The anti-globalization protests in Montreal, where the World Trade Organization is meeting, didn't turn violent until the second day. But lest some people consider that a lethargic start, the protesters did from the get-go condemn virtually every ill under the sun, from the deportation of illegal immigrants to AIDS in Africa. Now the WTO can't solve all the world's problems, but if the issue is poverty and inequality, the organization can insist on freer trade.
It's never entirely clear what, exactly, the protesters are for or against, other than they're awfully mad and looking for things to smash, preferably luxury cars that some unfortunate citizens happened to have parked nearby. The assumption seems to be that the protesters are demonstrating in some inchoate way against global capitalism. If that's the case, they're wrong.
One rarely gets to perform experiments in the social sciences. But the world has tested free markets versus state intervention on a huge scale over the past 60 years, and the results are in. Free markets don't just make countries rich. They bring critical improvements in the well-being of the worst off. For instance, many African governments can't afford anti-HIV drugs because their citizens aren't rich enough to pay enough taxes. Our government can.
Contrary to what anti-globalists say, it is not exploitation when multinationals offer poor people better jobs than they currently have, even if those jobs don't pay as well as an associate professorship of political science at York University. Ask the people of Hong Kong or South Korea how they feel about open trade and competition. Hong Kong has neither attractive land nor other resources, yet it went from rickshaw to Rolls in one lifetime by the simple economic strategy of not having an economic strategy. Trade liberalization works.
It's high time to apply this model to agriculture, which is what brings 25 trade ministers from WTO member states to Montreal. Our government could benefit Canadians simply by removing its own barriers to such trade. But agriculture and farming tend to tug on the heartstrings in ways that impede economic rationality, so probably the only way to lower trade barriers is via multilateral treaties. Let's do it for the poor. People in far away countries who earn less than one American dollar a day die from restrictive trade policies that make food too expensive.
A recent column in the Citizen argued that Mexico has the right to protect its farmers from cheap food. That's fine for the farmers, but who is prepared to walk the slums of Mexico City and wish upon those inhabitants that they should pay more for food? A certain snobbery underlies some anti-globalization protests, a fear that a wave of tawdry North American neon vulgarity is about to sweep the globe. There are worse things than Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, such as brutality or cholera. But in any event, McCulture is not carried by jute imported from Bangladesh nor by potatoes exported from Idaho. Starving the poor won't raise their level of cultural vibrancy nor keep it high.
Money cannot buy happiness, it is true. But malnutrition makes happiness hard to pursue, and starvation makes it impossible. The WTO is right to try to liberalize trade, and the protesters, even the peaceful ones, are wrong to object.
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