Thursday, January 31, 2013
G&D #4 - Issues of Globalization & Development
After watching, taking notes on, and reflecting on one of the videos, post a reflection as a comment to this post. In your comment, identify the video you chose and a BRIEF statement of WHY you chose this video. Then, identify any biases/problems with the arguments presented and explain why this issue is something that should be of concern and interest to the global community.
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I chose the video "Kevin Bales: 'How to Combat Modern Slavery'" because the title intrigued me and got me curious as to if there really was still a significant amount of slavery present in our world today. Additionally, I wondered what Kevin Bales was referring to as slavery. I wondered if he was going to talk about sweatshops and jobs of that nature; or if he was using the more obvious use of the word, and stating that there is still slavery similar to the slavery present in the United States during the 1800s.
ReplyDeleteOne of his major biases was that he claimed that slaves are perpetrating extreme environmental destruction, such as cutting down trees, destroying forest area in West Africa, and mining-thereby spreading mercury in the area. He implies that these problems are caused and/or fed by the modern act of slavery. I disagree with this. Whether slavery is present or not, there will not be a significant difference in the amount of environmental destruction. People with even the furthest connection to slavery are destroying the environment in their everyday lives by using gas thirsty cars and things of that nature. Additionally, even with the extinction of slavery, businesses will still find people and ways to cut down trees, mine, and even destroy forests. However, Kevin Bales being biased to the idea of slavery being the number one problem today, he sees it as having a profound connection to all problems, even when the connection may be weak. Finally, I saw one other problem with his argument. At one point he states that now there are double the number of slaves that came out of Africa in the entire Transatlantic Slave Trade; however, he later states that slavery is so low right now that it is on the edge of extinction and we simply need to give it that last push to drive it to its extinction.
All and all, I agree with his argument. It's against human rights and must be taken care of. In addition, though, the cost to liberate and stop slavery is so low that it is inhuman of us to not put an end to it. For sustainable freedom for all slaves, the global economy would have to pay $10.8 billion dollars. Bales claims that this is "peanut money" at a global level. Additionally, once liberated, the ex-slaves will be motivated to develop their lives. They will become consumers and producers; thereby, they will be driving the economy.
Point of clarification: by numbers, there are more slaves in the world today than at any other point in human history BUT proportionally (slaves to overall population) this number is lower than at the hight of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
DeleteThe video I chose was "Ending Poverty" with speaker Thomas Pogge. I chose this video over the others because after reading each question and title of the videos this one caught my eye. The video is about global poverty and some solutions of fixing it. Pogge in the middle of his speech revels his bias towards globalization. Here he states that globalization is the cause of poverty in the world. He is a critic towards globalization and he states that big business and the 1% are gaining from the economy and are towering over the bottom. Poverty is a serious global problem because it is 1/3 of human deaths worldwide. Pogge releases some solutions on poverty by giving out an organization called ASAP. ASAP is right now working on more than several projects. Some of these projects are connected with government. Pogge states that less developed countries political leaders are taking advantage of the countries resources and money, and that our job as a citizen is the stop that. Also we are responsible for the causes of poverty because we stand around and do nothing while others are being taking advantage of. I fully disagree because what can us average citizens do to help a different country. If the people are disagreeing with their leader they should change them. Global poverty is a concern, but another countries government is not.
ReplyDeleteWhile Pogge may be critical of globalization, I don't think he is necessarily completely against it. The average citizen can leverage the power of the global/information age to bring awareness to problems.
DeleteI chose the video “Global Power Shift” because the shift of power around the world interests me. Paddy Ashdown makes several interesting points on how the power has shifted in the modern age. In ancient times, power was shifted laterally in several situations, one being the Roman Empire. In modern times, power has shifted vertically. It has now migrated onto the global stage through internet broadcasters and global trading. Some multinational organizations are even more powerful than some countries. This has led to unregulated space, space that is not subject to the rule of law. Terrorism is a huge example, September 11 showed how a powerful country can be attacked in one of their most popular cities. After the fall of the Soviet Union, following the Cold War, the world turned into a mono-polar world. It just came down to one world super power, the United States. The world now is turning to a multi-polar world; it is turning to alternative centers of power. This is due to high communication around the world. The world is now held together because of the networking on the internet.
