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Globalization and Pluralism: New Challenges To Ethics

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GLOBALIZATION AND

PLURALISM
NEW CHALLENGES TO ETHICS
GLOBALIZATION

Globalization may be defined as the world-wide integration of government


policies, cultures, social movements, and financial markets through trade and
the exchange of ideas. British sociologist Anthony Giddens (born 1938) defines it
as “intensification of worldwide relationships which link distant localities in such
a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and
vice versa” (as quoted in “Globalization,” n.d.).
Various interrelated definitions are given for the concept globalization. However,
the common theme that runs through the definitions is the stress on the trans-
nationalization of the connections taking place in the world today.
Globalization has renovated the globe from a collection to separate communities
interacting infrequently into a virtually one multi-faceted community. Politically
economically, and culturally therefore, communities across the world now
function in what is fundamentally a shared space although divided into artificial
political condominiums called nation states. The transnational relation made
possible by globalizing forces and process have opened up new forms of social
bonds and responsibilities.
Globalized era

In a globalized era, peoples and communities across the world have become
culturally connected, the distinction between the global and the local has
become progressively blurred and actions and events in one locality carry with it
the potential to breed transnational and transgenerational impacts. It is precisely
for these reasons that moral reflection about our responsibilities and obligations
in a globalized age has become an imperative.
Pluralism
 Pluralism. As a philosophical doctrine, Pluralism is a concept used in many diverse ways, but, in general terms,
it is the philosophical theory that there    is more than one basic substance or principle, whether it be the
constitution of the universe, of the mind and body, the sources of truth, or the basis of morality. In this
discussion, we are more concerned with moral pluralism.
Moral Pluralism: What You Need to Know about this
Contemporary Ethics
Also known as ethical pluralism and value pluralism, moral pluralism is the idea that there can be conflicting moral
views that are each worthy of respect. It thus implies that there are some values which may be equally correct and
fundamental, and yet in conflict with each other.
Moral pluralism proposes that in many cases, such incompatible values may be incommensurable, in the sense that
there is no objective ordering of them in terms of importance.
Moral pluralism is a meta-ethical theory, rather than a theory of normative ethics or a set of values in itself.
Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of idea Isaiah Berlin (1909- 1997) is credited
with being the first to popularize a considerable work describing the theory of objective value-pluralism, taking it
to the attention of the academe. However, the pertinent idea that basic values can and, in some cases, do conflict
with each other has already been prominent in  the thought of the German sociologist and philosopher Max
Weber (1864- 1920).
Moral pluralism seems to advocate flexibility when faced with competing perspectives. It evaluates issues from
various moral standpoints in deciding and taking action. An example of value-pluralism is the notion that the moral
life of a nun is incompatible with that of a mother, yet there is no strictly rational measure of which is preferable.
It thus concludes that ethical decisions frequently necessitate radical preferences with no rational calculus to
decide which alternative is to be chosen.
Moral pluralism holds that many moral issues are extremely complicated. It thus proposes that no single
philosophical approach will always provide all the answers. For instance:
Pluralists point out that choices are complex, and so claim that we must not shy
away from the proposition that values are plural. In short, the charm of
pluralism is that it appears to allow for the complexity and conflict that is part
of our moral experience. “We do not experience our moral choices as simple
additive puzzles. Pluralists have argued that there are in commensurabilities and
discontinuities in value comparisons, value remainders (or residues) when
choices are made, and complexities in appropriate responses to value
Moral Pluralism: An Analysis
Although moral pluralism, at first glance, seems  to be flawless and attractive, it is definitely not immune to valid
criticisms when philosophically analyzed. For one thing, moral pluralism fails to stipulate what to do when two or
more of its values or theories indicate inconsistent practical imperatives.
Basically, not only is moral pluralism ethically irresponsible, it is also morally impotent. It gives us no moral
standard, and offers us no moral power. Moral pluralism leaves us either concluding that (a) there is no real
solution  to ethical dilemmas or (b) all possible answers are acceptable as long as they have underlying fundamental
values. The second implied conclusion is very much like moral relativism.
Some also argue that moral pluralists ignore the fact that values are indeed commensurable as they can be
compared by their varying contributions towards the human good. Concerning the ends of freedom, equality,
efficiency, creativity, and the like, for instance, some claim that none of these are ends  in themselves, but are
valued for their consequences. So technically, moral pluralists fail to prove that the problem of conflicting values is
in principle insoluble.
Globalization emphasizes the increasing trans-border or transnational relations,
which are occurring in the contemporary world. Globalization, in effect,
restructures our social space or geography from one that is mainly territorial to one
that is increasingly transnational. In other words, whereas individuals usually have
most of their interactions and affiliations in the past with others who share the same
territorial space (e.g., the village, town, or nation), there is massive mushrooming
of interactions and affiliations across these territories today because of
globalization. Evidently, globalization has brought about the escalation of global
relations.
