ECOLOGY

A very significant and observable impact of globalization is the changes that it has caused on our environment. High rise buildings, roads, airports, cars are the traits of cities. Deforestation, pollution, solid waste are what we have created to satisfy our wants or what capitalist have created to add on their personal wealth. We all understand the important of environment to us, but do we really do enough to save our environment? And who should be responsible?

 

Nowadays, most companies especially large MNCs have eagerly promoting themselves as companies with Corporate Social Responsibility. They come out with many energy saving products, biodegradable packaging, cleaner fuels, etc. However, these products are generally priced much higher than traditional products. Most capitalist are still unwilling to give up on their profit margin to encourage people to use these products. Furthermore, they simply make use of people’s increasing concern towards environment as another method to market their products. Indirectly, they are actually encouraging people to replace their old stuffs with the new inventions that they have come out, or they are just encouraging people to buy more and this might result in increasing waste being produced.

 

Our society is also too used to live in a way that is very detrimental to our environment. This may have largely influenced by the marketing techniques used by the capitalist. For example, men and women spent a huge some of resources on clothes, bags, shoes, etc. Most of these clothes, shoes or bags may be used only for once or twice before they are thrown away, creating huge amount of waste. Our society is also so used to nice packaging of products, even though that these packaging are of no use to them, and create large amount of waste. Lastly, for the convenience purpose, we will use various kinds of automated equipment, i.e. vacuum cleaners, washing machines, dishwashers, cars, but at the same time, we are slowly destructing our environment when more energy is used up.

 

Governments, using the excuse of improving economy, have the legal rights to destruct our environment, by deforestation, oil extraction, etc. Governments in developing countries are so influenced by the globalization and capitalist concept of the developed countries. And to be globalized, they need to replace their forest with high rise building and roads. They will extract all the mineral resources available to compete in this global world. On the other hand, the governments in developed world are much more willing to spend their resources on maintaining economic stability, building up of political power, rather than saving on our environment. For example, large sums of money are thrown to financial market during recent recession, huge resources are spent on building military strength, but only tiny amounts of resources are pumped into saving of our environment. Minimum efforts are spent on rebuilding the forest, decreasing their countries’ production to reduce waste, etc. The main reason for this is because that it will cause their economy to slow down and lose a huge amount of profits. 

Technology and Globalization

We all know that technology is an essential tool to promote globalization. Without technology, globalization is unlikely to happen. There is thus a very close link between these two terms. When the first light bulb was invented by Edison, when the first steam machine was invented by Watt, or when Einstein invented nuclear, their intention is to improve on every human life, instead of using their inventions to reap or maximize personal wealth at the expense of others.

Many of us, who live in these technology-savvy countries, recognized the importance of technology and cannot survive without it. For example, we can’t live in a world without electricity, washing machine, fridge, television, and most importantly, computer, internet and mobile phone. Can you imagine how insecure we will be if we forgot to bring our mobile phone with us? However, do we really benefit much from these technologies or actually we are losing ourselves to technology?

Technology is supposed to be invented to ease our workloads; instead many of us become slowly replaced by technology, due to the globalization and capitalism. We spent so much time and efforts to learn a skill, i.e. farming, technology can simply replace our skill and do it much better than us. This is supposedly to be a good thing as we can now have more time for family since technology will do for us, but it wasn’t the case. These technologies are often only accessible and manipulated by the strong and richer classes. As a result, the poorer classes lose their source of income and will be continuously exploited until they have control s over the technology as well.

Not only that, the middle class will also become the slaves of technology. Although they can access to technology, they do not have control over it. This is because that technology is an extremely costly tool. The middle class who have skill and knowledge of technology, will be paid to keep on inventing new technology, which will ultimately benefit capitalist the most, which are those richer class and MNCs. For example, R&Ds which are extremely costly, are done by many middle class, but benefits the richer class who invest the money in.  

When a new technology is invented, these capitalist will then promote and market the new technology to us, who are mainly middle or lower income group. These groups are attracted to buy the new technology and willing to pay to those capitalist. For example, various designs of computer games, mobile phone and home appliances are invented in a year and sold to these people and benefit the capitalist. In this way, they are actually indirectly controlled by the richer class. When these middle class people struggle to satisfy their wants on this technology, they will work even harder.

