Ethical Reflection on Globalization

1.    Definition and Background

With the development of communicating and transporting techniques, trading and investing activities across borders have become increasingly frequent. From this phenomenon, the concept of globalization was derived. According to the definition given by Globalization 101, globalization is the “process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations”.

Cross-border trading and investment can be dated back to as early as the time of Silk Road; with the help of modern technology, the pace of development for globalization was largely increased. For example, Dobbs, Manyika and Woetzel (2015) indicated that the global capital flow in 2007 was 25 times larger than that in 1980. Globalization provides numerous amounts of opportunities by facilitating the mobility of capital, ideas, labor and resources. However, there has always been a dispute about whether the opportunities created by globalization are enough to offset the value it jeopardizes or not. For example, suppliers in Europe have been complaining that cheap products from Southeast Asia are taking their profits away. Similarly, there have been protests in the U.S. about immigrant labor causing local people to lose their jobs. In the following parts of this essay, moral arguments for opening borders and enabling free labor movements will be provided.

2.    Moral Arguments

Despite differences in culture, time and region, human beings share certain basic values as the foundation of their moral systems. Those values are referred to as moral orientations. Since these criteria will not vary greatly with external factors, the six aspects of moral orientations will be used as outline for presenting moral arguments for globalization.

2.1   Care

Globalization promotes the communication of information and the mobility of resources, which allow people in remote areas to have access to resources such as medicine, doctors and educational materials. As Safran indicated in 2013: “globalization has imposed positive impacts on the morbidity and mortality indices in African countries.” Similar cases can be found in places such as Pakistan as well. Since the establishment of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the average level of health care, education, trading and resources sharing in both countries saw considerable improvements (Sina Finance, 2015). Therefore, globalization is in aligning with the moral value of care for general human beings.

2.2   Sanctity

Cohen suggested in 2013: “basic moral rights exist when people have a moral duty to respect the sanctity of life by avoiding injury or risk to others, or to give aid to those in need”. As discussed in 2.1, globalization promotes the average level of health care and human benefits, and it makes resources more easily accessible to those in needs. Therefore, globalization is in consistent with the concept of respecting life sanctity.

2.3   Authority, loyalty

Currently, the public has low trust in global corporations’ ethical behaviors (Sorscher, 2013). However, the author also indicated that new international trading agreements put high emphasize on ethical issues, and as long as we focus on “balanced, accountable, legitimate, sustainable, democratic governance, with a strong moral footing. We can do globalization right”, and preserve moral authority and loyalty.

2.4   Liberty

Out of question, globalization facilitates liberty by enabling free trading, mobility of labor and sharing of resources. It promotes the idea that opportunity, whether for individuals or corporations, should not be limited by geographic characteristics.

2.5   Fairness

According to Devictor, globalization has not necessarily increased equality, but it has provided more people with the equal chance and access to resources. As long as we implement the concept of globalization in the right way, it will increase fairness.