I think some actions by global corporations can readily be deemed harmful; others, perhaps not. If WalMart produces employment for 10,000 CHinese families by placing orders for tee-shirts and sneakers, that is good for them, mostly. If in doing so, they encourage primitive manufacturing with an inordinate ding to the environmental balance, that aspect of it is harmful. It could be argued that by leaving all their sites across the U.S. in the hands of small stores covering vertical niches (mom and pop hardware, sporting goods, audio-video stores) they would do more good by not existing at all. It's an interesting question to what degree largeness of scale is inherently harmful to the overall system, a question that deserves some hard research and analysis.

A