It seems that technology has led to globalization and creates many social problems, such as inequality, poverty or polarization, violence and crime, which we has been discussed in last few weeks. However, as globalization, it also has its positive impacts, especially in increasing our exposures and communications to the rest of the world. Through technology, we have widened our perspectives and know about other lives, and also problems faced by other countries. For examples, technology has allowed some people in other countries to look at poverty life in Africa, and thus they are willing to offer help, such as sponsoring or adoptingh some of the kids in Africa.

 

POPULATION AND HEALTH

The world population is expected to grow from 6 billion to between 7.5 billion and 11 billion. However, the growth is only found in poor countries around Asia and Africa. The richer countries, such as Japan, European countries, Singapore are actually faced with a problem of ageing population and shortage of labor.  If this trend continues, the poor countries might become poorer since they have to share the already limited resources, the richer countries will also have shortage of labor to run its economy and maintain its productivity.

 

With globalization, the richer countries can easily tap the human resources in two ways. First, they build their human-intensive production overseas to take advantage of the large and cheap pool of labor in poorer countries.  Alternatively, they can attract some foreign workers to their countries to perform work that their people do not want to work. Secondly, richer countries (i.e.) also attract many immigrants to their countries, become their citizens, and in such a way they can increase their population in short time. However, this benefits mostly those who are regarded as “talent”.

 

And because of this uneven spread of population and globalization, some of the world’s resources (in term of skills and knowledge) get to spread to poorer countries or to people in poorer countries who get to migrate to richer countries. However, it also cause many problem, such as, conflicts over different identities, resentment of disadvantaged origins from foreign talents, lack of understanding between different cultures, etc, which we has discussed in last previous lesson.

 

The globalization also plays an important role in the spread and control of disease. Due to easy and frequent movement of people from countries to countries, any infectious disease can be transmitted from a country to another in short time. This means that epidemics will now not be confined in certain region. However, the globalization has also enhanced the spread of information and coordination between countries to control the spread of disease.

 

World, organization, i.e. WHO, will make an announcement on the seriousness or number of cases of a particular disease spread in certain country. Hence, the rest of the countries in the world will take note on people who travel to or stop their people form travelling to these countries. Furthermore, various richer countries will also do research or investigation on how to control the disease. This information can also be quickly disseminated to all countries in the world for their government to take immediate actions to stop spread the disease.

 

Disease and epidemics tend to spread faster in poorer countries, especially in countries with dense population where there is very close human contacts. These countries usually do not have enough medical facilities to handle such a huge local population, too. However, as the spread of disease and epidemics can move across borders, especially in this globalization era, people in richer countries, especially neighboring countries, are more willing to help the poorer counties to control the disease and epidemics by donating medicine, medical equipment, sterilization solution, etc, and also sharing skills and knowledge on how to control the disease.

 

New threats, i.e. HIV or AIDS also threaten many poor countries in Africa. Again, this is the negative consequences of globalization. The sex prostitution, blood transfusion, and selling or human organs and insufficient medical facilities are the main causes of the spread of these diseases in Africa. However, as these diseases are not highly infectious as compared to epidemics, the strong aids from other richer countries are not so obvious as compared to epidemics, such as SARS. WHO is trying very hard to control the spread of these diseases in Asia and Africa, however, they are also very dependent on funding from richer countries, who prefer to put their money in military and economic defence. 

Urbanization

Urbanization is resulted due to unequal resources used by government to build up the countries. Often, a lot of wealth and resources of a country are spent on particular city. As a result, more and more people will start to flock into the cities, hoping that they can get a bigger pie of these wealth and resources. However, most of these people that flock into the cities end up with disappointment and try to vent their angers through different ways. For those who manage to get small pie of this wealth, they have also sacrifice a lot of their freedom and maybe their families as well.

 

Urbanism has caused decrease in per capita, unemployment and unequal distribution of wealth. Rapid population growth in urban areas also perpetuates poverty and lead to crime and urban violence. This has also threatened the political stability of a nation, and it is one of the most pressing issues faced by a lot of countries, such as United States.

 

Another major issue being created by this social problem is the breaking of the traditional family structure. It is an pertinent issue that has become increasingly noticeable in recent years, particularly in urbanized areas. The traditional, mom and dad, and children are rarely seen in the inner cities any more. Due to the busy lifestyle of many urbanists, the job and responsibilities as parents are always transferred to external institutions. For example, In Singapore, child who is above eighteen months old, can be sent to childcare centre while both of their parents are working. The duties of parents to coach and guide their kids in their growing period, are also shifted to educational institutions, such as school or various kind of tuition centres.  This lack of interaction will definitely result in weakened bond in families, even between husband and wife, which was proven by increasing divorce rate.

