Globalization, Governance, and Rhizomes Of Reality
As Mr Lamy says there is a lack of governance in the global economy. This is in my mind code for the need for social control or socialism. My contention is that a world government is emerging but there are key impediments, one is the persistence of the nation state, and the tendency for local interest to overwhelm the interests of the whole. This is very evident in the EU where Greece may end up leaving the body finding restrictions to be intolerable. Germany resents having to bail out Greece, after German banks were allowed to promote such great debt. The problem is the German people were not involved in generating the loans that incurred the debt but they must participate in the bailout. This is the same with the Greek people. They were not asked if they wanted the government to go into debt. They were simply told that the government had things under control and when they didn't they were asked to pay as if it was their responsibility. Even if they had benefited from going into debt with better salaries etc., it was essentially not their choice.
That is the problem with globalization as far as I can see. There is no mechanism for a world vote by citizens. Only governments which are theoretically representing the people are represented in the UN. Economically there is the dictatorship of the capitalist class, with economic democracy limited to shareholders, similar to the 19th century concept of the vote being limited to property holders, now it is limited to proxy holders. This is obviously the next step in democratization, direct economic voting power for all workers, whether they are owners or not. With the logical development that the capitalist class becomes superfluous except as some sort of coordinating body responsible to the voting workers. This would make the executive of any corporate entity responsible to the workers who have become the voters instead of merely the stock holders, although there could be a vote for stock holders and workers.
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