In principle, moral pluralism is untenable. To propose that it does not matter which values we adhere to is, in
effect, to claim that it does not matter what behavior we adopt. The two are intrinsically linked. Some thus explain
that the popularity of pluralism (and relativism) in the globalized age is accompanied by substantial moral collapse
today. Pluralism in belief and pluralism in morals go together. The outcome is said to be disastrous. As AE McGrath
of Wheaton College explains:
“Think of the unwanted girl children left exposed to die on the hillsides of Ancient Greece. Think of the human
sacrifices to the fish deity in ancient Polynesian religion. Think of the murder and gang rape carried out by
practitioners of Satanism. Are we to believe that these all spring from differing insights into the same ultimate
reality, as the pluralists claim? …Think, for example, of the Sawi tribes people in Indonesia, savage cannibals and
ruthless killers, for whom treachery was the highest virtue.’
“[Moral pluralism] can never control or even rival our natural sloth and greed… The terrorist groups [have] morality
[which] is determined by their political goals. If you believe in your cause as the most important thing on earth, you
will bomb, maim, and kill in order to achieve that goal. And the casualties? These are regrettable but inevitable.
Many ancient religions included the idea of human sacrifice.
Thus, we can identify negative social consequences of moral pluralism. Superficially, it has a certain plausibility to
a liberal-minded public; yet, on closer scrutiny, it has its darker side.
Globalization is said to have begun after World War II but has accelerated since the mid 1980s,
driven by two factors. The first is the technological advances that have reduced the cost of
transportation, communication, and computation to the degree that it has become economically
viable for a firm to place different phases of production in various countries.
The other factor has to do with the business escalating liberalization of trade and capital
markets. More and more governments are declining to protect their economies from foreign
competition or influence through import tariffs and nontariff obstacles like import quotas, legal
prohibition, and export restraints.
Many international institutions founded after World War II, such as the World Bank, International
Monetary Fund (IMF), and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (succeeded in 1995 by
the World Trade Organization) have played a crucial role in endorsing free trade in place of
protectionism.
1. Globalization uses up finite resources more quickly. As an example, China joined the World Trade Organization
in December 2001. In 2002, its coal use began rising rapidly. In fact, there is also a huge increase in world coal
consumption. India’s consumption is increasing as well, but from a smaller base.
2. Globalization increases world carbon dioxide emissions. If the world burns its coal more quickly, and does not
cut back on other fossil fuel use, carbon dioxide emissions increase.
3. Globalization makes it virtually impossible for regulators in one country to foresee the worldwide implications
of their actions. Actions which would seem to reduce emissions for an individual country may indirectly
encourage world trade, ramp up manufacturing in coal-producing areas, and increase emissions over all.
4. Globalization acts to increase world oil prices.  Oil  supply  is  not  growing  very much, due to limits we are
reaching, and partly because demand is exploding due to globalization. If we look at world oil supply, it is
virtually flat. Part of our problem now is that with globalization, world oil demand is rising very rapidly.
Chinese buyers purchased more cars in 2012 than did European buyers. Rapidly rising world demand, together
with oil supply which is barely rising, pushes world prices upward. The East has sufficient pent-up demand that
it will make use of any oil that is made available to the market.
5. Globalization transfers consumption of limitedoilsupplyfrom developed countries to developing countries. If
world oil supply isn’t growing by very much, and demand is growing rapidly in developing countries, oil to meet
this rising demand must come from somewhere. The way this transfer takes place is through the mechanism of
high oil prices. High oil prices are particularly a problem for major oil importing countries, such as the United
States, many European countries, and Japan. Because oil is used in growing food and for commuting, a rise in
oil price tends to lead to a cutback in discretionary spending, recession, and lower oil use in these countries.
Developing countries are better able to use higher-priced oil than developed countries. In some cases
(particularly in oil-producing countries) subsidies play a role. In addition, the shift of manufacturing to less
developed countries increases the number of workers who can afford a motorcycle or car. Job loss plays a role
in the loss of oil consumption from developed countries.
6. Globalization transfers jobs from developed countries to less developed countries. Globalization levels the
playing field, in a way that makes it hard for developed countries to compete. A country with a lower cost
structure (lower wages and benefits for workers, more inexpensive coal in its energy mix, and more lenient
rules on pollution) is able to out-compete  a typical OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development) country. In the United States, the percentage of U.S. citizens with jobs started dropping about
the time China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
7. Globalization  transfers  investment  spending  from   developed   countries   to   less developed countries. If
an investor has a chance to choose between a country with a competitive advantage and a country with a
competitive disadvantage, which will the investor choose? A shift in investment shouldn’t be too surprising.