 

The density of people reinforces effect of numbers in diversifying people and their activities and increasing the complexity of the social structure. The variations of people give rise to segregation of people by race, religious practices, ethnic heritage, as well as economic and social status. Segregation often creates much tension and prejudice between social groups. This can cause physical or mental damage to individuals or society, which means that sometimes people may permanently suffer before any action is taken to solve the problem because the delay in action is most often the result of people underestimating the problems. As for racism and segregation, there is not much that can be done to fix these problems.

 

Due to the overpopulation in urban areas and the lack of employment opportunity, the crime rate is also a huge problem in which they are faced with. Also the lack of the traditional family structure and weakened bonds of kinship weaken the moral of the children growing up in the urban areas. These children grow up in poverty and usually look at crime as a quick and easy way out. The problems in urban areas are far more, than can be handled in any short term efforts.

 

Ethnicity and Religion

Most of us are belonged to more than one identity, such as nationality, ethnic, religion, professionals, etc. The term “national” tried to create one identity for people with different ethnics, religions, etc. Due to the nature that people with same identities tend to get along better, leaders who aim to control various regions with different ethnics or religion, by creating a common identity, “nationality”. However, with a lot of nationals on rise nowadays, there seems to have a reverting trend. Rebels, nowadays, are using the identity of ethnic and religion to achieve their independence.

With the effects of globalization and ease of travelling, migration from places to places becomes very common. People who migrated to a new region also tend to bring their ethnic, culture and religion over. For example, Chinatown can be found at different parts of United States. When the influence of these new migrants become larger and larger in the new region, the natives of the region will feel resentment. These natives view that the land is belonged to them, but all the benefits are taken by the migrants. This will happen even though the so-called migrants already produce few generations in that region, even though they have same nationality and the new generations also see themselves as belonged to this region.

For example, Chinese in Indonesian has been living there for few generations.  Most of them saw themselves as Indonesian, instead of Chinese of PRC. A lot of them have also forgotten their own culture, language, etc. However, the racial riots in Indonesian show that a lot of Indonesian natives still view Indonesian Chinese as outsiders, who have taken their advantages.  This is the weakness of “national” identity, which always tries to integrate different identities into national identity.  But it forgot the intertwined effects between different identities.

Ethnics and religions have been frequently used to stir up the resentment among people, especially to those with identities that have been treated negatively. Rebels or oppositions can gain support from people by showing that they are belonged to the common identities, thus they will do thing for the benefits of their own identities, at the expense of sacrificing others. For example, terrorists saw their actions as heroic behavior to rebuild Muslims’ identity.

Identity will also have some influences on how people choose their leaders or governments. This is because people believe that leaders with same identities as them will come out with policies that are more beneficial to them. For example, people who are Christians might choose a Christian leader in the hope that he or she will make regulations that stop abortion or homosexual behaviours. People who have been treated unfairly will also select a leader with similar identities in the hope that the leader will change their ways of life. For example, Blacks, which are always discriminated in American society, will show their full supports to Obama in the hope that they will be treated fairly.

In conclusion, Identity has strong influences on people. It is something that is used to create bonds among different people. And because of its strong influences, political leaders, rebels or oppositions always use it as a tool to achieve their objectives.

DEMOCRACY & GLOBALIZATION

The issue that I am going to discuss here is whether democracy can be achieved in today’s globalization. It seems that in today’s world, majority of countries adopt democracy and practice elections to vote for their government representatives. But, are the people really vote wholeheartedly for the representative that they support for the benefits of majority, or are they being controlled by government representatives to support them for self’s’ benefits?

 

Globalization has given a valid excuse for one or few dominant countries in the world to interfere in the running of other countries. One country will try to control another country which will benefit them, for example to control over oil reserves in another country. World organizations which may also be controlled by one or few dominant powers, have also constrained the ways in which a nation should grow. Actions such as banning of trade will be performed if a particular country refuses to comply with its regulations.

