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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums157 of World's 200 Richest Entities Are Now Corporations, Not Governments
This should hardly come as a surprise, modern global techno-industrial civilization is a fundamentally a resource extraction and power-concentration machine. Corporations are the mechanisms that do the work. Governments of all types simply guide the process and ensure that corporations can operate as efficiently as possible, despite the citizen-friendly noises that some of them make regarding the regulation of corporate excesses.
Given the underlying assumptions and operating principles of modern civilization, including its self-protective legal structures, I can't see how it could be otherwise. That is a deeply dispiriting realization, because it implies that effective large-scale change will not be possible until after the machine of civilization breaks down.
Measured by 2017 revenue, 69 of the top 100 economic entities in the world are corporations, GJN found in its report, which was released as part of an effort to pressure the U.K. government to advance a binding United Nations treaty that would hold transnational corporations to account for human rights violations.
"When it comes to the top 200 entities, the gap between corporations and governments gets even more pronounced: 157 are corporations," GJN notes. "Walmart, Apple, and Shell all accrued more wealth than even fairly rich countries like Russia, Belgium, Sweden."
In a statement accompanying the striking new figures, GJN director Nick Dearden denounced Britain's Tory government for eagerly assisting this "rise in corporate powerthrough tax structures, trade deals, and even aid programs that help big business."
"The vast wealth and power of corporations is at the heart of so many of the world's problemslike inequality and climate change," Dearden noted. "The drive for short-term profits today seems to trump basic human rights for millions of people on the planet. Yet there are very few ways that citizens can hold these corporations to account for their behavior. Rather, through trade and investment deals, it is corporations which are able to demand that governments do their bidding."
democratisphere
(17,235 posts)will end with the demise of our planet. Corporations have no souls and no remorse.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,264 posts)The primary purpose of government is to protect. Unregulated capitalism consumes everything. A government which refuses to regulate the mechanisms of commerce fails its duty to the people who join to form it.
AJT
(5,240 posts)The_jackalope
(1,660 posts)It's never the bottom of the pyramid that gets protected in a hierarchical society. Protection flows to the top. ETA: It follows the money.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,264 posts)You may want to review:
The Democratic Party Platform
https://democrats.org/about/party-platform/
KY_EnviroGuy
(14,488 posts)for big banks, retail, industrial, high-tech and agricultural firms.
IMO, most of these firms should never have been allowed to get this big for the sake of humanity and the planet we live on. They've robbed us of social power, control of our governments, much of our educational system, the cohesion of families and just as important - our culture.
Now, they're executing a massive attack on our democratic system of government......using dollars they got from us.
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