Current Events

Globalization and Ethics

By Bill French
Courier Staff

Our world is one of notable social, economic, and political change. Of course, these facets of human life have always been fluid. However, with the contemporary height and pervasiveness of globalization, these changes are occurring with a unique rapidity.

Additionally, these changes are resulting less from centralized forces - such as states - and more from the interaction of individuals in the context of near instantaneous global communications.

While these details are being hammered out by academics and pundits, most agree that a central characteristic of globalization is extreme economic interconnection.

Receiving all too little attention is the relationship between ethics and globalization. In this area, most attention has examined the exchange and interaction of ethical beliefs across cultural lines.

In terms of ethical concern, this effect of globalization takes second seat to something much more important, and much more troubling: the complications created by globalization in acting ethical.

Let us return to the notion of economic interconnection. This means that the world is being unified into a common economic system - or a multitude of interactive, cause and effect relationships.

A dollar spent will find its way through this system, from the cashier’s hands, to a marketing company, to their outsourced facility in Bangladesh, to an employee there, then into the local economy where something similar to this process is repeated. Yet, this of course is significantly oversimplified.

Thus, you as an economic actor in the form of a casual consumer equates into you possessing the power to influence economic activity across the globe. Often, this occurs incidentally, without intent or any substantive understanding of the consequences. And how could it be any other way? Are you to be expected to analyze the international economic system and understand the potential effects of buying a gumball? Of course not, but good luck.

If one believes in consequentialist ethics - the idea that the effects of a particular action in part determine the ethicality of that action – being an ethical person has assumed new degrees of complexity. This complication arises only if you recognize economic actions have definite effects invisible to you personally. But that is a bridge not yet arrived at.

The current crisis in implementing ethics is more fundamental than that. Ethics is a philosophical school that exists to help resolve the problem of what one aught to do. Implementing an ethical belief requires the recognition of a potential ethical problem so one may deliberate what act is the most ethically precise.

Quintessential examples have been inadvertently supporting sweat shops, unfair trade, and supporting unjust economic polices – which depending on your beliefs could be something like neoliberalism or even overly regulated markets. The later involve the opposition or acceptance of one’s role in maintaining entire sub politico-economic systems.

Our current crisis then arises with the problem of recognizing that the most casual economic act actually most likely has concealed ethical implications. Without being aware of an ethical contention exists, how can we apply our ethical models in resolving that problem?

However, it seems the consumer population has adopted a de facto solution: to modify their ethical view to overlook personal relationships to complex economic realities.

This is not valid ethical behavior, for it excludes outcomes from ethical purview. Instead it is amoral, the rejection of ethical consideration in favor of practicality.

On the flip side, the consumer population’s de facto solution may the acceptance of immorality in particular uses of economic power. This may stem from an overriding emphasis on materiel self-interest or the unmanageability of assessing a particular economic action and its effects.

Either explanation amounts to consumer’s inability or unwillingness to modernize ethical models in response to contemporary realities. There does not seem to be any readily available options to ameliorate this crisis. Yet, should we accept the de-emphasis or neglect of ethics in a globalizing world?

Each historical period bestows internal and external conflicts on its contemporaries. In our period of history, this appears to be both wrapped in one. I encourage all of you to accept responsibility for the realities of your economic power.

Be cognizant of this conflict, and work to engage it in whatever ways you can. Any less effort guarantees effects too bitter to complicate.