedent for necessary future cooperation, in the face of even greater challenges, such as change climate.

A more supportive globalization could pave the way for a more integrated and diverse humanity. values truly universal fundamentals. If, with the same eagerness with which the supposed virtues of the free market are promoted, socio-economic and financial responsibility were stimulated, or Should the necessary ethical debates take place regarding the distribution of medicines in the world, many of the evils of the time could begin to overcome.

What is the use of vaccinating the population of industrialized nations even with booster doses, while the population of disadvantaged countries incubates in their own bodies, or in those of their deceased relatives, a new variant of virus that can end the protection of the vaccine? What is the moral character of Business Westerners who today abandon thousands of workers whose cheap labor previously allowed them to maximize their returns and consolidate their markets?

The pandemic, in any case, will end sooner rather than later and globalization will continue there, ready in one way or another to resume its dynamics and to learn from lived experiences. It will be up to us to lead it towards a promising future, to make it a process that multiplies well-being and not that widens the gap between the poor and the rich.

References:

• "Essay" in Wikipedia.
• "Globalization" in Wikipedia.
• "Globalization: Threat or Opportunity?" at International Monetary Fund.
• "Has globalization come to an end?" on the Andean Development Corporation (CAF).
• "A brief history of globalization" in World Economic Forum.
• "Globalization" in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

What is an essay?

The rehearsal is a literary genre whose text is characterized by being written in prose and by addressing a specific topic freely, making use of the arguments and the author's appreciations, as well as the literary and poetic resources that make it possible to embellish the work and enhance its aesthetic features. It is considered a genre born in the European Renaissance, fruit, above all, from the pen of the French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), and that over the centuries it has become the most used format to express ideas in a structured, didactic and formal.

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