Populist Empire?

When you read about the north american colonial period one of the themes that pops up frequently is manufactured goods were often made in the mother country and the monetization of the raw materials of the New World was made possible by import of manufactured and/or luxury goods, and no competing local industries. Money, and therefore credit were attached to the mother nation and its trade monopolies which led to deliberate hobbling of the colonies' economies.

It seems like innovation is inherently at odds with authoritarianism and oligarchy. (The Japanese Empire is a notable exception to this notion.) The rising tide of techno-totalitarianism across the western world (and in spades in China) is really pretty interesting from this point of view.

The thing I wanted to write about in this post, though, is the contradictions of the United States neoliberal empire and how the populist backlash against it could go down a dark path. The imperialism of the present day US is carried out by and on behalf of corporations. It takes the form of exploitation of less organized nations' people and environment for the production of goods abroad. It really represents a near total ownership of governments all over the world by corporate interests. The empire really doesn't sit well with the nation's long held ideals, though, but maybe it's idealistic to think the average American is attached to them either.

The populist backlash against corporatism is a long time coming and at the present time has very little positive shape or any specific agenda or goals. It's pretty easy to imagine a lot of bad potential outcomes. For example, rather than promote freedom around the world and see corporate exploitation of people in Asia or Latin America as a problem, we could end up with a populist empire that seeks to exploit them more on behalf of a bread and circuses mob run amok.