Power Concentration in World Politics

Power Concentration in World Politics PDF

Author: William R. Thompson

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-06-10

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 3030474224

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This book discusses the role of space, time and cyclical behavior in world politics. More specifically, the political-economic role of lead economies – the world’s most innovative economies for finite periods of time – in world politics. These represent unusual concentrations of new technologies, energy sources, and military capabilities of global reach that play disproportional roles in the conduct of international affairs and the provision of limited governance at the most macro level. They also possess close links to economic growth and intense conflict. The book describes the economic, military and political processes behind the systemic leadership of a state at the international level. It also highlights the economic preconditions of systemic leadership, such as economic monopoly of new technologies and energy, which underlie the system leader’s material advantage over others. Analyzing lead economies and the evolution of power over a number of centuries, the author demonstrates how disruptions wrought by the emergence of new technologies and energy sources are partly responsible for global conflicts. This book appeals to international relations scholars as well as anyone interested in the political economy of systemic leadership, growth, and conflict in world politics.

Concentration and Power in the Food System

Concentration and Power in the Food System PDF

Author: Philip H. Howard

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-02-25

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1472581148

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Nearly every day brings news of another merger or acquisition involving the companies that control our food supply. Just how concentrated has this system become? At almost every key stage of the food system, four firms alone control 40% or more of the market, a level above which these companies have the power to drive up prices for consumers and reduce their rate of innovation. Researchers have identified additional problems resulting from these trends, including negative impacts on the environment, human health, and communities. This book reveals the dominant corporations, from the supermarket to the seed industry, and the extent of their control over markets. It also analyzes the strategies these firms are using to reshape society in order to further increase their power, particularly in terms of their bearing upon the more vulnerable sections of society, such as recent immigrants, ethnic minorities and those of lower socioeconomic status. Yet this study also shows that these trends are not inevitable. Opposed by numerous efforts, from microbreweries to seed saving networks, it explores how such opposition has encouraged the most powerful firms to make small but positive changes.

The Concentration of Power

The Concentration of Power PDF

Author: Anders Corr, PhD

Publisher: Optimum Publishing International

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0888903235

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Since the beginning of organized societies, power and leadership have operated in human hierarchies, which are concentrating power in an accelerating manner, according to the comprehensive analysis of Dr. Anders Corr in his book The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy & Hegemony. “This sweeping study belongs next to Niall Ferguson and Jared Diamond in our understanding of how the world works and how it can work better.” — James Kraska, Harvard Law School “A must-read for legislators, military strategists, leading academics, regulators, and anyone interested in the existential threat that the concentration of economic, political, and informational power in an illiberal country like China creates for the leading democracies of the world.” - Kyle Bass, Billionaire investor “…erudite and realistic appraisal of 21st century power politics.” — Alex Gray, former Chief of Staff, White House National Security Council From The Book: “China’s influence in US politics has coincided with the industrialization of China, at the expense of a deindustrializing US. Global corporations, to which US politicians answer, fled high wages and environmental regulations in the US for low wages and lax environmental standards in China. Now, the US is paying the price and might not recover sufficiently to defend itself against China’s growing military. The strategic ambitions of one nation can and have upset the United Nations and the balance between powers. Now the Western world must understand the imminent threats from the hegemonic ambitions of China.” Hierarchy is the “institutionalization of power,” according to Dr. Corr’s The Concentration of Power, an institutionalization that is concentrating and accelerating over historical time, from prehistory to the present. Corr develops twelve historical theories and applies them to the greatest conflicts of the past and present, including during the age of empires, the present competition between superpowers such as the United States and China, as well as conflicts between the nation-state and emerging supranational powers such as the European Union and United Nations. Corr’s theories apply to domestic politics as well, as illustrated by the evolution of conflicts between communism, fascism, and liberal democracy. Corr argues that the concentration of power acts as a ratchet. It concentrates when conditions are ripe, and force is applied. Due to mechanisms like subsidies, transfers, and corruption, however, power does not easily return to an unconcentrated state when conditions are not ripe. This dynamic dynamic of the ratchet drives international and domestic concentration of power, with no apparent end other than a global illiberal hegemon at some point in the future. In sum, The Concentration of Power is a short history of the world, from the beginning to what the evidence indicates should be its logical conclusion. From politics to unions, associations, corporations, and the military, Dr. Corr analyzes them and provides readers with a sense of what the world could face if we allow hierarchy to continue its historical development toward global and illiberal hegemony. Be it in China, the United States, or the European Union, all are vying for global influence and the utilization of the structure of the United Nations to promote either the principles of human rights and democracy, or in the case of Beijing, the exact opposite. This clash between democracy and autocracy on a global level could turn into a final war of world proportions. No greater stakes have ever existed in world history.

