There have been a number of recent really thought-provoking (at least for me) newspaper articles about globalization. I tagged them via del.icio.us but wanted to blog specifically about a couple. The first one was For India’s Traditional Fishermen, Cell Phones Deliver a Sea Change. What struck me about this article was how a small but profound technology that most of us take for granted could have a huge impact on the economic lives of a group of people in the developing world.
Clearly, the fishermen will gain here, but it’s not merely at the expense of the fish wholesalers. Rather, there’s a much more powerful dynamic at work here. This scenario is not a zero sum game. The advent of cellphones turns fishing into a much more competitive industry, where fishermen will end up selling in ports where the demand is highest. This should result in a net creation of economic value, not just a transfer of existing wealth from wholesalers to fishermen.
