Religion and Social Development Exam

Religion and Social Development
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QUESTION NUMBER 1
Corporate globalization is intricately related to environmental destruction, poverty, forced migration and competition of scarce resources and ultimately to war. Corporate globalization is basically the neo liberal economic order that is no different from the unbridled capitalism of the classical liberal economics. The only major difference now is that corporations are now bigger than countries CITATION Way10 \l 1033 (Ellwood, 2010) and thus the plunder is more intensive and the impact is greater in scope. Keynesian economics, formerly branded as socialist, was actually implemented after World War 2 into order to put a brake on cutthroat competition that leads to national bankruptcies and eventually to World Wars CITATION Mag07 \l 1033 (Black, 2007). Keynesian economics actually gave national governments the capacity to prevent corporate competition from draining the nation`s coffers. Regulation was meant to control the tendency of prices to go up by government subsidies. Public ownership of key industries was actually meant to increase subsidized services to the people and protection through tariffs and taxation were actually meant to protect a nation`s industries from easily going bankrupt due to competition with imported goods. The role of national governments in their own economies was actually meant to control the negative impact of the capitalist system in check such as increasing social inequality and environmental destruction. With neo-liberal economic policies now in place, structural adjustment programs such as deregulation, privatization, and liberalization were implemented lessening the role of governments to protect their economy CITATION Way10 \l 1033 (Ellwood, 2010). Now there is no stopping corporations from entering national economies and destroying their resources. Big foreign mining and logging companies can now enter into ancestral lands of aboriginal peoples, displace them, take out their gold and minerals and leave them utterly ravished. Mass production which draws heavily from exploiting the environment is now on a full swing with little control and monitoring from national governments as long as investments pour in. Imported commodities sold cheaper than their local counterparts can easily put down local businesses and lead to increasing poverty and helplessness. Welfare support from the government is decreased leading to poor health services, poor education, poor hospitals, as government subsidies are drastically reduced. As poverty increases, the tendency is for people to go out and look for "greener pastures" thus competing over employment and scarce resources. In order to keep the people passive and afraid, low intensity conflict wars are implemented and human rights violations increase. Yet corporate cutthroat competition becomes increasingly vicious. Nations whose economies are in danger have social unrest and on the brink of civil war. Some might choose to go on a national war against their competitors if they would stand to benefit in the market. The United States who main business in the military industrial complex would like to promote proxy wars and wars among nations so they can sell their goods. As the US economy is always in danger of economic bubbles bursting, they would tend to rely more on arms sales. In order to preserve US world hegemony, the US would increase military presence and implement a global police state. Yet pressures are mounting due to stiff competition with Chinese, European, Japanese and OPEC economies. As the conditions that gave rise to World War I and World War 2 are back, so will corporate globalization leading the world to war today CITATION Mag07 \l 1033 (Black, 2007).
Corporate globalization would want to target ancestral lands of aboriginal peoples as they are very rich in natural resources and minerals. As corporations come in for the plunder, they would divide the unity of the people by giving privileges to the leaders in terms cash, scholarships and benefits so that they would permit to the plunder. The subsistence economy would be destroyed with cash economy and the natural self reliant economy will be replaced by the market economy. In effect, the communitarian spirit would be demolished and the former egalitarian social structure would experience increasing social inequality and indebtedness. Meanwhile the corporation would come in and displace the community while employing indigenous peoples in their operations. After they have extracted all the resources, they would leave the place utterly ravished CITATION Cro02 \l 1033 (Croal & Darou, 2002).
Question 2
Over the last hundred years, statements from various Christian churches expressed concerns about unbridled capitalism. The Papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum was the first social encyclical released in 1891 that strongly criticized capitalism that increased social inequality the world over. This was reiterated by the Papal Encyclical Quadregesimo Anno in 1931 which further criticiz...