Chomsky vs. Friedman

Chomsky:

Chomsky's view on globalization doesn't appear to be extremely positive or extremely negative. He stresses the fact that overall, international integration is a very good thing because it brings new people and cultures to other parts of the world. However, Chomsky's main point is that the specific type of international integration called globalization is not necessarily good for all people. He emphasizes the fact that due to globalization, the poor farmers all flee to the cities, thus there are more laborers for a certain job, thus wages go down while the economy continues to boom, and this is not necessarily a good thing for all classes of people. Overall, Chomsky says that globalization does have some good aspects to it, but it is not solely beneficial.

 

Friedman:

Friedman focuses his speech on what he called the three eras of globalization and how he believes that the "agent" for globalization has begun to decrease in size over the years. He says that in the first era, from about 1492-1800s, the agent for globalization was the country. What he means by this is that globalization took place on a very large level such as Spanish settlers making the voyage over to America, for example. Then, from about 1820-2000, globalization's main agents were the companies and then still later the "individual" became the agent for globalization. Friedman uses this example of the eras of globalization to show just how powerful and beneficial globalization really is. The fact that globalization has gone from such a large scale to a small scale just shows the impact of it on people. He ties this in with the mentality that you should "do it first" because whatever can be done will be done, and it will either be done by you or to you.

 

I tend to agree more with Chomsky.