Globalization II - Good or Bad?: Crash Course World History #42

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In which John asks whether globalization is a net positive for humanity. While the new global economy has created a lot of wealth, and lifted a lot of people out of poverty, it also has some effects that aren't so hot. Wealth disparity, rising divorce rates, environmental damage, and new paths for the spread of disease. So does all this outweigh the economic benefits, the innovation, and the relative peace that come with interconnected economies? As usual, the answer is not simple. In this case, we're living in the middle of the events we're discussing, so it's hard to know how it's going to turn out.

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Hi, I’m John Green

and this is the final episode
of Crash Course World History,

not because we’ve
reached the end of history

but because we’ve reached the particular
middle where I happen to be living.

Today we’ll be considering whether
globalization is a good thing,

and along the way we’ll try to

do something that you may not
be used to doing in history classes:

imagining the future.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green!

In the future, I’m gonna get
to second base with Molly Bro--

No you won’t, Me from the Past,

but the fact that when
asked to imagine THE future,

you imagine YOUR future says
a lot about the contemporary world,

and listen, Me From the Past,

while there’s no question that your
solipsistic individualism is bad

both for you and for our species,

the broader implications of individualism
in general are a lot more complex.

[Best]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[EVER]

Man, I’m gonna miss you, Intro.
[if only you were a ringtone. wait…]

So last week (ta da) we discussed how
global economic interdependence has led,

on average, to longer, healthier,
more prosperous lives for humans--

not to mention an astonishing
change in the overall human population.

In the West, globalization has also
led to the rise of a service economy.

In the US and Europe,

most people now work not in
agriculture or manufacturing

but in some kind of service sector:
healthcare, retail, education,

entertainment, information technology,

Internet videos about world history, etc.
[it's been a please to serve you! tear.]

And that switch has really
changed our psychology,

especially the psychology of upper classes
living in the industrialized world.

I mean, to quote Frederic Jameson,

“we are … so far removed from the
realities of production and work that we

inhabit a dream world of artificial
stimuli and televised experience.”

Think of it this way:

If you had to kill a [chicken 57]
every time you visited KFC,

you would probably eat fewer chickens.
[yeuup.]

Another change of psychology:
Many historians-of-the-now note

that globalization has also led
to a celebration of individualism--

particularly in the wake of the failures
of the Marxist collectivist utopias.

The generation that lived through
the Depression and World War II

saw large-scale collectivist
responses to both those crises.

And they were responses
that limited freedom.

Like, the military draft, for instance,
which limited your freedom,

you know, not to be a soldier.

Or

the collectivization of health insurance
seen in most of the post-war West,

which limited your freedom to
go bankrupt from health care costs.

Or also government programs
like social security,

which limit your freedom not
to pay for old people’s retirement.

[as they once did. ah, the circle of life]

But since the 1960s,

the ascendant idea of personal freedom

minimally limited by government
intervention has become very powerful.

Even the Catholic church was part of
this new search for individual freedom,

as the Second Vatican Council

relaxed church rules in ways
that weakened central authority,

[price paid for Nuns Having Fun?]

made concessions to
individual styles of worship,

even said that people of different
religions could go to heaven.

What good is heaven if it’s
gonna be full of Protestants?

It’s just gonna be like Minnesota.

So here in the last episode
of Crash Course World History,

in the last thirty seconds,

I have offended, uh, 5/6ths
of the world’s population in the form of

non-Catholics and, uh, all Republicans,
and probably some political moderates.

Who are confused about what Obama’s
healthcare law will and will not do.

[and will now be allowed to
keep doing w/o repeal. DFTVA]

Stan, maybe I should just make
this episode just an extended rant

where I reveal all of my political biases.
And also my personal biases.

[Cue the flaming pit
that is the comments section]

Look, you’re never gonna meet a
historian who doesn’t have biases.

But good historians try
to acknowledge their biases

and I am biased toward Canada
and its awesome healthcare system.

I can’t lie. I’m very jealous of you guys.
[for reals]

But perhaps the greatest effect
of the victory of individualism

was on sex and the family.
[this should be interesting...]

We haven’t talked much about sex
because my brother’s teaching Biology,

which is basically just sex,
[as 1/2 our viewers flee to Bio playlist]

but sex is pretty important historically

because it’s how we keep happening.
[for now]

But, in the 20th century, greater variety
and availability of contraception

made it possible for people to
experiment with multiple sexual partners

and helped to uncouple sex from child bearing,
which was awesome,

[and the plot to movie Down With Love]

but individualism also had a
destabilizing effect on families.

As the great Leo Tolstoy put it,

all happy families are alike, but each
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

But when your individual
fulfillment trumps all,

you needn’t live amid your uniquely
unhappy family: You can just leave.

