The biggest problem of the third industrial revolution is as easy to explain as it is difficult to solve. Technology is creating a global economy that is rapidly supplanting our old national economies. National governments cannot control this new economy, yet no one, least of all Americans, wants to create the form. of global government that might be able to control it. As a result we were going to be living in a fundamentally unmanaged economic system. The difficulties of containing the 1997 Asian economic meltdown are just the first of many such difficulties we can expect.
National governments, which used to worry about managing and maintaining their economic systems, are slowly being pushed out of business. Changes in global finance overwhelm all but the largest governments. Governments have lost much of their influence over the movement of information and capital. They cannot control who crosses their borders either physically or culturally.
Conversely, the power of global businesses is growing with companies&39; ability to move to the most advantageous locations and play countries off against one another in bidding for attractive investment projects.