Are we ready for Globalization?

Sure, we have a lot of pros and cons for Globalization, there would be a long list if we try to put it all down, but the question really is: Are we ready for it?

Globalization promotes competitiveness. It creates a tight market where all the competitors are trying to entice the customers to buy the different companies' respective products. I believe that enticing customers, for the most part is all about Pricing. But have you ever wondered how they make the products go so low?

There are a lot of trade-offs involved. As I was doing my interview for the Video Project, my boss (Alex Tolentino, see video) said something about declining product quality. As we are now facing it, prices are going lower and lower, and so does quality. To be able to make such low priced products companies are cutting costs and short-changing processes. If you would think about it, it is a double edge sword. As foreign importers offer low priced products, they produce it via cheap labor, in the end does people doing the labor in their home country receive less so their standard of living goes lower as well. In our country, the one being importing foreign products, as we get more enticed with lower prices, our own products (if we ever have one) are not being sold as much. In this light, our products are priced higher to catch up with previous losses, but then it would not be able to sell because of the cheaper foreign products. The point being is that, with stiffer competition, our locally produced products are not being consumed, thus lowering the standard of life of our own workers.

In this train of thought, only the people or countries who have the better technology and does not have enough market in their place of origin to dump their products at, would be the ones richer. Those who do not have the same capacity would try to react on what is going on, until finally they would not be able to keep up. As we continue with this we might become a totally importing country and become overly dependent on other countries.

I do not want to become conservative with this issue but are we not better off producing our own and consuming our own. Yes, the competition is good for the consumers - only for the short run - but in the end we suffer. I believe that it is when we are producing our own products for ourselves and also we have the capacity to offer products to other countries that we should become totally open for the rules of globalization. As for now, we should keep our thoughts straight, and start doing something for our own until we are globally capable of competition.