Richard Falk is one of the most prominent and influential modern day Kantian thinkers. He has served as the North American Director of the World Order Models Project and has been a central voice on how to achieve a peaceful world order. His focus is to promote a movement against war, and to construct “a new world order that assures basic human needs of all people, that safeguards the environment, that protects the fundamental human rights of all individuals and groups without encroaching upon the precarious resources of cultural diversity, and that works toward the non-violent resolution of intersocietal conflicts”4.
In 1999 Richard Falk wrote a critique piece where he coined the term “predatory globalization.” He argues that while …show more content…
First, he believes that after the fall of the Soviet Union the profit-driven globalization-from-above arose as the only legitimate path to economic growth. He argues that citizens – and even governments – feel helpless in an economic climate “where the market reign[s] by divine right”2. While this methodology has arguably increased living standards around the world, it has also encouraged those in power to focus almost entirely on the interests of business and finance. In the process, either by choice or necessity they disregard important social concerns such as wealth inequality, falling labor standards, environmental harm and faltering support for free trade. The second factor encouraging “predatory globalization” is that global organizations such as the UN have very narrow missions that are almost purely concerned with the enlargement of the Security Council. This is another form of disregarding the social agenda. Falk contends that the mission should also involve the “democratization of the decision-making process”4 and the demilitarization of