1 . I T ' S T H E E C O N O M Y , S T U P I D

" I see i n t h e nea r f u t u r e a crisis a p p r o a c h i n g t h a t unnerve s m e a n d causes m e t o t r e m b l e fo r t h e safet y o f m y country . A s t h e resul t o f t h e war , c o r p o r a t i o n s hav e bee n e n t h r o n e d . . . A n er a o f c o r r u p t i o n i n h i g h places w i l l f o l l o w , a n d t h e m o n e y p o w e r o f t h e c o u n t r y w i l l e n d e a v o u r t o p r o l o n g its reig n b y w o r k i n g u p o n t h e prejudice s o f t h e p e o p l e unti l w e a l t h is a g g r e g a t e d i n a f e w hands.. . a n d t h e republi c is d e s t r o y e d . " - US President Abraham Lincoln economies; instead they undermine those economies and the communities that depend on them by enabling goods to flood into local markets at artificially low prices. It is only because of such subsidies, for example, that butter transported all the way from New Zealand can be 'cheaper' than local butter in Vermont, home to hundreds of struggling dairy farmers.

• Unlike producers and sellers in local markets, TNCs require extensive communications networks to monitor and co-ordinate their global enterprises, and to facilitate rapid flows of capital into and out of distant markets. These networks serve global corporations in another way as well. While their output is generally portrayed as furthering the 'free flow of information', that flow is decidedly one-way: worldwide communication facilities make it possible to transmit the world-view of consumerism - via movies, television programming and direct advertising - thereby helping to homogenise diverse populations into masses of similar consumers with similar desires. When television programmes like Dallas and Baywatch are broadcast throughout the South, for example, people's distorted impression of modern urban life fast, glamorous, exciting, wealthy beyond measure - leaves them vulnerable to the empty promises of Western-style 'development', and hungry for the consumer products that seem to define modern life. "Once television is there", the CEO of a large American TNC pointed out, "people of whatever shade, culture, or origin want roughly the same things." 8

• Large-scale, centralized energy installations - huclear power plants, huge hydroelectric dams, fossil fuel facilities, and similar projects - are a necessity in a global economy predicated on growth, consumption and the long-distance transport of virtually every commodity. The growth imperative impels even the North constantly to expand its already massive power infrastructure, but most of the new construction is in the South, where an estimated trillion dollars worth of large-scale plants will be needed to integrate fully those countries into the global economy.9 Meanwhile, dispersed and locally available energy sources such as solar, wind and small-scale hydro - all of which are well suited to small and localized economies - are effectively ignored.

Long-distance, high-speed transport infrastructures do little to meet the needs of participants in diverse, localized economies; instead they undermine those economies and the communities that depend on them by enabling goods to flood into local markets at artificially low prices.

Large-scale, centralized energy installations are a necessity in a global economy predicated on growth, consumption and the long-distance transport of virtually every commodity.

• Portrayed as an unequivocal good, modern educational infrastructures are heavily funded in almost every country. Unfortunately the knowledge dispensed in such schools leaves children largely unprepared to participate in an economy based on their own environment, resources and cultural history [see "Education for Globalisation" by David Orr in this issue]. Instead, schools mould children everywhere for future roles in the global economy: as high-tech workers, as corporate managers or paper-pushers, as telemarketers or dispensers of fast food, and of course as consumers. In industrialised countries, this form of education begins long before children ever set foot in a school: parents in the United States, for instance, are putting their children in front of computers and 'educational' television programmes by the age of one, or even younger. The consequence is predictable: most American children are unable to identify more than a few local plant species, but "even two-year-olds are concerned about their brand of clothes, and by the age of six are full-out consumers", according to a specialist in marketing to children.10

• Research infrastructures provide industry with technological innovations to raise productivity, to keep levels of consumption growing, and to draw ever more resources from the planet. 'Techno-fix' solutions to the problems caused by the industrial system are also sought, thus masking the long-term unsustainability of the entire model. Studies have shown that most of the research needed by large-scale producers and marketers is done at public expense. While such research is "a fundamental pillar of industrial advance" ", almost no research is done that would provide people with the means to use local resources within diverse, more localised, and smaller-scale economies. There can be no better example of the thrust of publicly-funded research than the 'Terminator' technology, a bio-engineered trait which renders seeds infertile in the second generation (see "The Monsanto Files", The Ecologist, Vol.28 No.5). Perfectly suited to the needs of agricultural biotech corporations, the technology could prove disastrous to the millions of small farmers who have always saved seeds from one year's harvest for planting the next. This technology was jointly developed by a large seed company and the US Department of Agriculture, and is now in the hands of the Monsanto Corporation.12

• A military infrastructure is needed to keep the less stable elements of the global architecture in place, and to guarantee access to the natural resources on which the model depends. Even ardent globalisation proponent Thomas Friedman agrees: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the

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T I P P I N G T H E S C A L E : S Y S T E M I C S U P P O R T F O R T H E L A R G E A N D G L O B A L

builder of the [Stealth Bomber!. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." 1 3 'Keeping the world safe' for global corporations does not come cheap: just ensuring the steady supply of oil - a prerequisite for long-distance transport - is estimated to cost US taxpayers $57 billion annually. For the targets of military power worldwide, obviously, the costs of globalisation are much higher.

A further form of systemic bias towards the large and global comes in the guise of regulations that purport to protect the environment and public health. As well-intentioned as these regulatory regimes may be, they have largely failed in their mission. In part this is because of the 'revolving door', which riddles regulatory bodies with past and future employees of the industries they are supposed to regulate, (see for example Jennifer Ferrara, "Revolving Doors: Monsanto and the Regulators", The Ecologist, Vol.28 No.5, Sept/Oct 1998).

