This diary consists of three parts: (1) transnationals; (2) transnationals on steroids aka the Super Entity; and (3) solutions/questions/lessons to learn.
If you already know all about transnationals and how destructive they are, skip through until you get to the portion on the 147 transnationals ruling the world as the Super Entity aka the Toxic Zombie Vampiric Blob. Since I previously diaried about the Super Entity, feel free to skip that, too, if you've already read it and focus on the third part: solutions, questions and lessons we can learn from transnationals.
Part One:
T.E.A. is Thom Hartmann's acronym for Transnationals Exploiting Americans (to which I add, and every other person on earth).
In 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations are legal persons whose life, liberty and property are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. It took railroad-company lawyers less than two decades to turn the amendment, which was ratified to protect freed slaves, into a loophole. By 1904, corporations controlled four-fifths of the nation's industrial production. Today transnational corporations (TNC's) control the world's governments, economies and media.
Investment abroad used to mean that a corporation sold its domestically produced goods to foreign markets. Today it means setting up business in other countries through complex global networks. The labor movement, which created the middle class, can no longer compete with these changes.
The U.S. shifted from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor in less than 20 years, when the first trade deficit occurred in 1971. By 1991, foreign-owned firms controlled one-half of the United States consumer electronics industry, one-third of the American chemical industry, 20% of the U.S. automobile industry, 70% of the American tire industry, almost 50% of the U.S. film and recording industry, and vast segments of America’s banking, steel, machine tool, robotics and telecommunications industries. http://prospect.org/...
Governments are helpless. All they can do is watch world domination by the core group of TNC's and pray . . . to the mighty dollar, yen or whatever currency the Super Entity decides to go with.
Never before have corporations enjoyed such power. Many of the few hundred transnational giants are bigger than most nations. As the transnationals control more of the world, this guarantees a loss of rights and resources for its citizens. Democracies don't stand a chance against these giants. Transnational economic agreements, beginning with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank over half a century ago, have escalated in the last few decades with NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO, to name a few.
Taxation has shifted from corporations to individuals, not just with federal income tax, but at the local level, too, through property and other taxes. Corporate tax cuts started by Reagan are a bonanza for corporations, but instead of using the savings to create jobs, they slash them, opting to acquire other companies and invest in foreign countries. In other words, American taxpayers have unwittingly subsidized globalization of our industrial structure.
Transnationals use transfer pricing to avoid taxes. With operations around the world, it's a simple matter to arrange transactions so that the profits show up in jurisdictions with lower taxes. Every day trillions of dollars pass through worldwide currency exchanges. A small percentage of these figures involve the normal transfer of goods and services, while the rest is purely speculative. As we now know, the initial financial crisis assumed global proportions in the blink of an eye, and speculators recently bet against the United States by betting for the credit downgrade, and won. The tail of U.S. debt is now wagging the dog of U.S. policy.
It's clear that our public institutions are unable or unwilling to ask transnationals to operate in the public interest. Thousands of lawyers, lobbyists, trade association employees, think tank experts, public relations specialists, politicians, and prominent journalists are drawing fat fees by fronting for free trade and the private interests of international speculators and transnationals.
Corporations control the way the world thinks simply through the power of p.r. Currently the major battle for the mind is through infotainment and McCulture. Special effects have replaced content. The television culture has caused a serious decline in literacy and critical thought. The few newspapers that still exist have turned the news into easily-digested bites, surrounded by lots of colorful images.
It's the rich corporations that can afford the services of PR professionals. Catchy video news releases, industrial espionage, infiltration of civic and political groups, planted stories, phony grassroots campaigns and astroturf movements have become the norm.
Freedom, democracy, human rights, and other threats to authority, which evolved through many decades of social struggle, are being rolled back in favor of the discipline of the unregulated market, resulting in predatory capitalism and welfare for the rich.
Bankruptcies, foreclosures, credit card delinquencies, and consumer debt are all at record highs. Falling wages and downsizing are the norm, and Social Security and Medicare may not be there for the next generation of retirees. The figures are in: the middle class is rapidly disappearing.
Even when direct acts by the transnationals are not seen as the problem, it is still the case that only these private interests have the wealth and resources necessary to improve the public welfare. Unfortunately, they have yet to even express an interest in lending a hand.
The World Bank imposes "structural adjustment programs" on poor countries as a condition for new loans. While the loans themselves are guaranteed by the taxpayer, the "adjustments" benefit only the rich investors. The aim is to weaken the country by eliminating protectionist barriers, price supports, and government services. Frequently the currency is devalued, communally held lands are privatized, and production is reoriented toward export rather than subsistence.
More than half of the world's population live in slums and the streets and that will grow to two-thirds by the year 2025. http://www.nytimes.com/... Governments are unable to cope with this level of urbanization, and shantytowns sprout faster than they can be torn down. As governments are forced by the transnationals to become less responsive to the needs of the people, it's unclear what will happen over the next several decades. Meanwhile, the transnationals don't care what happens, as long as their profits increase. Since no one is in a position to tell them differently, it's not their problem. Their only goal is to keep their shareholders happy.
World population will increase, perhaps doubling, in the next 50 years, with 95 percent of this increase in the poorest regions of the world. This growth rate is clearly unsustainable, as it depends on an ecosystem that's losing its capacity to support even current numbers.
One can only ponder what policies TNC's will implement with regard to surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation/soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions.
Part Two:
The Super Entity of 147 Transnational Corporations Ruling the World
This space-looking diagram is actually a visual depiction of the first analysis of the Super Entity. In the analysis, the authors (Vitali, Glattfelder, Battiston) lay out the architecture of the global ownership network:
We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions.
