11/24/2004

On the globalization of economy



Tom Sine's Mustard Seed Versus McWorld is an essential book for Christians to understand the future effects of the developing global economy, and offers very practical ideas for Christians to offer Christ's "Mustard Seed" faith within it.

Here's a couple quotes from Sine:
"One of the essential conditions of economic globalization is that all businesses have unlimited access to the global labor pool to produce goods as efficiently as possible. This viewpoint insists that the employer has no responsibility either to the worker who loses his job in a car plant in Flint or to the worker who replaces him in Juarez. The employer’s singular responsibility is to show shareholders a profit. It is up to the free market to sort out the future for those in Flint whose jobs went south. And it is up the free market to set wages of workers in Juarez, even if the going wage is not enough to provide a decent way of life for their families.” (p. 59)

"Is the ultimate vision of 'something better' to be defined primarily in terms of economic growth, centralization, and efficiency, or is there something more?...Many of the advocates of this new global order define the ultimate primarily in economic terms. It appears that we are traveling into a future in which virtually everything in God’s creation, including human beings, will be reduced to a commodity and assigned a price…Deep down I think that most of us are not keen to see our lives and God’s creation reduced to an economic value, and McWorld is not our home. As followers of Jesus Christ, aren’t we sojourners in search of a better homeland?” (p. 67)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

not to pass judgement on your situation paul, but i think that a larger economic trend is gonna hit us all sooner or later, one of being much more frugal. We are going to have to start living with alot fewer amenities, which would be due to having less money to spend because economically America is on the out and at the end of an era.

However, choosing carefully where we buy can influence how the next trend in global economics goes. If we place our money into socially concious businesses now as the shift begins, it may be possible for us to promote these businesses to have a stronger foothold as the economic center shifts from the west to east asia.


Also,and more importantly,
pray alot, pray specifically that God will give you the means to do what is right here, pray in faith that He will enable you to livelihood and to fair business practices.