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Re: [transformative-change] An analysis of governance as a topic of study.
Brian Gibb wrote:
>
> Russel wrote:
>> How can we have a system of governance that will be able to protect
>> our interests as individuals when the 'foe' is itself extremely
>> centralized?
> : Moving to the scale of human society, there is a battle going on
> : between those who favour the dropping of all barriers in order
> : to create "the level playing field" in which profit can be pursued
> : without the constraints that respect for humans and their habitat
> : entail and those who feel that the sovereignty of a placed people
> : offers the only protection, at this time, from the exploitation
> : inherent in the practive of free market capitalism.
>
> : The MAI, for example, specifically targets the ability of place-
> : bound governments to require transnational corporations to modify
> : their corporate behavior so they do not adversely affect the
> : quality of the environment or the social sphere. Instead, the
> : TNC's want to move politics offshore, so that the important
> : decisions, like the quality of the food you eat, will be
> : decided by unelected technocrats working for the World Trade
> Council.
>
> : The second point concerns the idea that TNC's are extremely
> : centralized. Although the multinational corporations which
> : gave birth to the TNC's were, the rise of the digital economy
> : has enabled them to change their structure to something more
> : akin to an internetworked enterprise. For example, a car
> : company which has its shares traded world wide on the net of
> : global stock exchanges decides to build cars in Mexico to be
> : sold in Asia from which a portion of the profits go to pensioners
> : living in the Midwest whose pension fund had invested in the
> : company. Considering the trend to move towards the virtual
> : corporation structure, I would venture to say that where
> : the TNC's have gained their competitive advantage is that they
> : have, for the moment, outflanked place- bound governments by
> : moving from centralized control structures to ones that embrace
> : the concept of distributed control.
As Brian GIbb has written, the "foe" is really no longer
geographically centralized. In some ways the MAI is an attempt to
multi-nationals to move towards a post-industrial era in which they
still control all the economic power. What is so wrong about the MAI is
that it is the 'transformative change' that we seek to understand but it
undermines completely the promise of a true international culture. It is
not as if we don't need rules for international investment, but the ones
promulgated by the MAI are the worst ones possible.
The alternative of a centralized (UN?) economic commission (World
Trade Commission) for the whole planet has it problems. Ideally, under
it, multi-nationals would have tough rules wherever they operated. But
as in most bureaucracy, the regulated would soon co-opt the regulators.
We have to look at other mechanisms for distributing control.
>
> : Once we start talking about effective distributed control
> : s systems as a model for a system of governance, the idea of
> : the network inevitably comes up. More on this later.
>
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