In advance of the conference, he welcomed the prospect of demonstrations, thereby encouraging tactics of intimidation toward a group of ministers who were America's guests. But what all those people in the street are telling us is that they would also like to be heard. What was in fact needed at Seattle was a road map for the next phase of globalization, designed to preserve its economic benefits while broadening its political scope. Globalization has encouraged an explosion of wealth and technology never approximated in any historical epoch. Such rapid change challenges prevailing social and cultural patterns.
Markets generate growth but also dislocations.
While these dislocations are arguably the engine of ultimately greater well-being, political leaders are obliged to deal with their consequences here and now. To be sure, even in the United State, globalization has left some individuals and groups behind. Jobs are lost in some sectors even as they multiply in others. Yet the protectionist argument that globalization generically produces unemployment is, in the United States, belied by the reality of full employment coupled with rising wages. While the benefits of globalization have been dramatic in the United States, the effect on the rest of the world has been more ambiguous, at least in the short run.