Globalization Terms

The article talks about the different terms used in the globalized world. Globalization is the movement that shows that economies, business and our livelihood have become linked and interdependent. In other words, everything depends on something else. Due to globalization, there has been a dramatic increase in trade between nations. Companies operate all over the world, and communicate with their factories across the world. Big, global companies will be more efficient if they produce and sell more to consumers. They bring communities all over the world together, communication has improved greatly over the past century. The major force behind globalization has been technology. Some argue that technology is slowing globalization down, yet technology is the reason why our nations make progress.
But there are actually many types of corporation that drive our economies forward: multinational corporations, that operate in any countries, conglomerates, corporations that operate in many fields or areas, often unrelated. But one of the most important types is maybe merger, the fusion of two or more corporations, in order to increase profits and reduce losses or costs. There is also a reduction in competition, which has been fought against in the United States. One of the major parts of competition includes monopolies, where there is only one seller of a certain commodity. They have in fact never been very popular in the capitalist world, and laws have been created to protect fair competition.

Olympic Postcard: Green Beijing.

Bug Wars
by Richard Rayner August 25, 2008
published in the New Yorker

Kari Heliövaara, head of forest entomology at the University of Helsinki, was recently part of a team hired to prevent an ongoing eco-catastrophe before the Olympics in Beijing. For years, bugs has ravaged nearly all the deciduous trees in Beijing, leaving the branches "naked and ugly". Civic leaders were worried about the environmental image that the country would give during the Olympics and therefore decided to act as fast as possible.
Chinese experts turned to Heliövaara for assistance, and he soon discovered that the larvae of moths and sawflies caused the problem. He soon launched a program called 'Green Beijing'.
Chemical control was possible but ecologically not very friendly, and biological control was much more efficient. Biological control means, in this case, "rearing parasites that attack only the defoliating pests".
This is very challenging because you have to use the right kind of parasite in order to get rid of the larvae. In order to create the 'parasite', you have to capture a female moth, a male moth, make them mate and infest their eggs with the parasite. When the cocoons are put back on the trees, only the parasite survives and then attacks the larvae you are trying to get rid of.
But given the tight deadline of the summer Olympics, more labs were needed. The Chinese government built 20 buildings, in and out of the city in order to create the larvae that would get rid of the moths.
Last summer, Green Beijing had successful trials and decided this year, in May, to release the larvae in all of Beijing. In a matter of weeks, about 20 thousand parasites emerged from each cocoon, killing the sawfly and moth larvae.
Prof. Heliövaara has watched the Olympics on TV, and says he is very happy because Beijing now looks green

Seattle Scene: Grunge.

Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal ad indie rock, grunge is characterized by heavily distorted guitars and angst-filled lyrics. Grunge became commercially popular in the 1990's due to the release of Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten.
Grunge became the most popular form of hard rock in the 90's and still continues to impact modern rock music. However many grunge bands were uncomfortable with this sudden popularity.
Their popularity was mainly due to MTV playing Nirvana songs over an over again. The industry even created a grunge clothing line. Grunge was all about rebelling and being independent, but the clothing lines and MTV were not what grunge bands were looking for. It was in fact against all their ideals.

Globalization

Over the course of the 20th century, globalization is all we talk about. It has considerably improved our living standards, all over the world. Globalization worldwide has boosted productivity, by using workers in more productive ways, which enables a better development overall. Consumers are also buying more foreign goods, and trade has flourished greatly over the past century.
Some critics might argue that globalization brings more competition between developing countries, and destroy jobs and push down wages, in developed countries as well. One of their arguments is that countries reduce wages, taxes, welfare benefits and environmental controls to make themselves more 'competitive', which is brought by the competitiveness between countries. There are obviously positive and negative effects coming from globalization. But to understand what is really happening we have to look at the definition of globalization and what is meant by it.
Even though people still argue that globalization is new, it has been happening for longer than we think. Globalization started 50 years before the first world war. But it ended abruptly due to the first world war, and did not start again due to the second world war and the Great Depression. To restore their prosperity, firms and government agreed to reduce trade barriers. After 1995, trade flourished again due to the GATT, the General Agreement on tariffs and Trade, which organized a series of negotiations that gradually reduced import tariffs. By the end of the 1970's, one of their systems collapsed, enabling currencies to "float" against one another, at whatever rate the market set. This was the rebirth of global capital markets. Most of Europe followed the American trend except France and Italy. Continental European nations are now worried, because America has been exposed to capital markets for much longer.
Two forces have been driving globalization forward. One of them is obviously technology. Everything has become cheaper due to the falling costs of production. Communication has become much better due to technology, and firms can communicate with their entities all over the world whenever they wish to.
The second major force driving globalization forward is liberalization. Almost every country has lowered its barriers to foreign trade and international capital. For example, Britain and France are more open to trade than they used to in 1913, while Japan is less open now than then. In theory, the wages and prices of goods should be the same in countries all over the world, yet there are some major differences between the United States and Europe or Japan. This reflects a variety of factors including tastes, transport costs, difference in taxes and inefficient distribution networks.
But while capital and product markets have been increasingly integrated, labor markets have not. This means that even though tens of millions of people work outside their home countries, the labor force is less mobile. There are many reasons for it, such as language, cultural barriers, and incompatible educational and professional qualifications.
Could globalization be reversed a second time? Doubtful. Because of technological advancements and lower communication costs, as well as better foundations for market systems, it is less likely that globalization can be reversed at this stage.