Privatizing governance makes it inaccessible to citizens and thus eliminates opportunities for active engagement and monitoring of the process. She firmly reiterated, The WTO is here to stay. My provocation to you is that we need to make it more accountable because right now it is an abusive system. In response to a question about keeping the WTO versus creating a new organization, Prof. Sassen responded by saying that the WTO required enormous efforts in setting up and that if it goes, another supranational organization may not emerge. Globalisation has its own Achilles heel it can work on improving.
Arbitration is exclusive and unfair.
Sassen made it clear that she is not a policymaker and approaches these issues from a theoretical perspective. Answering a question about the cultural consequences of globalization, Prof. Sassen made a distinction between the organizational aspect she had been addressing and the separate consumer aspect by which the rest of the world is absorbing Americana . It is primarily the elite who strongly voice the benefits of globalization, while the working class and immigrants aspire to reach some level of comfort with this belief. Prof. Sassen pointed out recently fragmented urban topography where urban glamour zones in the world s global cities co-exist with areas of neglect. Sassen discusses the issues of trade and globalization with the 2001 Great Decisions Committee.