is globalization economic rape?

Answer 1

Rape implies lack of consent, and Globalisation does involve permission. So the short answer is: no.

Globalisation is more like the owner having sex with the slave, or like the rings of prostitution that exist nowadays.

True, there are advantages to being engaged in the trade, especially in the short run, but this deprives you of other stuff. For example, while you earn enough to feed your family today, most of the time you are suffering, and your personal future, while possibly materially better, is stark.

When engaged in the trade, there are many opportunities that are foregone, but also many future paths that are closed.

Now when you bring it from a personal story to a regional or even countrywide story, then the future paths closed are more dramatic. When domestic industries close down as people flock to work at the initially better paying foreign companies, the local industries die, and will probably never get back up.

The domestic economy basically becomes one huge pool of cheap labour. A few years down the road, as people start getting better off and ask for higher wages, the foreign companies simply move production to another 'willing' party.

The big difference is that, as the foreign industries move out, there is no local industry to pick up the slack.

You make the money to feed your family today, but as you grow old, you are dumped from your present trade, but also go home and find you cannot work either.

WHat people need to remember is that the powerhouses today did not grow by free trading, but under some form of protection(subsidies, tariffs, colonial pillage...), and the technological gap is so large that playing catch-up is getting harder by the day.

Once a country becomes a source of chaep labour, it is difficult to move away from this type of exploitation.

Answer 2

I wish we could sit down and talk for a couple hours. There are a few problems with specialization and trade. The benefits almost always outweigh the costs.
I saw a special once on an anti-globalization activist. He coordinated world wide on a computer made with Japanese parts. He used a cell phone made in Finland and drove a German car. He was a poster child for globalization.

If tomorrow every anti-globalization person got their wildest dreams fulfilled we would have:
more powerful monopolies
more people dying of disease and starvation
more child prostitution
less education
more poverty (I mean desperate poverty)

I know it seems I am asking you to take my word on this but do some thoughtful research on the topic (not just anti globalization literature but actual studies and peer reviewed academic articles). You will find that countries that reduce trade restrictions have higher growth rates and standards of living.
Occasionally companies will close plants in poor countries because of social pressure (anti-sweatshops). These create opportunities to see the before and after. The after is the list above.
I think alot of this is arrogant westerners. Oh those people are making the wrong decisions. They don't work for 7 dollars an hour I am going to stop that and make those poor ignorant foreigners better off

Answer 3

Without globalisation the poor will get poorer, the starving will die faster etc, etc.

There was recently a piece about manufacturers paying poor people in Bangladesh a few cents to manufacture their clothes. True the wages are derisory, true there is a lot that could be done to improve conditions and wages. But perhaps one should consider what would be happening without those factories?

Without that work for a few cents these people would be starving, living in ever worsening conditions and have little or no hope for the future!

Globalisation has already improved their lives even if it is only by a few dollars a week. Most also provide rudimentary health care and some form of education. Not much for sure but it is a start.

Once the factory is there conditions can be challenged and changed for the better.

I am sure none of the recipients of globalisation in these countries feel it is rape or any other form of assault. I am sure they think it is a blessing.

I suspect that those against globalisation are in fact the bad ones. Stop growing food abroad - produce it at home. Stop manufacturing abroad - do it at home. They appear more to be xenophobes rather than anyone who thinks of the world populations and people!!!

Answer 4

Rape involves an unwilling partner. Global company cannot trade in a country if the country doent allow it to.

Answer 5

i think you have a point. it could certainly be percieved that way by some