Thursday, February 6, 2014
G&D #4 - Issues of Development
After watching, taking notes on, and reflecting on one of the videos, post a reflection as a comment to this post. In your comment, identify the video you chose and a BRIEF statement of WHY you chose this video. Then, identify any biases/problems with the arguments presented and explain why this issue is something that should be of concern and interest to the global community.
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For my video I chose "How to Combat Modern Slavery" by Kevin Bales, I chose this one because after looking at the other three i thought that this would be the one that would be the most interesting to me. Slavery is a problem that should be addressed on a global scale because it is not only outlawed in every country but is a violation to basic human rights. There exist 27 million slaves in the world today, all of which are treated inhumanly and without ever having the chance to get any pay for there efforts or even getting a rest after there work.
ReplyDeleteI chose Paddy Ashdown's video entitled "Paddy Ashdown: The global power shift." I decided to choose this video because I recognized that it was TED talk which I have found informative in the past. His argument was well stated with only a few problems. One major bias he has is that he comes from a western civilization. While unavoidable to come from either a western or eastern civilization, it does mean that he will look at western countries more favorably and may be slightly resistant to change from this. Two, he mentions how internet, air travel, and other globalized methods are unregulated on an international scale, but this is false. There are many laws that prohibit selling or obtaining malicious goods on the internet, and many laws denounce dangers objects on airplanes. Thirdly, he mentions that now one's government must be wary of internal problems during a time of military conflict such as pandemics and attacks on infrastructure, yet pandemics were arguably more common in the past. The issue of an international power shift and an international governance is important because if it does not come about, international problems will continue to grow. Ashdown argues that a treaty-based governance must happen in order for international regulations to be set.
ReplyDeleteI chose Kevin Bale's video "How to Combat Modern Slavery". I chose this video because because I thought it sounded the most intriguing and was something I never really thought of before. I think the video could have had more proof about how this was actually happening, but overall this video was very informative. This issue is important to global community because it is up to us to end this and help those people being forced to work with no pay under the threat of violence. By doing this we can make the global community better and giving people back their freedom.
ReplyDeleteThe video that I watched was "Ending Poverty" by Thomas Pogge. I chose this video because I saw it was about poverty around the world. Every day I see a commercial or some type of fundraiser to help people that are in poverty in several different countries and places around the globe. I knew this was a problem around the world, but wanted to look into it further. The video tells me that poverty goes from no food and shelter, to lack of water, electricity, people working from the ages of 5 to 17 for income. People are also being chronically under owned around the world. All of these things combined is when people are officially "severely" in poverty. There are many concerns with people in poverty. Over 400 million people have died in the last 23 years due to poverty. There are concerns because the overall income rate is very high in 5-25% of the world. The remaining 75% of the globe has a drastic drop in income. There are many places in the world that are facing poverty and it is concerning.
ReplyDeleteI chose the video "Ending Poverty" by Thomas Pogge. The reason why I chose this video is before even watching it I knew poverty was an essential problem in this world that needs to eventually be removed. This is an even larger problem in third world countries where people aren't really able to make an income because jobs won't accept them. The video stated that severe poverty is when people are chronically undernourished or lack access to essential medicines, safe drinking water, adequate shelter, electricity, adequate sanitation, and have children work wages outside their own household. I knew poverty had to do with shelter, food, and water but I didn't realize it was to that extent. The video also stated that a third of Human Deaths result form poverty. That made me realize that this a larger problem than credited for. Over the years the rich have only gained wealth and the poor have lost, and that shows that the world's wealth isn't distributed evenly like it should be. To advance towards ending poverty Thomas Pogge stated that we should work towards super national institutional arrangements that would impose less harm upon the poorer half of humanity. Also for us to compensate for some of the harms the institutions do. I was glad to know there were organizations like ASAP (Academics Stand Against Poverty) that were helping with this world wide problem.
