Has globalisation been a benefit to everyone world wide

Has Globalisation Been A Benefit To Everyone World Wide?.
Globalisation is the spread of economic, cultural and social ways of life being integrated into other societies and reaching nearly every human being. For example if you went to Argentina you could buy English football shirts. This sort of thing represents two cultures which just 60 or 70 years ago knew nearly nothing about each other now have parts of each others culture and ways of life in their own society. Also without globalisation, at present, most countries would have one major brand for sportswear but because of globalisation the whole world has one or possibly two brands that supply everyone. In Africa you see children wearing Nike, an American company’s, hats. Although this may offer people in MEDC’s a better choice and a lower price, what about the people who are making these products and what about the people who live in LEDC’s and may feel their culture is being destroyed by this foreign influence.

One of the cultures that is definitely under serious threat because of globalisation is that of Peruvian wool farmers! These farmers generally farm either Al Paca or Vicuna. Although a coat made of Al Pace would sell for hundreds of pounds and a coat of Vicuna would sell for thousands of pounds, these farmers still aren’t getting enough money to survive on. Here is why; the farmers have say 5kg of Vicuna wool. They would go to a market and sell it for £10, the person they sell it to would sell it on for a small profit of maybe £2. This will happened about 5 times before it reaches an actual dealer. So say the dealer buys it for £25, he then takes it to his factory where it is refined and made into cloth. He’ll then sell it to someone like Harrods for about £40. Harrods will shape the cloth into coat and sell it for say £1500. And although it has gone through a little refining and has been made into the coat. It now costs 15000% more than the original wool. Is the secondary service really worth 150 times more than the primary? But the problem is the farmers don’t have any money or training to provide the secondary service so they have to keep on earning low amounts of money. But they won’t be able to much longer because the little money coupled with the price increases (because of the economic advances of the country, helped by the farmers) is meaning that they really only just have enough to survive.

Another problem with Globalisation is the fact that because the MEDC’s consumer market is demanding ever lower prices (because of the ever growing choice which is being driven by globalisation) TNC’s are having to look for where they can produce the cheapest goods and make the most profit. Unfortunately though this most often is in a LEDC, this means two things; 1. The companies’ workers in the country it is moving out of will lose their jobs. 2. The workers in the country the company is moving to will get paid as little as possible. Although two is fair enough it is not fair were; for working 12 hours in the UK the company would pay their workers £60 whereas in say the Philippines the company would pay their workers £4 (93.3% less). That isn’t just lowering wages that’s practically getting rid of them. Although cost of living in the Philippines is much cheaper it is still unacceptable that a TNC would take such a massive advantage of people who need jobs. But that is the reason the TNC can charge that little is because they know the workers need theses jobs and they know there are plenty of people waiting to step into their places if they complain. So why pay them more than you have to?

Although I’m sure so far it has sounded all “doom and gloom” but actually there are many very good aspects of globalisation. It increases economic prosperity which (in most cases) is very beneficial this is created by the taxes paid to the government either on; the profits, the goods or the production. This helps boost the economy of all three of the countries involved in the chain; the country where the TNC is based, the country where the product is produced and the country where the product is sold. It has also been proved that countries affected by globalisation have seen a fall in poverty rates.
This graph

shows the poverty rates in China, Sub-Saharan Africa and the whole World. China has been massively affected by globalisation whereas Sub-Saharan-Africa has barely been touched by it. These statistics show a very large correlation between progression of globalisation and fall of poverty.

One way of tackling the disadvantages of globalisation is Fair Trade. Fair Trade is a movement which tries to get fairer money for the primary service. It tries to cut out the middle men. Like in Peru where the Vicuña wool would go through five or six people before it got to a factory with Fair Trade it would go straight to the factory meaning that the farmer would get the profits of all the middle men as well. So although it doesn’t make much difference to us it makes a huge difference to the primary service provider. Although in principle it is a good idea the problem is the amount of sellers the system could support is not unlimited. If too many rice sellers were involved in fair trade then the TNC’s would have to lower their Fair Trade prices because of the amount of competition. This would undoubtedly lower the price a company would pay the primary service provider. This would just create the whole low wage problem again.

In conclusion I think that globalisation is beneficial for me as a individual but I don’t think its positives outweigh its negatives overall. In the end I think the problem comes down to the greed of the people in MEDC’s because they’re the ones who are pushing down the prices by not paying as much as it really costs. But unfortunately the cost we don’t have to pay is being paid in money and hard work by people in LEDC’s and is this really fair?

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