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Globalization Score Card — How are we faring, as a species?
Globalization arguably began at the end of the Iron Age when tribes and peoples nurtured regular trading of goods. The Mesopotamian Shekel, the first real currency, came into being around 3000 BCE and our earliest records of financial loans date to 2000 BCE. Both were precursors to The Silk Road. Globalization leaped forward after the great age of discovery, when the European powers colonized the rest of the world. This led to the first multinational companies, such as the East India Company and its Dutch equivalent, both formed around 1600.
From a disparate bunch of hunter-gatherer tribes, homo sapiens came together to shrink the world and act as a common species. Now, almost every country on Earth is entwined in a complex web of trade, economics, and the exchange of ideas.
I argue that globalization is an obvious step on the long road to us surviving as a species. The universe is a dangerous place, and the Fermi Paradox hints that not too many civilizations make it. We are going to face extinction level events impossible to deal with on an individual or nation-state level. Only by uniting as an entire planet do we stand any chance. Unfortunately, we are also busy creating our own such problems like pandemics, climate change, and nuclear war.
So how successful are our globalization efforts?