What does globalization mean for government? Nationality?

As the world continues to follow the trend of flattening that Friedman discusses in his book, we must ask what the role of government will become in the increasingly flat world. Will it become more or less important than it is now? Or will it change in a way that we cannot even yet anticipate?
In an article titled "The Benefits of Globalization," the CATO Institute claims that "While globalization may confront government officials with more difficult choices, the result for their citizens is greater individual freedom. In this sense, globalization acts as a check on governmental power that makes it more difficult for governments to abuse the freedom and property of their citizens." Because of this, it is easy to see how globalization and government may be able to work hand in hand. Globalization will soon be forcing government to not only do the job it was intended to do, but also perhaps become better and more consciencious about it.
An article titled "Globalization Requires Positive Government Policy Responses" summarizes the key points and analyzes a book by Dani Rodrik, who points out three sources of tension between the global market and social stability. This article claims that "...Each of these points...reveals an important weakness in how advanced societies are currently handling—or are equipped to handle—the consequences of globalization. Collectively, they point to perhaps the greatest risk of all: that the cumulative consequence of these tensions will be new class divisions between those who prosper in the globalized economy and those who do not, between those who share its values and those who would rather not, and between those who can diversify away its risks and those who cannot. Rodrik warns that this deepening of social fissures harms all sectors of society, including the winners from globalization because of the threat they pose to the continuation of the process."
This is an important thing for us to take into consideration. How prepared are we for globalization and the consequences that it could bring? As individuals, we may think we are prepared, but when we think about society as a whole, there may be many weaknesses in our preparation. But no matter how prepared we may be, globalization, even though it is in a sense bringing together the world technologically, is at the same time isolating different people and groups of people who have different beliefs about the way things are changing. The theme of globalization and everything that it brings and creates can tend to become quite controversial, and it makes sense that people who supported it would be divided from the people who don't want to see it happen. In this way, globalization could separate us as a society and a culture more than it brings us together in other ways. The question arises: What will things such as nationality mean in a completely globalized world? In a part of his book, Friedman talks about a businessman's experience at a hotel. When he asks if entertainment is available on the television in his room, the hotel clerk simply tells him that "every room has every movie ever made in every language, anytime, day or night." This seems to be becoming the norm anywhere you go. No matter what country you are in, you can probably find some people who speak English. I myself traveled to Italy my senior year of high school, and in every store or restaurant I went to, I interacted with an Italian who spoke English fluently. It was expected that the people who came to these places would know English, so most people didn't even bother to ask if I spoke Italian before they started talking to me in English. It seems as though this is the way the whole world is becoming. Many years ago, if you traveled to or spoke with someone from a different country, a language and culture barrier may stand in the way of successful communication. Now, it seems as though with globalization, the world is becoming "Americanized" and different countries are losing their own unique, individual culture. In the beginning of The World Is Flat, Friedman mentions companies in India that deal with customer service, talking on the phone to people in America offering support for different things, like computers, telephone services, etc. Before they can start working, these Indians must take classes on speaking without their accents. Things like this, if we aren't careful, will likely someday eliminate all traces of different world cultures. You can already go to a McDonald's in just about any country you travel to, and do so many other things that feel American. Because of things like this, all of the cultures of the world will someday mesh into one giant culture. Nationality, country, and culture will no longer matter. All of this will be wiped away with globalization.

