Globalization isn’t a new process. It’s actually been around for thousands of years. It’s the process of interaction between people and integration among each other. This includes integration of companies, governments, nations and processes used in the trade across the world. It is a process that has effects on the entire society, environment, politics and culture, as well as the economic development of the world. This can also influence wealth, prosperity and physical well-being of people in the world. Because globalization means that people from great distances buy and sell goods from each other, it also means people have invested in other countries and their companies for centuries. It sounds like there are no negative sides to this collaboration. However, there are bad effects of globalization that might have a stronger influence on the society than the benefits of globalization.
Starting off with the one of the first of negative impacts of globalization, it increase the emissions of CO2. How exactly? The fact is, the companies and enterprises require more and more goods, which means factories burn more coal quickly, thus increasing the release of carbon dioxide into the environment. Needless to say, this has a terrible effect on the environment, causing global warming to speed up and endanger our overall existence in a couple of decades. The more goods and service countries and people require, and the more affordable prices are due to the competitive nature of companies, the higher the negative impact will be on the environment. This is not something companies usually consider as their priority, but is one of the major factors why we are faced with global warming.
Globalization also influences employment in many countries. This process has led to a transfer of jobs from develop, and highly-successful countries to those that are less developed. This means that, less developed countries, that have lower wages overall, inexpensive coal, light rules when it comes to pollution are able to create an atmosphere where other countries can’t possibly compete. Just in the US, the percentage of employed citizens has drastically dropped, especially since China joined the World Trade Organization. However, the globalization negative effects can be seen all around the world, not just in the USA. So many countries are hiring help off shore due to employees who are willing to do the same job, at lower prices, which actually influences the economy of a country in a negative way.
Another one of the negatives of globalizations that ordinary citizens can actually notice is the tax changes. With big companies that can move around to locations where the taxes are lower, citizens feel the changes in taxes the most. People can’t move from location to location, due to their jobs and personal lives. There’s also the fact that with the lack of jobs caused by globalization, communities are basically competing with each other, in the sense who will give more tax breaks to their employers. This in essence means, globalization is transferring taxes over to the ordinary citizens, away from the corporations.
It is a fact that globalization has created a very competitive environment in the entire world. Each country strives to sell as many goods and services, at the lowest price possible. The prices are important, because the lower and more affordable the prices are among competitors, the bigger the demand, because the people are always going for what’s ultimately cheaper. This has triggered the so-called currency race to the bottom. This makes every country drop the value of its currency. And this isn’t the only effect of globalization, when value is concerned. Another way companies cut down on costs and sell at the lowest price is by paying lower wages to their employees, using cheaper fuels that pollute the environment more, and essentially let more pollution into the air causing global warm to become more intense.
One of the major negative consequences of globalization revolved around independence. Or for that matter, the lack of it in certain countries. In a certain way, globalization has encouraged the dependence on certain goods and services in some countries. Certain countries may rely on import more than on the production process overall. This leads to countries stopping to produce their own goods, such as clothing and food, and import it entirely from other countries, putting their well-being into the hands of another country. So far the system has worked, but what happens when dependent countries are left without resources, because the system starts to fail. And this dependence isn’t just on food and clothing, but on technology as well. If a country doesn’t produce their own goods, they are in high risk of a crisis, if these resources potentially stop functioning.
Last but not least, globalization is a process that enables countries to collaborate with each other through integration of systems, making these countries not just possibly dependent on each other but tied together tightly, creating a chain. This chain can mean, if a country collapses due to a certain reason, it is likely to influence other countries it is connected through the system of globalization, endangering all countries it’s connected to. There have been many examples like this in history. Civilizations that started off small, grew and eventually over-utilized their resource base, after which it ended up collapsing. Although this has happened in the past, and our systems have evolved, we are still involved in a very similar situations, if not potentially more dangerous now, because of the large number of countries who are linked together through globalization.
Globalization is an inevitable process that has been around for thousands of years and has continued to develop further using all the resources possible to make trade more efficient. With all of the above mentioned negative effects of globalization, it leads us to the conclusion that if globalization had a negative impact on civilizations and countries before, causing them to collapse completely, this event is bound to happen again in the future. The question is just when.