: I am sick of hearing about everybody's unjusified hatred for large mulitnationals and capitalism in general. Especialy when none of you understand the concept or its implicatons: Anyone with hlf a brain coud answer these questions: Those who won't answer ar too ashamed of their own unjustified irratinal actiions
: 1. What is globalisation? How has it impacted western economy?
Globalisation is the converting of the whole world into one labour and resource market; this has benefitted the Western standard of living; as poorer countries can be used to provide cheap labour for the West; the West's heavy industries have been scaled down and the white-collar sector in the West has expanded as a result. The average standard of living in the Third World, has, however, never been so low; they are effectively being used as slaves to provide the products of primary industry that the West no longer has to dirty its hands with.
: 2. what is privitisation? what has it done?
Privatisation is the act of taking a common resource held in the peoples' name and turning it over to the control of a private company to manage it "in the peoples' interests"; however, actual ownership of the resource also transfers to the private company.
Take, for example, the privatisation of the UK train network (British Rail) in 1995. Since 1995, the UK rail network has been sold off to a mixture of train companies (who own and service rolling stock) and Railtrack (who look after signals and track and stations). The network no longer has to answer to the taxpayer; instead it has to answer to the directors of Railtrack and the regional train companies. The effect of this has been to make maximisation of profit the over-riding consideration in operating practices; above staff levels, train reliability or operating safety.
The effect of this to the consumer is that trains are more unreliable, more infrequent, they stop at fewer stations, they are less safe and more overcrowded than ever before.
Take the 07:52 Thameslink train going to Cannon St. in London; the train is designed for 350 people; the average number of passengers on that train each day is about 800; the company refuse to enlarge the train or augment the service because there is not sufficient demand.
Take the issue of train safety; there has been an automatic train protection (ATP) system available for the last 10 years; it was recommended that BR adopt ATP following a crash in 1988; but put on hold by the Conservative government. The privatised train companies repeatedly insisted that the price-tag associated with the system was too big to justify deploying it. The result can be seen in 1997's Southall rail disaster and last month's Paddington rail disaster.
If the safety of the public and the reliability of the public transport system is placed secondary to the maximisation of shareholder dividends, then these things will continue to happen.
This is a good example of privatisation.
: 3. what deregulation? what is an example?
Deregulation is the abandonment of restrictions and regulations that would harm a company's profits; these take on two forms; firstly, the abandoning of national laws that introduce tariffs on trade and secondly, the abolition of workplace practices that would harm profit - typically including environmental laws, health-and-safety laws, employee benefits, social benefits and the like.
An example of this was Union Carbide's plant in Bhopal; the US corporation used their fiscal strength to persuade the local government to accept a plant at Bhopal; then proceeded to cut corners on safety in the name of maximal profits; even thought they were acting in violation of Indian law in doing so. I quote;
"In the early morning of December 3, 1984 a Union Carbide pesticide producing plant leaked a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate onto the densely populated region of Bhopal, central India. Of the 800,000 people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 died immediately, 300,000 were injured and as many as 8,000 have died since.
The leak was caused by a series of mechanical and human errors. A portion of the safety equipment at the plant had been nonoperational for four months and the rest failed. When the plant finally sounded an alarm--an hour after the toxic cloud had escaped--much of the harm had already been done.
The city health officials had not been informed of the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union Carbide factory. There were no emergency plans or procedures in place and no knowledge of how to deal with the poisonous cloud.
A series of studies made five years later showed that many of the survivors were still suffering from one or several of the following ailments: partial or complete blindness, gastrointestinal disorders, impaired immune systems, post traumatic stress disorders, and menstrual problems in women. A rise in spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and offsprings with genetic defects was also noted.
Although Union Carbide denied liability, in 1989 the Indian Supreme court agreed to a settlement payment of $470 million by Union Carbide to the survivors of the disaster."
That's deregulation for you.
Gideon.
None.