The Generation of Globalization

Reading Friedman's book The World Is Flat has really gotten me thinking about the globalization of the world that he talks about, and although I don't have much knowledge about politics and I still don't completely understand the idea of globalization, my opinion is that it may not be as good of a thing as he makes it out to be.
More specifically, the idea of the entire world becoming so interconnected that it will eventually make the world "flat" makes it seem to me as though this world will someday become so interconnected through technology that it will go beyond being a good thing and turn into something that only makes the world worse off. This book has really gotten me thinking about the world today and what it has become, and I have realized just how technological we have gotten in the past few years.
Everyone we know seems to have facebook, twitter, myspace, or their own personal blog. Some have all three. Now, a person without an account with one of these networking sites is considered out of the loop and a rarity. What started off as social networking sites have taken off and become the way we communicate, the way we keep in touch, the way we find out our information. It seems that in almost every conversation I have with someone, the topic of Facebook is brought up at least once, whether it is gossip about a relationship, news about an event, or what we read in our newsfeed that one friend said to another. One person in class used the example of finding out about the Video Music Awards through people's Facebook statuses. The same thing happened to me: I was simply wasting time on Facebook, probably avoiding work of some sort, when all of a sudden it seemed like everyone's statuses changed to something about Kanye West and how big of a jerk he was. So I decided to see what all the fuss was about and looked his name up on youtube. Sure enough, within minutes, someone had posted a video containing Kanye's now infamous outburst while Taylor Swift was onstage accepting her award, claiming that Beyonce had the best video of all time. I couldn't watch the VMA's, but because of Facebook I felt informed about at least one controversial thing that happened. Although facebook and similar social networking sites can provide a good service in being able to keep in touch with people that we would probably lose touch with and gather important information, it is quickly becoming one of the only ways we communicate. We expect people to check their inbox multiple times a day, or be on Facebook "chat" so that we can talk to them instantly. It seems that with the spread of Facebook and other similar sites, old-fashioned ways of staying in touch are becoming outdated and obsolete. Pretty soon, our personal relationships, interactions, and lives will become so impersonal that we never even talk to our friends. Whereas in the past, you would probably pick up a telephone to speak directly to a friend, now we just rely on the technological brilliance of Facebook and the internet. So many things are now becoming "facebook-ed" now, including facebook jargon becoming a part of our daily language. How much longer will we actually have true interactions with people? With the world becoming more globalized and interconnected, I fear that personal relationships and real interactions will one day be a thing of the past.

Friedman and his Critics...

To say that Thomas Friedman is controversial in his ideas presented in his book The World is Flat would be an understatement. As I read the book myself, I find myself confused and wondering if his ideas actually make sense or if it is just me and my simple mind that can't grasp these huge political concepts. However, after reading the ideas of a few of his harshest critics, I am starting to change my opinion of the ideas that he presents us with for why the world is "flattening." In his article "Flathead" Matt Taibbi calls Friedman a "genius of literary incompetence" that "does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up." Through the entire article, Taibbi jokes about Friedman's poor writing style and failed attempts at metaphors throughout his book, starting with the simple claim from the title that the world is flat. Friedman made this assumption when the CEO of Infosys stated to him that "the playing field is being leveled." According to Taibbi, Friedman has foolishly and incorrectly jumped from the term "level" to "flat," which most certainly are not the same thing. Taibbi begins to compare Friedman's claim that the world becoming "flat" is making the world more interconnected to Columbus's discovery that the world is round. In this, he makes the observation that in a round world, each end is closer to the other, thus making a more interconnected world. Why, then, has Friedman made the claim that a flat world is a more interconnected world? It should make sense that a more round world would be more interconnected. This claim, along with many other claims and examples that he tries to use in his book, are caught and refuted by Taibbi as he makes many arguments against Friedman, has made me question what I myself think of Friedman's ideas.
In his book Making Globalization Work, Joseph Stiglitz criticizes Friedman and argues his own points against the man, claiming that "not only is the world not flat; it is getting less and less flat." One peer-reviewed article, although validates that Friedman's ideas and suggestions that Friedman presents are valid, poses a question to contradict Friedman's platform : "Is globalization really making the world flat?" It describes two rebuttals to The World Is Flat that have been written: Richard Florida's The World Is Spiky and The World Is Flat? by Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo, in which these critics claim that the tools that are spreading globalization will actually concentrate wealth and labor, in contrast to Friedman's suggestion that it will spread out almost evenly across his proposed "flat" surface. However, even though these authors differ in opinion from Friedman, this article provides a possibility that perhaps they are all right, as the critics are look at our present world while Friedman is looking into the future. The viewpoints are compared to the difference between socialism and capitalism: "Florida, Aronica, and Ramdoo believe that flat world means a world in which income gaps decrease and wealth is evenly distributed. Friedman instead sees a world where the opportunity to achieve wealth is evenly distributed, but wealth itself is not." In this way, he validates Friedman's point while also criticizing it, claiming that his idea for the future of America is our focus, and that we must all take advantage of the opportunities that we have to succeed and improve our own world.
After reading part of Friedman's book, and now some of his critics, I am partly compelled to believe that his ideas make sense and are true. However, I also agree with many of his critics that his ideas make no sense. Again, perhaps this is simply because I have a very limited understanding of politics and economics and globalization in general. I have noticed that many critics are not so much opposed to his general ideas as they are offended and annoyed by his writing style and the way in which he attempts to get his point across. This is one thing I can whole-heartedly agree on. It is quite a trivial thing to be annoyed by his atrocious attempts at metaphors; however, I wonder, if he is as bad as these critics say he is about making simple metaphors, should we believe that he really knows what he's talking about in other things? In his other ideas? In his propositions about the future? Is he a genius, or the idiot that his critics claim?

