Although humans have interacted over long distances for thousands of years, the global movement of people, goods, and ideas communicated consistently over centuries. Due to globalization, an increasing amount of “consumer class” shows the global market has been even more opener, consumers can obtain benefits from mature manufacturing and modern technology. However, globalization and this new, international consumer class may have also created social and ethical problems for the world. In order to meet these new problems and challenges created by globalization and consumerism, people may all have to rethink their ethics and values.
Some people may worry that globalization’s consumer class may results in environmental issues, but according to “The Environmental Benefits of Globalization”, the conflict between commercial trades and human’s desire for environmental quality does not exist. For example, because globalization has been controlled organizationally in some countries; air quality, water quality, timber supply, agricultural promotion and mineral resources usages were not led to a negative consequence by consumer class in past decades (2004). Qualities and usages of natural resources may increase or reduce environmental problems flexibly, but globalization’s sustainability has been measured considerable that it will not bring troubles to richer countries
With the development of globalization, social problems have been shown recently among “consumer class”. According to Knickerbocker’s statement, lack of job satisfaction is a problem because personal debt and chronic time shortages are pressure for workers due to globalization (2004). Additionally, the author also claimed that an increasing number of consumers may improve health rate and education levels in high consumer class percentage countries, but poorer countries are facing survival problems as well. For example, 362 million of shoppers from China and India have ability to consume more than all Western Europeans. However, there are 3 billion people around the world are suffer from the consumption less than 2 dollars per day (Knickerbocker, 2004).
Because of globalization’s outcome “consumer class”, it also results in the ethical issues, which need to be rethought by people. According to Kakabadse, with globalized trades, fortunate consumers who have ability to consume, have no notifications of how their buying behaviors affect the environment. For example, when “consumer class” in New York consuming a shrimp salad; they have no idea that the price is developing countries have to destroy a mangrove in order to build a shrimp pond. In addition, the author also indicated that people need to “giving higher priority to being rather than having”, to consume with responsible behaviors and to prevent the environment from damages due to the globalization (Kakabadse, 2002).