by Aaron Lukas

Aaron Lukas is an analyst with the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies.

March 1, 2002

The much-maligned World Economic Forum meeting in New York wrapped up earlier this month without much fanfare. Corporate big-wigs jetted home to eat babies and oppress the proletariat in peace, government-types returned to the urgent business of running other peoples' lives, and a rather pathetic pack of street protesters slunk back to their dorm rooms and union halls to plot the revolution. Indeed, the meeting was so lackluster that reporters were reduced to making snide remarks about the "sumptuous Park Avenue hotel" (Agence France Press), "swanky parties" (AP), and "posh galas" (Cox News Service) that the summiteers attended.

Thankfully, policy-watchers such as myself -- yes, the life of a wonk is grand -- had alternative entertainment this year: the World Social Forum, or WSF, that met in the socialist-run city of Porto Alegre, Brazil. No word on the relative posh- or swanky-ness of the facilities, but we do know that the official theme of that gathering was "Another world is possible." And to hear the WSF's organizers tell it, that other world has lots of fans. They're gleefully boasting about the 50,000 anti-capitalist faithful that attended. The implication, I suppose, is that the ability to attract so many people means they're on to something good.

Then again, local soccer matches attract far larger crowds. Should we conclude that Brazilians care more about pampering pretty-boy athletes than they do about achieving social justice? That the country would be better off if Pelé were setting economic policy?

In any case, the loony left has a annoying tendency to exaggerate attendance at their events. The Porto Alegre head count seems to mysteriously increase by the day. During the anti-globalization protests in Quebec last April, activists whined non stop about inaccurate reporting on a march that "some estimates" put at above 60,000 participants. I suppose that's why many street crusaders have decided that it's safer to dispense with counting altogether. I was in a bar during the Quebec protests, for example, chatting with the press liaison for a well-known NGO. She confided, after a few pints of Eau Benite, that she had been pulling crowd numbers, out of an orifice that shall remain nameless, and then feeding them to mainstream reporters. Yet she was miffed that most journalists weren't using her figures. Those tedious corporate media stooges -- always hung up on "facts" and "data." Don't they realize that the righteousness of the cause outweighs narrow-minded considerations of "truth"?

The only thing the activists hate more than corporate-media reporters is not having those reporters around. Thus, the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy -- an organization named in the same tradition that gives us 350 lb. linebackers called "Tiny" -- has complained that U.S. news coverage of Porto Alegre was "thin and fleeting," so that the public ended up learning little about events there. The implication is that Big Media intentionally smothers exciting announcements from the summit.

In reality, though, the summit wasn't newsworthy unless you didn't already know that socialists tend to demand more socialism. That thin-necked, humorless college professors and bombastic union heavies pound the table in favor of wealth redistribution is hardly front-page material. Questions such as "Should corporations be banished, or merely reformed?" and practical tips for achieving the "ultimate goal of a socialist planned economy" were hot topics on this year's agenda. And if you're fuzzy on how utopia will be achieved, here's a no-nonsense suggestion from the WSF's Web site: "We propose that the participatory presuppositions are extended to all levels because they enable the common citizens to improve their lives and make a straight distribution of public fundings to the poor."

In English, that means that we need more government, and it needs to give us -- meaning them: the wise arbiters of social and economic justice -- more cash.

It's interesting: evil corporations supposedly have hapless governments by the gonads, yet the answer to literally all the world's problems is an expansion of the state. One thing you learn after hanging around these meetings: lefty activists are genetically incapable of blaming government for anything; whatever's wrong, it's always the businessmen's fault. (Humanity's darker traits, such as greed and dishonesty, presumably vanish when one enters the bureaucracy.)

The "participatory presuppositions" to be extended to "all levels" means that the majority will, especially at the local level, should more regularly trump individual rights. Lest we voice some sympathy for that position, be aware that "democracy" in the WSF worldview is considered legitimate only when it leads to policies the activists favor. "The people" can have only one genuine vision, and that's a collectivist vision; the existence of free market policies is self-evident proof that the system has been corrupted. Thus, a California referendum to ban the gasoline additive MME is an expression of the popular will, to be respected by Washington at all costs, while Montanans voting to open more state land to commercial logging is a travesty of justice that must be overturned by astute federal bureaucrats.

And by the way, because capitalist democracies are self-evidently corrupt, violence against their citizens is deemed perfectly acceptable. The increasing incidence of low-level leftist violence against persons and property around the Western world illustrates this thinking. For example, the New York Times reported that the thuggish anti-globalization icon Jose Bové, best known for vandalizing McDonald's restaurants in France, joined local farmers at last year's WSF summit in attacking a privately-owned farm that grows genetically-modified soybeans. And at the WEF meeting in New York, street protestors once again struck a blow for equality by defacing the window of a Starbucks. That's the radical left's vision of democracy: terrorizing their opponents and violating their property rights -- tactics to which collectivists throughout history have always resorted.

Yes, "another world" is possible. We could return to the policies that have kept the world's poorest people mired in misery. We could embrace the language of victimization, convince the developing world that their problems are caused -- and can only be solved -- by the advanced economies. We could reject the blessings of technology and condemn billions to an early death. We could turn our backs on economic liberty.

We could do all of these things -- but why on earth would we want to?