Rating: 
Summary: The Case Against the Global Economy
Review: I don�t know where to begin in describing how terrifying this book is even from its first pages, and maybe even particularly in its first pages. The introduction paints a grim portrait of the future unless all people take responsibility to demand that their economic systems take a turn toward the local, not the global. We have all been told that globalisation is inevitable and above all beneficial and profitable to all of us. This books makes the case, with a series of well-documented and well-organized essays by scholars, intellectuals and individuals at the forefront of the anti-globalisation movement, that nothing could be further from the truth. Globalisation benefits corporations, not people. Most people believe that globalisation has nothing to do with them, and if it does, it only means that goods for those in the western world will probably become cheaper or jobs in the west will be lost to cheaper labour and production costs overseas. But in everyday American life, the problems inherent in all of this are not investigated or talked about at all. If you do ask questions about these problems, you are relegated to the dustbin of far-left environmentalists or far-right protectionists. Mander writes in his concise introduction, �Economic globalisation involves arguably the most fundamental redesign of the planet�s political and economic arrangements since at least the Industrial Revolution. Yet the profound implications of these fundamental changes have barely been exposed to serious public scrutiny or debate.� He continues, �We are now being asked to believe that the development processes that have further impoverished people and devastated the planet will lead to diametrically different and highly beneficial outcomes, if only they can be accelerated and applied everywhere, freely, without restrictions�� Mander makes this point and questions HOW? How can this possibly benefit people when what is clearly happening is �corporate colonialism�? Mander argues that the measures taken by a globalised economy will be tantamount to the �global homogenisation of culture, lifestyle, level of technological immersion.� In other words, every place will be the same as every other place and there will be no reason to leave your home. Maybe for some people this will be an ideal world to live in. Who knows? Economists have created measures of economic well being that do not reflect anything about the way and quality of life. There will always be winners and losers in the competitive and capitalistic society, and on a globalised level we can only see, in the short term, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In the long term we will see, as Mander illustrates in his introduction and the following essays demonstrate with more evidence, that growth and prosperity can only be temporary and unsustainable because resources, both renewable and non-renewable, will be used so quickly and haphazardly that growth and progress cannot be sustained. Co-editor Goldsmith writes �even for the biggest winners, it will be like winning at poker on the Titanic.�
Rating:
Summary: 43 Essays about the "global economy"
Review: I first read this book in 1997 not too long after it was first published and again just recently, it is more relevant now because things described are coming down in the world. Some essays cover such topics as trade, the third world, explanations of GATT & NAFTA, mass layoffs in labor, the food supply & genetically modified organisms. Other writers question whether or not the idea of "globalization" is even sustainable, one starts to wonder exactly who is behind "globalization" and benefits from it 'cause the majority sure doesn't. There is a whole section of this book devoted to corporations and they way they function. Wal-Mart & General Electric get whole essays all their own, and richly deserved.Usually books this accurate about the state of the world are just too depressing because the problems seem so entrenched and we're helpless to do anything about them. Not so here, the last section of the book focuses on community & localization and is uplifting. I wish more people would read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Multinational Corporations Explained
Review: I read this excellent book almost 4 years ago but it still has an influence on me. Each chapter deals with the operation of the global economy from a different perspective. The insights offered in the book are truly eye-opening. The fact that this book actuaaly puts forward some alternatives and argues them makes it an even greater joy to read it. Anyone who is really interested in a different perspective on how the world works should definitely read it and benefit from it.
Rating:
Summary: Ain't No Power Like The Power of The People
Review: If you have wondered why people all over the world have taken to the streets to protest the World Bank, IMF, the WTO, and other agents of global capital get this book! This book is wonderfully written, with in-depth yet easy to understand essays written by people all around the world who have realized that globalization is not benefitting anyone but the rich! This book will open your eyes and provoke you to act. I recommed it whole heartedly. If you care about the environment, human rights, workers' rights, biodiversity, democracy and freedom READ THIS BOOK! You aren't going to get the truth from the corporate media.
