Can Globalization Be Reversed
With the coming of the industrial age, the wheel of progress turned. Factory based mass production replaced independent artisans, who now worked for business firms (Volti, 2009, p. 187). The workers became dependant on businesses to provide facilities to work in, tools to work with, and wages to take home, creating a society of employees (Volti, 2009, p. 187).
Since work and income was now dependant on the factories, workers need to find homes in relative proximity, thus leading to higher density of individuals within the urban areas surrounding the manufacturing centers. With urbanization came a need for production and transportation of food to the growing cities. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, this food was generally produced locally on the surrounding farmlands with only the occasional delicacy imported from a foreign land.
While factory work was hard and the hours long, people chose it over subsistence farming as it lead to a better standard of living for themselves and their offspring. Bertha Black remembers her family’s move to a mill town:
We all went to work, in the Amazon Cotton Mill and we all worked there all our lives. We were all anxious to go to work because, I don’t know, we didn’t like farming. It was so hot from sunup to sundown. No, that was not for me. Mill work was better. It had to be. Once we went to work in the mill after we moved here from the farm, we had more clothes and more kinds of food than we did when we was a farmin’. And we had a better house. So yes, when we came to the mill life was easier (Rivoli, 2009, p. 110).
Thus began urbanization which continues to this day, with 50% of the global population residing in urban centers (Satterthwaite, 2010, p. 1). This urbanization is directly coupled with wealth, where the “more urbanized a country, the higher the individual incomes (Satterthwaite, 2010, p. 1)”. The United States, one of the top 20 global incomes per capita (World Bank, 2011, p. 1), supports this, as
Since work and income was now dependant on the factories, workers need to find homes in relative proximity, thus leading to higher density of individuals within the urban areas surrounding the manufacturing centers. With urbanization came a need for production and transportation of food to the growing cities. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, this food was generally produced locally on the surrounding farmlands with only the occasional delicacy imported from a foreign land.
While factory work was hard and the hours long, people chose it over subsistence farming as it lead to a better standard of living for themselves and their offspring. Bertha Black remembers her family’s move to a mill town:
We all went to work, in the Amazon Cotton Mill and we all worked there all our lives. We were all anxious to go to work because, I don’t know, we didn’t like farming. It was so hot from sunup to sundown. No, that was not for me. Mill work was better. It had to be. Once we went to work in the mill after we moved here from the farm, we had more clothes and more kinds of food than we did when we was a farmin’. And we had a better house. So yes, when we came to the mill life was easier (Rivoli, 2009, p. 110).
Thus began urbanization which continues to this day, with 50% of the global population residing in urban centers (Satterthwaite, 2010, p. 1). This urbanization is directly coupled with wealth, where the “more urbanized a country, the higher the individual incomes (Satterthwaite, 2010, p. 1)”. The United States, one of the top 20 global incomes per capita (World Bank, 2011, p. 1), supports this, as
References: Pimentel, D., & Giampietro, M. (1994). Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy. Carrying Capacity Network. Retrieved from http://dieoff.org/page55.htm Ramsey, J Rivoli, P. (2009). The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade (2nd ed.). Wiley. Satterthwaite, D. (2010). Urban Trends: Urbanization and Economic Growth. Environment and Urbanization. Retrieved from http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/SOWC10/R7.pdf Springer, D Starr, M. (2008). Production and Operations Management (2nd ed.). Atomic Dog. US Census. (2010). 2010 Census Data - 2010 Census. Retrieved April 7, 2012, from http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/ USDA Volti, R. (2009). Society and Technological Change (Sixth ed.). Worth Publishers. Weintraub, E. R. (2002). Neoclassical Economics. Library of Econoics and Liberty. Retrieved April 8, 2012, from http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NeoclassicalEconomics.html World Bank