So, divorce rates have skyrocketed in the
past few decades, and not just in the US.

By the turn of the 21st century,
divorce rates in China reached nearly 25%,

with 70% of those divorces
initiated by women.

Technology has also driven families apart,

as parents and children spend
increasing time alone

in front of their individual screens,
sharing fewer experiences.

That’s individualism, too, but not
of a kind that we usually celebrate.

But probably the biggest consequence of
globalization and the ensuing

rise in human population has been
humanity's effect on the environment.

While populations have increased

partly thanks to better yields
from existing farmland,

much more land has also been brought under
cultivation in the past half-century.

Often this meant cutting down
trees in valuable rainforests–

the best known example of this
is what’s going on in the Amazon,

but it happens worldwide.
[insert own Pandora joke here, in Na'vi]

And we're losing land not just for food,
but also to grow the global economy.

Oh, it’s time for the open letter?

An Open Letter to Flowers.

But first,

let’s see what’s in the
secret compartment today.

Oh, it’s fake flowers.

Thank you, Stan.

One for behind each ear.
[because just one would be too girly]

Dear Flowers,

You capture the best and the
worst of the globalized economy.

You’re so pretty.

Even the fake ones are pretty.
But the real one are constantly dying.

They’ve got to be harvested,
and shipped, and cut very efficiently.

And it’s a global phenomenon.

Like there are flowers in my
corner market from Africa.

These are from China,
but because they are plastic,

they could just be shipped
in a shipping container.

More people can afford to apologize
by giving their romantic partners

professionally cut and arranged roses
than in any time in human history,

but in that we have lost something,

which is that the whole idea of flowers
is that you had to go out into the field

and, like, cut them and
arrange them yourself to apologize.

It’s not supposed to be,

“I’m sorry I forgot your birthday. Here’s
$8 worth of work that was done in Kenya.”

[sentiment falls a bit flat, doesn't it?]

It’s supposed to be,

“I’m sorry I forgot your birthday,

so I went into the frakking forest
and got you some frakking flowers.

Anyway, flowers,

Best Wishes,
John Green.

Aww..
you guys got me flowers for

my last episode of World History.
[cupcakes now reserved for Merebration]

Okay, let’s go to the thought bubble.

As worldwide production and
consumption increases,

we use more resources, especially
water and fossil fuels.

Globalization has made
the average human richer,

and rich people tend to use more of…

everything… but especially energy.

This has already resulted in climate
change, which will likely accelerate.

The global economy isn’t a zero-sum game.

I don’t need to become more poor in order
for someone else to become more rich.

Like,

But growth, at least so far,

has been dependent upon unsustainable use
of the planet's resources.

The planet can’t sustain seven billion
automobiles, for instance,

or seven billion frequent flyers,

although most of us who can afford to
drive or fly feel entitled to do so.

You'll remember that when we talked about
the Industrial Revolution,

we discussed the virtuous cycle of
more efficiency making things cheaper,

which in turn made them easier to buy,
which increased demand,

which increased efficiency.

But from the perspective of the planet,
each turn in that cycle takes something:

More land under cultivation, more carbon
emissions, more resource extraction.

That can’t go on forever, but worryingly,

our current models of economic growth
don’t allow for any other way.

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

And then there is our
astonishingly robust health.

Although much of the world has

been ravaged by HIV/AIDS
for the past three decades,

there’s been a relative lack of global
pandemics since the 1918 flu.

And that’s particularly surprising
given increased population density and

more travel between population centers.

China has seen 150 million people

leave the countryside for cities
in the last 20 years.

This was Shanghai in 1990;
and this is Shanghai in 2010.

The population of Lagos
was 41,000 in 1900;

today, it's almost 8 million.

Of course, people have been moving from
country to city for a long time;

remember Gilgamesh?
[& the Mesopo-taaaaa-mii-aans]

But the pace of that change
has dramatically accelerated.

Similarly, there's nothing
new about international trade,

but its pace has also
increased dramatically:

In 1960, trade accounted for 24%
of the world's GDP;

today, it’s more than double that.

Almost no human being alive today

lives with stuff only manufactured
in their home country,

but a thousand years ago,

only the richest of the rich
could benefit from the Silk Road.

Still, trade isn’t new.

And while it’s tempting to say that
the types of goods being traded –

pharmaceuticals, computers, software,
financial services –

represent something wholly new,

you could just as easily see this as
part of the evolution of trade itself.

At some point silk was seen
as a new trade good.

As tastes change and
consumers become more affluent,

the things that they want to buy change.

So is anything really different,
or is it all just accelerated?

Well, some historians argue that

an economically interdependent world
is much less likely to go to war.

And that may be true,
but increasing global, cultural, and

economic integration hasn’t
led to an end to violence.

