Addresses the issue of modern corporate power, exposing the harmful effects gobalization is having not only on economics, but also on politics, society and the environment

We have long been told that corporations rule the world, their interests seemingly taking precedence over states and their citizens. Yet, while states, civil society, and international organizations are well drawn in terms of their institutions, ideologies, and functions, the world's global corporations are often more simply sketched as mechanisms of profit maximization. In this book, John Mikler re-casts global corporations as political actors with complex identities and strategies. Debunking the idea of global corporations as exclusively profit-driven entities, he shows how they seek not only to drive or modify the agendas of states but to govern in their own right. He also explains why we need to re-territorialize global corporations as political actors that reflect and project the political power of the states and regions from which they hail. We know the global corporations' names, we know where they are headquartered, and we know where they invest and operate. Economic processes are increasingly produced by the control they possess, the relationships they have, the leverage they employ, the strategic decisions they make, and the discourses they create to enhance acceptance of their interests. This book represents a call to study how they do so, rather than making assumptions based on theoretical abstractions.

"Why do automakers sell us cars they know to be unsafe? Why do multinational drug companies advertise and promote drugs they are aware could harm us? Why is big business allowed to poison our environment - and us? Why is our food so unhealthy and obesity growing at such a disconcerting rate? Why do public companies mislead their employees and stockholders by hiding unfavorable results and, all too often, criminally falsifying figures?" "Greed, Inc. addresses head-on the pressing question of why so many major corporations have lost all sense of ethical direction, focusing totally on the bottom line, and, more egregiously, falsifying that information whenever it suits their needs or demands."--BOOK JACKET.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision marked a culminating victory for the bizarre doctrine that corporations are people with free speech and other rights. Now, Americans cannot stop corporations from spending billions of dollars to dominate elections and keep our elected representatives on a tight leash. Jeffrey Clements reveals the far-reaching effects of this strange and destructive idea, which flies in the face of not only all common sense but most of American legal history as well. Most importantly, he offers solutions—including a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United—and tools to help readers join a grassroots drive to implement them. Ending corporate control of our Constitution and government is not about a triumph of one political ideology over another—it’s about restoring the republican principles of American democracy.

When Corporations Rule the World has become a modern classic. Korten's warnings about the growing global power of multinational corporations seem prophetic today. This new edition has been revised throughout to make it more accessible to the general reader, and features a new introduction, a new epilogue, and three new chapters. While Korten points out that the multinationals are, if anything, more powerful now than they were when he first wrote the book, he also offers reason for hope: the growth of the international Living Democracy movement opposing corporate rule. The new material in the book: * Documents the consolidation--since1995--of financial and corporate power at the expense of democracy, people, communities, and the planet * Looks in depth at the nature and cultural underpinnings of the burgeoning Living Democracy movement to resist corporate power * Offers a vision of a what a "civil society"--grounded in life-centered values rather than immediate financial gain--might look like.

Although the issues addressed in The Great Turning are global and universal, I have chosen to focus my analysis on the United States. It is the nation among all others that is most challenged by the imperatives of the Great Turning. Few other nations are so accustomed to living beyond their own means, so imbued with a sense of special virtue and entitlement, or so burdened by a political leadership as out of touch with global reality and as incapable of accepting responsibility for the consequences of its actions. Because of its global presence, whether the United States responds to the imperatives with the logic of Empire or the logic of Earth Community is likely to have far-reaching consequences for all nations. Furthermore, the United States is the nation of my birth, the nation I know best and love most, and the nation for whose role in the world I feel most responsible.

"An urgent and witty manifesto, Monopolies Suck shows how monopoly power is harming everyday Americans and practical ways we can all fight back."--