One of the things we talk about in the brief is that free trade as it was envisioned years ago, in terms of comparative advantage and whatnot, was defined by Ricardo within certain constraints, such as a national economy and a balance in trade and so on, and that is not able to happen in a globalized situation.
I agree that we need markets. That they should be as free as they have been in the last decade under neo-liberalism, I think is very questionable. I agree that many parts of the world have improved because of a market economy, but I think many of us, even 15 years ago, were warning that it was a little too free and open. It was accompanied by deregulation, by privatization, by a diminution of the public service sector, and so on.
As you say, it is possible to cite many advantages, but what you don't often hear as much about are the disadvantages. Particularly as a group that works across the Americas and through Latin America, we've seen the poverty that existed there under neo-liberalism, and it's quite stunning. Just because the Brazilian president has been evicted for what some people feel are unjust reasons.... The conservative government that's taken over is very crime-ridden and is pulling back on all of the progressive moves that have been made since Lula Da Silva got in some years ago. If you look at that closely, it's not a very pretty picture.
I'm just saying that we haven't really looked at the downside of this whole free-market neo-liberal model. What we do know is that it is leading to runaway climate change and to contamination of ecosystems. Many of our ecosystems are starting to actually collapse. If we look at the coral reefs in Australia and other places, we see climate-change issues. Some people actually feel the climate-change issue now has reached a point where it's almost beyond being able to—