Today's Generation - Lazy, or simply clueless?

The video we watched on the first day of class about today's generation and our lack of work ethic really interested me. This is a problem that I have heard many older people complain about for some time now. I am conflicted with these thoughts. Part of me feels as though we don't have the work ethic that our grandparents and great-grandparents had, simply because they had to do more just to get by. In the days when children were expected to work in the fields and provide for themselves as early as possible, they had no choice but to work hard. In today's society, we depend on others for a much longer time and we are not forced to provide for ourselves until much later in life. Perhaps it is for this reason that we seem to not have enough work ethic. It simply is not required of us. If more was required of us to simply get by and survive, then I am sure that all of us would be doing as much as we could to survive. Now, at a young age, surviving does not require much of us. Our grandparents and those before them, who had to work hard to get by when they were young, are now the ones working hard to take care of us. They have been working hard their whole life, whether it is for themselves or not. This explains why they think we do not have enough work ethic - they are constant hard workers because it is required of them.
Another part of me thinks that it is our fault that we do not have enough work ethic because we have allowed ourselves to get used to having things handed to us. An example that comes to my mind is my cousin, a 30-year-old college graduate with a Business degree. He is now working for his mom (my aunt) because she is the only person that will hire him. Since the time he graduated college nearly 8 years ago, he has not been able to hold a steady job for any amount of time, because he expects his job to cater to him. He wants to be able to sleep late, come in at 10:00, take a 2-hour lunch break, leave early, and call his wife whenever he wants during the day. His wife doesn't help the matter, in that she wants to call him all day, and wants him to come home and help her clean the house and take care of their children. He has been fired from countless jobs over the last few years because he doesn't understand that working doesn't mean doing what you want, and doesn't necessarily mean doing things that would be normal for you. You are getting paid to do a job, so while you are working, you should be expected to do your best and do what is expected of you. His whole life, he has just had stuff handed to him and expects that he should be able to do whatever he wants wherever he works. The idea of enjoying your work and having fun is a great idea - I agree with it whole-heartedly. I believe that a happy employee is a productive employee. However, this only works if the employee is actually productive in being happy and enjoying their job. It is when people take advantage of this idea of happiness that it becomes a problem. Unfortunately, I think this is the way too much of our generation is; we are used to having things handed to us, and so many of us are simply clueless about what should be expected of us in a professional atmosphere. We expect that we should have fun and enjoy ourselves everywhere we are at and in whatever we are doing. As long as we have this kind of mindset, older generations looking in on us will always see us as lazy and lacking any kind of work ethic.

Outsourcing - the new fad (Blog question 1)

I have noticed recently how many things around us are outsourced to other countries that we never even think about. One of the major things I have noticed that is outsourced is customer service. It seems now that anytime you call a company for help with any kind of technical difficulties, especially with computers, you are directed to someone on the other side of the world. I have noticed also, that if you call a company to ask for help with any kind of phone service, internet, or cable, you speak to someone outside America. Many companies with websites outsource their web design to other countries. Also, the transfer of money through services such as PayPal and other credit cards is outsourced to other countries and they are able to make records of transactions.
One of my career options at the moment is going to Physical Therapy and becoming a Doctor of Physical Therapy. This is one job that you would think would not be outsourced, simply because of the fact that the vast majority of the job is actually seeing patients. However, many things go on outside of seeing patients that are outsourced that we are unaware of. Medical charts and records of any kind, therapy notes, rehabilitation notes, and any kind of transcribing can be sent to other countries. http://www.kcsportsrehab.com/sportsrehab.aspx?pgID=871
So many things are outsourced now, especially things that people would never expect to be outsourced, such as medical-related fields, that it is almost impossible to find a company that is completely contained within the United States.




















































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