Such a situation lends itself especially well to cozy insider deal making-especially when these bureaucrats come from the same elite circles as members of the Trilateral Commission. Clinton's leadership in advancing what many progressives thought to be a Bush agenda on these agreements won him high marks from his colleagues on the Trilateral Commission but seriously alienated major elements of his core constituency, who had looked to him to provide a less corporatist view of the trade agenda. On this most fundamental of issues, the electoral system gave the voters only the illusion of choice. The policy actions being advanced by the elite consensus constitute an increasingly effective attack on the institutions of democracy-the very purpose of which is to prevent a small inside elite from capturing control of the instruments of governance. Their dominance of the policy debate largely precludes raising alternatives to prevailing assumptions.
Economic globalization is neither in the human interest nor inevitable.
It is axiomatic that political power aligns with economic power. The larger the economic unit, the larger its dominant players, and the more political power becomes concentrated in the largest corporations. The greater the political power of corporations and those aligned with them, the less the political power of the people, and the less meaningful democracy becomes. However, networks and alliances made up exclusively of Stratos dwellers are unlikely to articulate and pursue such an alternative. To the contrary, as we shall see in the next chapter, the Stratos dwellers are mobilizing the full resources of the world's largest corporations behind an effort to consolidate global corporate rule.