What is a Liberal, and What is a Conservative?

Economic Left/Right: -4.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.59

I think another aspect of globalization is in the form of ownership. There has been a switch from state owned or locally traded companies to small time stockholders and international investors. Thus, a "German" company may have a majority American, British, etc. stock ownership.

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However, I would also argue that modern corporations and industrialization also aid in the rapid production of cheap goods that can vastly help people, aka humanity, by meeting needs and services at a fraction the price it would without such buisness organizations.

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There is a downside to this as well. In order to push down prices, a lot of labor intensive jobs are outsourced to places with no worker protection so that in effect, slave or indentured servant like conditions are used to produce the goods and other people benefit from the workers not being paid a living wage. So I would say the benefits are confined mostly to the developed western countries.

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Well, I both agree and disagree with your stance (actually various points. First off, multinational companies aren't inherentaly a bad trend. The abuses by a few are teh same abuses we have seen when companies were strictly nationalistic entities. So the real complaint should be, do we structure and regulate companies properly with the law, or should their be changes.

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I agree. I was not trying to indicate that I am opposed to this newer ownership structure. I think it has some advantages i.e. rather than running a lousy company using tax money to make a national champion like the French due gets superceded by multinationals that are trying to make a profit without using public financing. The toughest part is how to regulate multinationals when they break local (or international) laws.The second part is a mixed bag. Outsourcing can be beneficial. The outsourcing of high tech jobs to India is not hurting the Indians who get the jobs. But the outsourcing of labor by Nike and textile companies to places like Indonesia or China where the workers are basically slaves should not be tolerated. Even if it makes things more expensive, I think (personal opinion here) that I would rather pay more for shoes etc. than benefit from forced or coerced labor. Again, how this is regulated and how some minimum standard of living can be enforced is one of the main sticking points in the globalization debate.