Global economics came to be presented as a tool to weaken government, discourage taxes both on corporations and on the top bracket of earners, force deregulation and, curiously enough, to strengthen private sector technocracies in large corporations to the disadvantage of real capitalists and entrepreneurs. That predilection for the large over the small meant that the Globalization movement would actively and quite naturally favour the limitation of real competition.
The Collapse Of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World, by John Ralston Saul
So I purchased this book probably seven or eight years ago and it has been sitting on my shelf unread ever since. That is, until I picked it up last night (after finishing that new Zodiac book). Why did I buy it? I didn't know who John Ralston Saul was then, and I sure don't know who he is now. I think I just liked the title and cover, and it looked like something a smart person should probably read.
In all honesty, I don't feel I'm quite smart enough to be reading this now, let alone when it was first released. But I'm getting the gist here and there, about how economists and governments bought into the ideology and promise of globalized free markets and that accepting economics as the dominate force in shaping Civilization became viewed as an inevitability.
I'm right there with you, Saul.
Apparently this book was reissued in 2009 after the financial crises with a new epilogue. I have the hardcover first edition, so I get to read it for the first time in the context of a prediction that appears to have later been vindicated.
For the record, I also have an unread copy of John Ralston Saul's "A Fair Country" -- it, too, has a rather attractive cover:
