Chapter 20
Our Flat World
This is Globalization 3.0. In Globalization 1.0, which began around 1492, the world went from size large to size medium. In Globalization 2.0, the era that introduced us to multinational companies, it went from size medium to size small. And then around 2000 came Globalization 3.0, in which the world went from being small to tiny.
—Thomas L. Friedman
Let me say up front that I have never lost a job because it has been outsourced, and I am sincerely sorry for anyone who has. That said, in bigger terms, I think that globalization is good for the world, and it's good for small business. Here is why: in a world that is increasingly fragmented and discordant, globalization creates bonds. It offers hope, fosters democracy, bolsters the middle class, creates new markets, and creates jobs, both here and abroad. And, according to Dan Griswold in Trading Tyranny for Freedom: How Open Markets Till the Soil for Democracy, “economic integration promotes civil and political freedoms directly by opening a society to new technology, communications, and democratic ideas. . .By promoting faster growth, free trade promotes political freedom indirectly by creating an economically independent and politically aware middle class.” He adds that “nations that have [opened] themselves to the global economy are significantly more likely to have expanded their citizens’ political and civil freedoms.” The bottom line is that, even with its obvious flaws, globalization helps small ...
