This should hardly come as a surprise, modern global techno-industrial civilization is a fundamentally a resource extraction and power-concentration machine. Corporations are the mechanisms that do the work. Governments of all types simply guide the process and ensure that corporations can operate as efficiently as possible, despite the citizen-friendly noises that some of them make regarding the regulation of corporate excesses.
Given the underlying assumptions and operating principles of modern civilization, including its self-protective legal structures, I can't see how it could be otherwise. That is a deeply dispiriting realization, because it implies that effective large-scale change will not be possible until after the machine of civilization breaks down.
At the Heart of Global Woes, 157 of World's 200 Richest Entities Are Now Corporations, Not Governments
Measured by 2017 revenue, 69 of the top 100 economic entities in the world are corporations, GJN found in its report, which was released as part of an effort to pressure the U.K. government to advance a binding United Nations treaty that would hold transnational corporations to account for human rights violations.
"When it comes to the top 200 entities, the gap between corporations and governments gets even more pronounced: 157 are corporations," GJN notes. "Walmart, Apple, and Shell all accrued more wealth than even fairly rich countries like Russia, Belgium, Sweden."
In a statement accompanying the striking new figures, GJN director Nick Dearden denounced Britain's Tory government for eagerly assisting this "rise in corporate power—through tax structures, trade deals, and even aid programs that help big business."
"The vast wealth and power of corporations is at the heart of so many of the world's problems—like inequality and climate change," Dearden noted. "The drive for short-term profits today seems to trump basic human rights for millions of people on the planet. Yet there are very few ways that citizens can hold these corporations to account for their behavior. Rather, through trade and investment deals, it is corporations which are able to demand that governments do their bidding."
