Our hegemonic laissez fair economists are demanding that money,
goods and services be able to move around the world transcending any
local market economy or national border.
This push to artificially define one global worldwide market
place is not driven by people with different culture, different
languages, different aspirations, different needs. Instead, the
Globalization of one world wide market is driven by our
transnational corporations for the purpose to make money.
Money has today lost its original purpose as a medium for
exchanging goods and services, and it has become the new ethical
value driving our corporate societies. We have financial businesses
who can arrange $100 loans out of $1 original bank deposit, and this
is the reason why we have bubbles in the financial market place, and
this is why in the last 20 years the assets of big corporations have
increased by 5000% while the minimum wage has practically stayed the
same.
The definition of one global world wide market place is
wrong and this state of affairs is not sustainable for providing
healthy communities and healthy people. Another way to make more
money in the one global world wide market place is by the rigid and
longer protection of copyrights. The shorter the term of copyrights
and the more flexible our economies can become to innovate
themselves, and it is strange how our laissez fair economists want
to liberalize the markets while at the same time they want more
world wide protection of corporations' copyrights.
And to understand the absurdity of liberalizing the markets by
having one global world wide market I can make reference to our
transnational drug corporations. The world is afflicted by the
epidemic of AIDS, yet our transnational drug corporations have been
demanding monopolist prices for their medicinals to cover the assets
of their research efforts. And I tell you how these corporations
have been covering up their assets, not only by shifting profits
from country to country to pay less taxes, but by manipulating costs
and evading taxes as well.
We understand that transnational drug companies operating in
Canada have dodged taxes by paying their corporate cousins abroad as
much as 40 times the going rate for chemical ingredients. These
transnationals include the Canadian arms of the Glaxo, SmithKline
and Hoffman-La Roche groups, and their allegiance is not to Canada
or any local market but their allegiance is to the bottom line:
money.
Some references
LIFE AFTER CAPITALISM, Presentation for Edmonton, Calgary, and
Saskatoon. By David C. Korten, November 1998 http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/capitalism.html
AIDS Drugs Case Puts Our Ideas About Medicine on Trial.
Undiplomatic Dispatch: TIME.com's Tony Karon argues that a lawsuit
over patents in South Africa should challenge us to rethink
conventional wisdom on profit in health care. By Tony Karon http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0%2C8599%2C101494%2C00.html
Taxman targets drug firms. Government alleges offshore purchases
were inflated to dodge Canadian taxes. Colin Freeze, Investigations
Unit, July 7, 2001 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/gam/National/20010707/UPHARN.html |