Quotes about Globalization

Globalization is a bottom-up phenomenon with all actions initiated by milions of individuals, the sum total of which is "globalization." No one is in charge, and no one can anticipate what the sum of all the individual initiatives will be before the result manifest. A global economy can only be the result of "spontaneous order."

The economic borderlines of our world will not be drawn between countries, but around Economic Domains. Along the twin paths of globalization and decentralization, the economic pieces of the future are being assembled in a new way. Not what is produced by a country or in a country will be of importance, but the production within global Economic Domains, measured as Gross Domain Products. The global market demands a global sharing of talent. The consequence is Mass Customization of Talent and education as the number one economic priority for all countries

As often as I listen to the worries about China eating the jobs of the West, I hear the concern about the influence of the American way of life in the East. The question is: "Does globalization mean Americanization?" My short answer is no. In measuring globalization, we can count telephone calls, currency flows, trade sums, and so on, but the spread of culture and ideas cannot be so easily measured. Embedded in the present is the unrecognized paradox that culturally, America itself is changing more dramatically than America is changing the world. It is the world that is changing the world. Immigration is reshaping America more profoundly than America's influence around the world.

An unreflective passion for social justice may be one of the biggest obstacles to creating peace and prosperity in the 21^st century. While there are most certainly factory owners in China whom we would rightly regard as criminal in their treatment of their workers, it is very important not to confuse these incidents with the phenomenon of globalization. It is a good thing that Wal-Mart is encouraging more humane standards in its supplier's factories. And yet it is also important to remember that Wal-Mart's "vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market" is a vast pipeline of prosperity for the hundreds of millions of rural Chinese whose lives are more difficult than we can imagine.

Much of the criticism of economic globalization has centered on factory labor abuses. But the majority of the world's poor are not employed in factories; they are self-employed -- as peasant farmers, rural peddlers, urban hawkers, and small producers, usually involved in agriculture and small trade in the world's vast "informal" economy ("informal" because economists have difficulty measuring it.).

“Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.”

“If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.”

“If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.”

Never before has information been so important, to governments and businesses alike. And please don't imagine that some of you gathered here today may be less concerned than others. Globalization means that the "butterfly effect" is everywhere at work. The mistakes of a stockbroker in Singapore or the collapse of the Baht in Bangkok, the decisions of a Finnish industrial concern, or what the Governor of Minas Gerais in Brazil decides to do about his State's debt, have had consequences for the world as a whole. More than raw information, what I expect from you is shrewd judgement and foresight. I also expect you to have the courage to commit yourself by proposing new initiatives.

Everything there is to say has been said-and well said-about the tidal wave that is mingling the irreversible globalization of human activity with ever-faster scientific and technical progress. This worldwide process raises two crucial questions: How can people, and in the first place governments, maintain the necessary control over these changes? And, how can our societies keep pace with the precipitous course of change without damage to themselves? Every political leader is obliged to act to keep the pace and scale of this process under control, so that our peoples may reap its full benefits.