Author Douglas Rushkoff’’s most recent work, Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back, provides an interesting take on how society and the corporate world currently interact and more importantly, how the market forces have changed society for the worse.

Though the book makes some wild assumptions and at times provides little support for its positions, it does represent a comprehensive look at the ways society has changed over the last few decades. The corporate world has taken precedence according to Rushkoff’s work, and that’s push communities and individual relationships to the brink of disaster.

We often have a tendency to regard the economy as a machine that is beyond the control of mere mortals like ourselves. We see it as something that is bigger than society, and something that our decisions and the responsibility that we take upon selves as we live our lives has no significant bearing on.

Unfortunately this is a dangerous and shortsighted outlook to have. While it may be true that the economy is like a machine, it’s a machine that’s made up of people, the money that they earn and spend, and the decisions that they make. The fiscal soundness with which we live our lives represents the grease in the cogs of the economy, and therefore determine how smoothly it is able to run.

There are those among us who support and nurture and delight in our progress.
There are those among us who sabotage and manipulate and grow envious of our successes.

There are those among us who think clearly and speak the truth as they see it.
There are those among us who impose their dark, cloudy confusions on others and distort the truth with lies and manipulations.

There are those among us who live in the present and know grace.
There are those among us who are trapped in past or future and know only illusion.

There are those among us who listen quietly to their inner wisdom.
There are those among us who shout out their discomforts as they scream at the agony within.

New, compelling evidence that the United States of America is approaching the status of a third world nation has emerged in the last few years. It may seem ludicrous that one of the countries on the forefront of technology has citizens in a state of squalor but surveys and reports paint an alarming picture of the United States as falling so far down the economic scale of the world that the country will lose its status as a world power.