JOHN GREEN: Hi. I'm John Green. And this is the final episode of Crash Course World History, not because we've reached the end of history, but because we've reached the particular middle where I happen to be living. Today, we'll be considering whether globalization is a good thing. And along the way, we'll try to do something that you may not be used to doing in history classes-- imagining the future.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, in the future I'm going to get to second base with Molly Brown.

No, you won't, me from the past. But the fact that when asked to imagine the future you imagine your future says a lot about the contemporary world. And listen, me from the past, while there's no question that you're solipsistic individualism is bad, both for you and for our species, the broader implications of individualism in general are a lot more complex.

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Man, I'm going to miss you, intro. So last week, ta-da, we discussed how global economic interdependence has led, on average, to longer, healthier, more prosperous lives for humans, not to mention an astonishing change in the overall human population. In the West, globalization has also led to the rise of a service economy. In the US and Europe, most people now work, not in agriculture or manufacturing, but in some kind of service sector-- health care, retail, education, entertainment, information technology, internet videos about world history, et cetera.

And that switch has really changed our psychology, especially the psychology of upper classes living in the industrialized world. I mean, to quote Frederic Jameson, "we are so far removed from the realities of production and work, that we inhabit a dream world of artificial stimuli and televised experience." Think of it this way. If you had to kill a chicken every time you visited KFC, you would probably eat fewer chickens.

Another change in psychology, many historians of the now note that globalization has also led to a celebration of individualism, particularly in the wake of the failures of the Marxist collectivist Utopias. The generation that lived through the depression and World War II saw large-scale collectivist responses to both those crises. And they were responses that limited freedom, like the military draft, for instance, which limited your freedom not to be a soldier, or the collectivization of health insurance seen in most of the postwar West, which limited your freedom to go bankrupt from health care costs, or also government programs like Social Security, which limit your freedom not to pay for old people's retirement.

But since the 1960s, the ascendant idea of personal freedom minimally limited by government intervention has become very powerful. Even the Catholic church was part of this new search for individual freedom, as the Second Vatican Council relaxed church rules and ways that weakened central authority, made concessions to individual styles of worship, even said that people of different religions could go to heaven? What good is heaven if it's going to be full of Protestants? It's just going to be like Minnesota.

So here in the last episode of Crash Course World History, in the 30 seconds, I've offended 5/6 of the world's population in the form of non-Catholics and all Republicans and probably some political moderates who are confused about what Obama's health care law will and will not do.

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Stan, maybe I should just make this episode just an extended rant, where I reveal all of my political biases and also my personal biases. Look, you're never going to meet a historian who doesn't have biases. But good historians try to acknowledge their biases. And I am biased toward Canada and its awesome health care system. I can't lie. I'm very jealous of you guys. But perhaps the greatest effect of the victory of individualism was on sex and the family. We haven't talked much about sex, because my brother's teaching biology, which is basically just sex, but sex is pretty important historically, because it's how we keep happening.

But in the 20th century, greater variety and availability of contraception made it possible for people to experiment with multiple sexual partners and help to uncouple sex from childbearing, which was awesome. But individualism also had a destabilizing effect on families. As the great Leo Tolstoy put it, all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

But when your individual fulfillment trumps all, you needn't live amid your uniquely unhappy family. You can just leave. So divorce rates have skyrocketed in the past few decades and not just in the US. By the turn of the 21st century, divorce rates in China reached nearly 25%, with 70% of those divorces initiated by women. Technology has also driven families apart, as parents and children spend increasing time alone in front of their individual screens, sharing fewer experiences. That's individualism too, but not of a kind that we usually celebrate.

But probably the biggest consequence of globalization and the ensuing rise in human population has been humanity's effect on the environment. While populations have increased, partly thanks to better yields from existing farmland, much more land has also been brought under cultivation in the past half century. Often this meant cutting down trees and valuable rain forest. The best known example of this is what's going on in the Amazon, but it happens worldwide. And we're losing land, not just for food, but also to grow the global economy.

Oh, it's time for the open letter? An open letter to flowers. But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today. Oh, it's fake flowers. Thank you, Stan. One for behind each ear.

Dear flowers, you capture the best and the worst of the globalized economy. You're so pretty. Even the fake ones are pretty. But the real ones are constantly dying. They've got to be harvested and shipped and cut very efficiently. And it's a global phenomenon.

