The Rise of the Metanational

Kim Stanley Robinson, in his "Mars" trilogy, decribes in vivid detail an Earth governed in large part by what he calls "metanats," metanational companies that do not exist in a realm beyond national borders, and often have at their disposal resources equivalent to, and sometimes superior to, national governments. Those metanats (and their advocates) pursue their own agendas and policies, largely to the detriment of the world overall, and almost never ask the question, "Why are we doing this?" Global warming, pollution, skewed energy policies, health policies, damaged or destroyed land and indigenous peoples result from their pursuit of profit.



Some people may read accounts like this and write it off as science fiction, as the product of a vivid imagination, and not to be taken seriously. I read Chirac's reaction to what might be one of the most divisive labor laws ever enacted in all of the Western world, and can't help but wonder just how far along this path we already are.

First off, let me say that I am emphatically not anti-business. Business, especially small and medium business, is what America is all about. I will proudly state that I am anti-big business, though. I figure it's okay to be categorical like that if Republicans can claim to be "anti-big government" (I figure that when it comes to organizational entities, big anything is bad news, and I'd like small-to-moderate-sized groups making policy or generating products and services, because they might still retain some level of common sense). I happily reap the rewards that large corporate structures have afforded me: I own mass-produced electronics, an automobile, clothing, and other consumer goods, I eat the products of corporate farming. I work for a company whose clients are other, larger companies.

Corporations, to some degree, make the world go round. I can acknowledge that.

Where I diverge with all this big business is when corporations can meddle with actual affairs of state. Legislation should not be the province of companies, contrary to what the Jack Abramoffs of the world would have you believe. Domestically, our political process is becoming ever more tainted and corrupt by legislators kowtowing to special interests that have, at their heart, business interests. We have to fight those entities tooth and nail to enact what should otherwise be common sense; from the gun lobby to the tobacco lobby to energy production to the automobile industry, we're beset on all sides by the propaganda of interests whose sole focus is protecting their bottom line while resisting government regulation as forcefully as possible.

This labor law in France...who are we here in America to sit and watch complacently? Our work products are not our own. We scream very loudly and litigiously for our individual freedoms: freedom to worship, freedom to own a gun, freedom to speak as we choose, marry as we choose, have sex, wear a condom, have an abortion, freedom to do this that or the other thing.

And then for 8 or more hours a day, we chuck all that out the window. Our rights take a backseat to the rights of entities that do not care about us as individuals any more than they care about the rights of the workstations we sit in front of, or the productivity we create for them. The bottom line rules all.

I'm not some huge advocate of labor unions. I don't want to go on strike. I just want to own a fair share of what I produce. I dislike that there exists an elite class in our society whose only claim to their wealth is that they took risks with capital. For that, they are compensated in ways that are hard to believe. They live the lives that Muslim insurgents think they have to blow themselves up to attain in the afterlife: yachts, sexual escapades, their every whim catered to, their every material desire fulfilled.

To what end? Shouldn't we, as workers, look out for what's ours? We work, we produce. But do we stop and think? Are we empowered to take any form of action at all? Can we even protest? No. The least form of action we can take would cost us our livelihoods. The conventional wisdom is that it's better to keep your head down so you can keep what little you do get.

This week, thousands of people took to the streets in France and did all sorts of damage: looting, arson, wrecked cars and shops. They may have gotten some emotional outrage out of their systems, but apart from damaging Chirac politically, I don't really think they accomplished much else. The systems and structures behind it all have not been budged one iota.

As the tagline for a movie in theaters currently goes, "people should not fear the government. Governments should fear the people." Well, I'd personally settle for something milder: our government happens to be ostensibly of the people and for the people--shouldn't it make sense that it then therefore respects the people?