Ask the former Director-General of the WTO a question

Here's an interesting use of the web to connect questions with answers. Mike Moore, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand & Director-General of the WTO, recorded a youtube video introducing himself to Reddit. People are asking him all kinds of questions this week & he'll be recording a video response on the weekend.

Mr Moore was a Member of the NZ Parliament from 1978 til 1999. His time in New Zealand parliament spans his time in opposition during the Muldoon years, then as a part of government through the Lange years (including the anti-nuclear movement, and Rogernomics), and leader of the Labour Party until challenged by Helen Clark. Moore went on to lead the World Trade Organisation from 1999 to 2002. His term coincided with momentous changes in the global economy and multilateral trading system. He is one of the world's leading voices in support of globalization, in fact he has just released a book - Saving Globalization: Why Globalization and Democracy Offer The Best Hope for Progress, Peace and Development.

Mike Moore led the World Trade Organization through the controversial WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, and the WTO Ministerial Conference of 2001 where China joined the WTO, and where the Doha Development Round began.

Here is Mike Moore's intro on Youtube:

"Gidday Reddit, my name is Michael Moore.
I'm not that Michael Moore, I'm the New Zealand one. I was a former Prime Minister and Director General of the World Trade Organization. I've written a book called Saving Globalization.

Here's the deal.

We've created more wealth in the last 60 years than all of history put together. The last 10 years except for the last 12 months, have been the most sustained period of economic growth in human history.
Those countries that have done well are the most globalized. The unpleasant, dangerous and poor places to live are the least globalized.

If you are opposed to globalization you therefore must be for de-globalization, and de-globalization is what happens when you have a recession or a depression. That's when dangerous things happen. The Great Depression gave legs to the twin tyrannies of last century - Fascism and Marxism.

So my argument is that globalization is not a policy - it's a process. And ever since man stood upright and looked beyond the horizon, we have been trading, we have been moving and we have been thinking. And it's a process and not a policy. Therefore it can't be stopped, but it can be slowed. We saw that in August 1914. We saw that in the Great Depression.

I am a Former Director General of the World Trade Organisation, AMA."

So go on, GreensBlog readers - ask Mr Moore some questions here and we'll see how his response goes over the weekend.

Found via BoingBoing, first published on GreensBlog