To: MSI who wrote (269786 ) 7/6/2002 4:08:45 AM From: Raymond Duray Read Replies (4) | Respond to THE SILENT TAKEOVER: GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACYamazon.com free market capitalism has had dire social and political repercussions , although it has triumphed as the dominant world ideology and brought prosperity to many. She sensibly argues that with government in retreat from its traditional rule-setter role, multinational corporations have grown so powerful that 51 of the 100 biggest economies in the world are corporations, that they determine political policies rather than operate subject to them. Market success may rule, but Hertz laments that the state, in appearing to serve business, may be nullifying democracy's social contract to represent and protect the rights of all citizens equally. WTO protests and activism reinforce her sense of growing political discontent not only about income distribution effects (97% of the increase in income over the past 20 years in the U.S. has gone to the top 20% of the families ) but also about human rights issues. Campaign finance realities, declining voter participation, increasing alienation and terrorism amid glowing corporate results represent an urgent cry for reform to Hertz. Since corporations are not designed and cannot be expected to serve a general population's social and political needs, she argues that democracies need to move toward a realignment between the state's political power and the corporations' economic power so that all people have a positive stake in world economic progress. Hertz maps out a proposed agenda, and her eloquent call to action deserves the attention of every concerned citizen of our troubled world. My estimation of businessmen (and lawyers and accountants) is that they aren't going to behave until somebody goes to jail for not behaving. I would deliberately and intentionally put the multinationals on the defensive A multinational corporation should never be able to imply that it acts with the military support of any government, particularly the American government because of the superiority of its military forces. That amounts to translating military force into a business advantage. (And, as an American taxpayer, why am I paying to support a military that helps somebody else get rich? Ah, oops.)