ReplyDeleteAshdown is biased through saying that the UN will not succeed in creating a global economy. The United Nations has made huge breakthroughs throughout the years with adding more countries and attempting to keep the peace. Also, Ashdown says that the whole world is being held together. Although the internet does add communication, terrorism and other countries still do not participate. For example, North Korea refuses to have anything to do with the rest of the world.
Although the UN has seen some successes, many argue that a "global economy" would undermine the sovereignty of states and the incentives for innovation.
DeleteMy video choice was Kevin Bales, "How to Combat Modern Slavery" because I read the title and didn't believe that he was actually talking about slavery where people worked in harsh conditions and received no pay. So many people don't know it exist because they don't think it's a possibility. There are slaves all around the world. People become slaves because people will offer them "jobs". They see that the person offering them these jobs seems to be a little sketchy yet they take them because of their families low income and they need to feed their children. They find out when they finally want to leave that they have been tricked into slavery. This also has had an impact on the environment. Slaves are being forced to deforest forests or over mine in mines. I now see how slavery still exists to this day and I see that Bales's points are very good and are against slavery. I agree with Bales in that we can help stop it completely.
ReplyDeleteI chose to watch the video "Kevin Bales: How to Combat Modern Slavery" because the title caught my attention. I had always read about slavery in the past, but never thought it still existed today. Who, where, when, how, and why were all the questions that ran through my head upon reading the title. Could slavery really exist in the modern world?
ReplyDeleteThroughout watching the video I realized a few exaggerations and biases. For example, Bales presents the argument about how slave labor has caused devastating effects on the environment. Through the cutting down of trees and mining out useful minerals, the world's environment has been hit hard. Although this may be true, I think it is an exaggeration to push so much of the world's environmental issues on slave labor. I think it is adequate to say that more of the environment's troubles come from the carbon dioxide being continuously pumped out of cars and factories around the world. In addition another bias is that Bales only really discusses the prevalence of slavery in Africa when in his presentation he had a world map that expressed slavery existed in all countries of the world with the exception of Greenland and Iceland. What about slavery in other countries? What is the most common way they are being lured? Do they not deserve world recognition for the hideous crimes done to them too? He needed to provide more information on slavery in other nations of the world, such as, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Generally, I agree with Bales' argument. Human rights is not only wanted, it is vital for the world to work at its highest capacity. Without slavery, the people that were once held under it would be able to participate in global affairs freely. They would be able to produce more than they ever could when they were enslaved. A mere $10.8 billion to free the slaves would pay off several times over to improve the economy greatly. Not only would the economy boom, but we would be saving millions of people from a life of misery.
Good analysis. You identified biases & exaggerations but still managed to distill useful information from the lecture.
DeleteI chose the video "How to Combat Modern Slavery," by speaker Kevin Bales. I chose this video because it is rare to hear anything about modern slavery so I thought it would be a unique video. Kevin Bales talks about how slavery is a pressing issue that is very rarely talked about. He goes on talking about the 27,000,000 people currently enslaved in the world. Bales talks about how modern slavery is caused by three main factors which are a global population increase, many extremely impoverished, vulnerable people, and injustice by corrupt governments and law enforcement. He talks about how the main difference between slavery in the past and modern slavery is the collapse in the price of human lives. He points out that around the world, the average price of a slave is $90. Bales makes the point of saying that fixing slavery will be an easy job.
ReplyDeleteThis point he brings up was one of the few flaws in his argument. Bales says how the cost of sustainable freedom for all the slaves in the world would be 10.8 billion dollars. He says that this is a very small number that would be easy to come up with to put an end to slavery. I disagree with this because 10.8 billion dollars is a very large amount of money. This would be a very difficult sum to come up with, and even if it is obtained, it would be very difficult to distribute around the world to free every slave in the world.
I chose the video "Thomas Pogge, 'Ending Poverty'" because I was interested in the title and specifically how poverty can come to a stop. The questions also made me wonder about the relationship between businesses and global politics are, what citizen responsibilities are, and what the difference between poverty and "severe" poverty are.
