The Great Corporate Conspiracy

I've just finished reading two books, pictured above, and have some comments to throw out there.

Both books are by the same author, John Perkins, and they are about roughly the same thing. Perkins claims that he worked for a company as an economist and it was job to go out to developing countries and make wildly inflated economic forecasts and convince the leaders of these countries to take excessive loans from the World Bank and the IMF.

Later these countries would default on their loans, putting them in debt to the U.S. and subject to various demands such as the placement of U.S. military bases in their country, exploitation of their natural resources by U.S. companies, etc.

The book paints a mean picture of the U.S., who Perkins claims is building an economic empire around the world. The U.S. is doing this primarily through large corporations who really run the country.

Oh, and did I mention that Perkins claims he was selected to do this job by the NSA?

The first book, Confessions, was on the bestseller list forever. I remember it came out when I was living in Indonesia, one of the countries featured prominently in both books. I would often talk to people who wanted to know what I thought of the book. Having only read reviews and a little about Perkins on the Internet, my reply would be something like, "It sounds like the guy is a conspiracy theorist and most of what he claims is likely untrue."

After reading the book, however, I have changed my mind.

Some of what he says, I believe, is untrue and suitable conspiracy theory material. But I think there is a lot of truth in both books if you look at the overall message.

First, his claim that he was selected by the NSA to do this work is utterly bogus. He says that he once interviewed with the NSA but later chose a career path with the Peace Corps instead. There he was recruited by a private company to do his evil work or bringing down developing countries. He assumes that the NSA initiated all of this.

The NSA does not do that kind of work though. It's pretty widely known and accepted that the NSA does electronic eavesdropping, not medling in the economic affairs of other countries. But they suffer from the curse of the secret government agency. By not telling everyone everything they are doing, we are free to make it up for ourselves.

So my theory is that Perkins was not put in his position by the NSA or any government agency for that matter. But I believe that he was encouraged to inflate his economic assessments and pressure countries to take big loans for infrastructure development. These development projects would then be farmed out to U.S. companies, including the one for which Perkins worked.

It makes perfect sense. If you were a big multi-national company, interested primarily in the bottom line, this is how you would do business. All is fair in love and war, and business. Is that morally right? I don't think so, but that's how the world works, driven by human nature.

So Perkin's assessment that these multi-national companies exploit people in foreign countries is dead right. Are they attempting to build an economic empire by doing so? Maybe not. I doubt individual companies could work together on such a scale.

But exploitation is the name of the game in the "corporatocracy" as he calls it. Perkins claims this attempt to build an empire and exploit developing countries started after World War II and was starting to build steam before the Vietnam Conflict. Of course it did.

Prior to World War II, the U.S. wasn't that involved overseas. It didn't have to be. Big corporations were busy exploiting U.S. citizens. Today we see big corporations like Nike running sweatshops overseas where workers are exploited in near slave-like conditions. One hundred years ago we saw the same thing in the U.S with big corporations exploiting child labor and working U.S. citizens in nearly the same conditions. But you can't do that here anymore, we've developed beyond that.

Even 5,000 years before that we see the exact same thing happening in Egypt where a small elite class exploited the labor of lower classes to build the Great Pyramid of Giza. It's the story of civilization, the strong exploit the weak. Is it right though? I don't think so, but should we be surprised that it happens today?

Just like the U.S. worker has gained freedom from oppressive corporations and the right to decent work conditions, workers around the world should demand the same as well. We in the U.S. should not encourage corporations to exploit other countries.

But we do encourage this exploitation by our excessive consumerism and consumption. If we didn't buy more than 350 million sport shoes each year, most of which are made overseas, we wouldn't need to exploit foreign workers. If we bought shoes made in the U.S. by Americans, we wouldn't need to exploit these workers and we'd give workers in the U.S jobs. If we weren't the world's largest consumer of oil per capita, we wouldn't need to rob other countries of their resources.

That's a lot to think about but it's something that we as Americans really need to start thinking about. If we want this country to remain one of the greatest in the world, we need to be responsible for our actions. In today's global society, every decision we make can have a global impact. That's a lot of responsibility but part of being great is successfully handling responsibility.