ReplyDeleteI watched the video titled "Ending Poverty" by Thomas Pogge from RSA. I chose this video because I thought I had some background knowledge about poverty since it is talked about so frequently. Although, throughout the video I realized what little knowledge I have. Pogge defines "severe poverty" as people who do not receive seemingly necessary things such as essential pharmaceutics, electricity, and safe drinking water. In addition, when children are working to provide for their family. He defines poverty as people who cannot afford things not so necessary such as luxuries. Pogge uses a death toll of about 400 million due to poverty and the fact that people are being denied basic human rights, to support that poverty needs to be a global concern. Also, he describes how most of the worlds income goes to the richest countries while the poorest countries get little and the income of the world is not distributed evenly. I find this extremely astounding because it is always said how globally income is a good thing as of now. Also, people are paying politicians to base political moves on what they believe in. Since politics is a very high price in the United States, this gives them money. The citizen responsibilities according to Pogge are to work towards super-national institutional arrangements that does no harm to poorer people and to compensate for some of the harms the current institutions do. Yes, I do agree with Pogge's assertions about the responsibilities because it is citizen's duty to respond to what their government does in their name. Lastly, organizations such as Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) are working to end the poverty problem in the world.
ReplyDeleteI chose the video "Global Power Shift" by Paddy Ashdown. I chose the video because the idea of power shifting interested me. After watching this video, I realized that he brought up many points that caught my attention. In the video it is that we are all connected and if our enemy falls then we fall too. This was an interesting concept that I agree with to a certain degree because there are some situations were only the enemy falls and we remain standing. I also enjoyed mono and multi- polar worlds. I thought that was very interesting. I was not as impressed with how there was a clear favoring of the west. Numerous times the speaker mentioned the west and how it was good but failed to comment on other areas in positives ways like he did for the west. Even though I am unsure about whether or not the unregulated space applies to rules and laws, I still found it interesting and liked how he said that with the goods there are bad things about it too. Ashdown also says how treaty based systems are more effective. I was not sure if I believed this or not, but with his information and support I now believe that a treaty system may be a smart choice; however, I am not one hundred percent. Overall, the video brought very interesting facts and ideas to my attention.
ReplyDeleteI chose to watch the "How to Combat Modern Slavery" video. I chose this video since it seemed interesting to me because we tend to forget that slavery is still in issue throughout the world. Overall, there are 27 million slaves. That is astonishing. I found it extremely disgraceful how today human's lives are worth even less than that of the transatlantic slave trade. It is extremely important for people throughout the world to be given their freedom. It is our job to gather our resources and put our attention to get the slaves out. By doing this, it will allow local businesses to prosper and increases consumer goods. Overall, I thought the video was extremely insightful and truly informs us on how slavery is an tremendous issue and how we can liberate the slaves.
ReplyDeleteI chose to watch "How to Combat Modern Slavery". I watched this video because I did not realize that there was still slavery around the world today. This video really opened up my eyes towards this new modern form of slavery.
ReplyDelete1. Contemporary slavery is unknown to many people because it does not fit the usual stereotype of slavery that occurred in the past.
2. Slavery is when people are forced to work without pay under the threat of violence and are unable to walk away. Slavery occurs in every country with the exception of Iceland and Greenland.
3. The relationship between slavery and environmental degradation is that usually the slaves’ work hurts the environment. Some of the usual slave jobs include hunting animals and cutting down tree, this all ruins our environment.
4. There exist a large amount of slaves in the world because people in poor economic countries needed jobs and were very vulnerable to slave owners. People are usually brought into slavery by kidnappings and needing a job to support their family.
5. Slavery is different today because the price of a human is lower. Slaves now cost a lot less than they did in the past.
6. We can liberate slaves from slavery by donating money in order for these people to build a new life with stability. The global community can help end slavery by getting the word out to other people about this new modern form of slavery. People need to have hope that this awful situation and issue will be terminated.
I chose to watch "How to Combat Modern Slavery" because it was shocking to hear that slavery is still prominent in today's society. A major bias is that the speaker has an extreme dislike of slavery. This bias causes his argument to be completely towards the side of anti-slavery. This can be attributed to living in an advanced civilization. He knows what it's like to live without slavery, making slavery appear as an even larger crime to him than it would seem to those accustomed to it. To further benefit his argument, he could have mentioned an example of our country's botched emancipation and how it is still affecting us today, so that the listeners could understand the idea more easily.