In recent years, the U.S. domestic investment has dropped off and is now close to consumption of assets
(similar to depreciation, but includes other removals from service, such as removals because manufacturing has
moved overseas). The assets in question include all types of capital assets, including government-owned assets
(schools, roads), business owned assets (factories, stores), and individual homes. A similar pattern applies to
business investment viewed separately.
8. With the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, globalization leads to huge U.S. balance of trade deficits and
other imbalances. With increased globalization and the rising price of oil since 2002, the U.S. trade deficit has
soared. A major reason for this is the fact that the U.S. dollar is the world’s “reserve currency.” With the
current working mechanism, the result is that the United States can run deficits year after year, and the rest of
the world will take their surpluses, and use it to buy U.S. debt. With this arrangement, the rest of the world
funds the United States’ continued overspending.
High oil prices together with globalization have led to huge U.S. deficit spending since 2008. This has
occurred partly because a smaller portion of the population is working (and thus paying taxes), and partly because
U.S. spending for unemployment benefits and stimulus has risen. The result is a mismatch between government
income and spending.
9. Globalization tends to move taxation away from corporations, and onto individual citizens. Corporations have
the ability to move to locations where the tax rate is lowest. Individual citizens have much less ability to make
such a change. Also, with today’s lack of jobs, each community competes with other communities with
respect to how many tax breaks it can give to prospective employers.
High oil prices seem to lead to depressed U.S. wages. If wages are    low at the same time that wage-earners
are being asked to shoulder an increasing share of rising government costs, this creates a mismatch that wage-
earners are not really able to handle.
10. Globalization sets up a currency “race to the bottom,” with each country trying   to get an
export advantage by dropping the value of its currency. Because of the competitive nature of
the world or global economy, each country needs to sell its goods and services at as low a
price as possible. This can be done in various ways–pay its workers lower wages; allow more
pollution; use cheaper more polluting fuels; or debase the currency by Quantitative Easing
(also known as “printing money,”) in the hope that this will produce inflation and lower the
value of the currency relative to other currencies.
There is no way this race to the bottom can end well. Prices of imports become very high
in a debased currency–this becomes a problem. In addition, the supply of money is increasingly
out of balance with real goods and services. This produces asset bubbles, such as artificially
high stock market prices, and artificially high bond prices (because the interest rates on bonds
are so low). These assets bubbles lead to investment crashes. Also, if the printing ever stops
(and perhaps even if it doesn’t), interest rates will rise, greatly raising cost to governments,
corporations, and individual citizens.
11. Globalization encourages dependence on other  countries  for  essential  goods  and services. With
globalization, goods can often be obtained  cheaply  from elsewhere. A country may come to believe that there
is no point in producing its own food or clothing. It becomes easy to depend on imports and specialize in
something like financial services or high-priced medical care–services that are not as oil-dependent.
As long as the system stays together, this arrangement works, more or less. However, if the built-in
instabilities in the system become too great, and the system stops working, there is suddenly a very large
problem. Even if the dependence is not on food, but is instead on computers and replacement parts for machinery,
there can still be a big problem if imports are interrupted.
12. Globalization ties countries together, so that if one country collapses, the collapse is likely to ripple through
the system, pulling many other countries with it. History includes many examples of civilizations that started
from a small base, gradually grew to over-utilize their resource base, and then collapsed. We are now dealing
with a world situation which is not too different. The big difference this time is that a large number of
countries is involved, and these countries are increasingly interdependent.
There are significant parallels between financial dislocations now happening in the United States and the
types of changes which happened in other societies, prior to collapse. It is not just the United States that is in
perilous financial condition. Many European countries and Japan are in similarly poor condition. The failure of
one country has the potential to pull many others down, and with it much of the system. The only countries that
remain safe are the ones that have not grown to depend on globalization, of which there are probably not many
today–perhaps landlocked countries of Africa.
Ethical Challenges of Globalization
The previous section deals mainly with economic aspects of globalization. This portion, nonetheless, contend with
their ethical implications and other moral challenges posed by globalization itself.
One criticism against the presently unfolding neoliberal globalization is that it concentrates wealth in the hands of a
few, leaving the majority in the condition of poverty. While advocates of globalization paint a pretty picture  of a
globalized world marked by the spread of liberal democracy, prosperity, and peace, globalization has actually
caused radical inequality, a deepening of exclusions brought about by inequalities that present the world to be a
fragmented space where some benefit at the expense of others. Critics thus describe globalization as a process
driven by progressive capitalist countries to perpetuate their economic and political domination.
