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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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Is the globalization irreversible and if it isn't, why we still continue to be intellectually enslaved by our progressive evolutionary models? In fact, the whole charm of future is that it can't be fully predicted, that every forecast is only a relative one, which takes into account only those determinants that seem to us relevant and disregarding all the rest. When we decide which avenue to follow, it's with impeccable precision that we try to find out all "because of..." reasons why a certain prediction will take place and try to avoid as much as possible all "on the contrary... or despite of..." facts that can make relative our predictions. Within this flawed paradigm the New Work Stock Exchange had to continue its positive development instead of crashing in October 1929; the "New Economy" had to continue its positive development instead of shrinking in 2000-2001; going to the other side of the Iron Curtain, communism had to continue its existence in East Europe long after 1989.

In any of these cases supporters of a particular prediction were keen to find as many as possible arguments for building one-sided models. For our minds it's easier to make such one-sided predictions. If we made precise calculations on the gains and losses of every step we moved, then perhaps we couldn't have been gone too far from our primitive social condition. It's precisely the fact that we make so many mistakes in our expectations that we have gone so far away. Which doesn't mean that we shouldn't be careful about our present predictions and we shouldn't pay attention to their inherent flaws.

A recent example of such inherently flawed analysis in the field of real estate market is the report made by Ernst & Young on the commercial global market trends*. The main argument in this report is that right now the tide is high on the global scale. In order to prove that, the reports' authors bring only trends which are neutral or positive to the main argument. Facts that could contradict it are carefully avoided. The result is a rather linear development, more or less following only the market forces, which now are favorable to the globalization.

The report undoubtedly has strong sides, but it could have been even stronger if it has explicitly paid attention to the factors that contradict the general assumption of its authors. In order to be more precise we'll give some examples of such opposing factors, which can influence the market in the near future as well as in mid and long-term.

The development of new technologies can ultimately make obsolete space concentration of the corporate management. The next generation of Internet, allowing hundreds of times speedier connections than our present broadband technologies, can forever change the way we do business. When the data storage becomes part of the Internet grid instead of our local networks, then the commercial space may lose one of its principle advantages over our private habitat.

All assumptions about the inevitable progress of globalizing corporate culture don't take into account the fact that the international system that most favors such development, the near-unipolar world under the US leadership, isn't more than historic accident. New redistribution of power in the world, the reappearance of multipolarity, may lead to geographical limitations of the globalization principle. It's too early to say whether countries like China and India will prove to be good investments for companies looking for corporate outsourcing.

Communication lines that maintain the globalization corporate networks are still vulnerable. Many examples of amateurish e-mail bugs and their devastation consequences show how vulnerable the system is. More professional approach by terrorist networks can lead to temporary disruptions on global scale, causing billions of losses.

Political factors even in the most developing countries still play significant role in shaping the economic agenda. The importance of the problem of outsourcing during the presidential campaign in the United States may force the future administration to direct its economic policy toward less globalization. The same goes in Europe, where the higher interest rates are already broadly perceived as main culprits for the slow economic development.