 

The effect of globalization has blurred the boundaries of nation-state in the world.  For example, farmers in certain countries burn their forest to obtain land for cultivation, which may be critical to their survivals. Theoretically, they burn their own land and they can vote to do so. However, the effects of air pollutions will affect not only the country itself, but also some of the neighboring countries. As a result, these neighboring countries or world organization will press the government in the source-country to stop this act. The government in the source-country will then impose regulations on its people to stop this act, not at the consent of its people. This shows how democracy can be affected by external parties.

 

The real application of democracy can also be mitigated by the actions of government. Traditionally, people can select the government to represent them, and also change them if the government does not perform up to their expectation. However, in today’s society, government has the ability to manipulate the people to select them and control people in a way that the government wants. For example, the government can use its sovereignty to eliminate its strong opponents, media can also be used to distort the truth, and voters can also be given physical incentives to encourage them to vote for a party. One might argue that choosing the right government will give them more incentives a whole. However, to some poor people, physical incentives are more practical and immediate.

 

However, a full or pure democracy may also not be effective in current world. Interactions among people are not limited to small community or states, however, it involves people around the world, but not everyone in our society can view the whole picture of global relationship. Hence, we need a capable government that can help us to decide on matters that we are not familiar with. Furthermore, full democracy might also discriminate the interest of minority populations, since they have lower voting power. Lastly, an efficient government may produce better results than government selected with pure democracy. Singapore may be a good example, at least I can safely said that at least 95% of Singaporeans have enough food, clothing and shelters.

WAR AND GLOBALIZATION

Over the centuries, war is always viewed as legal means of violence, or stealing, or killing, or even massacring others. In the ancient times, warriors who had defeated the enemies and won the war, were regarded as heroes and rewarded handsomely by the kings or leaders. However, if a commoner beat or killed others in order to protect himself, he or she will be punished by laws or regulations. And this legal means of violence prolongs even after so many centuries.

 

Humans are born with the ability to have their own way of thinking, living, belief and ethical values. Just like people with similar interest tend to get along better, humans who share the same belief and values also tend to form their own community. As a result, there are different communities either in a country or in the world. Each of this community believes that they have superior belief and values over the others, thus forcing other communities to follow on their ideology. When this was not achieved, conflict arises.

 

Why does human want to go into war? War is a legal mean created by state power or bureaucracy to expand their controls over others and forcing others to accept on their ideology. In the past, war was usually linked to intention to acquire more economic or natural resources to boost the economy and strengthen the position of winning states. However, nowadays, war is a means used by people to achieve their freedoms in building their communities with their own ideologies. For example, most the civil wars in regions such as Vietnam and Indochine, Korea, Germany were actually fighting over which ideologies (communism or liberalism) should represent or rule their countries.

 

With globalization, war has changed from its traditional form where countries in conflict go into war. Instead, countries in conflict will always try to preserve their own countries in a good shape. However, they will try to manipulate other countries in the world to go into war. In this way, they can expand their controls and also signal to the world on their power. Furthermore, regarding the final outcomes of the world, the countries in conflicts will not be affected; instead the countries being manipulated will suffer.

Globalization has also brought about inequality, competition for dwindling resources, and environmental degradation are worsened by free trade. As a result, government ability to mitigate and regulate damaging effects of market are undermined, which leads to an intensification of all of the economic causes of war.Globalization also promotes military spending over social spending. “Security exceptions” in free trade agreements grant governments a free hand in military spending, but place limits on social spending. Since the late 1990s, world military spending has been on the rise and is now nearly $1 trillion a year — almost half of this is by the United States alone.

 

Globalization promotes corporate security over human security. Globalization and free trade regimes align government interests with corporate interests, resulting in the state increasingly assuming the role of promoter and defender of corporate interests at home and abroad. This focus on corporate interests comes at the expense of governments providing for the security of their citizens through social programs and public-interest legislation, and deters governments from undertaking international actions to promote peace and security and achieve the greater public good.

CRIME AND GLOBALIZATION

In most of our previous topics, we see that poorer people or those who live in less developed countries are mostly the victims of globalization. Most of them are treated unequally or unfairly as a result of the humans’ profit motivated attitude. To break from poverty cycle or to release anger or resentment, some of these victims actually involve in criminal activity. The self-interest groups also take advantage of globalization to reap high profit through criminal activity. Lastly, the lessened rules due to the effects of globalization also facilitate the growth of criminal activities. As MNC spread across countries; the criminal activity also spreads aggressively and become more internationally-linked.