That globalization and the propagation of the laissez-faire capitalism deepen the inequalities within and between
nations is ethically condemnable from both the consequentialist and deontological standpoints. From the
consequentialist viewpoint, the moral argument  against  globalization  is  that it fails to maximize happiness for
the greatest number of people. From    a deontological perspective, particularly in Kantian ethics, globalization is
condemnable on the account that exploited populations are treated as means to an end and not as end in
themselves.
Another problem with globalization is that states are in effect increasingly losing their sovereignty. In a globalized
world, organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, and WTO virtually take over their traditional functions. For
example, the World Bank and the IMF usually prescribe dislikeable neoliberal policies such as currency devaluation,
subsidy removal, and the privatization of strategic public enterprise as conditions for granting loans to financially
distraught states.
The disastrous repercussion of this is that elected indigenous leaders cede their prerogative  over  economic 
management  to  unelected  officials  of international organizations. This scenario generated by globalization is thus
seen as morally condemnable intrusiveness of international economic organizations, characterized by lack of
accountability to the people openly affected by their policies and the tendency to impose agonizing conditions on
indebted governments.
Ecologically speaking, another moral challenge arising out of globalization is the problem of handling the global
environment in order to prevent a  global ecological collapse, a scene that threatens humanity with the threat     of
annihilation. It is now a basic knowledge among environmentally literate people that today the world is threatened
by a host of environmental problems that carry with them potential planetary costs.
Theseproblemsinvolveanthropogenicgreenhouseeffectthatissupposedly generating global climate change, commonly
known as global warming. There is also the challenge of ozone layer depletion, which progressively extinguishes the
protective blanket that shields the world’s population from unsafe ultra violet rays being discharged from the sun.
The global biosphere is also encountering a speedy reduction in the diversity of ecosystems, in the number of
species of life, and in the variety of genes that circulate within individual species.
Aggravating the various global environmental problems mentioned is the explosive population growth which
threatens to surpass the earth’s carrying capacity and bust the biosphere. Combined, these environmental problems
essentially elucidate the idea of transnational harm and the interdependent condition of human existence in the
21st century primarily due to globalization. Industrial capitalism, an essential partner of globalization, is chiefly
responsible for the damage of the ozone layer and the escalation of global warming, two major environmental
problems today.
Global environmental considerations form the need for international environmental ethics which is an aspect of
global ethics. The use of the global commons or environment ought to be controlled by international regulations.
Sensibly, the regulation of the global commons should be based on sound ethical principles. One of the ethical and
sound ideologies concerning environmental protection is the so-called “Human-Environment Systems.“ For one
thing, this approach categorically affirms the significant relation between humans and their natural environment
and other broad implications of this connection.
Globalization and Business Ethics
As globalization is largely an economic concept and system, it is rational to have a separate section that deals with
the issues and challenges it creates that concern business ethics. Basically, business ethics is a form of applied
ethics that examines moral principles concerning business environment involving issues about corporate practices,
policies, business behaviors, and the conducts and relationships of individuals in the organizations.
Globalization has made the world a global village. Although businesses grew and the globalized environment has
provided more markets and numerous opportunities, but with it also came various ethical issues such as duplication
of products, child labor, money laundering, environment issues, and many other business malpractices.
Additionally, sundry business crimes have existed such as cybercrimes, sexual harassments in work places, and
intellectual property and patent thefts.
Focusing on child labor, it is said that globalization paved the way for    the existence of this controversial business
practice. Like other  ethical  issues (such as homosexuality), the child labor issue is taken differently in different
nations. In Europe, it is seen as an unethical activity whereas in Asian countries, it is somewhat tolerated. In many
countries, like India, where poverty is high, children in family after certain age start working to contribute to family
income.
The international company Nike in its Vietnamese factory employs children. Nike Vietnam, however, provides free
education and food to these children. Fundamentally though, the main reason for employing children is that it
reduces the cost of production line. Hence, the practice, in many cases, has resulted in legal conflicts and loss of
custom for being seen as immoral.
Globalization as a new challenge to ethics thus requires incorporating ethics (such as business ethics and
environmental ethics) as part of companies’ strategic business programs and alliances. Moreover, it mandates top
managements to establish clear policies that encourage ethical behavior. For instance, all employees who observe
or become aware of criminal practices or corrupt conduct must be encouraged to report the incident to their
supervisors. Furthermore, management training seminars and orientation meetings that involve discussion of actual
situations can alert employees to potential ethical conflicts.
With the involvement of business ethics as a part of business strategic decision-making companies are even
expected to gain a competitive advantage, good will, and recognition in the global business world. They may attract
a good workforce and cater to a healthy organization climate. All these are anticipated to ultimately lead to good
profits and a healthy competition in the international globalized business world.

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