Corporate Colonialsim
Kathy at Stone Soup Musings raises a vital point about outsourcing and globalization, one that the current administration and the previous one all but ignored:
I'm all for raising the living standards of people across the world, but it needs to be done incrementally, equitably and fairly by people at all income levels. So far, most of the sacrifice seems to be coming at the expense of the lower and middle classes.
People who lose their jobs to outsourcing are the obvious and immediate victims of globalization. But there is a larger price being paid as well, as this letter in yesterday's Boston Globe makes clear:
[I]t is all too obvious that India has become a colony for foreign corporations. If the Western world ever changes its mind about doing business in India, the consequences will be calamitous.
It is time to stop pretending that corporations should enjoy the same rights and protections of a free society as you and me. Their actions have a profound effect on individuals and entire countries, yet they are responsible to no one but their shareholders and their bottom line.
I've never been able to figure out whether corporations exist to benefit their customers, or we exist to benefit the corporations. But this new, 21st century form of colonization, not by countries but by multinational corporations, settles the question.
Corporate colonialists have allegiance not to nations, or rights, or ideals — only to themselves. Under corporate colonialism, national boundaries, and nations themselves, are irrelevant.
Colonialization and exploitation go hand in hand. If we don't recognize and manage this evolving, corporate-controlled globalism, we will all become its subjects.
Comments
Thankfully, the East India Company broke the back of India's will to resist corporate colonialism long ago!
In fact, I have it on good authority that once AT&T wraps up their merger with BellSouth, they'll be buying Kashmir for little more than the promise of a few locally-placed call centers and some shiny beads.
Posted by: Rex Kramer, Danger Seeker | March 5, 2006 10:42 PM
It is corporate colonialism. That looks like the future of the world, quite frankly. Akin to the old 'city-states' of the past, all with their own private armies. Gated communities are already with us. Next up: MOATS!
Posted by: Neil Shakespeare | March 6, 2006 05:19 AM
Well it depends on how you look at it, there is no question that corporations exist for profit but isn't that a bit like walking into a restaurant and saying: "What, do you exist to serve food???"
Are you asking a business which by its very nature is established to make money to add a bottom line of humanity? You want a corporation to be treated as it is, and yet they are behaving as they are, aren't they? Corporations are run by PEOPLE, the same people that drive huge cars and heat huge homes and buy crap from Wal mart by the ton. As we asked at Consider The Boot recently, why would we expect them to be selfish in their daily lives but NOT extend that thinking into the boardroom?
See, it has to go a bit further than lamenting a business for their bottom line. We need to address the crimes they commit and hold them accountable. Then, ask ourselves why they are outsourcing and relocating. What is the remedy? Change the tax laws, change the trade laws?
One thing I know for certain is that they are not going to pivot on their heels and change direction. They exist for their shareholders because thats what they do.If we did not cosume their stuff to some extent they would have far less power. There's blame to go around!!!
But government exists for THE PEOPLE- they are the ones in actuality who are not doing what we expect from them, their mission.
Posted by: Lily Branford | March 6, 2006 09:41 AM
Lily, I'm not talking about corporate crimes. I'm talking about corporate regulation. For example, corporations are free to outsource jobs. But in the best interests of America, the government is free to tax them for outsourcing jobs, and to use that money to retrain people who lost their jobs.
I'm also talking about the "right" corporations have to contribute to political campaigns, to pay lobbyists to influence political decisions, to pay for congressional junkets. There's no justification for any of that, and it skews the political process in their favor.
And there's more - getting corps to pay their fair share of taxes, making them more protective of the environment, ending corporate welfare.
The bottom line for me is that corporations have a greater obligation to society than they are willing to acknowledge. It's the government's obligation (and basically ours) to see that they honor that obligation.
Posted by: abi | March 7, 2006 12:23 AM
I hear you Abi, really. I think its a matter of how they are held accountable and I agree they should be. Maybe I didn't make my point clear, been known to happen...far too many times.
Posted by: Lily Branford | March 7, 2006 08:48 PM