Assignment #5: Globalization

In Life or Debt there is a scene as we talked about when the bus is driving through you see all the American inspired businesses along with many other tourist attractions but then most of the tours overlook the poverty that goes on in the country. In Friedman's book he states that we are currently emerging into an age of globalization 3.0. In 3.0 globalization is no longer solely for the businesses that are connecting across the globe and competing with each other. He suggests that the individual will now come to be involved in the globalization process. In the scene where they are seeing all these businesses and talking about how tourism has taken over their country and it is now not a country for them anymore but the tourists. According to Friedman they will soon be able to participate in the globalization process and have more say in what goes on. However, there is a flaw in this logic for one obvious reason the people like those in Jamaica are too impoverished to really have any say in what goes on unfortunately. I think however what Friedman is saying is that individuals will soon have that capacity to participate because of the rapid growth of business globalization, with this rapid growth individuals now have more and more access to information because of the growing methods in how to obtain it. This is potentially encouraging but in my mind as long as there is selfishness there will be poverty and inequality. Businesses still have power as long as there are people that will buy and invest.