ing institutions in the world system are increasingly corporate empires. I say "increasingly" because national states, the rich states, at least, retain substantial importance. They are instruments of integrated corporate systems. And also increasing because it's an old phenomenon. It goes back to the origins of capitalism. It is true that it has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. DB: To continue with GATT: The Environmental News Network has said that GATT will "open borders for businesses seeking lower labor costs and less rigorous environmental regulation, thus blackmailing U.S workers to accept deteriorating working conditions and lower wages or lose their jobs." Do you think that's a fair assessment? It's not even controversial. Of course it will have that effect. It's already having that effect. Take the free-trade agreement with Canada. It's actually working both ways. Canada has just objected to U.S. environmental regulations on use of asbestos, claiming that that's interference with free trade. Canada is an asbestos exporter, and they want the barriers lowered. Perhaps they've already won on that, meaning that U.S. environmental regulations on asbestos will have to decline. Sooner or later the U.S. is probably going to object to the Canadian Health Service as an interference with free trade because it means that Canadian-based corporations are freed from the burden of paying parts of health costs that U.S. corporations have to bear because of the grotesquely incompetent and highly bureaucratized health system. Threats from U.S. insurance companies were enough to cause Ontario to drop plans for a provincial auto insurance program that would have reduced costs, but cut out the highly inefficient private corporations -- an interference with free trade, they claimed, and won. Canada has lost several hundred thousand jobs. There are various estimates, but none are less than a quarter of a million jobs, to the United States, m...
