by Lam Luu

Created on: October 29, 2008

The question about globalization is not whether we should do it, but how we should do it. Globalization is something must happen, and the resistance to do it now only lengthens the pain. On the other hand, if we do it the right way, everyone can benefit from it!

First, let's see what globalization is. It is not all about out-source and off-shore and laying people off. No, these are not what globalization is. They are what WRONG globalization are. Globalization is the unification of all markets, to have only one huge market, the Global market. Goods and services can be produced anywhere and shipped to any corner of the Earth, and all of the national barriers of trade are lowered and destroyed.

How is, then, globalization good? First, because it significantly lower the cost. No, not just the shirts produced in China or the discs produced in Indonesia. That's only a part of globalization. In true globalization, even the cost of schooling, health care, etc. will be lowered! Remember that those costs in the US is significantly higher than other areas of the world, including Western Europe. If we have real globalization, we can "import" doctors and teachers and professors from those low-cost country into the US, as well as medicines, textbooks, medical instruments, research results, etc. If the US has done globalization right, it should have prepared its people for the global market. That means improve the skills of those potentially-laid-off workers so they can work on new jobs in sectors where American companies excel (such as information technology, finance, etc.). Furthermore, if globalization was done right, each country would need to produce only some types of goods, and import the rest. This allows greater degree of specialization, which further drives down the cost!

Why, then, current shape of globalization is so bad? It is because we have never truly gotten globalization. For example, the system of patents prevents the free flow of information; the system of licences (at least in the US) prevents specialists coming to the country to serve poorer people; etc. Those are not free trade! Secondly, and more severely, American government, and many other governments, has failed to make companies do globalization responsibility. Let me start a new paragraph for this.

In theory, companies that ship jobs to suitable places (eg. labor intensive jobs to countries with large population, etc.) should allow their current employees time to prepare for the changing, as well

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