There are thousands of alternatives
For years now, we have been told that free trade and economic globalization are “the only way to go.” These rules, we were told, are not policy options but “economic facts” that are irreversible. They called this the TINA factor: there is no alternative.
In reality, free trade rules are an ideological choice. They represent a view that sovereign states should let the “invisible hand” of the market decide everything. Under the current trade system, public services like health care and education should be privatized. Water, like oil, should be bought and sold at market prices without limits. Plants and animals – life itself – should be patented and privately controlled.
This is nothing more than an economic straightjacket. The idea that a “one-size-fits-all” set of trading rules should work equally for both rich and poor countries has been proven completely false. Numerous studies by the United Nations and even the World Bank attest to a growing gap between rich and poor people around the world.
Thankfully, there is an alternative to this kind of thinking. It’s called diversity! We must replace the TINA factor with the TATA factor: there are thousands of alternatives.
The International Forum on Globalization
The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) is an alliance of 60 activists, scholars, economists, researchers and writers. The IFG was founded to stimulate new thinking, joint activity, and public education in response to economic globalization.
Representing over 60 organizations in 25 countries, IFG associates come together out of a shared concern that the world's corporate and political leadership is undertaking a restructuring of global politics and economics that may prove as historically significant as any event since the Industrial Revolution. This restructuring is happening at tremendous speed, with little public disclosure of the profound consequences affecting democracy, human welfare, local economies, and the natural world.
www.ifg.org/programs.htm
Hemispheric Social Alliance
In April 1998, over 1,000 people from nearly every nation of the hemisphere gathered for a Peoples' Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile. They expressed their collective rejection of the dominant "neo-liberal" agenda that promotes trade and investment liberalization, deregulation, privatization, and market-driven economics as the formula for development -- a formula that has been disastrous for most peoples of the hemisphere.
www.web.ca/~comfront/alts4americas/eng/eng.pdf
Focus on the Global South
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