CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE---Episode 19

                    ILLUSIONS OF THE CLOUD MINDERS 

"The Cloud Minders," Episode 74, of the popular science fiction television series Star Trek, took place on the planet Ardana. First aired on February 28, 1969, it depicted a planet whose rulers devoted their lives to the arts in a beautiful and peaceful city, Stratos, suspended high above the planet's desolate surface. Down below, the inhabitants of the planet's surface, the Troglytes, worked in misery and violence in the planet's mines to earn the interplanetary exchange credits used to import from other planets the luxuries the rulers enjoyed on Stratos. In this modern allegory, an entire planet had been colonized by rulers who successfully detached and isolated themselves from the people and the localities of the planet's surface on whose toil their luxuries depended.
   This imagery sounds familiar. How like our own world it is, where the rich and powerful work in beautifully appointed executive suites in tall office towers, travel to meetings by limousine and helicopter; jet between continents high above the clouds, pampered with the finest wines by an attentive crew ; and live in protected estates, affluent suburbs, and penthouse suites amid art, beauty, and protected environment. They are as isolated from the lives of ordinary people of our planet as those who lived on Stratos were insulated from the lives of the Troglytes. They too are living in a world of illusion, draining the world of its resources and so isolated from reality that they know not what they do, nor how else to live. 

                                      THE MAGIC MARKET

   The isolation of the rich and powerful is exemplified by the annual gathering of the directors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The following is an account by journalist Graham Hancock from one such meeting : 

     I had come to Washington, D.C. simply to attend the joint annual meeting of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, two institutions that play a central role in mobilizing and disbursing funds for impoverished developing countries . . . The total cost of the 700 social events laid on for delegates during that singe week was estimated at $10 million. . . A single formal dinner catered by Ridgewells cost $200 per person. Guests began with crab cakes, caviar and creme fratche, smoked salmon and mini Beef Wellingtons. The fish course was lobster with corn rounds followed by citrus sorbet. The entree was duck with lime sauce, served with artichoke bottoms filled with baby carrots. A hearts of palm salad was also offered accompanied by sage cheese souffles with port wine dressing. Dessert was a German chocolate turnip sauced with raspberry coulis, ice cream bonbons and flaming coffee royale. . . Washington limousine companies were doing a roaring trade.

   At the same meeting that favored its delegates with $10 million worth of lavish meals and social events, Barber Conable, the former U.S. congressman and then recently appointed president of the World Bank, presented the following charge to the 10,000 men and women present : 

     Our institution is mighty in resources and in experience but its labors will count for nothing if it cannot look at our world through the eyes of the most underprivileged, if we cannot share their hopes and their fears. We are here t serve their needs, to help them realize their strength, their potential, their aspirations . . . Collective action against global poverty is the common purpose that brings us together today. Let us therefore rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of that great good. 

  If the delegates had indeed made an effort to look at their world through the eyes of the most underprivileged, they might well have lost their appetites. Take, for example, this simple interview with a sharecropper's child in nearby Selma, Alabama, by Raymond Wheeler of CBS TV : 

Q : "Do you eat breakfast before school ?"
A : "Sometimes, sir. Sometimes I have peas."
Q : "And when you get to school, do you eat ?"
A : "No, sir."
Q : "Isn't there any food there ?"
A : "Yes, sir."
Q : "Why don't you have it ?"
A : "I don't have the 35 cents."
Q : "What do you do while the other children eat lunch?"
A : "I just sits there on the side." (his voice breaking).
Q : "How do you feel when you see the other children eating ?" 
A : "I feel ashamed" (crying). 

Far from encouraging delegates to see through the eyes of the poor, the organizers of World Bank-IMF meetings take great care to shield them from the specter of poverty. 

   The World Bank and IMF are leading proponents of economic rationalism and free-market, export-led growth strategies.They have for years been lauding South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong as examples of success. Thus when the directors met in Bankok, Thailand, in October 1991, it was natural that the meeting served as a celebration of the recent "success" story of free-market, export-led growth in Thailand. 
   No expense or inconvenience was spared by Thailand's government to impress the delegates that Thailand had arrived as a full member of the elite club of newly industrialized nations (NICs). To ensure the desired impression, a shiny new convention complex was rushed to completion in downtown Bangkok to host the conference. Two hundred families were evicted from their homes to widen roads to and from the site. A nearby squatter settlement was leveled so that the delegates would not be troubled by unpleasant views of Bangkok's poverty. Schools and government offices were closed to limit traffic congestion and help the air of emissions so that delegates might rush with the least inconvenience, free of respiratory distress in their air-conditioned cars, between elegant cocktail parties and official dinners along routes chosen --- and walled off, where necessary --- to avoid disconcerting views of Bankok's slums. English-speaking engineers, doctors, and lawyers were pressed into service as drivers of the delegates ; nurses and teachers waited tables in the conference restaurants to ensure that instructions were understood and that no need of a visiting dignitary would go unmet. 
   Such cosmetic measures could only partially hide the reality that Bangkok, a once beautiful city, has been ravaged by the consequences of its development "success." Amid shining shopping malls, high-rise office buildings, and luxury hotels, filth and squalor abound. Three hundred thousand new vehicles are added to Bangkok's monumental traffic jams each year, slowing traffic to an average of less than ten kilometers (about six miles) per hour. On more than 200 days a year, air pollution in Bangkok exceeds maximum World Health Organization safety limits, and emissions are increasing by 14 percent a year.
   The World Bank-IMF meeting in Thailand was a fitting metaphor for the illusion within which the world's power holders live. The illusion is maintained in part through the construction of a life of luxury set apart in enclaves, and in part by self-justifying belief systems, such as corporate libertarianism, and by the adulation of wealth and the wealthy by the business press and a plethora of economic researchers and consultants. Most of all, it is maintained by the dysfunctions of an economic system that lavishes rich rewards on power holders for decisions that place terrible burdens on the rest of humanity.