Globalisation empowers ordinary people
At an online seminar on globalisation organised by the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, in Manila, in March 2007, I looked at the forces affecting globalisation, and held that critics of globalisation have a political agenda to keep the people disempowered by restricting their choices, and preserving the privileges for the elite. Globalisation: Power to the people A lot of the times it seems to me that that debate over globalisation portrays the phenomenon as something new. The communication revolution has drastically changed the speed of information flow, and perhaps many of us have in a sense been disoriented with the pace. So much so that we lost a sense of human history! Globalisation is a phenomenon as old human civilisation. It started when the first man learned to trade, barter, his or her goods. Today, there is hardly a product that has not been impacted by some kind of voluntary exchange of one kind or other. Rice and wheat, which are the staples of most humans on the planet toda...