I mean, we've seen large scale ethnic
and nationalistic violence from Rwanda to

the former Yugoslavia to the Democratic
Republic of Congo to Afghanistan.

Globalization has not
rid the world of violence.

But there is an ideological shift

in the age of globalization
that does seem pretty new,

and that’s the turn to democracy.

Now this isn’t the limited democracy
of the ancient Greeks,

or the quirky republican system
originally developed in the U.S.;

there are almost as many kinds of
democracies as there are

nations experiencing democracy.

The fact is, however,
that democracy and political freedom,

especially the freedom to participate
in and influence the government,

have been on the rise all over the world
since the 1980s and especially since 1990.

For instance,

if you looked at the governments
of most Latin American countries

during most of the 20th centuries,

you would usually find them
ruled by military strongman.

Now, with a couple of exceptions
(Fidel, Hugo)…

Stan, are they behind me right now?

Because if they’re behind me,

I am in favor of collectivising oil
revenue and distributing it to the poor.

If they’re not behind me, that’s a
terrible idea.[love the iron constitution]

Right, but anyway, democracy is now
flourishing in most of Latin America.

Probably the most famous democratic
success story is South Africa,

which jettisoned decades
of Apartheid in the 1990s

and elected former
dissident Nelson Mandela

as its first black president in 1994.

It also adopted one of the most
progressive constitutions in the world.

But it’s worth remembering that

democracy and economic success
don’t always go hand in hand,

as much as some Americans wish they would.

Many new African democracies continue to
struggle, the same is true in some

Latin American countries, and China has
shown that you don’t need democracy

in order to experience economic growth.

But for a few countries,
especially Brazil and India,

the combination of democracy
and economic liberalism has

unleashed impressive growth that
has lifted millions out of poverty.

So can we say that it's good, then?

Can we celebrate globalization,

in spite of its destabilizing effects
on families and the environment?

Well, here's where we have
to imagine the future,

because if some superbug shows up tomorrow
[says the hypochondriac, hypothetically]

and it travels through all these global
trade routes and kills every living human,

then globalization will have
been very bad for human history:

specifically, by ending it.

If climate change continues to accelerate
and displaces billions of people

and causes widespread famines and
flooding, then we will remember

this period of human history as
short-sighted, self-indulgent,

and tremendously destructive.

On the other hand,

if we discover an
asteroid hurdling toward earth

and mobilize global industry and
technology in such a way

that we lose Bruce Willis
but save the world,

then globalization will
be celebrated for millennia.

I mean, assuming we have millennia
and can convince Bruce Willis to go.

In short, to understand the present,
we have to imagine the future.

That's the thing about history:
It depends on where you're standing.

From where I'm standing, globalization
has been a net positive,

but then again,

it's been a pretty good run for
heterosexual males of European descent.

Critics of globalization point out that

billions haven't benefited much if at all
from all this economic prosperity,

and that the polarization of wealth is
growing both within and across nations.

And those criticisms are valid and they
are troubling, but they aren’t new.

Disparities between those who have more
and those who have less

have existed pretty much from
the moment agriculture

enabled us to accumulate a surplus.

At some times this inequality
has been a big concern,

as it was with Jesus and Muhammad,
at other times not so much.

Inequalities are as old as human history,

and almost as old is
the debate about them.

One thing that is new, however,
is our ability to learn about them,

to discuss them, and hopefully to
find solutions for them together

as a global community that is better
integrated and more connected

than it has ever been before.

Because here's the other thing about
history: You are making it.

That old idea that history is the
deeds of great men? That was wrong.

Celebrated individuals do shape history,
but so do the rest of us.

And while it's true that many historical forces--

malaria, meteors from space-- [bed bugs]

aren't human, it's also true
that every human is a historical force.

You are changing the world every day.

And it is our hope that by looking
at the history that was made before us,

we can see our own crucial decisions
in a broader context.

And I believe that context can
help us make better choices--

and better changes.

Thanks for watching.

But, there’s no need to despair,
Crash Course fans,

I’ll see you next week for the beginning
of our mini series on literature.

Crash Course is produced and directed
by Stan Muller.

Our script supervisor
is Meredith Danko.

The associate producer
is Danica Johnson.

The show is written
by my high school history teacher,

Raoul Meyer, and myself.

And our graphics team is Thought Bubble.

Last week’s phrase of the week was

This week’s phrase of the week was

"Cookie Monster".

"Bruce Willis,"

which I am telling you because
we are retiring the idea

of the phrase of the week.

Thank you so much for watching
Crash Course World History.

It has been super fun to try

to tell the history of the world
in 42 twelve-minute videos.

I hope you enjoyed it and I hope
you’ll hang around for literature.

Thanks for watching,

and as we say in my hometown,

Don’t Forget How Strange It Is
To Be Anything At All.

[outro]