The Third Way: how to turn the trend of corporate mergers and acquisitions into a force for good!

As defined by the Center for Economic and Social Justice, the Third Way is a proposal for a new economic system in which all corporations would be placed under employee control. On the face of it, this seems like communism with a thin veneer of capitalist mechanisms, until you realize that the corporations themselves will continue to compete in the marketplace, and that they will still require a governmental anti-trust apparatus to prevent that competition from breaking down.

The trouble is, anti-trust laws aren't really enforced these days, and corporations are growing and merging so quickly that their power is beginning to eclipse that of nation-states. That's a trend we should try to reverse if we can; if we want to solve the environmental crisis and other pressing issues that market forces tend to ignore, we really ought to maintain a powerful government presence that can encourage rapid transitions to new business models, such as those embodied in Natural Capitalism.

But let's assume for a moment that there's no feasible way to bring back the era of strong government, and that the state finally withers away as both Marxists and radical libertarians predict. Then we probably face a cyberpunk-style future of corporate feudalism, but with the Third Way, at least there would be democracy within the corporations (you can call it "communist feudalism" instead, if you prefer). And even if the merger trend continues to its logical conclusion, which libertarians seldom if ever discuss, the all-encompassing corporation masquerading as a world government will be democratic too.

Whatever the future may hold, one thing remains certain: the environmental crisis will continue to seem paralyzingly vast from the vantage point of ordinary people who don't have the right kinds of democratic institutions available to them. Critics of modern environmentalist rhetoric point out that the contrast between the scale of the problems and the scale of the actions we tell individuals to take is working against us. For most people, the mantra "think globally, act locally" is hard to accept when the whole world seems to be accelerating out of control. But if every employee could submit and vote on a proposal to change the way his/her entire company gets its resources and disposes of its wastes, it would go a long way toward curing the malaise of scale paralysis that still grips our world.

These are the main reasons why I support the Third Way. There is one more reason that I should mention: in many cases, the workers really do know best. They may need some managers to guide them in making large-scale economic decisions, but those managers shouldn't be making all the choices when it comes to working conditions, required hours, or which tools the company should provide for the workers to do their jobs.

Celestial forcing: the sophisticated way to leap from denial to despair

In intellectual circles, the continuing debate over global warming goes something like this:

"Well, Mr. Naysayer, the evidence is all in--the climate is definitely warming."

"Yup, have to agree with you there."

"Really! So what are you planning to do about it?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"What?? Well, whyever not?"

"Simple. There's no proof of the correlation between your so-called 'greenhouse gases' and global average temperatures. I say the Sun is causing the warming, not us. And you can't beat the Sun."

"I'm sorry, but that's no excuse for sticking your head in the sand and waiting for death. Just because we don't know for sure whether reducing emissions would help doesn't mean we shouldn't try it, particularly considering the economic benefits of switching to renewable energy before the oil runs out!"

To this dialogue I would add that whether or not human activities are inadvertently impacting the climate, we may be able to impact it intentionally if we really try. It won't be easy, but then, hey--the future of our species may be at stake here.

Idea 1: We could release large quantities of global-cooling pollutants such as sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere.
Objection: The resulting acid rain would kill off the world's plant life. Plus, if all that CO₂ isn't affecting the climate, why should we believe that any chemicals we put up there will make a difference?
Rebuttal: None at this time. Maybe I'll write one after reading the collection of scientific papers on celestial forcing provided to me by Professor Tim Patterson. (Oddly, Prof. Patterson never replied to my question about the startling lack of media attention paid to scientists like him. Maybe he agrees with Michael Moore that the news media is just trying to keep everybody as afraid as possible. [slaps self on hand for blatant ad-hominem attack])

Idea 2: We could plant millions of white-leafed trees to raise the planet's albedo, reflecting more of the sun's light back to space before it gets converted to heat.
Objection: This strategy would cause massive damage to already-strained ecosystems.
Rebuttal: Probably not as much damage as continued global warming would cause.

Idea 3: Similarly, we could cover the polar regions with giant white sheets to prevent the sunlight from melting the ice.
Objection: That's a whole lot of white sheets, and white or no, they'd eventually absorb so much heat that they would contribute to the problem rather than helping.
Rebuttal: Again, none at this time.

Idea 4: We could place an immense, semitransparent sunshade near the Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun, stabilized by the solar-sail principle.
Objection: To cast shade over an appreciable fraction of the planet, the sunshade would have to be tens of millions of square kilometers in area. And even if we could manufacture three-gram-per-square-meter carbon-fiber sheets in that kind of quantity, fifty million square kilometers of the stuff would still weigh about 150 million metric tons, making it basically impossible to lift it all into space in any reasonable length of time. Isn't mega-scale engineering fun?
Rebuttal: There's already plenty of carbon in space, in the form of large asteroids which might collide with Earth if we don't take them apart. In short, if we build the sunshade we can knock out two major threats to the existence of our species in one masterful stroke!

And even if none of these pans out, sticking our heads in the sand doesn't make any sense when we could be evacuating areas due to be inundated by water or disease, preparing to replace lost crop yields with hydroponics, and so forth. If things get really bad, we can move the human race down into some nice cool cave cities if necessary. Key take-home message: Where there's life, there's hope.