The one overriding objection I hear to my Pro Commerce position is
'What about the big global companies Aren't they an awful danger?
What the doubter is suggesting is that somehow big companies are bad. Global bigness is bad.
My response is that big companies are being vilified because of some 19th Century ideology. The truth is that big companies are fragile and ephemeral. They come and go, much faster than tin can despots like Mao, Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Ho Chi Min and Kim Jong-il.
Here is a list of the top 100 global companies in 1960* and in 2008. Only eleven companies are on both lists. Another only has the same name (AT&T is not the same continuous company) and two of the eleven are about to collapse (Ford, GM). Three from the 2008 list are already out of business (Citigroup, Bank of Scotland and Merrill Lynch).
To put it another way, of the top hundred global companies today, among these ferocious demonic monsters, only eleven will still exist when today's 20 year-olds are retiring. Big global corporations are best compared to orchids, delicate hot house plants. They come and go, mostly go.
Fear of big global companies is not a rational fear. Better to fear today's tyrants who have real lethal power and will get more lethal power as nuclear weapons proliferate.
*I compiled this list and put it on the Internet for the first time; I also put the pure U.S. list online.