Week 15 Discussion — Has Globalization Been a Net Good?

Hook

A port town gains jobs from the same trade that closes a mill town's looms, and over the same decades the World Bank counts far fewer people in extreme poverty. Each side of this week's question can point to something real, which is exactly what makes it worth arguing.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Has globalization, the growing flow of goods, money, people, and ideas across borders, been a net good? Take a position, use the two documented findings about trade (aggregate gains and distributional costs) and the World Bank's poverty count as evidence without reading a correlation as a cause, and state at full strength the strongest case for the other side.

Option B: A made-up country (illustrative) can join a trade agreement that its economists expect to bring aggregate gains, while the agreement is also expected to close the main employer in two of its textile towns. Should the country join, and on what terms? Take a position, label which of your premises is empirical and which is normative, and state the strongest case for the other side as its defenders would put it.

There is no single right answer. Thoughtful people who accept the same facts disagree about how much a concentrated loss should count against a spread-out gain; your job is to argue your side well and to state the other side fairly.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 15 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. Do not ask a chatbot to invent a statistic, a study, a poverty figure, or a quotation for you, cite the World Bank's count only with this week's pinned figures and its line, and keep every example free of living politicians, current officeholders, and any current tariff, treaty, or migration bill.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory political science
course. Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question
below. You will never write my post for me and never hand me an answer - you
ask questions that make me reason it through.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: Has globalization, the growing flow of goods, money, people, and ideas across borders, been a net good? Take a position, use the two documented findings about trade (aggregate gains and distributional costs) and the World Bank's poverty count as evidence without reading a correlation as a cause, and state at full strength the strongest case for the other side.
Option B: A made-up country (illustrative) can join a trade agreement that its economists expect to bring aggregate gains, while the agreement is also expected to close the main employer in two of its textile towns. Should the country join, and on what terms? Take a position, label which of your premises is empirical and which is normative, and state the strongest case for the other side as its defenders would put it.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I keep the two documented findings apart: aggregate gains (the
  total gain to an economy as a whole) and distributional costs (losses that
  fall on particular workers, firms, and towns, often concentrated and slow
  to heal), and whether I see that a loss in particular does not refute a
  gain in total
- whether I keep a correlation apart from a cause: extreme poverty fell,
  but the count alone does not show that trade or any one policy caused
  the fall
- whether I state the other side at full strength: the free-trade case
  (large aggregate gains; help the losers through other policies) and the
  managed-trade case (costs land hard on particular communities; a
  government owes them protection first)
- whether I label my premises as empirical (checkable) or normative (argued
  from values), and see that the weighing itself is normative
- whether I keep poverty (a share below a chosen threshold) apart from inequality (the
  spread of a distribution)

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or answering the counterpoint. Never accept a one-word
answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Never take a side for me, never
bring in a living politician, a current officeholder, a party, a current
government, or any current tariff, treaty, or migration bill, never invent a
statistic, a study, a poverty figure, or a quotation for me, and if figures come
up, use only this week's pinned ones: the World Bank's International Poverty Line is 3.00
dollars a day in 2021 international prices, and the World Bank counts around 831
million people below it in 2025, down from around 2.3 billion in 1990. Every
message you send before the summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 15 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — explaining global political economy and reading global data for what a measure and a line mean, while presenting a contested global question evenhandedly and labelling each premise of your own argument as empirical or normative — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. Take a side and give at least one reason. For Option A, use the two documented findings about trade and the World Bank's count, with its line and its years, and say what the count does not show; for Option B, name the aggregate gain and the distributional cost in the made-up agreement and say how you weigh them. Label each premise you rely on as empirical or normative. Use this week's terms (political economy, mixed economy, comparative advantage, opportunity cost, trade policy, aggregate gains, distributional costs, free trade, managed trade, poverty, inequality, within-country inequality, International Poverty Line, collective-action problem, globalization) correctly.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can, the way its own defenders would put it — for example, the managed-trade case if you argued for joining, or the free-trade case if you argued against. A weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. One assumption you are making (one or two sentences). Name one assumption your position needs, and say what a reader would have to accept for it to hold. Naming it is not admitting a flaw.

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 15 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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