Memo from Davos: Down with Democracy!

Multinationals, responsible for creating millions of jobs, manage to pit governments against one another in terms of wages, work conditions and taxation. Political leaders flounder in countering multinationals’ claims about the need to reduce excessive regulations, fire workers at will or accrue huge profits for shareholders. The multinationals have more power, argues Daniel Bell for the Huffington Post: “the laws of the country must conform to the dictates of MNCs, rather than to the people's will.” Company executives argue that their ability to select targets for charity is better than government programs relying on taxation, that a net increase of jobs anywhere in the globe has higher moral ground than protectionism. Bell concludes, “the clash may not be between good guys and bad guys, but rather between competing systems of morality.” In the clash between corporate-backed authoritarianism and democracy, nations must decide if some form of global governance could provide basic standards for all and tame the multinationals. – YaleGlobal