Big Is Messy – Brief Article
William Pfaff
Globalisation has had its day, says William Pfaff. ‘Reasonable people’ no longer support the continued spread of a globalised economy. People have lost faith in an economic system that encourages the consolidation of huge industries into the hands of a few corporations. It is like balancing an enormous rock on top of a pinhead. In the case of the food industry, the slightest upset and the rock comes crashing down on us all. Secondly, vastness doesn’t necessarily guarantee business efficiency. Take the American defence industry. When the cold war ended, America tidied all its defence-related companies into three huge corporations. Today, all three are in serious trouble, with industry experts blaming ‘mega-corporate sprawl’ and ‘excessive concentration’ for the mess. As for the customer, the stifled competition and concentrated production inherent to a globalised economy is hardly consumer-friendly. At the grassroots, people pay more. For the last 20 years, profit margins and corporate greed have kept globalis ation well fed, skewing the natural balance between the needs of individuals and institutions. Now the struggle to redress the ‘democratic balance of interests’ has begun.
COPYRIGHT 2000 MIT Press Journals
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
