The Story Of Globalization

Once there was a peaceful town in the middle of Algeranzania.  It was in a lush valley and most of the villagers were farmers who had never gone more a few miles outside the town.  Everyone knew each other and everyone was friends.  They had feasts celebrating harvests and birthdays and the start of spring and everything.  A few people died of disease, but they were mostly old and had lived good, full lives.

There was a boy named Fred.  He was friends with many of the other children and they played in the forests and fields around the town.  His best friend was Mark, who's grandparents always had interesting stories to tell because they had came from another town that was 50 miles away.  Fred and Mark had spent some days listening to the stories they had to tell and asking questions.  Fred was interested in farming and often helped his parents with the work.

Then some people came in on a truck with a picture of shell on it.  They said they were from Shell Oil and were going to pay the townspeople to drill oil.  Some other companies said they wanted to build factories there.  Fred thought it all sounded very interesting and exciting.  The people in the town decided to throw a feast.

A few days later, Shell started drilling.  It was not like anything they had ever expected.  Shell was drilling in farms and tearing things up to put in large tunnels made of metal.  Fred nearly fainted when he saw his parent's farm ripped up, and tried to get them to stop, but the workers just shooed him off.

It seemed Fred wasn't the only one.  The villagers organized protests against the Shell.  The oil company used brute force and harsh crowd control tactics against them and got the government to execute the leaders of the protests.  Fred hadn't heard about this "government," and most of the other villagers also hadn't, but what right did they have to go around killing people?  Many of them had children that were friends of Fred!

Other companies started building factories to support the oil company's drilling.  Fred's parents, lacking any other source of income, decided to work there.  From what they told Fred, it was horrible work in awful conditions, and the amount they were paid per day, 20 Algeranzanain cents, didn't seem like much.  Large businesses began shipping in food in packages, nothing like the fresh food they had grown.  But these businesses could make it cheap since they also used cheap labor.  The price of a day's food seemed to be around 20 cents, though, so there was really no choice except to keep working.

When Fred turned 14, his parents gave him a tough choice: he could either work at the factory with them, because they could no longer feed him, or he would have to leave and deal with problems on his own.  Fred thought it was an exciting change to go off on his own, so he did.  Since the drilling began, the companies had been saying things like, "Now you have more money!  You were in poverty before," and "The life expectancy has gone up, as well as education!  The quality of life must be going up!"

But Fred begged to differ.  His life hadn't improved.  Nonetheless, this had rubbed of on several people, who thought this "capitalism" was a good idea and they joined the Republican Party of Algeranzania.  Fred, against this, joined the Popular Socialist Party of Algeranzania.

TO BE CONTINUED