ReplyDeleteThis issue should be a concern for the global community because it is highly unknown by many people, and they are the ones who can help. I was not aware of the large amount of people in slavery as of today, and I'm sure that many other people aren't as well. If more people become aware to this large issue, they can help end it and prevent it from happening again, for, as Bales said in his presentation, slavery is nearing the end of its existence.
I chose to watch Parag Khanna's "Maps the Future of Countries" I chose this video because I always had a curiosity for why certain countries become countries. This video brought in some aspects that would probably affect the future of political boarders in certain countries.
ReplyDelete1. In the 20th century, many new countries formed as a result of the Cold War, and wars fighting over important resources, such as oil. One could think that countries are bought over being colonized, because they (Mother Countries) don't specifically want to run other, less powerful countries, but would rather trade and keep leverage on them so they could have alliances between the smaller countries.
2. Globalization "Chinese- Style" is meant when the people don't take over and create new boarder for say, China, but just want to use the other country's resources to bring back to China for China's advantage. This leads to many Chinese to move North into Russia and Mongolia to take advantage of mining and agriculture, just to import it back to China.
3. The reason why Iraq is not preferable is the fighting over oil, and with Kurdistan trying to become a country, most specifically to protect their oil pipelines, it would make sense for Iraq to be no more. Since Kurdistan is also land-locked, it would have to abide to the surrounding countries for it to survive, making it more preferable to have Kurdistan over Iraq.
b. Because Israel becoming independent without infrastructure would be futile. They would have no means of have a stable economy.
c. Stalin wanted to separate the "stans" into the least economically beneficial way for the countries as possible, so they would be more dependent on Stalin. Kazakhstan is now becoming a player on the global stage because the have important lines of oil and natural gas that they can supply to Europe.
I chose to watch Kevin Bale's video "How to Combat Modern Slavery". I thought the video sounded interesting because it was about contemporary slavery, which is not very well-known. I was very shocked to discover that so many people are enslaved today and that slavery can be found in so many countries all around the world. I was so shocked because there is very little information about this subject. The way people have become enslaved is very sad because they were just looking for work to make money to take care of their families and once they figured out what they had gotten themselves into they could not leave, but there is still hope for slaves. The slaves can be liberated and attain their freedom, so they can then be taught how to rebuild their lives.
ReplyDelete"Paddy Ashdown: The Global Power Shift" is an intriguing video that mainly discusses how countries, not located on the Atlantic seaboard, are gaining global power. I chose to watch this video, as supposed to the other three, since I thought it would add on to my knowledge of globalization that I acquired form the world is flat. In the video, Ashdown illuminates five main points: the difference between lateral and vertical power shifting, how unregulated space is filled, how governance in this unregulated space will form, the disparities between a mono-polar world and a multi-polar world, and finally the distinction between the vertical hierarchy of the industrial era and the networking information age. To begin, lateral power shifting occurs when power shifts from nation to nation such as when power moved from Greece to Rome. Conversely, vertical power shifting takes place when power moves from a smaller scope, a national scale, to a larger one, a global scale. In addition, Ashdown states, "where power goes, governance must follow;" hence, some rules have been established on the internet. Likewise, Ashdown explains how unregulated space, like the internet, should be controlled through treaty based systems rather than by one group. Treaty-based systems are the most effective to regulate rampant diffusions of power since a plethora of people all across the globe can monitor these propagations. Furthermore, Ashdown elucidates the dissimilarities between a mono-polar world and a multi-polar. Thus, Ashdown marks a mono-polar world as a place where there is a "single colossus" country that all of the other countries reference; for instance, the United States was the "single colossus" country fifty years ago. The contemporary world, however, exists as a multi-polar world where numerous countries are have a powerful influence. Although the United States is still the predominant country around the world, countries such as China, Brazil, and India are beginning to gain an increasingly amount of influence. On a final note, Ashdown differentiates the vertical hierarchy of the industrial era from the networking that exists in the information age. Ashdown shows the attainable limits of the vertical hierarchy since it can only help a country grow to a certain extent. Ashdown thinks that networking can interconnect people so everybody is dependent upon each other, so they can possess the same destiny. In total, "Paddy Ashdown: The Global Power Shift" claims that the world must be interdependent upon each other for it to survive.
ReplyDelete