THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

The most effective solution for avoiding a continuous erosion of
privacy is not European-style detailed regulation, or new forms of
US-style anti-trust legislation The best way is formally to clarify
ownership rights over personal data. For example, one could specify
that all personal data (transaction, medical, financial) belong, by
right, to the individual. Only with his or her permission could this
data be sold, traded or used for purposes other than the original
transaction. The right to data privacy is one right that the creators of
the UN Human Rights advocates did not have to think about.
It is certain that the Information Age will deal a completely
different set of cards to all the players, and modify the balance of
power between governments, corporations and the population at
large. This new game promises to shift power away from
governments and regulatory authorities, as well as from the public.
There are no direct quantitative measures for such power shifts, but
the dramatic trend of privatisation that is sweeping the world
provides some indication of what is going on. Figure 4. 1 shows the
process of systematic liquidation of government-controlled assets.
Before Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK, privatisation
was a rare event. Since then, a world-wide trend has caught on. For
the year 1997 alone, the volume reached some US$157 billion, five
times what it was in 1990. Developing countries have recently
embarked on the same process, representing at least 30% of the total.
I believe that it is rarely healthy for governments to own businesses.
But the point here is that this unprecedented global trend towards
privatise is one indicator for the growing loss of influence that
governments have their economies.
There are many other indicators of the plausibility of the Corporate
Millennium (see sidebar). Is it possible that this trend is the result of
what Noam Chomsky has termed 'manufactured consent'. The
purpose of mainstream media, Chomsky claims, is not so much to