One of the frustrating things about anti-globalization activism is the myriad perspectives and icons that it raises up. Frequently, this is a source of ridicule and scorn in the popular media, such as when auto workers march alongside those seeking protections for sea turtles and GMO food opponents (worthy causes all). Unfortunately, the media has proven to be as incapable of drawing parallels between these groups as they are of grasping the inescapable conclusion that BUSH LOST THE GODDAMNED ELECTION.

I’ll attempt to help them, and members of the anti-globalization community, put forward what virtually all of them have in common. The anti-globalization movement is not against the technological advances that have made globalization possible; they are against the use of globalization by the wealthy and by faceless corporations to completely avoid the responsibilities we normally associate with civilized society.

Here is why I think anti-globalization activists are not really against globalization. The idea that someone would spend four hours a day reading e-mail from Europe and India, spend thousands of dollars to travel to Prague to be beaten and gassed by Czech police and hold up as their hero a French farmer that dumps manure on McDonalds but also considers globalization to be bad strikes me as implausible as Tucker Carlson performing a gynecological exam. The so-called anti-globalization movement is so globally wired that most of them actually know where East Timor is. Unfortunately, the moniker is almost universally accepted at this point—even by those associated with the movement-- therefore "anti-globalization," much like Newt Gingrich’s American Express card at an RNC retreat, must be used.

If we look at globalization as a process of technical innovation that allows cheap, fast and virtually unrestricted communication, travel and financial transfers throughout the world we can see that there really isn’t anything bad about it. Almost 15 years ago, when I was on my honeymoon in Vienna, Austria, I used my ATM card to get $50 worth of Austrian Schillings just to see if I could. (And yes, like Bart and unlike Newt, Bob Dole and a host of other conservatives, I am still married to the same woman (at the time of this writing).) How cool was that! Half the world away, standing in line with a bunch of Italians who were constantly butting in front of me, I could get money out of my bank!

While my $50 did little to impact the financial health of the US (it did get my cable disconnected for a month), it now dawns on me that all across Latin America, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, capitalists were doing the same thing, only they were cashing out their manufacturing plants, taxable income and environmental restrictions. In an effort to lower their labor costs, reduce their taxes and escape environmental regulation, people with money were inserting their ATM cards and making withdrawals, re-investing in Maquilladores, Cayman Island bank accounts and pollution belching plants all across the sub-continent.

What the capitalists were doing is avoiding their responsibilities. Does wealth have a responsibility to provide good jobs to Americans? Does it have an obligation to pay taxes in the country in which it has built its wealth? Should it abide by hard-won regulations laid down by the political system in which it resides? I think it does, and here’s why:

When Ronald Reagan, American Patriot and Pothead, came up with the brilliant idea of ending taxation based on people’s wealth, the justification used was that reinvestment would spur the economy and create jobs. OK, so we sort of assumed that it would be the US economy and American jobs. Was that a bad assumption? Like Rick, who came to Casablanca for the waters, I must have been misinformed.

Second, for every dollar earned in the US, a portion comes from value added by our government. Liberal! Satanist! You say. Econ Tim, how can you spout such Marxist liberal Bullshit! (Note: Marxist and liberal are actually contradictory.) I might expect it of Robert Reich, but you’ve been educated in the finest public schools in central Illinois! Well, stay with me. If the government didn’t provide business with a mighty navy, a system of higher education that is undoubtedly the finest in the world and a justice system that gives the world confidence in, what would our economy look like? All publicly financed, but providing more value to those with wealth than those without. It’s one thing to develop a system where obscene disparities in wealth are not only acceptable, but encouraged. It’s another to expect those without wealth to finance that system.

Finally, the world can have democracy or unrestricted globalization, but not both. Either we can vote to restrict global transfers or we can’t. Either we can vote for regulation or we can’t. Forgive my sentimentalist side, but when it comes to democracy, I’ve got TJ’s back.

What anti-globalization activists are almost universally opposed to is the way that globalization has led to a drastic reduction in the responsibility of wealth. I’m not anti-wealth (hell, I am one of fifteen Americans that knows that the average income of Gore voters was higher than that of Bush voters). If you earn it, you got it. Even if, like Sophia Coppola, you didn’t earn it, hey, that’s our system, you got it. But unlike a certain person who gets his mail addressed to Occupant, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, I (and I believe most Americans) recognize that with wealth comes responsibility. This is a more constructive way of looking at globalization. To be anti-globalization makes as little sense as being anti-evolution. But to insist upon responsibility, not only for unwed mothers but corporate fat cats would seem to be a rallying cry around which a global movement would truly coalesce.