Frank Fukuyama weighs in on globalization. His point is fairly simple.
Globalization, he argues, is generally beneficial to all participating societies, and one of the benefits is that it requires that participants play by the rules of modern corporate culture. These rules, if adhered to, generate a functional level of trust that replaces other, more limited, traditional repositories of trust such as familialism, tribalism, racial and religious solidarity, and nationalism.
Basically he is offering a critique of and alternative to the "clash of cultures" paradigm that has dominated much commentary and analysis on the contemporary Muslim world.
Read the whole thing here.
Somehow Fukuyama's corporate utopia reminds me of William Gibson's nightmare future. There are times when Frank scares me.
