G20 fun and games

As those anarchists out there know, Melbourne Australia was the host for the G20 summit this year. G20 is a grouping of the top 20 Industrialised nations, plus a few optional extras like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Most of the big money men of International Finance and Governors of the various Reserve Banks were present and they were discussing a multitude of things, such as Poverty reduction and the effect of Global Warming on Economies.

Anyway, like most of the big gatherings of members of the international Finance or Business community, the meeting attracted violent protests. In fact, activists from Europe and the US apparently travelled to Australia to participate in the protest. The violence didn’t look great on the television cameras as Police and Protesters clashed.

Now my point is, why do people protest at these events and why do they always turn violent? If I were an activist, I would think non-violent protest is the way to go. Get on the cameras sure, make a loud noise but let the message get through, not the violence. Blockading a street through sitting down is always a good option. Sure the cops will move you, but at least they will be gentle about it, rather than to come out with all batons blazing like last weekend.

And besides, I am curious whether Globalisation has actually caused harm to the world. Someone posted a link to this article when I mentioned that Globalisation had been a source of Good in the world.

http://www.attac.org/fra/toil/doc/cepr05.htm

This article concerned a scorecard that the authors put together comparing the years before globalisation (1960-1980) with the years after (1980 – 2000). It was mainly concentrating on GDP per person and social indicators like Life expectancy and infant mortality. The authors found that GDP per person actually decreased after globalisation became a factor (1980-2000) as did life expectancy of low to middle income people.

However I do have an issue with some of the conclusions stated. Firstly, there is the assumption that globalisation wasn’t a factor in the 1960’s. International business has been around for centuries. (East India Trading Company anyone?) so why did the authors focus on the 80’s as a starting point for the effect of globalisation.

Secondly, GDP per person is not a good measurement of whether people are living in poverty. If the GDP remains the same, but population increases, the GDP per person will decrease. This article does not say anything about population growth in the years mentioned.

According to the World Bank (where the author got his stats from), they only got around to defining extreme poverty and measuring it from 1981. The definition was those people who are living on less than $1 a day.

In the years between 1981 and today, there are fewer people living in poverty. Generally speaking, these decreases in poverty occurred in Asia (mainly China and India) but as they had the largest number of poor people and they have also been the main beneficiaries of globalisation this is a fairly accurate reflection of the good in the concept.

So for mine, I think globalisation is actually a good and positive force in the world. Free trade is the one thing that may actually alleviate poverty in my lifetime. To protest against it is like protesting against penicillin.