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1,
Alternatives to Economic Globalization (A better world is possible)
John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, editors
(A reprot of the international forum on globalization)

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

p88-89

Diversity

A few decades ago, it was still possible to leave home and go someplace where the architecture was different, the landscope was different, and the language, llifestyle, dress and values were different.Today, farmers and filmmakers in France and India and millions of people elsewhere are protesting to maintain that diversity. Tens of thousands of communities around the world had perfected local resource mangement systems that worked but are being undermined by corporate-led globalizaion.Yet cultural,biological,social,and economic diversity are central to a dignified ,interesting, and healthy life.

Dicersity is key to the vitality,resilience,and innovativecapacity of any living system. So too for human experience and potential is relected in cultural diversity, which provides a sort of intellectual,and spiritual accomplishment and creates a sense of identity, community, and meaning. Economic diversity is the foundation of resilient, stable, energy-efficient, self-reliant local economies that serve the needs of people, communities, and nature. Biological diversity is essential to the complex,self-regulating, self-regenerating processes of the ecosystem from which all life and wealth unltimately flow.

Equity
(P 98)
Under the current rules, economic globalization has widened the gap between rich and poor countries, between the rich and poor in most communities, and between women and men. The social dislocations and tessions that result have become among the greatest threat to peace and security the world over. Greater equity both among nations and inside them would reinforce democaracy and sustainable communities.

Economic Democracy

P 25

The current and future well-being of humanity depends on transfroming the relationships of power within and between societies toward more democratic and mutually accountable modes of managing hunman affaires that are self-organizing, power-sharing, and minimize the need for coercive central authority. Economic democracy, which involves the equitable participation of all people in the ownership of the productive assets on which their livelihood depends, is essential to such a transformation because the concentration of economic power is the Achilles heel of political democracy, as the experience of corporate globaliztion demonstrates.

p26

Although rarely noted, economic democracy is as essential to the efficient functioning of economies as sound public regulation. because today`s markets respond only to money, they are overly attentive to the wants of the rich and neglect to the most basic needs of the poor.Economic democracy is also a necessary foundation of individual,community,and national economic self-determination--the ablity to determine one`s own national priorities and the rules of one`s economic life- because it helps secure a political voice for each person.

p336

Some things we consume can`t be produced just down the road, such as coffee and cocoa for the billions who live in colder climes. For these and other products, a vibrant fair trade of alternative trading market has emerged around the world.Whereas most corporations treat the producers as a faceless factor of production whose costs are to be minimized, fair trade organizations strive for the opposite-living wages and safe and dignified working conditions for developing-country srtisans and farmers.

one reason why fair trade organizaions can afford to pay well is that they reduce the number of middlement and minimize overhead costs. They often work with producer cooperatives that ensure safe and dignified working conditions and allow producers a say in how their products are created and sold. Cooperatives are also encouraged to provide benefits such as health care, child care, and access to loans and to reinest profits into their communities --for example, to build clinics or their community projects. Some fair trade organizations work to shift processing and packaging activities to the developing worlds so that as much value-added work as possible remains in the producer country.