A dearth of workable solutions?

15. There is no single universal solution in sight that will promote just the benefits of Globalization to all people: giving the same advice to everyone simply has not and will not work; this is what has been called "the fallacy of composition”.

16. A balanced and realistic value-free response to Globalization is difficult, especially if one considers the current reality of a unipolar world with a North-centered and North/transnationals-dominated economic order. (14)

17. On the one hand, the transnational corporations cannot be allowed to continue to duck and dive, invest in smoke screens, espouse gradualist solutions and attempt to derive maximum publicity from piecemeal changes. They must be persuaded, cajoled or even forced to change.

On the other hand , new insights are emerging as to the appropriate mix of market and government activities needed to complement each other. (4)

18. Whatever the response, promoting the economic benefits of Globalization requires mechanisms to prevent its excesses, because there is a clear trade-off between market efficiency and the social welfare of workers and peasants.

19. Turning again to the IMF, they see the policy responses to counter Globalization to include a mix of two elements:

a) ‘safety net interventions’ such as targeted subsidies, cash compensations, severance payments to and retraining of sacked employees, wage subsidies, and public works programs, and

b) ‘fiscal policies’ (the most direct tool of redistribution) such as levying highly progressive taxes, distribution of shares in privatized enterprises, and increased government spending in health and education (i.e. reallocation of spending to the social sector), as well as higher minimum wages, good unemployment benefits, job protection, keeping inflation low, subsidizing lower quality commodities, and giving better access to credit, justice and public services. (11)

How this is to be achieved, and whether the IMF plans to go for broke for these changes remains unsaid in the source here cited.

20. The truth is that, in the real world, the more radical visions or sustainable solutions calling for deeper social and environmental change have been diluted or silenced further with the onslaught of Globalization. In a mix of insensibility and unresponsive, the prevalent attitude has been to selectively reject (depending on the bias) the main features of any criticism and to keep important issues from surfacing to critical consciousness. This is what has been called "the exclusion fallacy” (“...if we have not considered it, it is not important...”).

21. In the international scene of (mercenary) technical development assistance, for example, issues of substance are turned into technical matters by paid consultants while underlying more structural issues get obfuscated. Or, what amounts to the same, aid agencies too often remain unwilling to respond politically to political situations. (3)