What economist Robert Reich terms, “the not quite golden age” (WW II to the mid-1970’s) gave way to the current global economy, or supercapitalism. This economic revolution took place in tandem with a radical transformation of Western cultures, and the growth of oligarchical/plutocratic tendencies within the polities of Western democracies. Together the political, economic and cultural developments in the Western World since 1963 constitute what Robert Struble has called “the postmodernist revolution.”
Discussion of such issues as the politics of the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and global players within the World Economic Forum, as well as global ecology and sustainability, have all influenced the definition of economy.
Joseph E. Stiglitz has defined economy to be a global public good. Economists like Peter Barnes and Alexander Dill are reclaiming the commons and providing definitions that embrace new phenomena like freeware. Game theorists such as Ernst Fehr and Klaus M. Schmidt are contradicting the notion of omnipresent economic self-interest. Under the gift economy extensive grassroot movements have arisen; also the credit programs of Nobel laureate Muhammed Yunus. In 2006 the World Bank started issuing its Wealth of Nations Report, tracking social and human capital.
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