While protecting inefficient domestic monopolies is generally inefficient and should be avoided, protecting a domestic market from predatory pricing by those who fail to include full production, social and environmental costs in pricing is essential to true economic efficiency and should be encouraged. Through grassroots initiatives, people the world over are struggling to create local economies based on principles of participation, self-reliance, equity, and sustainability. The World Bank and other official agencies should either find ways to support them or get out of their way. The unsustainability of modern life is grounded in a materialistic, reductionistic scientific worldview that is at odds with reality. There is need for a fundamental cultural change that is in fact underway.
Economic globalization has obvious benefits for transnational corporations.
The single minded pursuit of economic growth has proven to be socially destructive. We should be clear that our goal is to develop healthy human societies. The transfer of the functions of the family to the market is at the heart of social breakdown. Publicly funded services cannot replace the family as the basic social unit. We need to create urban environments that give families a clear role and support them in that role.