Globalization, like every other historical process in a fallen world, shares in both the goodness of human creation and the distortion of creation by sin and evil. Its benefits and threats are equally real and are intertwined in a complex variety of ways. For every benevolent aspect of globalization, there is a malevolent side that threatens to overwhelm the good. It is thus a Janus-faced entity, a paradoxical phenomenon that reflects the paradoxical nature of the human condition.
In the utopian vision of globalization, transnational corporations are led by rootless investors who can move freely and effortlessly around the world to maximize their profits. Kenichi Ohmae, an oft-quoted advocate of this view, writes, "in a borderless economy, the nation-focused maps we typically use to make sense of economic activity are woefully misleading. We must...face up at last to the awkward and uncomfortable truth: The old cartography no longer works. It has become no more than an illusion."
Similarly Robert Reich, Clinton's former labor secretary, wrote of the "coming irrelevance of corporate nationality" and counseled that "as corporations of all nations are transformed into global webs, the important question - from the standpoint of national wealth - is not which citizen owns what, but which citizens learn how to do what, so that they are capable of adding more value to the world economy and therefore increasing their own potential worth."
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