Another reason is that in their attempts to regulate industry, governments are like dogs chasing their own tails: on the one hand they are vigorously encouraging industry to develop new products The global economy and the corporations that dominate it are not the product of evolution. Instead they are the result of many years of direct and hidden subsidies.

and processes, on the other they are frantically attempting to limit the resulting harm. Even i f they were not watered down during the intense lobbying efforts of regulated industries, regulations simply cannot keep up with the current pace of technological change. Each year, for example, 1,000 new chemicals enter commercial markets in the United States; meanwhile the National Toxicology Program, the agency responsible for assuring the safety of these chemicals, can only manage to conduct testing on 25 of them annually.14

Though Big Business generally does the most complaining about 'red tape', many regulations would be unneeded were it not for the scope and scale at which large corporations now operate. A study by the US Center for Disease Control, for instance, points out that large outbreaks of food-borne disease are more likely today because of the trend toward fewer, bigger food production facilities and longer-distance distribution.13 Since the scaling-up of the food production system is itself never questioned (and is no doubt assumed to be 'inevitable'), the response is tighter regulation and still more technology - at greater cost to the public. Thus, outbreaks of salmonella and e. coli poisoning in the meat industry have provided the rationale for approving nuclear irradiation as a sterilizing process. This technology itself has the potential for serious accidents, and will require further layers of publicly-funded regulation.

I f the need for regulation is largely a consequence of largescale industrial processes, it is small producers that ultimately bear the heaviest regulatory burden. Health problems from small-scale food production for local consumption are relatively few and far between. But regulations needed because of large-scale production and long-distance marketing are applied to small producers of every kind. The EC directive demanding that cheese producers install tile floors and stainless steel kitchens, for example, is putting small farm-based cheese makers out of business; similar rules in the US nearly put an end to the selling of traditional cured hams in southern states, while rules favouring pasteurised apple cider will likely spell the demise of hundreds of small-scale cider makers in the north-east. As usual, the markets of these small, local producers will be taken over by larger, more highly capi­

talised producers that can more easily absorb the costs of satisfying the regulations.

Another benefit of regulations to large producers comes with the stamp of approval regulatory agencies give to industrial processes and products. However flawed the approval process, it nonetheless serves to calm the public's understandably jittery nerves about the pace of technological change. One reason that the American public has been relatively muted in its opposition to bio-engineered food, for example, is that people mistakenly believe their health and the safety of the environment are adequately

CORPORATESPEAK "If we do this . . . if we make it impossible for these 5.6 billion people to escape CocaCola... then we are sure of our future success for many years to come. Doing anything else is not an option."

- CocaCola, Annual Report protected by agencies like the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In this sense, the semblance of regulatory oversight has been highly beneficial for the biotech industry, much as it has for the chemical industry, the pesticide industry, and many others. The multi-billion dollar budgets of regulatory agencies are, in fact, most accurately interpreted as yet another subsidy given to large-scale producers.

Reversing the advance of the large and global and bringing about a resurgence of the small and local will require efforts on many fronts. An important first step is to acknowledge that the growth of the global economy and the corporations that dominate it are not the product of evolution, nor are they the consequence of truly free choice among the populations affected. Instead they are the result of many years of direct and hidden subsidies, public expenditures on infrastructures tailored to corporate growth, and government policies - from health and safety regulations to the rules of international trade - that are heavily biased towards the needs of the largest enterprises. Since all of these can be reversed, a shift in direction toward diversity, smaller scale and sustainability is within our reach.D

Steven Gorelick is Programmes Director for the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)

References: 1. David Morris, "Unmanageable Megacities", Utne Reader, Sept-Oct 1994, p.80. 2. A.V. Krebs, "Farm Subsidies: Myth vs. Reality", The Agribusiness Examiner, Apr-

May 1995, p.5. 3. Graham Harvey, The Killing of the Countryside (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997),

p.9, 47, 70-71; Robin Page, "Havoc wrought by the drive for 'efficiency'", DailyTelegraph, June 15, 1996, p.3. 4. The Guardian, Nov. 3, 1994, p. 13. 5. Vania Grandi, "Small Grocers Disappearing into History as Superstores Emerge in

Italy", Burlington (VT) Free Press, Jan. 2, 1998, p.6B. 6. "Is Bigger Better?", PBS Online, June 2, 1998, www.pbs.org. 7. Art Davidson, Endangered Peoples (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1993),

p. 174. 8. Anthony J.F Reilly, CEO of HJ Heinz, quoted in "Can't Live Without It" , by Alan

Thein Durning, Worldwatch, May-June 1993, p. 13. 9. Amulya K.N. Reddy and Jose Goldemberg, "Energy for the Developing World", in

Energy for Planet Earth, p.61. 10. Alan Thein Durning, Worldwatch, May-June 1993, p. 14-15. 11. William J. Broad, "Study finds Public Science is Pillar of Industry", New York

Times, May 13, 1997, sect. C, p.l . 12. RAFI press release, March 13, 1999; RAFI PO Box 640, Pittboro, NC 27312, USA. 13. Thomas L . Friedman, " A Manifesto for the Fast World", New York Times

Magazine, March 28, 1999, p.96. 14. Peter Montague, Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly. Environmental Research

Foundation, 538, March 20, 1997. 15. "Report: Mass production promotes food poisoning", Burlington Free Press,

December 10, 1997.

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