FlyingOrca's Journal: What will replace the multinational corporation?

Just went to see a film called The Corporation a couple of days ago, and I've been thinking about it quite a bit since. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the film describes how the modern multinational corporation came to be, and what it basically is now - a vastly powerful, amoral fictive "person" with traits we would call psychotic in a human.

Many people seem to think that the multinational corporation will replace, or is replacing, the nation-state as the most powerful entity in the world. It certainly appears that the corporate, "pro-business is pro-everyone" mindset is driving at least one world superpower. Oh, wait, there's only one left - so much for security through obfuscation. ;-)

Anyway, I got to wondering. Seems to me that hugely powerful corporations are not Good Things(tm), and some of us might want to hasten our passage through the "Corporate Age". What, though, would we work toward?

I don't have any great answers. I do think that changing what corporations are allowed to be, legally, is a better approach than challenging what they do, though both efforts are probably necessary. But what will come after the Corporate Age?

I was talking about this with my friend Steven Erikson last night (some of you may know his fantasy novels). He thinks there will be a reversion to nation-states, but more strongly isolationist and more divided by cultural and physical differences ("race", religion, politics, etc.) than nation-states are now. This makes sense, and one may already see it happening. What I'm wondering is, what else is coming? In what other ways will the post-corporate age differ from the pre-corporate age?

After all, if we can figure out what it looks like, we can find it that much more easily. Cheers!

non-state alternatives

[danharan]

I haven't yet gone to see The Corporation, although I'm happy to see those ideas get discussed more widely.

Corporations are bureaucracies, as are states. States were supposed to be sovereign over corporations, but often it seems like it's the other way around. That is not a good thing.

The whole bureaucratization of our lives was seen as one of the basic dynamics of modernity. Many "international development" projects are seen now as having done nothing for the natives, but extended the reach of the state.

Re:non-state alternatives

[FlyingOrca]

Thanks - I'll check those out. On the economics side, I'd also recommend Paul Hawken's classic _Ecology of Commerce_. David Suzuki pointed to a bunch of good resources in _Good News (For A Change)_, but I don't have it in front of me. Cheers!

Re:non-state alternatives

[danharan]

Yup, read The Ecology of Commerce. It was great. Hawken co-authored Natural Capital, so if you like Ecology, you'll likely enjoy this one even more. :)