Globalization is the word used to describe the growing interdependence of the world's economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information. Globalization has had a positive effect on the world so far. It enabled access to technology, goods, and services even to people from emerging and least developed economies. It has increased interdependency among nations, causing them to start caring for one another. However, it also had negative impacts such as increased exploitation of poorer nations in the name of development, faster degradation of ecology and environment, among others.
All these issues were aggravated with what is known as hyper-globalization- a dramatic change in the size, scope, and velocity of globalization that began in the late 1990s and that continues into the beginning of the 21st century. The concept of hyper-globalism first arose in the 2011 work by Dani Rodrick, an economist and professor of International Political Economy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, who described it in The Globalization Paradox. Rodrik defines hyper-globalization as a type of globalization aimed at the elimination of all transaction costs associated with the movement between the natural borders of nation states of goods, services, capital and finance. These costs include domestic regulations, standards, rules on product safety, rules on intellectual property, and banking regulations. In other words, Rodrik sees hyper-globalization as a type of globalization that allows multinational companies to avoid the rules and regulations of nation states. The deep integration of hyper-globalization conflicts with and threatens the sovereignty of the nation state. It is a globalization that has gone too far. Rodrik does not argue to stop or reduce globalization, but rather to change the rules of globalization away from hyper-globalization to activity that does not conflict with national sovereignty.
Reasons why hyper-globalism can be a threat to human prosperity:
• Cultural: Many cultural activists claim that hyper-globalization is the reason for reduced diversity around the world. People are perceiving westernization as globalization. Changing food values to increased fast food dependence- which is the main cause of obesity, over use of English which is threatening minority languages, reduced moral values in the name of development, all are result of hyper-globalization. Culture is the most important wealth any society can possess. By reducing cultural diversity, hyper-globalization is threatening human prosperity.
• Economic: Hyper-globalization is increasing inequality around the world. Prosperity increases when there is equality among people. GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon) are the wealthiest companies in the world. But this wealth is enjoyed by only a few individuals. Moreover, it creates a sense of insecurity among people who cannot access services provided by these companies. The increased income of people with required new skills (such as knowledge of Artificial Intelligence) is far less than decreased income of unskilled people, leading to decrease in net prosperity. Unaware people are also falling prey to cyber-crimes.
• Agricultural: Hyper-globalization has the capability to reduce the prosperity of farmers by limiting government’s support to them. It has resulted in the decline of household subsistence production. People look for greener pastures in other countries as laborers. Rural demographics are changing. While men leave, women are forced into farming. Despair has led more than 10,000 Indian farmers to commit suicide in 2020. Hyper-globalisation is leading to a concentration of the seed industry, the increased use of pesticides, and finally increased debt. In the regions where industrial agriculture has been introduced through hyper-globalization, higher costs are making it virtually impossible for small farmers to survive.
• Ecology & Environment: Hyper-globalism is also leading to increased extraction of raw materials and deforestation, without adding any value to indigenous people. Moreover, these people need to bear the cost of resulting damage to ecology and increased pollution, which reduces their prosperity. This can be better understood when we look at the plight of millions of climate refugees from island nations, cost incurred due to the damage on biodiversity, pollution-ridden rivers, impacts of climate change and global warming, increased threat of new and emerging viruses such as COVID-19- all threatening the human prosperity. Nigeria is the latest example where global oil giants have destroyed local ecology for profits and left the country to fend for itself. Local population has been left unemployed and is now living in abject poverty and misery due to acts under hyper globalism.
• Technological: Technology is going to make warfare more dreadful. Buying and selling dangerous weapons was never so easy as it is in the era of hyper-globalism. If, at all, war occurs, the damage to property is unpredictable. The huge amount of money that is used for defence, if were used for welfarist policies, would help the poor and destitute by making them prosperous. Hence, by depriving the world of this opportunity, hyper-globalism is threatening human prosperity. Newly emerging cyber warfare is also a result of technology.
Anything that happens quickly and is pursued very rigorously is bound to have negative consequences. The same is true with hyper-globalization. The process of hyper-globalization needs to be proceeded gradually with sustainable development, culture, happiness, etc., being involved. Nations throughout the world need to discuss and agree upon terms regarding the pace at which hyper-globalization should continue to work. One of the major reason behind hyper-globalism threatening human prosperity is increasing inequality and amassing of wealth by a select few individuals. This needs to be taken care of for the world to truly enjoy the benefits of hyper-globalism