Globalization

Globalization

One of the best definitions of globalization is “the trend toward greater economic, cultural, political and technological interdependence among national institutions” (International Business). The period goes outside of the parenthesis. It is a good but a highly complex definition. However, it can be greatly simplified and can be defined in one word “flattening.” A man by the name of Thomas Friedman wrote a book called The World is Flat where he talked about the ten flatteners. This book is all about globalization and the changing global environment. The moral of the book is that we may be far apart geographically but the world is slowly, through outsourcing, technological advances, and regional economic integration becoming closer and closer together. The last sentence should be your focus statement for the paper. What will you be explaining or arguing in terms of globalization? That is what the last sentence should be.

It is easy for anyone to see the outsourcing of a manufacturing related job such as an automobile plant being relocated to Mexico, because the Mexican work force works for much less money than Americans do. However, it is much harder to imagine services being exported from the country, but they are. We live in a global environment and there is no way around that. An easy way to see it is to walk down the street and take note to clothes or to shoes most notably on the campus where I live, Oxford. What visitors will see is many Northface jackets, Columbia fleeces, Ugg boots and an array of Abercrombie and Fitch. The point is that while, yes, most of the companies listed here are American companies, NONE of these clothes are made in America. I moved this part up because it was such a short paragraph and it made for a much smoother flow. The ever so popular Columbia jackets are made in Vietnam, the Abercrombie clothes are Cambodian, and Ugg boots are from Australia.

The point is that while it is easy to say that globalization has cost Americans jobs, it is nothing to get upset or freak out about. Many people have complained about that issue, and yes, some people might have to find a new job if they were part of those unfortunate few who lost theirs because the Ford plant moved to Tijuana. However, there are not many complaints being made when a person buys a bundle of Chiquita bananas from the grocery store. The Chiquita company owns “approximately 90,000 acres and lease[s] about 50,000 acres of improved land, primarily in Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras” (“Chiquita Maps”) you want to use a shortened for of the title if there is not an author given. Never put a website in a parenthetical citation. Also, few complaints are heard when someone buys a bag of Starbucks brand coffee made somewhere in Latin America. In fact, an interesting fact about Starbucks is that they have “14 blends from Latin American Countries, 7 from Africa, 5 from Asia, and 10 multi-national roast blends” (Starbucks.com see note above about websites in parenthetical citations) none of which originate in North America, let alone the USA. One option is that this country could be isolationist and set huge import taxes to promote internal competition and inhibit international trade. However, in doing so America would be greatly hindering what Wal-Mart calls “Everyday Low Prices,” and that is not referring to the twenty dollar CD player that was purchased for fifteen. This is about the fact that other countries can produce products for pennies on the dollar for what we can in America. If that stopped, we as American consumers would be lost.

Smooth transition here. Technology is another major factor that has played in the ongoing phenomena known as globalization. It all started in 1988 when “the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable is installed... linking North America and France, the 3,148-mile cable is capable of handling 40,000 telephone calls simultaneously…with a total cost of $361 million” (�Great Achievements”). This set up the one of the major components of the modern internet. One may wonder why fiber optic cable is so important and the answer is in the definition. “Fiber optics are a method for the transmission of information (audio, video, data). Light is modulated and transmitted over high purity, hair-thin fibers of glass. The bandwidth capacity of fiber optic cable is much greater than that of conventional cable or copper wire” (Cisco.com see note about citing websites). In other words fiber optics allowed the world to transfer data very quickly from one side of the ocean to the other.

The next great advancement with fiber optics came in 1996 when “TPC-5, an all-optic fiber cable that is the first to use optical amplifiers, is laid in a loop across the Pacific Ocean. It is installed