Someone has really overestimated me with this one. You all do know I studied poetry at university, right?

No. Here's the thing -- economics, and especially global economics, have never been a strong point of mine. I've read book after book about the IMF and the FTA and Mexico and Asia and South America, and I even took a graduate level course on globalization at university (the result of which being one of those high B exams I mentioned before) to try to educate myself, and to some extent it has worked, but not to the point where I would feel comfortable speaking as any kind of authority on the subject. I always end up getting too wrapped up in the social issues involved, and spent most of that grad course turning purple with rage at the back of the class as a room full of college educated artists made tacky comment after tacky comment in regards to poor people, the category.

On the one hand, I love the idea of the transportation and mixing of cultures across the globe -- the more exposure we all have as human beings, the more human we will become. On the other, much bigger and stronger hand, Neocolonialism -- the destruction of small, homegrown businesses and agriculture, the Westernization of entire cultures.... and the people at the bottom who always seem to end up the losers.... I don't know.

This is not an easy question. And I'm far from educated enough to answer it properly. So instead, I'd like to open the comments, because it's something I've also been wondering about. So... what have you got to say about this? Let me know.