A Non-Conspiracy Theorist Layman's Perspective.

A repost from a June 22, 2008 piece I wrote.

Recently, I've vowed to not let myself get drawn into sweeping conspiracy theories without remaining overtly skeptical.

Recently, I've been made aware of a powerful group of people that attend an annual invitation-only conference called the Bilderberg Group. So named for the first meeting which was held in 1954 at the Hotel de Bilderberg in the Netherlands. The original meeting was to resolve growing anti-American sentiment in Western Europe at the time.

It still meets to this day with international luminaries scattered throughout the economic, political and social spectrum.

Most conspiracy theorists I run across espouse fears of a "New World Order" globalization campaign aimed at tearing down national and economic boundaries.

This is a bad thing in itself? I say no, because nationalism is a tamer word to describe fascism. However, my concern would lie in how such a feat would be accomplished.

Judging by the biggest conspiracy theorists worried about Bilderberg I'd tend to side with Bilderberg (if I had to choose "sides"). One accuser is the John Birch Society, which I have absolutely no regard for and one Phyllis Schlafly (still kicking around; who I had never heard of). It turns out Schlafly is a conservative political activist who opposes feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment (which has not been ratified on a federal level; only in a majority of state legislatures). I'm not inclined to side with any of these two parties in opinion on ANYTHING.

So what about Bilderberg? Personally I believe it's making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Let me move on to globalization and specifically General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or GATT:

• Promotion of free trade:
  • Reduction or elimination of tariffs; creation of free trade zones with small or no tariffs
  • Reduced transportation costs, especially resulting from development of containerization for ocean shipping.
  • Reduction or elimination of capital controls
  • Reduction, elimination, or harmonization of subsidies for local businesses
• Restriction of free trade:
  • Harmonization of intellectual property laws across the majority of states, with more restrictions.
  • Supranational recognition of intellectual property restrictions (e.g. patents granted by China would be recognized in the United States)

Granted, there is a lot of paranoia resulting from the rising cost of energy and food. However, I see this as the process of zeroing out the imbalance in economic forces geared toward "national interests". For example we are seeing wide spread economic growth in parts of the world where there had been almost nothing but abject poverty. Is it a bad thing to see people being able to have three meals a day rather than one or none. Yes, I know we've got this global food crisis now. What's to blame for that though? The United States has one of the most sophisticated agri-business models in the world, yet we've turned that resource on it's head and have proposed to avert a good majority of the resource to energy supplies to help reduce demand for petro-energy to bio-energy (when in my opinion it was unwarranted). This move is actually counter to what a "globalised" economy seeks to achieve; it's a knee-jerk response to a rising energy cost spawned by a counter-balancing effect of a shift in people rising up from poverty.

There is a finite amount of resource on the planet. We in the West, who have been used to exorbitant luxuries may just have to share a little of that luxury with the rest of the world as we move toward globalization.