The G-20, an assemblage of heads of state and central bankers meeting here next month, deals with abstract billions in capital in the hopes its policies will benefit flesh-and-blood billions of people.

They haven't heard of Don Shaffer.

But if any one of them has climbed a ladder, chances are they went up rungs first conceived in Greenville, Mercer County -- a scant 50 miles north of the meeting hall -- and affixed by Mr. Shaffer in his own climb up the economic ladder and the fall that made him one of the G-20 skeptics.

Werner was the world's largest ladder maker and a family-owned company when it hired Mr. Shaffer. Things went well enough that, with overtime and benefits, he was bringing in $40,000 a year -- a comfortable wage that put a blue collar man firmly into the middle class.

Then family members decided to cash out. The company was sold to a Bahrain-based investment bank. In due time, Mr. Shaffer and his co-workers were unpacking boxes for the new company's widened product line.

The boxes carried a stamped American flag, touting Werner's American heritage. When Mr. Shaffer looked on the underside, the world economy peeked back at him: Made in China.

Werner went through a few more incarnations. Today, it's headquartered in Greenville but makes its ladders at nonunion plants in Louisville, Ky., southern California and Juarez. Mexico.

Gone are the days of $17-an-hour workers. Werner won't say what its assembly workers make in the United States. In Juarez, estimates from locals figure the employees bring in $3 an hour.

Objections to the G-20 and its policies are best captured in that dash of capital across international borders, in search of cheap labor and wider profit margins.

"When we have creativity, we ship it elsewhere because it can be produced or made cheaper in another country," said state Sen. Jim Ferlo, one of a dozen or so prominent leaders who says he is both welcoming the G-20 and planning to take to the streets to protest its policies.

Groups objecting to the G-20 range from environmentalists who want to press governments to drastically curtail greenhouse gases to a range of anti-authoritarian anarchists who see the institution as undemocratic and the free-market theories it promotes as flawed beyond redemption.

"It's hopelessly undemocratic," says Noam Chomsky, a renowned linguist and a guiding light to much of the anti-authoritarian left.

Mr. Chomsky is among those who see the G-20 as a body that largely reflects concentrated private economic power and the small circle of people that possess that power.

"Too much of what they're putting forward are economic needs as defined by the multinational corporations," said Paul LeBlanc, a college professor who is heading up the Peoples Summit Project, a proposed series of meetings to counter the G-20 meeting here.

Complaints of closed doors and minimal democratic input aside, G-20s advocates are quick to point out that the 19 nations represented in the group are a far cry from the five nations that first met to deal with world economics during the crisis of the 1970s. And of those 19 heads of state, the majority are democratically elected leaders who must devise some kind of fix to current problems or risk seeing the world economy spiral into chaos.

"Not having a global steering committee means that the world's free market is the only governance mechanism. And that has already failed the people," said Colin Bradford, an expert on global finance and the G-20 based at The Brookings Institution in Washington.

In the middle of that debate, and largely unheard, are the Don Shaffers of the world, as well as his Mexican counterpart in Juarez, where capital crossed the border in a bid to expand wealth that critics say falls into the hands of a lucky few.

"It signifies that private capital acts exactly as we should expect it to," said Mr. Chomsky. "It seeks profit and power and is indifferent to the effects on others."

If Mr. Chomsky and his allies on the left are chary of G-20 policies, seeing them as answerable primarily to the economic elite and undemocratic in their execution, they have surprising company in their discomfort.

"We're going to see odd coalitions forming," said Kiron Skinner, professor of international relations at Carnegie Mellon University and research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.

Dr. Skinner foresees neo-Marxists making the same objections heard from Main Street Republicans about what she calls a "supranational" economic policy. She worries about the United States ceding aspects of its economic sovereignty to international agreements designed to stabilize an increasingly complex world economy in which a crisis in India can trigger a slump in other nations.

"I'm deeply concerned about whether those U.S. interests which I still believe include maintaining sovereignty over political and economic decision-making are going to be eroded by international institutions and forums like the G-20," said Dr. Skinner.

Mel Packer, a longtime figure on Pittsburgh's political left, puts it plainly:

"Capitalists have no flags."

Capitalists might or might not have flags, but some experts wonder if the world leaders who will be seated alongside their flags when G-20 meets here have any other option than to create a centralized economic agenda to prevent wild fluctuations in a global economy.

"Regulation is part of that. It's about making markets work and making sure that those who don't have any protections, that they have some kind of fallback mechanism," said Nita Rudra, a specialist on globalization at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

Regulation of world markets -- a policy that could have colossal implications on the domestic policies of every G-20 nation -- is among the top items to be addressed in September's summit.

Dr. Rudra spoke from a conference in South America where fellow academics discussed the love-hate relationship of average citizens with global economies.

One, she said, noted a study of subjects who were shown different photographs. Shown a picture of consumer goods, they responded in favor of globalization. Shown photos of auto plants or agricultural fields, opinions swung to the negative.

A large measure of acceptance for global economic policies, she added, could hinge on old-fashioned domestic politics. In Scandinavian countries, she said, citizens are far more comfortable with the global economic policies that move capital and, with it, local jobs, into other places, all part of the "creative destruction" once explained by economist Joseph Schumpeter.

"They have a healthy social welfare system," she said. "Because we don't have the institutional mechanism in the U.S., you as an individual are going to have to deal with those short-term costs."

Al Hart, an official with the United Electrical Workers union, and one of those planning to take to the streets next month against the G-20, says those effects should at least reflect some input on the ground level.

"If sovereignty means sovereignty for democracy, that people should have a say in the policies of their government and shouldn't be trumped by bodies like the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund then, yes, that is a problem," he said.

Access to power isn't simply a street-level protest, though.

While a yet-to-be determined number of protesters, ranging from environmentalist accountants to self-proclaimed anarchists, make plans to chant their demands outside the convention center, entire nations are trying to crash the hall, too.

Meet the G-5 Plus Egypt. It comprises Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Mexico. Egypt recently aligned with them.

Several of those countries are part of the G-20, but they're looking for access to an even more elite corps, the so-called G-8 nations, the economic mega-powers whose treaties and policies often trump the influence of the G-20.

Brazil, India and China, for instance, are considered emerging economic powerhouses and see themselves as shut out from key decisions.

That struggle could presage yet another round of protests -- not in the streets of Pittsburgh, say experts such as Dr. Skinner. Rather, expect meetings in places such as Brussels.

"We will see other countries having parallel meetings trying to find their way into the diplomatic room," she said. "It's becoming a broader process. It's getting much more difficult to keep countries out of the discussion."