Economic Behaviour As If Others Too Had Interests

Chapter 6 - Egoism and Multinational Corporations

111 Chapter 6 Egoism and Multinational Corporations Multinational corporations are business firms that have their operations in more than one country. Jacques Maisonrouge in a speech once said that a corporation is a business structure whose sole reason for existence is the earning of profits by manufacturing products for as little as possible and selling them for as much as possible. It does not matter whether the product does good or evil; what counts is that it be consumed— in ever-increasing quantities.158 Their branches or subsidiaries located outside of the country of origin are connected to the headquarters. For example, Toyota Ghana is connected to the parent company in Japan. Many of these multinational corporations are often headquartered in the developed economies such as the United States of America, Japan, and Western Europe. Others are headquartered in some of the emerging economies such as South Africa, South Korea, Singapore, India, Malaysia, and China. The headquarters controls all the branches in the world. The scope of the multinational companies is as diverse as their business activities. Multinational corporations dominate the global economy and control world trade. They control the patents on new technologies and products. In terms of goods or services, their reach into the global economy is massive and extensive. Some extract, refine and distribute most of the oil, petrol, and diesel or jet fuel used around the world. The Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company and British Petroleum Company (BP) are only a few examples. Some multinational corporations are involved in the mining of mineral resources, for example, Anglo Gold Ghana, and in running hydroelectric and nuclear power plants. Multinational corporations have control over banks and other financial institutions and also the print and electronic media. The news that most of us hear, watch or read is mediated through the lenses of those corporations. They dominate the seed-production, processing and distribution of much of the world’s food. They control the automobile industry. Here, General Motors and the Japanese Corporations (Toyota and 158 Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Müller, Global Reach: The Power of Multinational Corporations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 24. 112 Mitsubishi) come to mind. Others like Pfizer manufacture most of the world’s chemicals and drugs. The growth of these corporations has been astronomical. They have increased in number at a twinkle of an eye. In 1970 there were around 7,000 multinational corporations globally. By 1995 that number had grown to 40,000.159 With the increase in global population and its appetite for goods and services today, one would not be wrong to state that the number of multinational corporations globally has exceeded 40,000. These corporations have strong backing of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank (WB), which underwrite the basic rules and regulations of global economic, monetary, and trade relations. They also have strong support from home countries, many of which are global economic, political, and military powers. The Power of Multinational Corporations The men who run the global corporations are the first in history with the organization, technology, money, and ideology to make a credible attempt at managing the world as an integrated unit.160 The managers of the world’s corporate giants proclaim that where conquest has failed, business will succeed. Aurelio Peccei, a onetime director of Fiat and organizer of the Club of Rome, states that the global corporation “is the most powerful agent for the internationalization of human society.” With the technology which changes man’s view of space, time, and scale, in their hands, global corporations aspire to be global managers. As the president of the IBM World Trade Corporation once said, “the boundaries that separate one nation from another are no more real than the equator. They are merely convenient demarcations of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural entities... The world outside the home country is no longer viewed as series of disconnected customers and prospects for its products, but as an extension of a single market.”161 Many of the multinational corporations operate on the same principle that countries outside their home countries are extensions of their territories 159 Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization,( San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997), 13. 160 Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization, 13. 161 Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization, 13. [18.189.193.172] Project...