Like, there are flowers in my corner market from Africa. These are from China. But because they are plastic, they could just be shipped in a shipping container. More people can afford to apologize by giving their romantic partners professionally cut and arranged roses than in any time in human history. But in that, we have lost something, which is that the whole idea of flowers is that you had to go out into the field and like, cut them and arrange them yourself to apologize.

It's not supposed to be, I'm sorry I forgot your birthday. Here's $8 worth of work that was done in Kenya. It's supposed to be, I'm sorry I forgot your birthday so I went into the fracking forest and got you some fracking flowers. Anyway, flowers, best wishes, John Green. Ah, you guys got me flowers for my last episode of world history.

OK. Let's go to the Thought Bubble. As worldwide production and consumption increases, we use more resources, especially water and fossil fuels. Globalization has made the average human richer, and rich people tend to use more of everything, but especially energy. This has already resulted in climate change, which will likely accelerate.

The global economy isn't a zero sum game. Like, I don't need to become more poor in order for someone else to become more rich. But growth, at least so far, has been dependent upon unsustainable use of the planet's resources. The planet can't sustain 7 billion automobiles, for instance, or 7 billion frequent flyers. Although most of us who can afford to drive or fly feel entitled to do so.

You'll remember that when we talked about the Industrial Revolution, we discussed the virtuous cycle of more efficiency making things cheaper, which in turn made them easier to buy, which increased demand, which increased efficiency. But from the perspective of the planet, each turn in that cycle takes something-- more land under cultivation, more carbon emissions, more resource extraction. That can't go on forever. But worryingly, our current models of economic growth don't allow for any other way. Thanks, Thought Bubble.

And then there is our astonishingly robust health. Although much of the world has been ravaged by HIV/AIDS for the past three decades, there's been a relative lack of global pandemic since the 1918 flu. And that's particularly surprising, given increased population density and more travel between population centers. China has seen 150 million people leave the countryside for cities in the last 20 years. This was Shanghai in 1990, and this is Shanghai in 2010. The population of Lagos was 41,000 in 1900. Today, it's almost 8 million.

Of course, people have been moving from country to city for a long time. Remember Gilgamesh? But the pace of that change has dramatically accelerated. Similarly, there's nothing new about international trade. But its pace has also increased dramatically. In 1960, trade accounted for 24% of the world's GDP. Today, it's more than doubled that.

Almost no human being alive today lives with stuff only manufactured in their home country. But 1,000 years ago, only the richest of the rich could benefit from the Silk Road. Still, trade isn't new. And while it's tempting to say that the types of goods being traded-- pharmaceuticals, computers, software, financial services-- represent something wholly new, you could just as easily see this as part of the evolution of trade itself. At some point, silk was seen as a new trade good. As tastes change and consumers become more affluent, the things they want to buy change.

So is anything really different? Or is it all just accelerated? Well, some historians argue that an economically interdependent world is much less likely to go to war. And that may be true, but increasing global, cultural, and economic integration hasn't led to an end to violence. I mean, we've seen large-scale ethnic and nationalistic violence from Rwanda to the former Yugoslavia to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Afghanistan. Globalization has not rid the world of violence.

But there is an ideological shift in the age of globalization that does seem pretty new, and that's the turn to democracy. Now, this isn't the limited democracy of the ancient Greeks or the quirky Republican system originally developed in the US. There are almost as many kinds of democracies as there are nations experiencing democracy. The fact is, however, that democracy and political freedom, especially the freedom to participate in and influence the government, have been on the rise all over the world since the 1980s, and especially since 1990.

For instance, if you looked at the governments of most Latin American countries during most of the 20th centuries, you would usually find them ruled by military strongmen. Now, with a couple of exceptions-- Fidel, Hugo. Stan, are they behind me right now? Because if they're behind me, I'm in favor of collectivizing oil revenue and distributing it to the poor. If they're not behind me, that's a terrible idea.

Right. But anyway, democracy is now flourishing in most of Latin America. Probably the most famous democratic success story is South Africa, which jettisoned decades of apartheid in the 1990s and elected former dissident, Nelson Mandela, as its first black president in 1994. It also adopted one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.

But it's worth remembering that democracy and economic success don't always go hand in hand, as much as some Americans wish they would. Many new African democracies continue to struggle. The same is true in some Latin American countries. And China has shown that you don't need democracy in order to experience economic growth. But for a few countries, especially Brazil and India, the combination of democracy and economic liberalism has unleashed impressive growth that has lifted millions out of poverty.

So can we say that it's good then? Can we celebrate globalization in spite of its destabilizing effects on families and the environment? Well, here's where we have to imagine the future. Because if some superbug shows up tomorrow and it travels through all these global trade routes and kills every living human, then globalization will have been very bad for human history, specifically by ending it.

If climate change continues to accelerate and displaces billions of people and causes widespread famines and flooding, then we will remember this period of human history as shortsighted, self-indulgent, and tremendously destructive. On the other hand, if we discover an asteroid hurtling toward Earth and mobilize global industry and technology in such a way that we lose Bruce Willis but save the world, then globalization will be celebrated for millennia. I mean, assuming we have millennia and can convince Bruce Willis to go.

In short, to understand the present, we have to imagine the future. That's the thing about history. It depends on where you're standing. From where I'm standing, globalization has been a net positive. But then again, it's been a pretty good run for heterosexual males of European dissent.

Critics of globalization point out that billions haven't benefited much, if at all, from all this economic prosperity and that the polarization of wealth is growing both within and across nations. And those criticisms are valid, and they are troubling. But they aren't new. Disparities between those who have more and those who have less have existed pretty much from the moment agriculture enabled us to accumulate a surplus.

And sometimes, this inequality has been a big concern, as it was with Jesus and with Muhammad. At other times, not so much. Inequalities are as old as human history and almost as old as the debate about them. One thing that is new, however, is our ability to learn about them, to discuss them, and hopefully to find solutions for them together as a global community that is better integrated and more connected than it has ever been before.

Because here's the other thing about history. You are making it. That old idea that history is the deeds of great men, that was wrong. Celebrated individuals do shape history, but so do the rest of us.

And while it's true that many historical forces-- malaria, meteors from space-- aren't human, it's also true that every human is a historical force. You are changing the world every day, and it is our hope that by looking at the history that was made before us, we can see our own crucial decisions in a broader context. And I believe that context can help us make better choices and better changes. Thanks for watching.

But there's no need to despair, Crash Course fans. I'll see you next week for the beginning of our miniseries on literature.

Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Miller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. The associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer and myself. And our graphics team is Thought Bubble.

Last week's phrase of the week was Cookie Monster. This week's phrase of the week was Bruce Willis, which I am telling you because we are retiring the idea of the phrase of the week. Thank you so much for watching Crash Course World History. It has been super fun to try to tell the history of the world in 42 12-minute videos.

I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you'll hang around for literature. Thanks for watching. And as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome. Oh, Stan. That's a crash.

HOST: --that the trend of globalization is at the root of the current financial crisis. They argue that poorer nations are essentially at the mercy of those represented at the G20 summit. For more on this, I'm joined by Neil Watkins, who heads an alliance of 75 religious groups, development agencies, and human rights organizations advocating for the poor. I'm also joined by Korok Ray, a business professor at Georgetown University who also worked briefly on the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House under President George Bush. Welcome to you both.

Neil Watkins, did the G20 summit put the plight of the poor nations firmly on the agenda?

NEIL WATKINS: Well, I think the G20 did take important steps by announcing that they were going to provide significant sums to help the developing world deal with the crisis. The problem is that the institution they chose to deliver those funds through, the IMF, has a record that's quite poor for the past 20 years in its impacts in poor countries.

HOST: Korok Ray, many people would agree with this statement, G20 now turning to the IMF to prevent a crisis that many people would blame many of its policies, and all the strings attached with some of is lending policies to the poor countries of this world, as being part of the problem. It's not a savior.

KOROK RAY: Well, I think the most important thing to remember is that the structure of the system is the most important feature of the financial economy. And instead of trying to separate cleanly the rich from the poor, I think we live in a really interconnected world, and what we really want is to make sure that financial institutions and the financial structures work well. I think giving more money to the IMF for the purposes of surveillance and research, I think that's fine. But trying to think of a supra-national regulator that makes laws for all countries, that has excessive power, may be a mistake.

NEIL WATKINS: I think part of the problem is that there's actually a double standard. The IMF is telling poor countries that they need to cut spending, that they need to raise interest rates. They're telling poor countries to do exactly the opposite of what we're actually doing in the United States and some of the rich countries. So this double standard occurs. And I think the IMF continues to push what we would consider market fundamentalist sort of policies, that the free market is the solution to everything. When in reality, this crisis shows that there are some real questions about whether the free market is really helping the poor.

