The protesters at Seattle shocked the world. The general public, thinking that globalization was helping everyone, could not believe that fifty thousand people could take to the streets to protest such a grand and beautiful idea. The protesters, belittled for wearing silly costumes and having pink hair, were dismissed as radicals, communists, anarchists, and people simply wanting to break stuff. But the truly shocking event at Seattle was that talks were suspended. Not only did those 'radicals' take to the streets; they actually succeeded in their mission.
The harms of corporate globalization are beginning to show around the world, and the worlds' citizens refuse to remain quiet. The 'not-for-profit sector,' the growing group of global citizens that are against corporate globalization, welcome more people to its ranks every day around the world.
The current path of globalization, where corporations are at its heart, must be rethought because its hypothetical and elusive benefits do not justify the harms it causes. One of the major difficulties with the present system of corporate globalization is that multi-national corporations are extremely difficult to control or check. Corporations, by their very nature, are centers of wealth (Mitsubishi is the 22nd largest economy in the world, GM is the 26th, Ford the 30th) that can exert immense political power. National governments have little power to control these multi-national institutions. After all, what right does the United States have to tell Nike what it can or cannot do in Vietnam? Multi-national corporations can only be checked by international law. The difficulty is that international law by its very nature is extremely loose and difficult to enforce.
Since the three Bretton Woods institutions (International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization) support corporations, we cannot appeal to them to support citizen complaints against corporations. That leaves only one international organization: the United Nations, an almost bankrupt institution due to unpaid membership dues (the United States has not paid its dues since 1984). This near bankruptcy has forced the UN to broker deals with corporations for funding. Furthermore, since the UN is composed of member nations, the interests of nations play an important role. Powerful, industrialized nations that benefit from corporate exploits and are influenced by corporate money hinder the development of international regulations. Under-funded and restricted by the interests of its member states, the UN has difficulty creating and enforcing laws upon corporations. Without any checks or oversight, corporations have a very free hand in their actions and policies in the world.
The current path of globalization is detrimental to the environment. In the United States of America, we protect our natural resources from destruction by massive regulation and legislation by the government. Emissions, equipment, and methods are tested so that they will not cause detrimental affects to our land. However, such regulation costs a massive amount of money that poorer countries cannot afford.
Third world nations, with less ability to legislate and regulate environmental standards, are easily exploited by large American corporations promising to self-regulate and to pump money into their economies. Frequently, American companies in foreign nations have built pumps and factories that would horrify Americans if they were built in the United States. For example, in Ecuador, Texaco built an oil well that would grossly violate American standards. However, in Ecuador, where environment standards are low and the bankrupt government does not have the ability to enforce the few regulations it does have, Texaco went unscathed. After a period of time, the leakage of Texaco's oil well became so terrible that indigenous farmers nearby could thrust a stick a foot into the ground and find Texaco's refuse bubbling under the surface. The local farmers, now unable to sustain themselves, suffer from complete poverty and even starvation.
This is not an isolated incident. Corporations, unlike governments and people, have the chief goal of profit. The notion that they will self-regulate at financial cost is absurd. If corporations can increase their profits by ignoring environmental concerns, they are not going to think twice about doing so.
The main moral justification for corporate globalization is that it will help the world's poor. The theory is this: as giant, conglomerate companies invest and move into a poverty-stricken area, they provide jobs for local workers and build an infrastructure that can later be used to rise the nation out of its poverty.
There are several problems with this theory. First, there is no guarantee that the corporations will help the region's populace. The empirical data is in: since the 1980s, when the current push toward globalization went into full swing, real wages in Africa have dropped and real wages in Latin America have grown at extraordinarily slow rates. Imagine this scenario: a corporation decides to buy the land of sustenance farmers in a third world nation. The land that was formerly used to grow sustenance for the local population is turned into commercial farming of cocoa beans. The farmers, now without work, are willing to work for virtually nothing to drive the tractors that have replaced their 'inefficient' plows and oxen. The unlucky ones who cannot find work starve; the lucky ones subsist on less then they had before because now they have to pay high prices to import the food they used to grow. The only winner is the corporation, which reaps tremendous profits on the cocoa beans in the international market.
Second, this theory is based on a one-size-fits-all notion that history has proven does not work. Past attempts to impose a political or economic order on a specific nation that was devoid of that nations' cultural or historical circumstance has failed. To attempt to impose economic orders on nations defy both physical, environmental, and cultural diversity. To say that the fields of northern China can grow wheat in the same exact fashion as the American mid-west is preposterous and ridiculous. Different economic institutions are needed in each case.
Third, third-world nations find it difficult to implement labor rights and regulations for the same reasons as they do environmental regulations. Corporations, because of lack of labor rights, can exploit the populace and will do so because it will increase company profits. After all, sweatshops are extremely profitable. Exploitation: does the word connote some sort of benefit or help for the victim? I didn't think so either.
Another problem with the current path of globalization is that it denies the principle of democracy. Americans should be outraged that our trade policy is made behind closed doors in international institutions, and agreements are signed to which the public is not privy. All over the world, corporations, and the Bretton Woods institutions that support them, make policy decisions that affect the global populace. Since the public has no way of holding these corporations accountable, nor are they subject to the laws of democracy, they violate the most basic principles of a free world.
The World Trade Organization has always supported corporations against member nations that raise environmental concerns. The United States of America has had to weaken its Clean Air Act and labeling requirements protecting dolphins to accord with the agreements made in the World Trade Organization. In Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell wanted to build an oil well in the Niger River Valley but the indigenous people did not want them on their land. Shell bribed Nigeria's dictator at the time for the use of the land. When the indigenous people persisted in their protest, Shell armed and supplied Nigerian troops who burned villages and massacred thousands of the native people. Many of the indigenous people were forced to flee their homes and now live in squalor in refugee camps. Shell does not have the right to decide what is best for the indigenous people of Nigeria, nor do corporations have the right to set standards on air emissions. Trade policy must be made subject to the forces of democracy, and corporations must be held accountable to the public.
The current path of globalization has many harms: unchecked and uncontrollable corporations, whose bottom line is profit, exploit natural and human resources and violate democratic principles. The projected benefits of this path have not materialized. Supporters echo the maxim "the rising tides lift all boats," but the world has seen that the rising tide lifts yachts and crashes poor fishing boats under its deadly waves.
One could argue that despite all the harms presented, we must still continue our current policy of globalization because there is no alternative. But there is: instead of a centralized global economy that separates the consumer from the production process, we could create a system of healthy, regional economies. Under this system, production methods would be more visible, encouraging broader consumer awareness, and resulting in greater care and respect for unique ecological characteristics of a region. This decentralized vision would create many benefits because economic institutions would be tailored to the unique region.
Because this view does not deny historical and cultural circumstances, it would decrease the exploitation of natural and human resources and encourage democracy. We could bring such a vision into place by supporting programs in micro-lending, community land trusts, local currencies, consumer-supported farming, and grassroots community renewal. Taken together, such programs present an integrated vision that would lead to a sustainable, decentralized "economy of permanence" that nurtures the earth and its inhabitants. That is an alternative that promises hope for the future.