Remember these people? They’d show up to protest G-7 meetings as well as disrupt other events. Have they finally gone away? Did they every really have a point or did they just want to protest for the sake of protesting?
I guess you can only spend so much time blaming Starbucks and Walmart for all the problems of the world.
Hardly…there are still a lot of anti-globalization folks on this message board in fact (though they probably don’t see themselves in this light), especially among some of the disgruntled ‘outsourcing is teh evil!’ American’s.
As to their point, I think it varies from group to group and even individual to individual. My younger sister for instance joined in the protest a few years ago on the basis that we (a.k.a. The West) is exploiting the 3rd world nations by making them produce goods and services for our tastes instead of (to paraphrase her argument) ‘letting them continue to peacefully manufacture their own home grown goods which are SO much better’. Other people/groups probably see it more as a threat to their own nations manufacturing and jobs (gonzomax for instance to give but one example from here). Others may see some kind of one world government conspiracy (several of my more loony libertarian friends fall into this category).
There are probably some reasons I’m missing as well, as these sentiments may run deep in some folks but the reasons are widely (even wildly) varying and are based (in many cases) on emotion instead of rationality.
I really don’t know if this is a debate or if you’re just pitting people who are part of the Anti-Globalization (I hate the term) movement in the wrong forum. I’m not really a part of it but I will attempt to defend these people from your facile lampooning of them.
The Anti-Globalization movement represented and still represents to the extent that it is still intact a vast array of groups who had problems with the status quo. A number of issues were involved including to name just a few:
the destruction of indigenous cultures worldwide by the force of globalised capital, ie the homogenising effects of frachise expansion, and market consolidation.
the place of corporations in the running of the world’s affairs. How much should a country’s government be pro-business etc.
the environmental degradation caused by a number of multi-nationals
excessive exploitation of the economically weak, in sweatshops, on farms and the like by globalised business.
I do not agree with some of the tactics of these individuals but for the most part they are/were well meaning. Some of these issues have become mainstream. The environment is a concern for a huge percentage of the populace not just AG nuts. The Fair Trade movement is successful and many businesses have modified their models to become more ethical.
It may all be moot anyway. This paper says “in tariff-equivalent terms, the explosion in global transport costs has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”