Re: Are global institutions up to the challenges of globalization?

Description: NGOs are getting too big for their britches.

Transcript:

They would have to be radically redone in some respects.  Like take the World Bank.  It . . .  It . . . Particularly now with Robert ________, who is a trade guy, running in – trade is something which they push, they endorse right?  I mean but what have they done in order to . . . to . . . to help say     . . .  Now let me talk about the poor countries which lack funds, okay?  They finally . . .  They __________ come around; not their NGOs necessarily, right?  Because they also have people who, you know . . . some of the old leftists, and some populists, and some generally misguided NGOs.  And people are inflecting their own little experience; objecting to this and saying it will lead to unemployment.  It will lead to all kinds of problems.  What have they done to help the poor countries build up the institutional system from which they can now proceed from an earlier attitude of anti-globalization to a current attitude of pro-globalization. 

So we have . . .  We are now trying to __________ like the Soviet system which was broken up from a completely controlled system with a little bit of, you know, black market activity into a modern system where suddenly you didn’t have the institutional support for it.  So my . . . my friend Jeffrey Sachs, you know, who is a technocrat and who writes . . .  I’m afraid he’s going to do for Africa what he did for Russia.  Because technocracy is the big bane of many economists who simply feel, you know, they don’t understand the reality . . . the context within which . . . the institutional context within which you want to place these things.  So even advocated shock therapy.  And of course it cost Russia quite a bit.  And the reason why you could not go straight into markets like that that fast was, you know as he was advocating, was because the whole system was built up around everything education, security, etc. being around enterprises – big enterprise.  Now you say big enterprise is going to be allowed to fail like in a market system of the United States type.  You don’t have a Chapter 11 there, which is the bankruptcy law.  You don’t have ___________ people getting into unemployment.  They don’t have educational support.  They don’t have medical support because they revolve around the factories.  So that was a case where you really . . . it’s a most dramatic example of how a system which had not even . . . which was . . . which went very much too rapidly into . . . into . . . from the traditional “no change” system to a modern, “change all the time” system, right?  So they didn’t evolve.  So in the same way the developing countries were readily-sheltered.  They were not going . . . getting into international trade in a big way.  Now they want to because they are . . . they . . . they buy the idea which people like, you know, myself and others have propagated – that trade is good for them.  They’ve seen it actually work for many countries like the far eastern countries and so on.  So they want to join in but they’re afraid.  It’s like asking . . . because they don’t have any of the institutional systems.  Do you know that we (38:52) in the United States in 1962 had our first adjustment assistance program?  That’s 45 years ago.  And that was during the time of the President Kennedy’s regime.  And Kennedy __________ trade negotiations under ____________ auspices.  And George ______ of the AFL-CIO and he, President Kennedy, jointly ____________ to buy the support of the unions and the . . . and the working class – the adjustment assistance program.  So as . . . as you got into this system of international trade and more . . . more intensively, you had to put up an institutional system to assist people who might be laid off, right?  Now we don’t have that in the developing countries.  So the World Bank should have been . . .  I have been writing for years, and you know those guys would never listen.  Finally they are beginning to think in terms of providing the technical assistance and the funds to be able to get people to come out and to venture forth, because otherwise they hesitate.  They hesitate.

I think one of the remarkable things which, you know, which just happened in the 20th century is really the growth of the NGOs or the civil society.  And you see that particularly in . . . in democratic countries.  Like in India there are three million non-governmental organizations, many of them mom and pop.  We have 45,000, I’m told, in Russia itself.  So while they __________ throw our Carnegie and Ford Foundation and so on, you know the big guys, which doesn’t bother me very much, their own indigenous people are very important like they are in our own country.  To me good governance is really essential for prosperity, for a sense of belonging to the community and so on.  You can belong to . . . to a community which is led by a corrupt government for example and so on.  So I think for all of that, it is very important that we have this civil society.  Because it is really . . .  Even if the government (01:12:23) wants to do good things, it has no way of knowing what the problems at the ground level are.  And the NGOs . . . a civil society provides you with the eyes and ears of good governance.  You may have, you know . . .  You can’t pull your . . .  You have to pay a tax.  But if you don’t know that evolution is occurring, you know . . . your law is sitting on the books in New Delhi where the . . . you know, the capital of the country.  And it’s happening somewhere in, you know, 50 miles from Bangalore.  How are we going to find it out unless there is a little NGO or, you know, a democratic system where this is allowed to function ___________ and so on.  So I think the civil society is so important.  And we often make this point in relation to . . . on the right wing . . . on the, you know, right would say don’t . . .  Leave things to the private sector because they are close to the ground, and they have a profit motive.  So they will . . .  They really should be left to do things . . .  Bureaucrats don’t ever have that.  So I’m making a similar point on the side of the left as it were, which is to say they have the altruistic motive to do good, which is to correspond to the profit motive and the right wing argument for . . . for not intervening.  And they have the political . . . to work with local knowledge.  So I . . .  I think the most important thing for us is to encourage the civil society, and to support it everywhere.  But this doesn’t mean that we must have Oxfam and . . .  I mean these are gigantic businesses today.  You know it’s worth billions of dollars being spent.  I mean Oxfam is half the size of the World Bank, believe it or not.  And it’s just . . .  They get into everything.  They should just stick to famines and, you know, flood relief and so on.  But they’re fantastic.  But this is the trouble.  I would say I’m against big size, let me put it this way.  Both in NGOs and, you know, people getting too big and leading to monopolistic practices and so on.  And I think, you know, strengthening media, democracies, and so on – that’s the only way to get good governance.  And I think this is where we ought to encourage . . . increase activity by our system.  And preferably through NGOs themselves and through . . .  Because if governments get involved, immediately it creates problems.