Many of the new U.S. president's supporters have rightfully expressed a deep-rooted concern about the rise of corporate greed and cronyism that has many people feeling left woefully behind.
The irony of selecting a billionaire who gladly exploited that system to obtain power aside, these sentiments seem to have evolved into an unquestionable loathing of globalization, generally seen as the source of the ailment.
When corporate greed has run amuck around the world and small handfuls of tycoons, bankers and investors hoard more wealth than billions of people who often feel neglected ó or worse, outright abandoned ó there's bound to be some kind of spectacular blowback.
We've all seen it ó Brexit, the new American president, and altogether too many European nations that are experiencing a disconcerting resurgence of once fringe far-right parties.
Of course it's completely legitimate to be concerned about rampant corporate greed and the corruption that allows, for example, unscrupulous Wall Street bankers to get bonuses while people's homes are foreclosed. Or for the top-paid CEOs of global conglomerates to be compensated hundreds of times more than they were mere decades ago while the average worker in that same time span by comparison has experienced stagnant to negligibly noticeable gains.
Along the way, globalization's reputation has unfortunately been dragged through the mud and badly besmirched. A vision of connecting the world's nations, improving communications and relations among all people as well as building cultural bridges seems to have in many instances unfortunately been replaced by ideals of protectionist isolationism and nationalistic withdrawal.
Globalization in its current form, which sees top-paid CEOs live in opulent wealth while their employees often desperately scrape by on social assistance despite working full time, should undoubtedly not only be questioned but also challenged as well.
Yet that does not mean the world's countries and their peoples should all give up and withdraw behind protectionist walls of any kind, whether they are economic, cultural or architectural.
The trick is to strike a suitable balance that establishes improved equity and prosperity for all, as opposed to the few at the top. There exists a potential for many different forms of globalization. They don't all have to be bad.
A great place to start would be closing legal tax loopholes that facilitate the siphoning of trillions of dollars into tax shelters around the world. It also couldn't hurt to scale the astronomical compensation packages offered to executives of Fortune 500 companies back to levels similar to those in the '60s and '70s, when they were a more modest and reasonable 30 or so times as much as the average worker rather than hundreds of times as much, as is the case today.
And perhaps most importantly, free trade deals should only be struck among peer nations that boast comparably equal labour rights and environmental regulations.
All of this does not seem to be lost upon Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, who sees his social media network not only as a means for friends and family to stay connected but also for communities around the globe to build proverbial bridges as well.
"Across the world there are people left behind by globalization, and movements for withdrawing from global connection," he announced recently in an appeal to reverse the trend of protectionist policy.
"In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us."
The 32-year-old recently told the AP that he firmly believes increased connectedness is the right direction for human kind. But it's "not enough if it's good for some people but it doesn't work for other people. We really have to bring everyone along," he added.
The self-made billionaire certainly has his own vested interest in the matter ó more users means the potential for more advertising revenue ó although that does not mean he's wrong.
Until the fruits of globalization begin to yield fair results for the masses, we can expect to continue seeing growing populist movements fighting tooth and nail against it.
