Is Globalization Viral?
In the early years, many scholars were concerned about globalization’s viral qualities. The speed, the ability to penetrate borders and regulations, and the capacity to transform and even drastically change the countries to which it came. Most people anticipated that globalization would be a positive force but had no idea how much it would influence the world beyond the early 1900s.
The speed at which people began to travel globally became recognized with the changing of cultures, customs, and businesses. The pace that technology advanced over the last 50 years alone has been mainly influenced by the fact that the world has become one large global market. In the race to become more global, the world has seen monumental change, in the fall of the Soviet Union, free markets for labor and capital becoming the norm, and financial markets becoming more important than the trade in goods and services. These trends cannot be reversed any more than the industrial revolution or the emergence of computers. Many nations have become preoccupied with maximizing their resources, prioritizing their production lines, and making their mark on the global platform.
Globalization is here to stay. This viral force is not slowing down.
Just as COVID-19 is a virus with global qualities, globalization is itself viral. But all viruses evolve, and globalization is no different. This year the nation-states of the world have had highly uneven success in their response to COVID-19, and that is primarily because the architecture of the system of nation-states is not well suited to an age of problems without national boundaries. Since globalization is here to stay, it is the system of nation-states that might well be forced to change, in ways that some might welcome, and others will resist. This battle will most likely outlast the battle of COVID-19.
With the emergence of a global pandemic, the world, including Japan has had to look at itself internally and assess the choices they have made. We have all had to look at our choices and decide if we are happy with them and if not, what are we willing to change. The risk of globalization dying due to the forced reflective states that we have been placed is only counter measured by rising in digital connections. We are moving into a new age. A global age that will far surpass this pandemic.
What choices and/or changes are you willing to make?