FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION
AND ALTERNATIVES

"Institutions" deals with the organizations and treaties that are dominated by the looters.

"Trends" deals mostly with the "race to the bottom", a system that, rather than being "globalization" actually uses borders as a way to turn the world into a sort of vampire's auction house.

"Rich nations" debunks the myth that the cult of looters makes people rich.

"Poor nations" debunks the myth that poor nations don't already have enough loan sharks, crony capitalists, and golden calf cults. It also debunks the myth that the anti-wtoimftaapec movement is a first-world rich kid's movement.

The most important part of the FAQ is "Alternatives and Proposals". This disproves the lie that "There Is No Alternative". Finally, check out "What can I do?" for non-activist activism you can do as an individual.

SECTION ONE: IDEOLOGY AND GLOBALIZATION:

In the past few decades a new breed of politicians, PR reps, media talking heads and other elites have taken control of mainstream opinion. Some call themselves "neoliberals" and others call themselves "neoconservatives". They are in most political parties and will make any promise to get power. They say buzzwords and make promises about "families" and "values" and "development" but they only care about power for the sake of power. They are not conservative, they are not liberal, they are simply NEO.

The UN calculates that the whole of the world population's basic needs for food, drinking water, education and medical care could be covered by a levy of less than 4 % on the accumulated wealth of the 225 largest fortunes. To satisfy all the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only less than the United States and the European Union spend each year on perfume.

Neos believe that the stench of rotting corpses in Africa can be covered if enough perfume is sprayed in London. They think that flooding in Bangladesh due to climate change can be solved with enough yaught clubs in Texas, or that the sound of starving children can be drowned out with enough BMW engines roaring, or that diseased water in India will be solved if there are enough millionaires have thousand dollar wine bottles with their "networking" lunches.

What are the neo policies and their effects?

Policies and effects:

Cut Spending on health, education, etc.

Increased school fees force parents to pull children--usually girls--from school. Literacy rates go down.

Poorly-educated generation not equipped for skilled jobs.

Higher fees for medical service mean less treatment, more suffering, needless deaths.

Poor women, already overworked, must provide healthcare and caretaking for family members.

Shrink Government:

Less enforcement of labor, environmental, and financial laws.

Sudden, massive government layoffs fill the labor market, make more people compete for the same number of jobs, making people desperate to work at any wage

Increase Interest Rates:

More money for wealthy investors. When a country lowers interest rates investors will find it a profitable place to park cash, though they may pull it out at any moment

Small farmers and businesses can't get loans to stay afloat. Workers cannot get mortgages or borrow money, slowing down the economy.

Small farmers sell land to rich landowners and corporations, work as tenants or move to worse lands.

Small businesses shut down, leaving workers unemployed, making people willing to work for less (see shrink government).

Eliminate Regulations on Foreign Ownership of Resources and Businesses

Multinational corporations can buy local industries easily.

Countries compete for foreign investment by offering tax breaks, low wages, free trade zones, and promise not to enforce democratically-created labor and environmental laws. (race to the bottom.)

Once in the country, corporations can turn to WTO for enforcement of "rights"

Control of entire sectors of economy can shift to foreign control. This puts poor nations at the mercy of rich people in rich nations. Rich western bankers can freeze the budgets of democratic nations and even stop wages to millions of workers, as they did in Russia.

Eliminate Tariffs (third wrld only):

Makes luxury items cheaper for those in the country, rich can splurge more and invest less.

Makes it harder for local producers to compete against better-equipped and richer suppliers (who developed with tariffs).

Leads to closure of businesses and layoffs.

Cut Subsidies for Basic Goods: Reduce government support to reduced cost of bread, transportation, etc.

Raises cost of food and items needed to survive, making workers more desperate to work under any conditions.

Poor instantly become much poorer, leading to riots. Just imagine what you would do if you saw food prices rise 75% in 3 days, as they did in Indonesia under "reform".

Re-orient Economies from Subsistence to Exports:

Give incentives for farmers to produce cash crops (coffee, cotton, etc.) for rich nations instead of food for the poor nations, encourage low-pay, low-skill manufacturing to send to rich nations, instead of developing and training poor nations. Encourage mining, drilling, clearcutting, and other displacing, destructive exploitation that helps rich nations but does nothing to develop poor ones.

Produces hard currency to give rich their interest payments .

Law of supply and demand pushes down price of commodities as more countries produce more of what the rich already have, letting the rich pay less to the poor for the same amount of wood etc. Low prices mean local businesses lose money, cut wages and lay off workers.

Best lands devoted to cash crops; poorer land used for food crops, leading to soil erosion.

Food security threatened - poor depend on the whims of the rich for survival. Right now the world grain market is under the control of just three corporations: Dreyfus, of France, and the US-based Cargill and Bunge.

Already overworked women often have to gather food for family while men work for cash.

Monoculture

Diversity and creativity are just too inefficient for neos.

"I'm looking to be entertained, not be taught anything" said Ontario premier Mike Harris, who cut his own arts council while spending taxpayers money on handouts to the blood-and-boobs billionaires of Hollywood, which likes to film movies about New York in Toronto.

Privatization of government-run industries

Massive lay-offs, loss of services to remote or poor areas (not profitable enough). Wages lowered, less spending to power economy. Often the businesses go to the corrupt ("crony capitalism" - see Russia).

Deregulation of monopolies such as water, communications, power etc.

Monopolies gouge customers with high prices and low quality. This hits the poor, especially water privatization.

