But Global economics involves the interdependent and interconnected systems of the world’s economies. When an economy is regarded as a single economic system that applies to all, it is considered to be a global economy. The features of a global economy include, processes that allow the expansion of an enterprise to the larger world without regard to national boundaries, languages, monetary systems or even time zones.
Global economics can include such enterprises as fast food restaurants, theme parks, hotels and airlines and even disaster response, social service, ecological management and health management.
“Outsourcing” of customer service tasks and production is another example of globalization where a corporation can have labor and facilties throughout the world to service customers in only part of the world. Importing of labor from other countries in order to obtain specialized skills or to lower labor costs is another example.
Global economics definitely involves the developed countries constant and constantly rising need for strategic minerals, expanded markets, cheap labor sources and other natural resources from less developed countries.
The dark side of globalization lies in the ability to obtain and to transport illegal goods from one nation to any region of the world. The issue becomes one of underground economies of global scale.
The illegal drug industry is definitely a global concern with estimated resources that have been said to exceed those of some nations. Despite globalization in law enforcement, there is equal or superior globalization in the production, transport, financial results and distribution of illicit drugs and the resulting profits.
Indigenous economics are the traditional economies and activities of the original inhabitants of individual nations, as they strive to survive and to interact with their own parts of the world. As such, they can include everything from farming processes and micro businesses, traditional means of providing health and human services, food preparation, and traditional services and businesses that relate to the individual regional and other ancient economic knowledge and cultural issues of a nation.
Indigenous economics are difficult to define because there are many examples, but no definition that applies to all parts of the world. The concept of indigenous economics is based in indigenous knowledge which is described as being unique and localized knowledge of a particular culture or society. Decision making is made in education, farming, food preparation and natural and other resource management.
In other words, globalization traditionally seeks to impose external and standardized knowledge, while it is becoming more recognized that paying attention to indigenous knowledge allows an interchange of ideas and decision making that can be universally incorporated, or that may be required for a particular people, with their own culture, local economy, society or natural environment. Using their indigenous knowledge, people are better able to realize the maximum benefits.
The corporations globalize in their specific self interest and often with little or no benefit to the populations of developing countries, even to the extent of destabilizing governments and replacing them with leadership that benefits the corporations. These processes ignore the vast capital that the citizens have in making their own lives better and in best using their own resources to control and improve their lives.
Even in medical globalization, the need for paying much more respect to local knowledge about health, interacting with nature, and illness has been recognized by the World Health organization and other global health improvement enterprises.
When indigenous economics come to bear, the localized application of knowledge, insight and experience allows greater benefits for people who would otherwise not even be considered as important beyond providing cheap and easily abused labor in the process of expanding business and economic interests.
The current situation with sea pirates off of the coast of Africa (and in many parts of the world) is indicative of people who have an incredible history, indigenous knowledge and outstanding seafaring and warfaring skills. Some resorted to piracy in this age in order to replace fishing and other work that was eliminated by pollution or by social upheaval.
There was whole scale exclusion from the systems that reap great profit from the natural resources of their countries. In the case of Somalia, the fishing industry was decimated by corporate waste dumping and overfishing by other countries. In the 1990s, without much government control, private or tribal sea organizations formed to protect fishing grounds.
Problems abound in attempting to globalize Afghanistan, China mining regions, and the coca and opium producing regions of the world as reminders of the power and vastness of human indigenous knowledge.
Some corporations and nations continue to engage in disastrous programs of attempting to demonize or marginalize the population that engages against the standards, rather than incorporating their knowledge and skills and compensating or supporting them accordingly.
Until indigenous knowledge is respected, any global solutions will be difficult to achieve by use of sheer force, as in Iraq, where cultural dissonance has placed permanent roadblocks to any US strategic goals for permanent military bases or easy access to oil.
As a result, the corporations (and governments) that insist on globalizing without paying attention to indigenous knowledge will continue to have enormous problems as long as they attempt to reap the maximum reward without incorporating and benefiting the populations of strategic and developing countries.
The World Bank Group, “Regions of Sub Saharan Africa”
Web definitions: Macroeconomics
Web definitions: Microeconomics
Peter’s Business and Economy Issues, “Global Economy”
Wikipedia, “Piracy In Somalia”