Criminal activities, such as stealing or destroying others’ belonging, are some ways used by the poorer people to fill their stomach or release their anger and resentment. As wealth becomes more concentrated, criminal activity increases. The nations which enjoy a high GNP, and which have the best-trained and -equipped police in the world (U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany) are also suffering some of the highest crime rates. Inequality and the lack of opportunities feed resentment, to such an extent that frustration is a more powerful motive for stealing than hunger itself. In this way, crimes against property serve a double function: to redistribute wealth and as social revenge.

“…’Given that the attacks on America cost only about $500,000, it is terrifying that al-Qaeda managed to convert $20m of its cash into diamonds,’ said Alex Yearsley of Global Witness, which campaigns against the ‘blood diamonds’ trade.
‘The ease with which terrorist organisations can use diamonds as a source of funding and money laundering is frightening; they can easily transport them over borders without detection and convert them back into banknotes whenever they need the money.’…”
Extracted from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oct/20/alqaida.terrorism

The growth of free markets have also inculcated, unintentionally, in human minds consumerism and extreme individualism and weakened the influence of the family, the community, churches, associations and even the State on individual citizens. Today, these self-interest individuals are much more independent, but what they have lost in terms of principles, values and vital reference points for human coexistence. Independence brings along a conviction that everything is permitted and everything is possible.

Globalization is coupled with an ideology of free markets and free trade and a decline in state intervention. The idea of globalization and free market has reduced international regulations and barriers to trade because foreign investment will increase trade and development. But these conditions that promote a globalized environment are crucial to the expansion of crime. Crime groups and terrorists have exploited the enormous decline in regulations, the lessened border controls, and the resultant greater freedom, to expand their activities across borders and to new regions of the world.

The rise in commercial airline traffic, improvements in telecommunications (including telephone, fax, and rapid communications through the Internet), and the growth of international trade have facilitated the ready movement of goods and people. Criminals and terrorists exploit the anonymity of chat rooms on the Internet and other forms of computer-based communications to plan and execute their activities.

Lastly, concerns regarding the poor being used or manipulated by the self-interest individuals should not be neglected. These self-interest individuals might stir the resentment and anger of the poor to either disrupt the stability of society and reap profit from it, i.e. the economic instability during 911, or to get them involved in criminal activities such as drug or weapon trafficking.

WOMEN AND FAMILY

PATERNITY LEAVE IN SINGAPORE?

 

“…..DESPITE the buzz over shared responsibility, paternity leave for dads was missing in the basket of new Government offerings to encourage parenthood.

This, despite the introduction of an extra month of maternity leave, raising it to four months.

One reason why Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong did not introduce the widely-expected incentive at the National Day Rally is the feedback that the Government had received from women.

They had indicated they would prefer the extra month of leave to be given to them, rather than to their spouses.

Senior Minister of State (Finance and Transport) Lim Hwee Hua, a key member of the National Population Committee, told The Straits Times on Sunday, after the rally: ‘When we were looking at this issue and doing public consultations, women said they want to spend more time with their babies….”

Adapted from http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking+News/Singapore/Story/STIStory_270020.html

 

 

Men are food provider or breadwinner of a family. Since food is so vital to our survivals, men carry a very heavy responsibility. His family will die if they failed to bring back enough food.  To allow him to fully concentrate on his searching of food for his family, there must be someone to take care of his family when he is not around. And this “so-viewed” lesser vital role is played by women. However, this clear distinction of men women’s role may be applicable only at zillions ago where human were still depended on hunting for their survivals.

 

As human began to learn on how to produce food on its own, there has been a shift in the responsibilities from men to women. In old china, women not only needed to do household chores and take care of the children, but they also needed to help out in farming, which should be the responsibility of men. With the effect of industrialization, the shift was even more obvious as women started to leave home to look for earnings in factory.

 

The shift of responsibility seems to be in one-directional flow, meaning that more and more responsibility is shifted from men to women, but not the other way round. Why is it so? The main reason is probably due to men’s pride. This may be a reason in many conservative countries. But, it should not be applied to Singapore case. Quite a number of Singaporean men actually earn lesser than women, but they do not feel ashamed of this. Traditionally, if women earned more than men, men will usually feel humiliated, because their self-pride is attacked on.

 

Another possible reason for this one-directional way of shift may be the interference of government role. Government in Singapore has traditionally put the responsibilities of taking care of families on women. One of the evidences to support this argument is that government only offers maternity leave women instead of paternity leave to men. This has indirectly indicated that government still believe that  women should put in more  efforts in taking care of the family as compared to men.

