CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE ---Episode 22

                                                  A SELF-DESTRUCTING SYSTEM

   The global economic system is rewarding corporations and their executives with generous profits and benefit packages for contracting out their production to sweatshops paying substandard wages, for clear-cutting primal forests, for introducing labor-saving technologies that displace tens of thousands of employees, for dumping toxic wastes, and for shaping political agendas to advance 
corporate interests over human interests.  The system shields those who take such actions from the costs of their decisions, which are 
borne by the system's weaker members ---the displaced workers who no longer have jobs, the replacement workers who are paid too little to feed their families, the forest dwellers whose homes have 
been destroyed, the poor who live next door to the toxic dumps, 
and the unorganized taxpayers who pick up the bills. The consequence of delinking benefits from their costs is that the 
system is telling the world's most powerful decision makers that 
their decisions are creating new benefits, when in fact they are simply shifting more of the earth's available wealth to themselves at 
the expense of people and the planet. 
   System theorists, who concern themselves with understanding the dynamics of complex, self-regulating systems, would say that the economic system is providing the decision makers with positive 
feedback, rewarding them for decisions that upset the system's 
dynamic equilibrium and cause the system to oscillate out of control, risking eventual collapse. Stable systems depend on negative feedback signals that provide incentives to correct errant behavior and move the system back toward equilibrium. 
   The genius of Adam Smith's concept of a market economy is that although he never used the cybernetic terminology of the systems theorists, he was one of the first to recognize the basic  principles 
of a complex, self-regulating human system. Implicitly, he applied those principles to create an idealized model of a self-regulating economic system that would efficiently allocate society's resources to produce those things that people most want without the intervention of a powerful central ruler. It was a brilliant intellectual achievement and had enormous appeal to intellectuals 
who were attracted to elegant theories, to populists who had a deep distrust of powerful rulers --- and to propertied elites who found in it a moral justification for greed.
   Unfortunately, the economic rationalists who are Smith's intellectual descendants took a narrower and more mechanistic view of economic systems and embraced market freedom as an 
ideology, without Smith's focus on the conditions required to maintain the market's self-regulating balance. Ideologues make poor system designers because they are oriented to simplistic prescriptions rather than to the creation of balanced, self-regulating systems.

As resulting tensions mount and the system's failures become more evident, established political alignments are becoming increasingly strained. Capitalizing on a growing sense of public uncertainty and fear, political demagogues and opportunists are now having a field day. In the United States, they are attacking big government and environmentalists while calling for tax cuts, 
government downsizing, the restoration of family values and individual responsibility, the elimination of restrictions on natural resource exploitation, increased defense expenditures, a tougher stand on non-white collar crime, market deregulation, and free trade. Posing as conservatives committed to protecting ordinary people from the abuses of big government, they play 
simultaneously to the self-reliant, who distrust government ; to the economically burdened, who seek tax relief; to workers in resource-based industries, who fear environmental restrictions; and to corporate interests, which are eager for greater freedom to increase profits by externalizing costs. The proposals offered to attract these varied constituencies are rife with contradictions. Few, 
if any, of the proposals will contribute  to restoring the values of family, community, and self-reliance. To the contrary, they allow the world's largest corporations the freedom to colonize still more of the world's markets and resources to the benefit of the already rich, further shift tax burdens from those best able to pay to those least able to pay, and enlarge the police powers of the state to stem 
the resulting social unrest. 
   The opportunists and demagogues of corporate libertarianism have linked corporate money and power with populist interests to advance an agenda that results in placing corporate interests above human interests.  This contradiction remains unexposed as long as the corporate libertarians are allowed 
to define the issues as a struggle between tax-and-spend, big government liberals and family-values conservatives fighting for 
individual freedom and responsibility. In this guise, they have enjoyed great success in attacking social programs for the poor, providing tax breaks for the rich, and giving greater freedom to corporations. The consequence, however, is to shift still more 
power and wealth to the big and central --- the corporate world of the cloud minders --- at the expense of the small and local. Ironically, the cause that many conservative voters believe themselves to be serving is that of reclaiming power for THE SMALL and LOCAL.

The terms of the political debate must be redefined to focus clearly on the real issue : the contest for power between the big and central and the small and local --- between corporations and ordinary people. The time is ripe for a realignment of political alliances, which is likely to come into full flower only when the true populists realize that their enemy is not only big government but 
also the giant corporations that owe no allegiance to place, people, or human interest.

   Economic globalization is the foundation on which the empires of the new corporate colonialism are being built. The corporate libertarians tell us that the process of economic globalization is 
advancing in response to immutable historical forces and that we have no choice but to adapt and learn to compete with our neighbors. It is a disingenuous claim that belies the well-organized, generously funded, and purposeful efforts by the cloud minders to dismantle national economies and build the institutions of a global market.