New World an Analytical Book

¶ … New World

An analytical book view of this 1996 prediction of William Knoke

The financial industry, which includes the investment banking community represented by the author of this text, is often depicted as merely reacting to global and political changes in the international environment, rather than driving them forward. However, William Knoke uses the political platform of Bold New World, his 1996 prognostication, to predict the decline of the modern nation-state as a source of political, ethnic, tribal authority amongst people of the first as well as the developing worlds as well as to forecast the development of modern, multilateral and multinational capitalism. Alas, 1996 is a long way away from 2004, but it is interesting to see the author's point-of-view from a 'where we stood then' ideological standpoint.

Knoke stated that in the coming years, he say multi-locals with relatively small operating costs in the form of headquarters and staff salaries, rather than multinational organizations coming to the helm of the world community. Often these organizations would be economic rather than political in nature. For instance, Knoke predicted the European Community and the EEU as opposed to the UN should hold sway in Europe. Indeed, his view still has some credence, as the United Nations has diminished in importance since the United States has adopted more and more of a 'go it alone' policy since the administration of the second George Bush.

Thus, Knoke seems oddly prescient in that assertion. However, he also stated that the price of capital, labor, and raw materials would play diminishing roles in the global economy during the years ahead. Today, we see the catastrophic effect on global economic confidence that has been played by world crude oil prices. If anything, OPEC's resurgence of dominance is proof of how raw materials continue to remain important in the geopolitical discourse of policy.

Knoke is on slightly surer ground as he predicts the contraction and demise of influence of multinational central banks and other depository institutions, as the World Bank has retracted in its influence. However, when he predicts the end of gigantic corporations because of regionalization, he neglects to consider the formidable force and potential of the Internet. Of course, corporations may become smaller within the next ten years as the world grows more multipolar in its political structure. But multinational corporate entities today are actually easier to form through ecommerce, than they ever were before. The role of technology is given short shrift in the text as it relates to commerce, oddly enough, given the author's 'day job,' although he does curiously predict that the developing Global Village's children will become a database, thanks to the Internet, as more and more private information about the world's citizens becomes available online. Still, identity theft, the purveying of mail-order brides and children for adoption via the World Wide Web makes such an apparently specious and speculative contention seem less far-fetched than it initially seems.