Americans had a dream. A dream where no more aristocrats like in Europe would suppress them. No more sultans as in North Africa would steal from them. And no more tyrannies would violate their most fundamental rights like in Asia. Many of them packed and came to the US. It wasn’t long until a new phenomenon, hidden among the Industrial Revolution, emerged among those new Americans, the huge corporations, corporations that promised wealth and a new social order.

These corporations accomplished that. Lots of wealth was created, but at a large cost, much of the median citizen’s time, natural resources and blood, for few of those corporations to get most of the profits. In Controlling Interest some examples of the operating ways and patterns of those big corporations in society are shown. It is therefore, a powerful argument of how citizens should keep control of these businesses. Controlling Interest successfully shows how trusting in those companies and setting them out of any kind of control is an enormous risk since our goals, as a society, and their goals barely meet.

In 1978, when the document was recorded, only 100 industries of the existing 200.000 controlled more than half of all manufacturing! This is an enormous revelation of what we are dealing with. The so cherished perfect competition, a fundamental of the capitalist system, is far from the reality.

Once the government started to observe minimum wages and monopolies, the game was displaced outside the country where low or no regulations are enforced. Consequently, many blue-collar workers in the USA became unemployed or with frozen wages because of foreign competition. For example, when General Electric, Zenith, and RCA moved, it ruined the life of thousands of families that were not prepared to find new jobs.

The consequence of the movements of big business to foreign countries was not beneficial to the host countries either. For instance, Brazil proved that the ‘economical miracles’ of providing high output does not necessarily benefit the population as a whole, but a scarce minority, usually supported by the politics of colossal corporations on the exterior. A "two losers and one winner" game. But the game can result in even worse consequences. As an example, the producer/director Larry Adelman, names Chile. Chile, with already a long tradition of democracy, elected Salvador Allende, a believer of controlling Chilean economy toward Chilean’s interests. Unfortunately, these policies were totally unwelcome outside their borders, where multinational corporations always had seen Chile as a terrific resource for profits and due to the psychological power of Chile to influence their neighbors in Latino America. So a conflict was raised. It started with a boycott to Chilean products followed by denied loans and finally ending with aiding its bloodthirsty military. A machinate by the multinationals and the American government using it’s most ‘tactic’ arm, the CIA. After some years of great instability, Allende was killed, while a Spanish Franco’s admirer, Augusto Pinochet, got in power with one of the most severe and bloody dictatorships known in South America. This was the conclusive confirmation of the different goals that multinationals and citizens can have, and eventually, how the first group, with most of the resources, wins… As in Chile, other countries like Iran in 1962, Guatemala in 1964, Brazil in 1964, Cuba in the 60s, Indonesia in 1965 to Vietnam from 1964 through the 70s., went through the same situations. Confrontations that after the optimum conditions like free lands, tax free zones, etc., that the new regimes created for the foreign invests set a propensity for these to operate likewise around the whole world.

At home, instead, corporations manipulate citizens using the media, schools, churches and by lobbying and supporting sympathetic candidates. Violations of these capitalist values are taken to be "un-American" giving corporations a powerful weapon against unsympathetic politicians. In addition, as in South America, if the government acts against the capitalist’s interest, corporations may close plants or stop investing or take the capital abroad. Constantly threatening any democracy that could exist. Understandably, values like higher GDP, capitalism, free enterprise, good business climate and competition are in the street. It is likewise very frequently observed that chairmen and presidents of big business like those from the Rockefeller Foundation, Morgan Warranty Trust, GM, Ford, IBM etc. become Secretary of States.

And how does all this apply to the citizens of USA? Well, at the end, Controlling Interest’s film affirms that "multinationals have no loyalty to any country, except to where they can make the most money. If they can make the most in America they will do it, if they can make more in Honduras they will do it…" it looks like the future was already sentenced for the Americans.

In my personal opinion, I see this situation more stabilized since Americans would never, in a short or middle term, blame the system for its failures, but instead they will blame foreign’s policies. In my modesty, I disagree with my Political Science professor that this system will collapse the whole domestic economy, once a vast majority of people become in a drastic condition of living. In a growing global market, we must see the situation globally instead of nationally. I argue that globally, there is a tendency to concentrate headquarters of big corporations in the USA, while the entire workforce will be located in the lower income regions of the world. It will cause stress in the USA’s lower social class but eventually, they will be placed in the services sector for those multinational headquarters. That condition, together with a growing executive higher middle class, will preserve the system. On the other hand, Americans failed to take advantage of the benefits of robotics and computers to take more time to enjoy themselves. They have accepted the role of working more hours and it looks like this tendency could increase even more. This outcome has made slower the process of the "go abroad" policies of big corporations. It will be, if the global economy fails, when the capitalist’s system will hit drastically to a non prepared America, but then, no federal policy will be able to help since in a USA with a crisis no political power could go beyond USA borders.

The impacts of the multinationals abroad will be different. With a World Bank that in 1993 loans to poor nations $16 billion but collects $20 billion, it doesn’t look like things are going to improve over there. Multinationals also will displace communities from the rural toward mammoth urban areas. At posteriori, when these same companies discover cheaper labor in other locations they will leave millions of unorganized and unprepared peasants in disorganized highly polluted colossal cities. These peasants with considerably smaller pieces of land, a damaged environment and without experience in production for local necessities rather than for the rich world, helps to perpetuate and even worsen the poverty.

So what can we do against my ‘hypothetical chaos’ in the future or more rationally, against the agonized present? Unfortunately, I don’t give credence to an alternative. If something would change, it will be due to a vast global failure of the capitalist system rather than a regional ‘democratic’ people’s choice. As we have just seen, democracy, id est., people’s choice, and oligarchy are opposed. A population without the power and even the knowledge of the present situation is virtually helpless against colossal corporations that, like a cancer, have grown in us. Therefore very little can be done, but research for new alternatives or as a last resort, surgery. I truthfully hope to be wrong!