Globalization most unexpected

My wife and I came home yesterday to find a slip from DHL waiting for us. It said that they were sorry that they missed us, but that we have a package that they were unable to deliver. We were surprised as we thought that we had nothing on order that would have been shipped to us by DHL. I urged my wife to simply sign the permission to deliver and then we would find out what the package was. But, she wanted to do more checking, so she went online to the DHL site, put in the number and found out that the package had been shipped from Bangkok, Thailand.

Now, we became very concerned. Both of us knew for sure that we had ordered nothing from overseas. We do not even know anyone in Thailand right now. We promptly checked our finances, but since we keep close track, we knew that there was no evidence of identity theft. So, my wife called the local DHL office, communicated all this to them, and asked if the manifest showed what was in the package. It is a textbook.

All of a sudden the penny dropped. I have been taking some graduate level classes. The next semester begins next Monday, and this was a book for which I had been waiting. But, why was it coming from Bangkok? I had ordered the textbook from Amazon, as an used book through one of their certified partners. Sure enough, a textbook written in America, for a course in America, was being shipped to me as an used textbook from Thailand. It would be interesting to know how it arrived over there, and the journey it took. I suspect that it was someone taking an online class.

But, here is the unexpected side of globalization. I wanted to buy a used textbook to save money. I did not check the seller closely, only that it was an Amazon partner and had excellent customer ratings. That was enough to guarantee delivery, right? Had I know that it was from Thailand, I probably would not have bought it. Why? Well, I would have been wondering whether the textbook sale was a scam. After all, online scams are a very present danger in Internet commerce. Yet, I did not worry about it because a multinational called Amazon was guaranteeing me that my money would not be lost. It was guaranteed. And so, without worry, I participated in the global economy in a very real and even touchable way.

I have not thought through all the implications of the “casual” globalization that has happened. But, here is an indication that the discussion over appropriate globalization often misses bits of globalization like this one. As Sargeant Schultz would have said, “Very interesting …”