1. Globalization of market forces creates greater inequality.

Over the past 30 years the globalization of the economy--led by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and transnational corporations--has proceeded at a quickening pace. These institutions have pressured governments to remove barriers to the cross-border flow of money and products. Also, advances in telecommunications and computer technology have made it possible for trillions of dollars in finance capital to zoom around the world, 24 hours a day, searching for the highest rate of interest.

This globalization of market forces has greatly increased the inequality in the world. Just 150 years ago there was not great inequality between the standards of living of people in the global north and those in Africa, Asia and Latin America. But slavery, colonialism and an increasingly integrated world economy transferred wealth from the south to the north.

Now the richest 20 percent of the world's population receives 83% of the world's income, while the poorest 60% of the world's people receive just 5.6% of the world's income. The richest 20% of the world's population in northern industrial countries uses 70% of the world's energy, 75% of the world's metals, 85% of the world's wood, and 60% of the world's food. This 20% minority is also responsible for producing about 75% of the world's environmental pollution.

2. Economic growth will not solve the problems we face.

Defenders of the system keep reassuring us that if we can just get economic growth rates high enough, these problems will be solved. We regularly hear the refain, "a rising tide floats all boats." But for those who don't own boats or have leaky boats, a rising tide means greater inequality between them and the more fortunate. The data shows that during a period of significant growth in world trade (1960 to 1989), global inequality got significantly worse: the ratio between the richest 20% and poorest 20% of the world population went from 30 to 1 to 59 to 1.

We should also remember that unrestrained growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

3. The real function of institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and transnational corporations is not to promote "development" but rather to integrate the ruling elites of third world countries into the global system of rewards and punishments.

Because direct colonial control of the third world is no longer tolerated, northern elites need an indirect way to control policies implemented by third world governments. By getting the elites onto a debt treadmill and promising them new cash flow if they implement policies written in Washington, the IMF and World Bank can control third world policies without ever needing to fire a shot.

This is not a war between "north and south." It is a collaborative effort between first world elites and third world elites. Rich outsiders are allowed to enter the local economy and take away wealth in the form of natural resources or financial profits, and in return the local elites get a cut of the take so they can maintain the armies and police forces that keep them in power. Look next door, to Mexico, for example. That country now ranks fourth in the world (behind the U.S., Japan and Germany) for its number of billionaires, yet for most of the 85 million Mexican people life is more difficult now than it was ten or twenty years ago. If the ruling PRI party did not control the police and military, its blatant corruption and disastrous economic policies would not be tolerated for long.

4. The comparative evidence from many countries shows that the free market policies promoted by the World Bank and IMF are disastrous.

Whether you look at the performance of poor countries such as Somalia, Rwanda and Mozambique or more well-endowed countries such as Ghana, Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines, the free market policies pushed by the World Bank and the IMF have worsened conditions for the majority.

In our book 50 Years Is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, we present evidence from a dozen countries showing a similar pattern: structural adjustment policies may help countries pay off their foreign debts and may create some millionaires but the majority of the population suffers lower wages, reduced social services and less democratic access to the policy-making process.

5. The World Bank and the IMF's policy emphasis on expanding exports has been disastrous for the environment.

As part of the standard structural adjustment package, the World Bank and the IMF encourage countries to expand their exports so they will have more hard currency (dollars, yen, marks) to pay off their foreign debts. But this has led countries to overexploit their natural resources. They are cutting down their forests, which contributes to the greenhouse effect. They are pumping chemicals onto their land to produce export crops such as coffee, tea, tobacco and cotton, thus poisoning their land and water. They are ripping minerals out of the ground at a frantic pace, endangering human lives and the environment in the process. They are overfishing coastal and international waters, which depletes a resource of the global commons. All of this destruction is aimed at one goal: ensuring that questionable debts can be repaid and the wealthy bankers can have more money to gamble with.

6. The "free market" economic model being pushed on third world governments is not one the industrial countries used to develop themselves.

All the wealthy countries-the USA, Japan, Germany, England, France and the recent success stories such as Taiwan and South Korea-used a heavily state-interventionist model that had government play a strong role in directing investment, managing trade and subsidizing chosen sectors of the economy. The United States was in many ways the "mother country" of protectionism, showing other wealthy countries how to do it. Would we have a big electronics industry or nuclear power industry were it not for the massive government subsidy program called the Pentagon?

Yet even though none of the currently rich countries used the free market model, it does not stop the IMF and World Bank from pushing this model on endebted countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It gives hypocrisy a bad name.

7. The system is being rejected by millions of people all over the world.

Globalization-from-above is controlled by wealthy elites and driven by a hunger for more wealth and power. But there is another form of globalization made up of grassroots alliances of human rights activists, trade unions, women's organizations, environmental coalitions and farmers organizations. This "globalization-from-below" does not get as much publicity as the elite form of globalization but it is growing just as rapidly.

This bottom-up form of globalization does not have the amount of money or guns possessed by the elites but it does have moral authority. Just think about the contrast between the dominant system's focus on greed and our focus on meeting human needs.

This alternative vision calls for more openness and accountability by institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and transnational corporations. It calls for raising wages, health and safety standards in the third world to bring them up to first world levels, rather than driving first world standards downward in a desperate effort to keep capital from fleeing to lower wage areas. It calls for stewardship of natural resources that will preserve something of the environment for our grandhcildren to enjoy. It seeks to redefine self-interest so that it is more in line with the common interest of humanity.

The choice confronting us today is which of these two global visions we prefer.