ReplyDeleteHis bias standpoint of globalization stood out to me as he defined it as the cause of poverty in the world. As people can have their opinions, the hypothesis of globalization being the cause of poverty is not false or definitely true. Globalization helps people in wealthier, more developed countries become wealthy and allows people in less developed countries be submerged into poverty to a larger degree, if not already. Pogge also has a biased view of poverty itself as defining two terms of poverty: standard "poverty", meaning not having a job or home in a relatively developed country or state, and then "severe poverty", meaning not having enough nourishment, lacking access to essential medicines, lacking safe drinking water, lacking adequate shelter, lacking electricity, lacking adequate sanitation, being illiterate, and having children (ages 5-17) work for a household income.
Pogge addresses poverty as being a major problem in the world and supports it with much irrefutable evidence and statistics in his presentation. He also asserts that another cause of poverty is the inequality of income distribution, not just in states, but in the world. Big businesses are described as taking the land's resources for their own benefit, leaving that undeveloped country with nothing to grow with, thanks to the exploitation of large political groups in developed countries.
Finally, this topic speaks for itself to be an interest to the global community as it is stripping people of their human rights and, evidently, killing them, as well.
The video "How to Combat Modern Slavery" intrigued me due to my recent education of slavery in the 19th century. Therefore, I was curious as to whether that outside our sheltered life in the United States slavery persisted to degrade the rights of humans.
ReplyDeleteBales interrogates society, asking us whether we want to live in a world where slavery exists. However, Bale seems to forget the fact that a large portion of society is ignorant of and oblivious to the current status of slavery. Bale himself was ignorant of slavery until he conducted his own study. For society to work as a whole to eradicate slavery, more than 2 out of 3,000 search results for "slavery" need to pertain to contemporary slavery. In addition, Bale insinuates that $10.8 billion is of little importance on the global scale. However, what organization is expected to donate such a large sum of money when it cannot receive any direct benefit. Therefore, the burden falls upon the countries in which slavery is extraordinarily prevalent. Most commonly, however, these are the countries that cannot afford to fund billions of dollars to restructure their society.
Enslavement pertains to the global community because of the ethical questions it raises. While slavery is at an all-time low in terms of both the percentage of enslaved humans and revenue generated from slavery, 27 million people are still being forced to work under the threat of violence, regardless. This is close to one-tenth of the United States' population. Why do 27 million people deserve to lead miserable, destitute, and impoverished lives? The question that must be asked is what is the role of the global to community to aid in the purging of slavery? Who will provide $10.8 billion to sustain the freedom of emancipated slaves? The global community must be concerned with contemporary slavery because apathetic morals, values, and beliefs that are associated with it. In addition, the permanent liberation of slavery would result in more stable economy and government in many countries.
I chose to watch the video "Ending Poverty" which featured Thomas Pogge. Thomas begins with defining "sever" poverty by using multiple statistics on what severe poverty brings among us. Sever poverty causes millions to lack nutrition, essential medicines, safe drinking water, shelter, electricity, sanitation, and literacy. It also drives children to work in unsafe jobs outside of their households. He also goes on to explain that poverty has huge influence on the death rates of humans.Pogge explains that the impoverished are stripped of their given rights. He also talks about how global income is unequally distrubuted globally and nationally. He also claims that the responsibilities of humans include our government's actions, operations that produce less harm to the poverty-stricken, and to compensate for what harms the impoverished had to face. I agree with this assertion because in the end, we are the government.The main organization that aims toward helping the poor is the ASAP. Programs that this organization is holding are Know Your Rights India, Supply Chain of Universities, Moral Psychology and Poverty Allevation, Beyond 2015: Global Poverty Consensus Report, Institutional Reform Goals.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Whitney. In a democracy, the government is answerable to the people. However, non-democratic societies are not always held accountable.
DeleteI chose to watch Kevin Bales, "How to Combat Modern Slavery" because I was under the belief that most, if not all of slavery ended a long time ago. I was interested in where this slavery persisted, especially if it existed in the United States.
ReplyDeleteKevin Bales is biased because he is fully aware of slavery in the modern world when many people, such as myself, were not aware before watching this video. He asks if we can live in a world where we know that slavery still exists, but modern slavery is not very popular so most people do not even know that slavery persists.
