Critics of Globalization (Ch 13)

One other interesting idea in Chapter 13 is about globalization being a "threat to communities and the environment". Also that global organizations are "undemocratic and detrimental to both local communities and the local environment". It would have been very interesting to evaluate the criteria the people who criticized globalization used. Aren't most business detrimental to either local communities or the environment also? I would imagine that whether global or local usually the goal of a business is to increase the wealth for the owner(s). So global businesses are no different than local businesses, the only difference lays in the fact that they are bigger.

Also, corporations do have a lot of power and certainly have influenced local businesses but ultimately it is the customer that makes a business successful or not. As long as people will continue to buy burgers, it will mean that there is a "need" for burgers. I remember reading an article about McDonald's being bombed, one way a group of French people decided to fight globalism. What perplexed me is that if everyone was agreeing with this group of French people, there would have been no need to bomb the place. People should just have stopped going there. If the location was not profitable, McDonald's would have left. My point is that it seems that the people that fight globalism are trying to impose their ideas on the majority of people that enjoy and benefit from globalism.