We Were Taught In Economics 101

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That free trade benefits everybody. I have apples, and you have oranges, we should trade. That way we both get what we want, right?

But what if my apples are genetically engineered, and covered with pesticides? And what if I don’t pay my workers a living wage? And what if my multinational corporation buys the other farms?

You probably would be outraged, and not want to do business with me. But that’s where the World Trade Organization steps in. This group of unelected people resolves trade disputes between countries. WTO panels have ruled against a European Union ban on beef treated with growth hormones, and against U.S. efforts to protect endangered sea turtles from shrimping.

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank work in similar, undemocratic ways. Countries in debt turn to these organizations for financial help. But to receive money the impoverished countries must agree to dramatically cut spending on things like education and health care. They must also make it easier for foreign corporations to make money in the country.

We were lied to in Economics 101. Free trade doesn’t benefit everybody. It benefits a select few. For example, the top 1 percent of the world’s population has 38 percent of the wealth. About one-fifth of humanity lives in absolute poverty, on less than $1 a day.

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What can you do?
It’s not enough to reform these secretive groups. We must reclaim our lives from corporations, which have the same rights as humans, sometimes more (an 1886 Supreme Court ruling, Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, said that a corporation is a “natural person” protected by the Bill of Rights). The international movement against corporate control has been labeled “anti-globalization,” but that’s absurd. Globalization can be a wonderful thing, if we globalize justice and democracy instead of greed and domination.