• Join The Fed
• Advertise with The Fed

• About Us
• Contact

In This Issue

• Happy VD
• I Want to Be A Matzoh, Matzoh Man
• Letters to the Feditor
• Lee Bollinger Asks: Are You Hot or Not?
• I Hate New York. Now More than Ever.
• Ab Electrocution Devices Found to be Shockingly Unsafe
• Waking up Gay On Sesame Street
• Lunchables for a Dysfunctional World
• Bad Places to Wake Up
• Removing Used Sex Partners is Simple & Fun!
• Columbia University, a.k.a. Outkast's Bitch
• Report from the Frontline-Dancing
• Anarchists betray the goals of liberal politics
• In defense of not defending - but instead attacking - TA Unionization
• A Crash Course In Punk
• R.I.P. What Bar
• Damn You, Nickelodeon
• Newsbriefs del Pueblo
• Pulpit Fiction
• Horoscopes? Why, yes. Horoscopes.
• Angry Cell Phone Guy Turns Me On (Real Hard)
• Fruitloop and Dandy
• Another View of The Fed
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 17.6

Earlier this month, so called anti-globalization activists flooded our fair city to protest the World Economic Forum. While not offering an actual agenda of their own, they "demonstrated" their disdain for the first-world politics that inform our economy and our foreign politics. Rather than actually examine the ramifications of corporate influence on a global scale, the anarchists merely wished to decry the nebulous fear that humanity and environmental conditions will be sacrificed in the name of industry. While these assertions may hold water in African kleptocracies and corrupt South American dictatorships (where power is defined by who can steal the most, and then ask for debt relief), here in the democratic economy of the NYSE, nothing could be further from the truth.

Let's examine what the corporate and industrial movements have given the global village. An obvious beneficent (yet much despised) sector of our corporate economy is the health care industry. The anarchists quickly offer the knee-jerk response that these tycoons profit from a socialized health care system should be employed (an awfully organized and governmentally controlled idea for an anarchistic movement). However, the majority of the world's medical advances are developed here in America, where the economic incentives compel the most research and development in treatment, drugs and surgical techniques. How many AIDS drugs have been developed by the Canada, the UK, or France? Is bypass surgery tainted because it was developed under a capitalistic economic structure? Should we outlaw the many life changing psychological medications because they were synthesized in the hopes of making a company successful? If activists submit that corporate greed only produces waste and human turmoil, than I submit they go home and throw away their grandmother's medications and take their mother's out of chemotherapy. Ingrates.

Another grave concern of the anarchists lies in fear that globalization shall conform to corporate ethics, which are suspect in their eyes. Apparently, the ethos of communal property and public ownership no longer sits well with the progressive agenda. In this post-gold standard era, our money rests on the power of our stock market. We as a society can share ownership of our companies and as participants involve ourselves directly in the shaping of their policy and the nomination of their officers. Is there a more democratic expression than one share, one vote? Even with a limited disposable income, we can become owners of companies whose products and policies we believe in, and communally own their capital. But this sort of constructive, unifying activism is frowned upon by demonstrators who believing in rioting and violence to promote their agenda.

But perhaps the most profound hypocrisy of the demonstrators is their fear of corporate influence destroying communities on a global scale. Nothing could be further from the truth as corporate presence typically improves social conditions when they invest globally. Which is less humane: keeping an impoverished country free of corporate presence and letting it fester in its disease and dilapidated infrastructure or developing it's markets through corporate investment, which inevitably brings better food, housing, health care and schooling? Does the impetus of ultimately extra profit make a corporate presence invalidate its beneficent influences on the society it inhabits? Perhaps we'd all be better off without our agricultural distribution networks and clean, efficient power (Enron not withstanding. No system is perfect, just ask the Soviets).

Sadly, the protestors seem to be missing the most profound potentiality of corporate involvement. When a corporation globally invests, it unites societies in a very profound way. As people all over the world work toward the betterment of an international company, we most closely approach the universal brotherhood that used to be on the top of the liberal agenda. It seems these protesters are more interested in maintaining the barriers that keep the international community divided and nationalistic hatreds brewing. Our only chance for world peace and racial harmony is to all participate with each other economically. This does not mean to access people for their fiscal value, but rather accept and involve one as equal and valuable contributors of our great economic engines. Do you think the multicultural and multilingual milieu of New York City functions without major racial unrest and political violence out of anything but our social desire to make a buck? However, as actions speak louder than words, violence is what these protestors really believe in. Take a stand and buy a corporate product today!