Globalization

Everytime we read the news, we get to read stories about how the process of globalization influences the lifestyles of million people around the world.

First of all, it is necessary to define what "Globalization" is, and its scope. When talking about "Globalization", we mainly refer to the process in which all the countries in the world are economically connected. This is achieved by breaking down barriers between countries, in terms of trade, taxes, etc. Yet, you may wonder why is all about economy, and not general facts as we all know. This happens because at the beginning, when the term "globalization" started widespreading around the world, it was used to refer to economical processes only, because nobody knew (or believed) that that process would undergo other situations.

So, what is known as "Globalization" nowadays? It is how we call the process of being in touch with all the communities of the world, in more than one aspect only. We get benefits from: faster news, cheaper goods, work online, study, etc. In other words, we can say that the world is connected, everybody lives in a "Global Village", where everybody knows about each other, and what is happening in very distant places, as well as interacting with them. Consequently, we would be dealing with an integrative concept, which includes social aspects, economical aspects, educational, technological, etc. Consequently, it has many effects on people's everyday life, which tend to be perceived as all positive, but if we think carefully, we will see that it has disadvantages too.

On the one hand, I believe that globalization is pretty good for us, because it enables us to keep in touch with people from faraway places, with whom we would have lost contact in previous decades. One of the most relevant issues regarding this contact is the communication that teachers and students, and business people can have, which leads to better results. For example, workers can share ideas and products easily and in a cheaper way. Likewise, teachers and students can work altogether through mail, blogs and social networks, to keep in touch with the students and help them to improve more.

On the other hand, all the positive points that were considered in the previous paragraph have pernicious consequences. Have you ever thought about how those big multinational companies sell products all over the world with relative low prices? They exploit people, for example, in sweat factories, by making them work very long hours, in filthy life conditions, and earning very little money. Sometimes, those people know that they are being exploited, but as the salary is enough to survive, they do not complain. There are foundations in certain cities that want to cut off globalization, and are called "anti-globalization" movements. However, if they succeed, those workers would be left unemployed.

To sum up, I believe that globalization has both, positive and negative aspects. The problem appears when we go to extremes, when the rich wants to be richer and (s)he does not think about the others. In this case, globalization is just a weapon against equiality, like a poison candy in a very nice envelope.