So we've seen that globalization is about the creation of the system of transactions, of people, of money, of goods. Why does it come about? Why does globalization come about? An old line in social sciences is talking about agency versus structure. That is, was globalization produced by individuals making choices? For example, here we have President Obama and the day that— the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. Are these individuals, did you have this sort of— this kind of room, in a sense, that decided globalization? Or if you follow a Marxist perspective, it's actually not a question of these individual choices. It's structural. It couldn't be helped. And you could talk about this as an inevitable process. Is globalization inevitable, or was it a policy choice? And again we could talk about individual choices throughout the last 50 or 60 years that made it possible. Others could argue no, that merely facilitated but globalization was inescapable. And depending on how you feel about this question, you're going to feel very different about globalization. Now there's lots of drivers for globalization. I want to just focus on a couple. Trade we've talked about but also conquests and migrations. And let me give you an illustration of an early form of globalization which clearly shows that this isn't just about, if you will, comparative advantage, that involves a great deal of violence and that is the global slave trade. From, let's say, beginning in the 17th century well through the 19th, you have this massive export of human beings across the Atlantic, large parts of it going either to Brazil or the Caribbean or Latin America. This is an example of globalization. This is a precursor of globalization, all right? Not at all an attractive one, a tragic, catastrophic one caused by violence. So globalization: yes, it's partly about trade but it's also about the imposition of violence whether it was the Imperial system across the globe, let's say in 1900, or it's the even more specific example of the kind of slave that we saw. So globalization has many causes. And depending on which one we want to focus on, whether we want to focus on migrations, is that a decision that every individual makes or is that just a structural shift? Conquests: again is that an individual or is that inevitable? And trade. But whenever you think about globalization, think also about its earlier forms. And again perhaps the earliest form of globalization as we understood today would be the tragedy of the slave trade in the 17th through 19th century. Why globalization? Some would argue that a lot of that has been driven not by policy or inevitability or violence but simply by technology. Air and shipping: the container, the shipping containers— a wonderful book called "The Box" that talks about how this kind of technology— this is not a very complicated technology. You don't need a PhD to figure this out. This is just a metal box, and it's a way of storing things and moving things. Well, this was a technological change. Clearly with computing we would not have to globalization we have today without the technical revolution that we have had. Both of these—and again you can argue that some of this has a structural element, technology improving and the inevitability of technology improving or you can also have the effect of an entrepreneur thinking of something as simple as this shipping container. You also political reasons for globalization. Certainly after 1989, the conquest of the world by, what we might call neo-liberalism, which I won't bore you with, and the collapse of alternatives. There were policy choices. We see this period of globalization is one that treats capitalism as inevitable, that treats capitalism as inherent to the very life of the world. This goes back to my earlier statement that one of the things that globalization signifies is this spread of these notions of property and market known as capitalism. And there were decisions. Davos—the annual get together of the very powerful and the very rich in Davos is a perfect example of the kinds of policy choices. So yes, globalization is partly a product of history. It's partly a product of these technological changes, but it's also a product of these individual decisions seeking to support neo-liberalism and capitalism. And we might see, in the last four or five years of politics from let's say 2015 on, that we are reversing some of this, that we are no longer so interested in a neo-liberal model. We're no longer interested in the global capitalism, and those policy changes might take us in a different direction. Or maybe we will see that they can avoid the inevitability of the increase of globalization. This is one of the big issues that we will see over the next couple of decades. The final question. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I always like to answer this with reference to gravity. If you want to keep the cosmos in order, if you want to stay on the surface of the Earth, gravity is a very, very good thing. Gravity is your friend. If, on the other hand, you are on top of a tree and you are falling from that tree, gravity is a bad thing. Gravity is going to lead you to pain. Well, we have to think of globalization as having these two qualities. Yes, it's been a very good thing for some. It's been a very good thing in some measures for large parts of the world. It's also been a very bad thing—go back to the elephant curve—for some parts of the world. There is no absolute value. It depends very much on where you stand, how you're going to feel, or how you're affected by globalization. And in order to figure that out, the next few lectures will talk about the good and the bad of globalization, what globalization has done that is good, and what globalization is associated with or has produced that is "bad."