 

Introduction of more maternity leave does not actually help the women to lighten their burdens in juggling between work and family. However, it possibly increases the burdens on women instead. With the more maternity leave given, men have more valid excuses to shield the responsibility of taking care of the children to the women. For example, if the kids were to get sick, the husband will expect his wife to take leave to bring the kids to doctor and take care of the kids. The men can then use the excuse that they do not have many leave days left to avoid being committed in the family.

 

On the other hand, the employers will still expect the same level of performance of the wife as compared to other male colleagues. As a result, women will face even more stress because she still needs to complete all her tasks, inclusive of those tasks that she has not completed during her leave. Employers will not take into considerations of women’s dual responsibilities in evaluating the women’s performance.

 

Lastly, Senior Minister of State said that this policy was implemented because that most women want to have more time with their children. So since it is not a big issue on who is taking the leave, why not the govt. offers a policy that allows either of parents to take the leave instead of only the mother can take the leave? This can also give more flexibility to both parents, especially to the mother.

 

WORK AND TRADE

CHILD LABOR

Globalization and international trade seems to have brought prosperity to countries who have adopted this policy. A very good example will be China. Since the opening of China in 1980s, China had changed from a peasant society to a country with many successful capitalists. Although the globalization has widened the gap between the rich and poor China, majority of Chinese seems to have benefited from it, and now, they can have more choices of work, such as fashion designer, full-time athletes, financial consultants, etc instead of working in agriculture.

Karl Marx was right that with the industrialization, many work processes are streamlined and we now know lesser skills as compared to people in the past where they had to perform the whole processes single-handedly. However, because of this, we can now be focused on the scope of works that interest us only. For example, if you love designing clothes, but not on how the clothes are produced or sold, you can work as a designer in a company that designs clothes. This can only be achieved only if every part of the processes interest different people who want to work for each of the processes. This will not be the case because there are many tedious jobs in this world that most people will not be interested in, such as construction workers, factory workers, domestic labor, etc.

 Hence, these kinds of unfavorable jobs will be pushed to less fortunate people in our society, who have not many choices except filling up their stomach. When there is not enough less fortunate labor to be exploited, they started to target at child labor.

“…Child trafficking includes the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of a child for the purposes of sexual or labor exploitation, forced labor, slavery or used in armed conflicts. Trafficking in children is a human rights tragedy estimated to involve over a million children worldwide. In Togo, for example, hundreds of children are trafficked annually—sent from, received in, or transited through the country. They are recruited on false promises of education, professional training and paid employment; transported within and across national borders under sometimes life-threatening conditions; ordered into hazardous, exploitative labor; subjected to physical and mental abuse by their employers; and, if they escape or are released, denied the protections necessary to reintegrate them into society…”(Extracted from http://www.hrw.org/children/labor.htm)

Child labor or trafficking is not something that is uncommon or caused by globalization or international trade. Since ancient time (i.e. ancient China), child, especially girls, need to help out in their families’ domestic or agriculture works. In some cases, children are sold to wealthier family as maid or slave in order to support the children’s families. However, with the impact of globalization, this issue of child labor becomes more serious. Globalization provides an easy access for capitalists and child traffickers to source for their child targets worldwide.

If globalization did bring prosperity to those who are less fortunate, i.e. people in third world country, why is this child labor or trafficking problem still happening in many parts of the world? In fact, The International Labour Organization (ILO) has estimated that 218 million children between the ages of five and seventeen work in developing countries. I believe that if the child’s parents are paid enough from those employments created to them by foreign capitalists, the child will not need to resort to work to support their families. After all, which parents in this world do not want to see their children growing in a comfortable home?

 On top of that, globalization affects not only those who work in less developed countries, but it also affects people living in first world countries. When somewhere in the world offers lower cost of labor, capitalists will move out from your countries and retrench those workers who have worked for them for umpteen years. As a result, these workers, mostly with one or two skills picked up from their previous employment, find themselves out of jobs. As a result, they need to resort into doing any kinds of jobs offered, or being exploited, until they pick up the new skills. If they cannot pick up the skills, they might be continuously exploited for the rest of their life, just like the people in third world countries. Their kids might not to go out to work to support their families, too, but they need to do it secretly since the laws forbid it.