This issue should be a concern not only because it is a violation of human rights, but because it is doing major damage to our ecosystems. The slaves are used to cut down forest and complete harsh mining work that is detrimental to the environment. Also, the slave owners are tricking the desperate slaves into thinking that they have paying work for them to do. However, they are really being forced to work against their will for no pay. Their dreams of being able to provide for their family are crushed by the fake paying job that the slaveholders offered them. Modern slavery is a real issue and needs to be recognized and stopped as soon as possible.
I chose to watch "Maps of Future Countries" presented by Parag Khanna. The main reason why I selected this particular video to view is because I was curious as to how the world map, along with its political borders, will change in the future. Also, I was intrigued to discover which country, or countries, would eventually expand its borders or not.
ReplyDeleteKhanna presents an argument that the world's borders that are shown on the everyday map are not the actual physical borders of specific countries. For example, Khanna mentions that China's population is migrating up into eastern Russia. He further explains how with the migration that is occuring, the political borders on a map do not fully represent how China's borders are technically moving up into Russia. A false component in the arguement is how Khanna fails to mention anything about the actual border of China officially extending. Another problem with his argument with political borders not fully representing the actual borders is that he does not back his information up or answer any of the "why" or "why not" questions. For instance, Khanna infers that his argument for the political boundaries to be correct, which I agree with, but he fails to explain why none of the country boundary maps are updated to the new political boundaries that are forming. He also fails to answer why does recreating the "curvy lines" have anything to do to benefit the world as a whole.
On that note, he never mentioned how the "Chinese-style" globalization effects or will effect the world today. Khanna is biased towards the "Chinese-style" globalizaiton. He only explains how China is benefitting from heavily trading with countries in the Global Hub. Khanna, however, does not state how the countries that China trades with are effected by the extensive trading. In order for him to have not been biased, he should have included how the countries that are being used by China are effected.
Overall, I agree with Khanna's argument thoughout the presentation. However, I feel as though if he went on to answer the why or why not questions, then people would understand why the political boundaries are at their current state. If he explained those questions in more detail throughout the argument, then the points he made in the presentation would have been stronger. In addition, I agree with his "Chinese-style" globalization argument. It makes sense because China is currently using all the power and goods from other countries for its own gain. Therefore, with China basically controlling the rest of the world, the country will one day become a major economic world power.
Good reflection. You may be interested in the following article "China Wages a Quiet War of Maps with its Neighbors" (Washington Post, 2/15/13)
DeleteI chose to watch the "Ending Poverty" video with Thomas Pogge. Pogge started with statistics that showed how devastating some levels of poverty are. He stated that there are 7 billion people in the world, and that out of that 7 billion: 2000 million do not that access to medical attention, 1600 million do not have adequate shelters or electricity, and that 2500 million do not have sanitation. The statistic that stood out the most to me was one that he mention later, which was that one third of all deaths in the world are due to poverty. Severe poverty a level of poverty that includes a lack of nutrition, medicine, shelter, sanitation, and literacy. Pogge explained that the world itself is not poverty stricken, but that it appears impoverished because of income distribution. He adds in several points, such as the act of lobbying, that prove that poverty is a global community concern. Pogge continues explaining that impoverished countries are stripped of their rights. Throughout the presentation he referred back to the rights that they were not getting. During the entire presentation he supported his assertions with statistics and data that proved and explained his points. According to Pogge, citizens' responsibilities are the government actions, the compensation of what problems the impoverished had to face, and the operation to lessen those problems. I agree with his assertion because we vote for the government representation, and we can lessen the problems that face impoverished countries. Pogge supports the organizations ASAP, Institution Reform Goals, and Moral Psychology and Poverty Allevation. Global Poverty is a concern that Pogge is working hard to end.
ReplyDeleteI chose the "Global Power Shift" video because I wanted to see how power was changing hands globally. Also, I wanted to see where the US ranked in this.
ReplyDeleteOne of Paddy Ashdown's biases is he believes that unregulated space will be filled with good and bad factors. I disagree because of global powers' observations of these spaces. For example, in Syria there was conflicting parties and the US chose to help the most democratically-thinking party in order to help them gain control. This helps to get more sensible governments in control and find new sources of global powers that support the US and its allies. Also, Ashdown's bias causes him to believe that the world is rapidly changing into a multi-polar world. I disagree because I think it is transitioning slowly. For example, China will probably change to a democracy, but it will change gradually. China is one of these multi-polar powers, which shows how they move slowly. Finally, Ashdown's bias causes him to say that alliance are not fixed. I disagree because the UN is trying to add new members to their global alliance, which will help to stabilize the clashes between countries when they have an alliance with each other.
