in your observations, are consumption habits changing the same way with respect to diet? eg. will they (mostly) skip unhealthy processed snack foods and move towards something new, and if that happens how will preventable diseases that plague western countries manifest if at all, the health and drug industries, aged care (family vs business). some things are skipped others might be accelerated. globalization works as long as there is another country down the road you can kick it to, but the axis of power will eventually shift towards emergent markets and those governments will cut out western monopolies out of self-interest, or at least be very resistant to a foreign controlled corporation taking its local profits offshore. japan and south korea have a resistant corp-gov structure due to monopoly, high technology and mass employment creating huge economic leverage over the political system. are chaebols nepotistic fascism, a valid competing business structure, benevolent dictatorships?

were not having this conversation in the 1980s and most of the worlds airports and shopping malls look eerily similar today, yet older systems are more brittle and prone to fracturing and new infrastructures tend to be cheaper, deploy faster and require less maintenance. giant malls in america remind me of communist apartment blocks dotted all over eastern european capitals, permanent monuments to a big idea that proved temporary. at least the soviet model serves some present social utility. the hidden cost of solar is of course in the manufacturing and re-use process which is fossil fuel dependent, but se asia has oil and gas fit to purpose. globalization for the western leaders means controlling the development of poorer countries by creating avenues for the corporations they front to come in and build, for the poorer countries i think they correctly see it as a way to accelerate society but not necessarily at the cost of autonomy like some corporate colony of an american or german or chinese conglomerate. people may reduce consumption individually, but over the scale of the planet the food industry alone must be undergoing some giant mutation. it's really hard for me to imagine a future in asia and africa without massive increase in petroleum and it's assorted bi-products.