Guess what? Corporations DO rule the world

The Gulf disaster, beyond the hideous truth revealed about our unwillingness to even begin to address our strung-out, monkey-on-its-back, petroleum-as-heroin, over consumptive economy; beyond the likely transformation of the Gulf of Mexico into one huge dead zone - makes it abundantly clear who is calling the shots across much of this tottering globe. David Korten called it in 1995 with the publication of his first book, "When Corporations Rule the World" (see below for excerpts from this prescient book). Fifteen years later, they do; they really do.

In his new Rolling Stone article, "The Spill, The Scandal and the President," subtitled "The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder," Tim Dickinson details how Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar kept the Bush "Easy Oil" policies in place, failed to bring Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) into line, which continued to function like a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry, and ultimately give the green light to BP's deep water drilling.

Little has stemmed the tide of the corrupting influence of corporate lobbyists on the political process other the apportioning of the money along different party lines.

The BP disaster is just the the the most current "in your face" example of just how the rise of massive multi-nationals has had dire effects on our nation and on the planet itself. Whether it be AT&T's subversive campaign to end Net Neutrality, the right wing Supreme Court's decision that allows corporations to spend unlimited funds on partisan political advertising, the corporate agenda, enabled by Wall Street and facilitated media empires like Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., have become adept at manipulating "Main Street" rage to turn against the very forces that could potentially inhibit the continuing rise of unbridled corporate power.

Like the late, great George Carlin said: "That's why they call it the American Dream. You have to be asleep to believe it."

Earth's three socio-ecological classes
OVERCONSUMERS 1.1 billion > US$ 7,500 per capita (Cars-meat-disposables) SUSTAINERS 3.3 billion US$ 700 - 7,500 per capita (Living lightly) MARGINALS 1.1 billion Travel by car and air Eat high fat, high calory meat-based diets Drink bottled water and soft drinks Use throw-away products and discard substantial wastes Live in spacious, climate controlled, single family residences Maintain image conscious wardrobe Travel by bicycle and public surface transport Eat healthy diets of grains vegetables and some meat Drink clean water plus some tea and coffee Use unpackaged goods and durables and recycle wastes Live in modest naturally ventilated residences, with extended/multiple families Wear functional clothing Travel by foot, maybe donkey Eat nutritionally inadequate diets Drink contaminated water Use local biomass and produce negligible wastes Live in rudimentary shelters or in the open. Usually lack secure tenure Wear second hand clothing or scraps
Based on Alan Durning's How Much Is Enough, Worldwatch Institute.

In the quest for economic growth, free market ideology has been embraced around the world with the fervor of a fundamentalist religious faith.

Assault of the Corporate Libertarians

Proponents of corporate libertarianism regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint... Ironically, Smith's epic work The Wealth of Nations, which was first published in 1776, presents a radical condemnation of business monopolies sustained and protected by the state.

The Betrayal Of Adam Smith

We should be more than skeptical of an economic model that calls on us to give up all loyalty to place and community, says we must give free reign to securities fraud and corporate monopolies and deny workers the right to organize, and tells the poor to run faster and faster after a train they have no chance of catching—so that a few hundred thousand people can become multi-millionaires by destroying nature and depriving others of a decent means of livelihood.

Economic Myths

Communism called for all power to the state. Market capitalism calls for all power to the market—which in a globalized economy means rule by global corporations and financial markets. Both ideologies lead to the concentration of power in distant and unaccountable institutions.

Markets are for People

So sacred have growth and free trade become in our modern culture that only rarely do we find the courage to ask why they should be given precedence over the needs of people and nature?

An Economic System Out Of Control

Needless to say, it hasn't been easy to create an economic system able to produce 358 billionaires while keeping another 1.3 billion people living in absolute deprivation. It took long and dedicated effort by legions of economists, lawyers, and politicians on the payrolls of monied interests to design and implement such a system. It required a radical altering of the dominant culture and the restructuring of many important institutions. It will take a similarly committed effort on the part of civil society to design and put in place an economic system supportive of economic justice and environmental sustainability.
A Citizen Agenda to Tame Corporate Power, Reclaim Citizen Sovereignty, and Restore Economic Sanity

Thanks to http://deoxy.org/korten_index.htm

Based on documents from http://treesandpeople.lbutv.slu.se/welcome.html

Also see:

Gangs Of America

The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy

The Corporation

Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power