WATERLOO, Ontario — The pronouncement of "the end of history" may have been a tad premature, yet, in a flat world, globalization — the intensified exchange of goods, services, capital, technology, ideas, information, legal systems and people — has brought "the end of geography" closer.
For many, globalization is both desirable and irreversible, having underwritten a rising standard of living throughout the world. Others recoil from it as the soft underbelly of corporate imperialism that plunders and profiteers on the back of rampant consumerism.
Globalization is not uncontrolled. The movement of people remains tightly restricted. The flow of capital is highly asymmetrical. Each year, for every $1 of aid money over the table from rich to poor countries, the West gets back $10 of ill-gotten gains under the table and, for good measure, lectures the rest on corruption.