Globalization : democracy in decline

In discussing globalisation one quickly comes across the disagreement about aspects of it that we like and dislike. We bring to our assessment of globalisation different motivations. This paper is no different. Globalisation presents many faces to many different observers. The most general and the most negative are those dealing with the process of economic globalisation. The ugly face of globalisation has become the huge trans national corporation with a relentless drive to create a consumer dominated global middle class. This paper will discuss the economic as well as some other aspects of globalisation. It will consider the desire to collaborate between nations and communities for such common good as, social justice, health and sustainable environments. It will also look at the uncontrolled popularist form of globalisation through which people are informally communicating with each other overcoming through the technology of global communication networks, the isolation enforced, in the past, by the tyranny of distance. It will be argued that globalisation has been an evident and powerful social trend for at least half a millennium and that the protesters have arrived at the rally, 500 years too late. A somewhat controversial proposition will be made that the protests opposing globalisation are the manifestation of the same forces that are driving globalisation, the so-called "will to power". In a globalised society the powerful are those who grasp and are capable of utilising purposefully the compression of space and time. Those who are capable of using and are greatly advantaged by the compression of space and time are a minority of the worlds population and their actions are leading to a decline in democracy