Can Second Wave insitutions reform by promoting and defending the basic principles that drive theThird Wave transformations that emphasizes accountability ,democracy,and devolution of power?
Second Wave and Globalization
The Vatican has called for an overhaul of the global financial systems with a supranational authority to oversee worldwide economy. The Vatican noted that the marketplace had run amok and these changes would bring more ethical and democratic principles. The Roman Catholic church expressed concerns about inequality of income, economic instability and the inability for national governments to address these issues
The report issued by the Church stated :“We should not be afraid to propose new ideas, even if they might destabilize pre-existing balances of power that prevail over the weakest."
According to the EUObserver, the top French Financial regulator agreed: He told senior Catholic bishops that the dominance of the global financial systems " has changed our relationship to money, which has become an absolute value and measure of all things. More seriously, states have increasingly fallen under the control of markets, as this crisis shows. We have to constantly react to market expectations, to reassure the markets...States, politics must regain control of things.”
Second Wave Means ,Third Wave Ends?
These representatives of large Second Wave institutions ( the Vatican and the French Government 's financial regulatory authority), by reasserting centralized goverment controls over the globalized economy, have sent preliminary signals that the endless expansion of marketization must have a limit.
Alvin Toffler predicted that Thrd Wave civilization would become "trans-national", that is it would no longer see the imperative to build and extend markets ( though there would still be a market dependency).
Is this a case of Second Wave insitutions merely asserting their centralizing authority - or more profoundly using Second Wave means to accomplish Third Wave ends? Or both?
"Re-Massification"
This reassertion of the value and efficacy of large institutions could be called "re-massification"- a reversal of the "de-massification" or decentralizing process intrinsic to the Third Wave transformation.
James Surowieck, writing in The New Yorker ( October 31,2011), defends large corporations as the "real drivers of growth" not small businesses. He cites a study by the World Bank that argues that in ninety-nine developng countries large firms have significantly higher rates of productivity and growth. Meanwhile,in the U.S. large corporations haveaccounted for the vast majority of technological innovation via R&D.
In the decades after WWII, the American workers' increasing middle class prosperity was directly, linked ,Surowiecki notes, to employment in major corporations:in the early Seventies one in five non-farm worker was working for a Fortune 500 company,he further adds.
Perhaps the issue is not about choosing between Second Wave and Third Wave but creating a hybrid between the two that can partake of the best of both worlds: A Fourth Way?
Thomas White - Thomas White’s poetry, essays, and fiction have been widely published in both online and print journals in Canada, United States, ...
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