Dave Winer couldn’t figure out what the goals of the anti-globalization folks were (they seem pretty obvious to me), but linked to this unintentionally hilarious article trying to explain the goals. According to the article,
The majority of the world consists of small countries with small economies full of small enterprises, exactly like your independent developers. But what increasingly happens is that the umberella organizations of globalization : the World Bank, WTO and IMF have policies, which in the name of Free Trade throw these people to the wolves.
This has to be one of the single stupidest anti-globalization claims I’ve seen so far.
You’d probably think that given the high labor costs and extensive regulations that it would be more expensive to start a small business in a country like the United States or somewhere in Europe. But the reality is that the most expensive places in the world to start new businesses are in developing countries.
Why? Because of layers and layers of protectionist policies which are designed to protect entrenched interests at the expense of innovation and new businesses. Add to that the endemic corruption, and it is hardly surprising that the only serious capital accumulation in such countries is driven by large international corporations.
The obvious thing to do would be to get rid of the protectionist policies and stop giving favors to special interests, but anti-globalization folks have a fit whenever the World Bank or International Monetary Fund tries to do this (their critiques of the pointlessness of IMF and World Bank loans are accurate, however).