These people claim they are so concerned about poverty, yet there is nothing more predictable than that the policies they espouse will create, extend and entrench mass poverty. The protestors hate globalisation as the expression of the success of capitalism, and of the collapse of socialism. Globalisation is simply the application of liberal capitalism on a global stage. And liberal capitalism is the only form of society which has sustainably delivered mass prosperity, mass longevity, mass freedom and mass democracy. It does so because it allows a myriad of economic agents to make their own choices, through property rights, the rule of law and free and open political processes.
Liberal capitalism is the most dynamic social system humanity has ever created.
But it remains a boon. The increase in mass prosperity and longevity, the creation of mass freedom and mass democracy, is such a stunning achievement that no-one who does not seek to understand the nature of that achievement, who does not acknowledge that achievement, can be said to be seriously concerned with human welfare. We are so used to seeing people accept uncritically that opposition to capitalism and all its works is the only possible sign of moral virtue that we do not stop often enough and consider the bankruptcy of such a position. It is contemptible that people who proclaim themselves deeply concerned with human welfare to pay no heed to such unparalleled achievement. For all its, at times apparently relentless, banality, capitalism, at its core, is based on the mass application of individual choice, of institutions which protect and foster mutually beneficial exchanges which have proved to be a profound force for human liberation.