Democracy or Corporatocracy

What is corporatocracy ?

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In very simple terms, corporatocracy is the economic and political system ruled by corporations.

Some statistics on the power of corporatocracy.

In order to understand the economic and political power of the major corporations worldwide, I have dug up some figures concerning the 45 largest companies.  I have compared their revenues to the tax revenues and GDP of the major countries. See the table below. The 45 largest companies worldwide have total earnings of around 9,3 trillion dollars. 
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The full picture is alarming as it clearly demonstrates that governments have less economical clout then the 45 largest companies worldwide.  45 CEO’s have more economical power than any individual country in the world. To worsen the situation, most countries are run by governments with parliaments, senates etc… For example, in the US there are 100 senators, 435 representatives, and 55 governors (including territories and district). So the decision making of the top 45 is easier than that of the US government.

The above picture really made me wonder if the major corporations really do have power through economical supremacy. The further I dug the worse it got.  

Corporatocracy through dept.

Most countries around the world have debts. It is simple to understand that the creditor always have clout and final ownership.  So, lets take as an example the US.  It currently owes 18 trillion dollars. The chart below shows the distributions of debt.




30% of the public debt is owned by the corporate world. This is quite significant and does raise questions about the potential decision power it provides. Especially considering that a big chunk of the debt is intergovernmental holdings and the federal reserve (so government owned).

With this evidence, the big question is whether corporations have ethical standards and won’t abuse their economical position to lead governments. For this reason, I did some further digging and started to look up the top 20 companies for scandals. Not one single company from the list was scandal free. This clearly highlights a problem. It does not mean these companies are bad, but due to their size, ambitions and cutthroat management, they are prone to excesses.

Corporatocracy and scandals

Many examples of scandals can be found in the oil and gaz companies. Together they account for 51% of the list. This means that half of the largest companies worldwide are dealing in some way or another in oil and gaz. The scandals are about buying African leaders, even toppling African governments. But also about hidding global warming evidence, about exploitation of labour and resources, and about the irreparable destruction and pollution of nature.  This shows that these companies will stop at nothing to keep their activity going.

Purely through the economic position of these companies, there is not a single government in the world that is willing to risk change. They cannot afford to loose 30% of their financing. This means that even the state of the planet and the well being of future generations are compromised due to financial power. It seems that humanity has accepted corporate power as the guiding principle and the driver of the state of our earth.  We are not in a democracy, but in a Corporatocracy.

This situation needs to change as the gap between the richer and poor is getting bigger, nature is suffering, and it’s killing people through wars for more resources and financial gain.