HOST: Were any of these questions answered, Korok Ray? Because we heard many people at the G20 summit talk about the need to tweak and reform the international financial system. They're pouring money into the IMF and other financial institutions, but no one really was talking about giving up on the very system of capitalism and free trade that many people say got us into this.

KOROK RAY: Well, let's take a step back, and let's remember that, look, the surest way out of poverty is economic growth. And the best way to get around economic growth is to have a stable financial sector, to have investments in human and physical capital, to have free trade of movement of both capital and labor. These are the fundamentals of our world. And yes, there's been a slight shift towards-- maybe less towards, less of a free market. But I think the system as a whole is sound, and we need to focus exclusively on a few pieces of the puzzle with financial regulation. And the G20 announcement will do that. But my view is that, look, markets, by their very nature, they fluctuate. Economies grow and shrink. That's a fact of life.

NEIL WATKINS: But the reality is the impacts of the market system we have means that countries in Africa, or Latin America, or Asia are thrust into great turmoil when something goes wrong on Wall Street. So you have a crisis right now where-- which really originated in excess deregulation, and free market excess. And now who's paying for that? Some of the poorest people in the world. You're going to have 53 million people fall into poverty this year.

So I think, though the G20 started to look at regulation and putting their hands around this casino capitalism, that they should go further. That we need to see tougher measures taken, and that we need to see more movement towards sort of economic stimulus packages that can help countries recover from the crisis.

HOST: Are these countries likely to have a bigger say? We heard Gordon Brown talk about a global new deal, which would suggest that both sets of countries would join forces together. Is that likely to happen?

KOROK RAY: Well, I think coordination of economic policies is always a good thing. What I worry about is too much power in the hands of a single institution. And the problem is that if, say, the IMF has that power, and they make a mistake, and all the countries are following that standard, then the whole system gets messed up.

HOST: Are we seeing any hints of the beginning of a new world economic order do you think, Neil Watkins?

NEIL WATKINS: Well, one thing you could say about this G20 summit is that it is more ambitious, in some ways, than the G8 has been for the past 5 or 10 years, where you have sort of the same old things repackaged every year. It took a little bit further step, but I think they fell far short of even what the president of France asked for last November, when the G20 first met, which was a remaking of the global economic system. I think they fell short of that, but at least they took some initial steps. And I think there's a lot of movement still to go to correct what has become sort of a free market model that has gone awry in the world.

HOST: But so we didn't hear anything about the prospect of a new global trade deal that would also improve the prospects of poorer countries, did we?

KOROK RAY: Well, I don't think that trade is sort of front center on the agenda. I think this is really a financial crisis. Let's keep our eye on the ball. Macroeconomic stimulus is important, but really, this is about banks, and how banks operate, and how they're regulated. There is a lot of different pieces of the puzzle that were, I think, a little distracting. The trade was, in my view, a little distracting, as was the sideshow with regulating hedge funds. I mean, hedge funds are everyone's favorite scapegoat, but they really were not as central to the buildup of the crisis. And the action should be about looking at the banking sectors.

NEIL WATKINS: But you've got to get a handle on some of these hedge funds. I mean, they're secretive. They operate completely without regulation, without even knowing who's on the board of these things. These are huge actors in the economy. And I think the steps that were taken today were just initial steps, and I think we need to see even more.

One other thing I would say that's an important issue is that one of the problems with the response is that it suggests that there may be a new debt crisis building for the developing world, in the sense that the whole package today was provided in the form of loans. And countries are going to take on a lot more loans. We think the G20 should have provided some grants, or even debt relief, in addition to the new loans for the developing world.

KOROK RAY: So first, on the hedge funds, look. Let's look at the facts. The facts are that the most regulated financial institutions in the US are banks. Banks were where the problems were. The hedge funds were fine. And also let's think about the benefits of all this lending, which is a lot of capital was made available to the poor countries over the last decade. There'll be a little bit of a contraction now, but still, there were many benefits.

HOST: Neil Watkins and Korok Ray, thanks very much for this. Thanks for joining us. And let's take another short break. But still to come here on Al-Jazeera, on trial for murder and abuse of power, we'll look at the history of--