Less aid, let them eat lies

Despite a promise made by rich nations in 1990 to give 0.2 percent of their GNP to the world's poorest countries, the amount of foreign aid sent to poor Nations has fallen 30 percent during the 90s. The average donation is .05 percent (The equivalent of giving a nickel for a tip after a hundred dollar meal.)

Military

There is one exception to the less-government pattern. Government that helps people is reduced, but death and destruction is still considered worth spending on.

In desperately poor Zambia, military spending went from 23% in the early 80s to 50% in 1987. Nigeria bought 80 battle tanks from the UK at a cost that could have immunized two million children. While tanks are acceptable, immunization would have been "misguided" "overambitious" and not "disiplined". During the 80s Ethiopia, with a GDP of 110$ per person, spent 13$ each per year on the military but only 7$ on health and education combined.

Welfare Kings

IMF "bailouts" give millions of taxpayer dollars to millionaire bankers to "restore their confidence". Since this money adds to the debt, which means more interest payments to bankers, governments are actually paying bankers twice with the same handout! Wonder if it hurts their work ethic...

Loss of democracy

All of these policies are unpopular, so opposition has to be crushed. In wealthy nations corporations "shout down" debate by spending millions and millions of dollars on propaganda to sell neoims via Public Relations firms, think tanks (whose reports are always found worthy of publishing - by corporate-owned media), advertising, and lobbying and bribing politicians. In Canada, the leading think tank is the Frasier Institute, which produces wisdom like: "We must cast away the myth that popular elections are...leading to an improvement in the freedom of Canadians" People unlikely to vote for neos (such as blacks in Florida) are taken off voter lists and disenfranchised in other ways. Protestors are arrested en masse and freed after they have been photographed and identified - so that they can all be rounded up later, when an excuse is found.

A few photos from the past few months alone

In other nations, neoism is simply spread by brute force and terrorism. Thousands of protestors have been killed in "IMF riots" in the third world, this trend is spreading to rich nations as well.

Some of the most spectacular oppression by neoism was in Chile, the Acteal massacre in Mexico, the assassination of thousands of Colombian union and popular-sector leaders over the past several years, the raping to death of American nuns by US-funded "freedom fighters" in El Salvador, and the savage assassination of Bishop Gerardi of Guatemala. Many of these terrorist campaigns are funded, armed and trained by the USA, justified by the "war against drugs".

The IMF-WB and other bankers have a history of "loaning" to the tax-haven fortunes of corrupt dictators and leaving their citizens to pay. Suharto in Indonesia, Houphouet-Boigny in Ivory Coast, Moussa Traore in Mali, Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, the Videla regime in Argentina and "Founder-President-Helmsman-Godking-Messia" Mobutu in Zaire are some examples.

Double standard Justice

While neoism imposes LAW on the poor, neos insist that corporations should be able to write their own "guidelines".

For example, Charlotte Observer Page 17A November 22, 1996:

"Don't deny indigent children legitimate labor

...Many manufacturers want to use foreign subcontractors, but they don't want to exploit children." Why they want higher labor costs is not explained. "They are trying to develop reasonable guidelines for doing business. Labor leaders and child advocates should not sabotage such efforts by demanding that the United Nations and U.S. companies set standards higher than other countries."

Now imagine someone saying that laws against murder are "sabotaging" the "reasonable guidelines" being written by murderers.

(Not much later the "family-values" republican Congress dutifully killed the ChildLabor Deterrence Act)

Orwell spinning in his grave:

"Lean concept of synchronous organizational structures" (GM)
"Normal payroll adjustment" (Wal-Mart)
"Strengthening global effectiveness" (Procter and Gamble)
"Involuntarily separated from the payroll" (Bell Labs)
- Corporate words for "unemployment"

Not practicing what they preach

The effects of neoism are biggest in poor nations, because neos tend not to practise what they preach.

For example UNCTAD estimated that the rich nations that promote neoism spend nearly a billion dollars a day on subsidies to agriculture, most of which goes to rich agribusiness corporations. These corporations then use this money to bribe politicians to urge the third world to cut subsidies. Since the Uruguay round, farm subsidies in rich nations have actually increased.

Oxfam, the British-based anti-hunger network, notes that while the average tarrif in rich nations is 5%, goods from poor nations are 300% more likely to be hit by tarrifs over 15%.

A recent study of the top 100 transnational corporations in the Fortune list found that "virtually all appeared to have sought and gained from industrial and/or trade policies [of their home government] at some point," and "at least 20...would not have survived as independent companies if they had not been saved in some way by their governments." Ruigrok, W. (1996) FT, Jan. 5. McQuaid, K. (1994) Uneasy Partners Baltimore-London, Johns Hopkins University Press

NAFTA happily protects Floridias Everglade-destroying sugar industry against cheap sugar from Mexico (or someday, Cuba).

The number one most economically free nation, Singapore, has one-year jail sentences for buying bubble gum, and no free speech or press. The second most "free" nation in the world, Bahrain, arrested thousands for pro-democracy rallies and has political prisoners as young as ten.

A market economy tends to follow a pattern of "boom and bust". After the "bust" of the great depression, governments ended the cycle by spending during bad times, and taxing in good times to pay for it.

Neo economists opposed this because it works too well: they said that bad times are needed for "cleansing" - putting the innefficient out of business. Today Kensynomics still exists, except that the money spent is usually wasted on the military instead of invested in education etc.

TOP