Korten, David. "When Corporations Rule the World". European Business Review, Vol.98, No.1 (1998): 77-77.

Korten, David. "When Corporations Rule the World". European Business Review, Vol.98, No.1 (1998): 77-77.

• In the modern world, the logic of economic growth and expansion of markets has become alienated from its societal goals, to the degree that we are sometimes willing to sacrifice human wellbeing or the environment in exchange for higher profitability, despite the fact that economic growth's only purpose is to benefit humanity (77).
• The narratives of major business publications, like Business Week and Forbes, are about the creation of new wealth and investment opportunities focusing on entrepreneurs and millionaires. Neither publication discusses this growth in terms of human happiness or alleviating the suffering of Asian workers (77).
• "Much of what we measure as economic growth actually diminishes the quality of our lives. For example, expanded use of cigarettes and alcohol increases economic output, both as a direct consequence of their consumption and because of the related increase in health care needs" (77).
• Economic growth is a terrible measure of the actual health of a society, since many negative societal activities generate economic growth. Moreover, many of the tactics used to increase economic output have severely negative social and environmental consequences, meaning that fetishizing economic growth can led to policy decisions which diminish the quality of life for humans (77).
• Increased competition between smaller corporations and government has led to a global race to the bottom in terms of providing the best conditions for corporations, driving an overall downward push in quality of life (77).
• The author shifts to full on conspiracy theory, arguing that corporations have increasingly captured power and use finances to undermine governance. Also they control all the media and feed us lies about consumerism to justify greed (77).
• The author proposes tying financing and business to local decisions and local democracy. This idea is not fully flushed-out, but it is essentially a form of syndicalism and democratic confederalism (77).
• "To reclaim the power that a rogue global economy has usurped from people and communities, we must press for sweeping political campaign reforms to get big money out of politics. We must re-establish that a corporate charter is a privilege ­ not a right. It is issued by government to serve a public purpose, and it is the inalienable right of the sovereign people to withdraw it any time they decide a corporation is not serving that purpose. We must also break up the largest corporations to restore the conditions essential for the efficient function of competitive markets. And we must return to nations and communities the right to set their own economic priorities and to regulate commerce within their jurisdictions" (77).

Do not cite this, this is not an academic publication, it is a crazy hippy rant. It makes many valid political points, but the utter lack of citations means that it should not be used in academic or scholarly work. It basically argues, without referencing Marx, that economic growth has become alienated from humanity and fetishized to the detriment of actual humanity, governments have become corrupted by money, and that the solution is radical decentralization of regulatory power to communities on a semi-anarchist or syndicalist basis.