Rating:
Summary: A guidebook for understanding the anti-globalism movement
Review: If you've wondered what all those protests were about in Seattle, or anywhere else, it seems, that the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been scheduled to meet -- this is the book to read. It contains 43 articles by such writers as Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, Helena Norberg-Hodge, David C. Korten, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Herman E. Daly. The book's premise is that the emergent global economy is destroying diversity, both biological and cultural. Even nation-states are becoming increasingly irrelevant and meaningless under globalism -- much less regional and local jurisdictions. The bright and hopeful message, in the otherwise bleak landscape painted by the book, is the fact that people inherently seem to need small-scale forms of community -- we appear to be genetically programmed for it -- and if globalism won't provide for this need, we will reinvent structures that do. The book details, for example, a number of efforts underway around the world to recreate local currencies. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Critical Book In Understanding Economic Globalism!
Review: In a book one can best describe as both painstaking and muckraking, author and scholar Jerry Mander focus his considerable critical acumen by editing a series of essays on the much vaunted and constantly ballyhooed phenomenon of economic globalization. From the outset, Mander admits that the processes feeding into this process are so wide-spread, pandemic, and attractive to a variety of international corporate forces that any prospect for reversing the trend will be problematic indeed. Yet, given the potential for catastrophic consequences stemming from the movement toward the expanding influence of such global corporate enterprises, the author advises us that we would do well to try. Mander was among the first critics to point out how fundamentally undemocratic the rise of the corporate entities were in terms of how they came to increasingly exert powerful influences regarding the disposition of resources, political orientations, and the public welfare. Indeed, given the fact that economic globalization may well represent the most fundamental and the most radical reorientation of the sum total of international social, economic, and political arrangements in several hundred years, it is without a doubt critical that the average citizen learn more about the nature of economic globalization, how it is being implemented, and what this phenomenon means for each of us as individuals, as consumers, and, most importantly, as citizens. Thus, he and co-editor Edward Goldsmith have organized a series of 43 different essays from contributors as far ranging as Jeremy Rifkin to William Greider, from Ralph Nader to Wendell Berry, and from Jeanette Armstrong to Kirkpatrick Sale (the noted Neo-Luddite advocate), each discussing topics ranging from the nature of corporations accomplishing such change to the impact of the change for individuals in a number of important and interesting ways. Thus we have Wendell berry focusing on how corporate activities tend to attack and destroy rural opposition to facilitate the plunder of the natural resources, or William Greider discussing how a corporate giant like General Electric uses its political influence to fix the game in its favor, and this is often against the greater influence of the public at large in terms of jobs, the local economy, and the environment. This is an important book, one that arms the reader with an array of facts regarding what the so-called "New World Order" really means in terms of its potential impact on each us in every aspect of our lives, as individuals, as members of the local community, as consumers of necessary (and other) products, and as citizens of a nation and of the world at large. The scope of the change to come is immense, and it is obviously in the interest of each of us to better understand exactly what is at stake in terms of our lives, our freedoms as citizens, and our survival in a world increasingly endangered by reckless corporate activities that are destroying the biosphere. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Rational arguments against the global economy
Review: It's a shame a book like this is needed at all. We should have thought about this before we implemented our global economic system. Caught in an ever smaller web, countries are forced to compete for scarce resources, which are not the products of countries, but corporations. National sovereignties are destroyed. The environment is affected, since our economy judges our "goods" for value, rather than taking into account the environmental or emotional worth of something. Things become commodities and are prepackaged and sold back to us. For what? The question is something we should have asked before we allowed things to get this far.
Rating:
Summary: "Words to live by."