Superclass

Superclass PDF

Author: David Rothkopf

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2008-03-18

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 1429943998

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Each of them is one in a million. They number six thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our governments, our largest corporations, the powerhouses of international finance, the media, world religions, and, from the shadows, the world's most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. They are the global superclass, and they are shaping the history of our time. Today's superclass has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth and power. They have globalized more rapidly than any other group. But do they have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen, as nationalist critics have argued? They control globalization more than anyone else. But has their influence fed the growing economic and social inequity that divides the world? What happens behind closeddoor meetings in Davos or aboard corporate jets at 41,000 feet? Conspiracy or collaboration? Deal-making or idle self-indulgence? What does the rise of Asia and Latin America mean for the conventional wisdom that shapes our destinies? Who sets the rules for a group that operates beyond national laws? Drawn from scores of exclusive interviews and extensive original reporting, Superclass answers all of these questions and more. It draws back the curtain on a privileged society that most of us know little about, even though it profoundly affects our everyday lives. It is the first in-depth examination of the connections between the global communities of leaders who are at the helm of every major enterprise on the planet and control its greatest wealth. And it is an unprecedented examination of the trends within the superclass, which are likely to alter our politics, our institutions, and the shape of the world in which we live.

Requiem for the American Dream

Requiem for the American Dream PDF

Author: Noam Chomsky

Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Published: 2017-03-28

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1609807375

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! In his first major book on the subject of income inequality, Noam Chomsky skewers the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism and casts a clear, cold, patient eye on the economic facts of life. What are the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power at work in America today? They're simple enough: reduce democracy, shape ideology, redesign the economy, shift the burden onto the poor and middle classes, attack the solidarity of the people, let special interests run the regulators, engineer election results, use fear and the power of the state to keep the rabble in line, manufacture consent, marginalize the population. In Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky devotes a chapter to each of these ten principles, and adds readings from some of the core texts that have influenced his thinking to bolster his argument. To create Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky and his editors, the filmmakers Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott, spent countless hours together over the course of five years, from 2011 to 2016. After the release of the film version, Chomsky and the editors returned to the many hours of tape and transcript and created a document that included three times as much text as was used in the film. The book that has resulted is nonetheless arguably the most succinct and tightly woven of Chomsky's long career, a beautiful vessel--including old-fashioned ligatures in the typeface--in which to carry Chomsky's bold and uncompromising vision, his perspective on the economic reality and its impact on our political and moral well-being as a nation. "During the Great Depression, which I'm old enough to remember, it was bad–much worse subjectively than today. But there was a sense that we'll get out of this somehow, an expectation that things were going to get better . . ." —from Requiem for the American Dream

Concentration and Will Power

Concentration and Will Power PDF

Author: F. W. Sears

Publisher: Health Research Books

Published: 1996-09

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9780787307608

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1919 Twelve lessons: Concentration Rightly & Wrongly Used; Character of Thoughts We Think; Thought Habits; Inharmonious Thought Habits; Consciousness & Thought Habits; I'll Try Thought Habit; Overcoming Self-Consciousness; Law of Harmony; Law of.