This should be a cause of concern because the world's outcome depends on the global power shift. If it shifts more in favor of the United States, the world will be more peaceful and there will be more democracies to promote freedom. If it shifts towards a different country, the outcome will change.
The video I chose was How to Combat Modern Slavery by Kevin Bales. I chose this because I rarely hear about slavery in modern time. In the video Bales did a study on articles of Contemporary slavery. Of three thousand articles two of them were on contemporary slavery. One reason why contemporary slavery may be unknown is because people don't want to believe that slavery still exist. Nonetheless slavery still exists and over 27 million people are currently slaves. Slavery is being forced to do work without pay and to be put under threats and violence while being unable to walk away. Some places where slavery occurs is Brazil the congo and Southern Asia. The large increase in the number of slaves can be attributed to the large population increase,extreme cases of poverty and legal corruption. Some ways how slavery is different today compared to slavery in the past is that slavery is cheaper and the people are "disposable". Some ways how Slavery can be ended is to stop buying out slaves and begin liberating slaves and providing them a sustainable life.
ReplyDeleteI chose to watch the video and take notes on "The Global Power Shift" by Paddy Ashdown. I chose this video because i find the change in global throughout history very interesting. Ashdown makes several good poins about how the power has changed over history upto the modern age. In history or ancient times the power was shifted horzantally, for example, the poer in Europe. The power is now shifting in the modern day vertically. It has all migrated onto a global stage. Our enemies have access to the internet and satilite broadcasting as well. He uses terrorism as a huge example for this. He talked about how on 9/11 terrorists were able to attack one of the most iconic cities in the United States, New York City. The world is turning to alternative centers of power. The world is now connected because of the internet and other types of satilite broadcasting.
ReplyDeletePaddy Ashdown is very biased when it comes to the UN trying to create a unified global economy. He believes that they will not be able to accoplish this goal. He says the UN will not be able to do this because of the uneven distribution of power. When you bring the guys in that have a lot of power together it leaves the weak guys out.
You concisely tied up his argument with your last statement. Well done!
DeleteI chose to watch the video "How to Combat Modern Slavery". This video was interesting to me because slavery is something that doesnt seem common. People think that slavery is not exsistant but it is in most countries of the world. This effects the environment because they had slaves deforrest forrests. today there are 27 million slaves in the world.
ReplyDeleteThis video should be concerned to global society because it is something that our countries have fought about in war, and should not be happening again. Although it is, it should not.
I chose to watch the video "How to Combat Modern Slavery" by Kevin Bales. I chose this video because slavery is something very interesting to me. Contemporary slavery is caused because people choose to ignore the problem and they don't want to believe that it exists. Slavery is when people are forced to work without pay under a threat of violence and that they are unable to walk away. Today there are 27 million slaves all over the world. It affects the environment because they are forced to deforest and mine spreading mercury, which is very bad for the environment. Most people get involved with slavery because there are no laws and it causes corruption, especially police corruption. Slavery is different today then is used to be because the cost of a person has decreased. Liberation would cost 10.8 billion dollars to free all slaves.
ReplyDeleteKevin Bales is very biased when it comes to slavery. He believes that slavery can be abolished if everyone stops ignoring it. Slavery is a concern to the global community because if we don't help people will die or suffer. Slavery is a serious matter and it is the intellectual power in everyone.
I chose the video "Global Power Shift" by Paddy Ashdown
ReplyDeleteThis video explains how global power has shift drastically throughout the years. Back in the ancient times global power shifted laterally from one nation to another. Nowadays, power shifts vertically and is progressing to a new modern stage. Ashdown believes that the United States will continue to lead as a dominant global force, and will remain in this position for the next 10-15 years. Ashdown uses the 9/11 attack as an example for how terrorism is spreading into more unpopulated territories. The video also states how everything is becoming more interconnected and how eventually nations that were former enemies will soon become allies.
What are your feelings/reflections on this argument?
Delete