FUTURE SHOCK THE THIRD WAVE

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 7th, 2022 in Civilization, Prophecy

THE THIRD WAVE

Taken together, the nuclear family and the factory-si school formed part of a single integrated system for the preparation of young people for roles in industrial society. In this respect, too, Second Wave societies, capitalist or communist, North or South, were all alike.

IMMORTAL BEINGS

In all Second Wave societies a third institution arose that extended the social control of the first two. This was the invention known as the corporation. Until then, the typical business enterprise had been owned by an individual, a family, or a partnership. Corporations existed, but were extremely rare.

Even as late as the American Revolution, according to business historian Arthur Dewing, “no one could have concluded” that the corporation—rather than the partnership or individual proprietorship— would become the main organizational form. As recently as 1800 there were only 335 corporations in the United States, most of them devoted to such quasi-public activities as building canals or running turnpikes.

The rise of mass production changed all this. Second Wave technologies required giant pools of capital—more than a single individual or even a small group could provide. So long as proprietors or partners risked their entire personal fortunes with every investment, they were reluctant to sink their money in vast or risky ventures. To encourage them, the concept of limited liability was introduced. If a corporation collapsed, the investor stood to lose only the sum invested and no more. This innovation opened the investment floodgates.

Moreover, the corporation was treated by the courts as an “immortal being”—meaning it could outlive its original investors. This meant, in turn, that it could make very long-range plans and undertake far bigger projects than ever before.

By 1901 the world’s first billion-dollar corporation—United States Steel—appeared on the scene, a concentration of assets unimaginable in any earlier period. By 1919 there were half a dozen such behemoths. Indeed, large corporations became an in-built feature of economic life in all the industrial nations, including socialist and communist societies, where the form varied but the substance (in terms of organization) remained very much the same. Together these three—the nuclear family, the factory-style school, and the giant corporation—became the defining social institutions of all Second Wave societies.