Review: Jim Otterstrom's review below prompted me to read this book. "We
are caught in a terrible dilemma," contributor David Korten
writes in this collection of 43 essays. "We have reached a point
in history where we must rethink the very nature of and meaning of
human progress" (p. 29). Reading the newspaper on any day
reveals the ever-increasing problems caused by the expansion of our
global economy: worldwide unemployment and poverty; homelessness;
global warming; air, soil, and water pollution; violence; political
chaos; a global monoculture "which is leveling both cultural and
biological diversity" (p. 317); the destruction of natural
resources; sprawling superstores that destroy communities; and "a
global sense of despair about the future" (p. 94). However, as
this long-overdue book makes clear, these are not simply unrelated
problems as the media would have us believe. This book first
identifies "the global economy" and examines the effects of
globalization, and then offers strategies "required to assist a
transition toward a more viable, more satisfying, and incomparably
more sustainable world" (p. 392). Co-edited by Jerry Mander and
Edward Goldsmith, this collection includes contributions from Ralph
Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, Wendell Berry, Satish Kumar, and Jeanette
Armstrong, among others. It offers compelling evidence that we are
living in a "global factory" (p. 302)--a corporate state,
"which not only disregards local tastes and cultural differences,
but threatens to serve as a form of social control over attitudes,
expectations, and behavior of people all over the world"
(p. 300), and which defines education as job training, and success as
a high-paying job (p. 416). In his essay, Satish Kumar observes that
with economic globalization, people have lost their dignity; they have
"become cogs in the machine, standing at the conveyor belt,
living in shanty towns, and depending on the mercy of their
bosses" (p. 420). He writes, "global economy drives people
toward high performance, high achievement, and high ambition for
materialistic success. This results in stress, loss of meaning, loss
of inner peace, loss of space for personal and family relationships,
and loss of spiritual life" (p. 421). We are pieces of the
living, dreaming earth (p. 465), Jeanette Armstrong writes in another
favorite essay, sharing the world with "people without
hearts," who have "lost the capacity to experience the deep
generational bond to other humans and to their surroundings,"
"blind to self destruction, whose emotion is narrowly focused on
their individual sense of well-being without regard to the well-being
of others" (p. 467). Economic globalization may seem
overwhelming while reading this book, but there are also strategies
here for local production, local consumption, reducing global trade,
and ensuring strong environmental standards (p. 91). The solution
begins with each of us, individually. Eat vegan. Buy organic. Walk
to work. Appreciate what is local. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Value
life. You will find words to live by here. And for those of you who
do not understand why hundreds were shot with rubber bullets, pepper
sprayed, and arrested for nonviolent protest in the streets of
Seattle, November 30 through December 3, 1999, while corporate elites
met in secret behind police barricades and a 25-block no-protest zone,
consider this book required reading. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: Execellent Reading: A Must 4 Business and Economics Students
Review: Mander and Goldsmith assembled a reader essential for all who care about the future of our species and the planet. Critically examining the global economy from its inception and exploring the vast consequences of global corporate dominance and the undemocratic bodies that govern them, "The Case Against the Global Economy" is a necessary voice in an increasingly corporatized world.
The student of Economics may benefit most of all from this book. Unlimited economic growth as a major societal goal is shown to be devastating for the future, and alternatives, however improbable, are offered for a more sustainable world. This book is a wake-up call that everyone must read!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Luddites convention
Review: The number of fallacious arguments in this collection of essays boggles the mind.But what do you expect fron the likes of Jeremy Rifkin,who has had a glorious 40 year record of failed predictions and doomsday scenarios behind him?What can you expect from a Jerry Mander,who sincerely thinks that life was better before plumbing,medicine,running water,sanitation and other manifesations of civilizations' corruptions that destroyed the "Noble Savage"?One truly fallacious argument is the idea that land should revert back to a "Commons",a policy that is directy responsible for the deforestation,pollution and shortages so common in many 3rd world nations.It is precisely private land ownership,along with restrictions of usage,that makes environmental solvency possible.Many of the authors continually bash multinational corporations,but it is precisely the inflow of investment capital that leaders of poorer nations have been clamoring for-capital that makes the building of infrastructure possible.Big business gets the blame for 3rd world poverty from these authors,somehow oblivious to the fact that poverty has been a way of life for certain nations for as long as history can recall,and that it is only now that material comfort,a safe and abundant food supply,medicine,a longer,more comfortable life is now becoming possible for peoples around the world.The "Noble Savage":impoverished,diseased,dead by 35;this paradise these Luddites imagine more primitive societies to be only shows what conceit,condescension and sillyness is at work in their thinking.These elitists want others to live in a cultural musueum so that they can turn on PBS or the Discovery channel and coo 'Awww.Look at the quaint little villagers work their quaint little plot of soil.And look at their quaint little straw huts.Awwww.' P.S. Take note that those who preach the virtues of anti-technology and anti-modernity fail to follow the religion that they want everyone else to follow.
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