Previous attempts to analyze the Super-Entity were limited in scope to national networks which "neglected the structure of control at a global level." What was needed was a complex network analysis: thus, the "bow-tie" structure was used because it is similar to the structure used in analyzing the most influential/trafficked websites.
They began with a list of 43,060 TNC's (transnational corporations) from the Orbis 2007 database (which is why some on the list are now defunct). They then used a recursive search algorithm and here's a partial result:
The above list consists of the Top 50 transnational control holders of the Super-Entity. It is easier to read in the paper (linked below).
Per the authors:
This is the first time a ranking of economic actors by global control is presented. Notice that many actors belong to the financial sector (NACE codes starting with 65,66,67) and many of the names are well-known global players. The interest of this ranking is not that it exposes unsuspected powerful players. Instead, it shows that many of the top actors belong to the core. This means that they do not carry out their business in isolation but, on the contrary, they are tied together in an extremely entangled web of control. This finding is extremely important since there was no prior economic theory or empirical evidence regarding whether and how top players are connected.
The study shows that network control is much more unequally distributed than wealth, meaning that the top ranked actors hold a control ten times bigger than what could be expected based on their wealth.
Two generalized characteristics were identified: each member firm owns directly or indirectly shares in every other member; and the largest connection contains only one strongly connected component, the core. This leads to the emergence of a structure which prevents take-overs, reduces transaction costs, includes risk-sharing and increases trust between groups of interest.
In summary:
1. Nearly 4/10 of the control over the economic value of transnational corporations in the world is held, via a complicated web of ownership relations, by a group of 147 transnational corporations in the core;
2. About 3/4 of the ownership of transnationals in the core remains in the hands of transnationals of the core itself - cumulatively they hold the majority share of each other, so the core has almost full control over itself;
3. Almost 3/4 of the core is made up of financial intermediaries;
4. When a financial network is very densely connected, it is prone to systemic risk.
Links to the article, the research paper and to the Cornell University Library, where the paper resides, are at the bottom of this diary.
Part Three:
I've thought a lot about this, why I'm here, why we're here, at this particular time in history. I'm wondering what can be learned from and about transnationals and what can be done about this Toxic Zombie Vampiric Blob. Transnationals and The Super Entity have no home and no conscience. They are lawless, borderless and shameless. But there are things we can do.
1. If you choose to continue watching, reading and listening to media, think about what message they are trying to sell you. Question everything, not just what news they choose to serve us, but movies, shows and even the message in some of today's music.
2. Don't fall for their falsehoods. Remember that even though they are legally defined as having personhood, they are not human, so do and be the opposite of what you see and hear. Use your imagination, dream, create (write, draw, paint, dance, sing, etc.) because that's what they don't want you to do. Strive for empathy because it's not for sentimentalists, tears are not a sign of weakness and your life story does matter, if for no other reason than the fact that it can't simply be used as a piece of data.
3. Why are we confronted by surveillance cameras everywhere we go? Have we chosen security and voyeurism over our inherent sense of nature and beauty? We need to reawaken our sense of appreciation, focus our attention on what matters to us.
4. Change is up to us. The transnationals and The Super Zombie Vampiric Blob own the world governments and defense. The "move along, nothing to see here" mentality was bought and paid for long ago. Keep pushing your representatives to protect us from the transnationals, but do remember they were elected by transnational campaign donation money.
5. Who's more responsible? The urban kid watching the transnational bulldoze his neighborhood or the shareholder? The system is hierarchal and there is no shared blame. Don't all them to disempower you with notions of shared responsibility. We did not cause this and we will not own it, even partially.
6. Why do we collectively need and enable transnationals, including their sociopaths in suits, who recklessly trade with people's life savings? If we continue handing over our power, they'll gladly keep pocketing it.
7. Why do we yearn for bosses? Don't skilled facilitators involved in the community wisdom and decision-making make more sense?
8. Revere your natural resources. Transnationals buy up and destroy what we take for granted. Fracking, drilling, using corn for energy instead of food is not coincidental. We have to pay attention to our earth and appreciate everything we have every single day.
9. Transnationals have shown us what can be done when groups of people band together for a common cause. There is no one leader to show us the way or save the day. Instead of who will lead us, the question is when will we leave behind the notion of our superheroic ideal? It only deepens our sense of impotence. We need to band together instead to foster ideas and dreams.
10. What makes transnationals so powerful? Three words: their global reach. While it's important to act locally, we need to consciously use the internet to form our own global transboundary frontier. Root yourself within your community, and be deeply appreciative of it, but don't be limited by it.
11. We can live without oil, but we cannot live without clean air, fresh water, good soil, healthy forests and oceans. Our cities and communities belong to us, not to some pulsing zombie vampiric blob that destroys everything in its path in order to gain more power.
12. Imagine a world where we kick their asses into oblivion. Let's send the earth-killing transnational dinosaurs into extinction, where their remains can provide energy and materials for clean and just civilizations only dreamed of.
We have our work cut out for us.
Further future reading/viewing:
Here's a page which lists a few ways to make a difference:
http://howtomakeadifference.net/...
Here's an Alternet link to text by Bill Moyers for a speech delivered October 29, 2010 as part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series at Boston University.
http://www.alternet.org/...
In the autoplay link below, Thom Hartmann discusses: Our Policies are being Written by Transnationals.
http://www.youtube.com/...
The following links to the article on The Super Entity: Analysis of Who Rules the World
This link takes you to the research paper on the Super Entity: The Network of Global Corporate Control
Here is a link to the portion of the Cornell University Library where the Super Entity paper resides: http://arxiv.org/...