Demographics, Corporatization and Democracy

Here is an interesting presentation on trends in demographics, with some discussion of their implications to prosperity and stability of countries around the world.

The world has never been a static place and the future is certain to be different from what we know today. Having grown up in a long period of peace and propsperity in "western" countries, it is easy to forget the preponderance of conflict and hardship in the overall human experience. It seems unlikely that the pervasive ease of life that I have known will continue much longer.

We are still in the early stages of global integration and corporatization. As global integration progresses, the significance of geographically based organizations declines. For example, in Europe, after many centuries of violent conflict, there is no longer enough concern in the geographically based nation states to continue the conflicts - European union better serves the corporations. The corporations already transcend nations. Their conflicts are in other realms than the geographic extents of nations.

National governments are of progressively less significance. Consider, for example, how many countries remain free to pass legislation independently on issues that affect the corporations. They are bound by economic necessity and international treaties and have progressively less independence as they become more integrated economically.

Corporations, on the other hand, are becoming ever more powerful. They are revising the laws of all nations to facilitate their objectives. They are powerful enough now to be able to subvert the democracy in even the most powerful and most dogmatically democratic countries. And they have long since disposed of democracy and independent local governments in less powerful countries in which they have an interest.

In the past 250 years, the struggle for democracy in national governments was won to a significant extent in several of the more powerful countries in the world. But the new powers, the corporations, are in no way democratic.

If you want to know how it will be, re-read Machiavelli's The Prince and remember that the shareholders are the new princes. The nature of the conflict has changed, from military to economic, but the desire for power and the consequences of the struggles for power, for the general population, remain the same.

Very broad markets in consumer goods and services may be the last bastions of democracy in the new world. Unless democratic nations reverse the handover of power to international corporations, they will soon cease to yeild any significant power, after which their democratic nature will be irrelevant.

The rise of third world nations and cultures will not save the democracies - they are already un-democratic and easy prey for the corporations.

Religious fervor may be the only force that the corporations find difficult to overcome. But the concentration of power that is often associated with religious organizations makes them vulnerable to corruption, so even this is uncertain.

The corporations will continue to consolidate and amass power and wealth, until even the wealthiest nation states are unable to compete with them.