When
Corporations Rule the World David
C. Korten Copublished
1995 in the United States of America
by
Kumarian Press, Inc. And Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
The point
of departure of "When Corporations Rule the World" is the evidence that
we are experiencing accelerating social and environmental
disintegration in nearly every country of the world - as revealed by a
rise in poverty, unemployment, inequality, violent crime, failing
families, and environmental degradation. These problems stem in
part from a fivefold increase in economic output since 1950 that has
pushed human demands on the ecosystem beyond what the planet is capable
of sustaining. The continued quest for economic growth as the
organizing principle of public policy is accelerating the breakdown of
the ecosystem's regenerative capacities and the social fabric that
sustains human community; at the same time, it is intensifying the
competition for resources between rich and poor - a competition that
the poor invariably lose.
Governments
seem wholly incapable of responding, and public frustration is turning
to rage. It is more than a failure of government bureaucracies,
however. It is a crisis of governance born of a convergence of
ideological, political, and technological forces behind a process of
economic globalization that is shifting power away from governments
responsible for the public good and toward a handful of corporations
and financial institutions driven by a single imperative-the quest for
short-term financial gain. This has concentrated massive economic
and political power in the hands of an elite few whose absolute share
of the products of a declining pool of natural wealth continues to
increase at a substantial rate-thus reassuring them that the system is
working perfectly well.
Those who
bear the costs of the system's dysfunctions have been stripped of
decision-making power and are held in a state of confusion regarding
the cause of their distress by corporate-dominated media that
incessantly bombard them with interpretations of the resulting crisis
based on the perceptions of the power holders. An active
propaganda machinery controlled by the world's largest corporations
constantly reassures us that consumerism is the path to happiness,
governmental restraint of market excess is the cause our distress, and
economic globalization is both a historical inevitability and a boon to
the human species. In fact, these are all myths propagated to
justify profligate greed and mask the extent to which the global
transformation of human institutions is a consequence of the
sophisticated, well-funded, and intentional interventions of a small
elite whose money enables them to live in a world of illusion apart
from the rest of humanity.