In the current global market, companies must "customize products and services on time/on demand faster and more perfectly than their global competition does or they go out of business." The need for customized products derives from the social tendency of "groups of people who come to define and change their identities by the sorts of goods and services they consume." This tendency to classify people according to their monetary wealth and possessions has lead to a widening gap between the upper and lower classes. Many lesser-developed nations do not have the money to purchase the technology or knowledge to compete in the global market. Therefore, since the status of a nation has become dependent on its wealth and knowledge, lesser-developed nations are marginalized, becoming merely sources of raw materials. These raw materials are stripped from the land and the local peoples are relegated to menial job positions like janitors or laborers.

More and more, companies are demanding more of employees. Corporate employees are now expected to not only work diligently at the office, but to carry cell phones and pagers so that they will be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Traveling across the country, or even across the world, several times a week is becoming common for many sales representatives and other corporate employees.

The term "cosmocrats" has been coined to refer to this new generation of corporate employee. Some characteristics of cosmocrats are:

An appreciation of technology - Cosmocrats are comfortable with technology and value the efficiency it allows. While they do not necessarily understand the inner workings of these technologies, the cosmocrats do maintain a functional knowledge of the tools at their disposal. There is no need to question how things work, as long as they work.

Superficiality - Cosmocrats have developed a level of indifference or cynicism to the world around them. It is hard ot measure things like goodness and virtue, but it is easy to measure hours worked and units produced. In addition, the travel habits of cosmocrats lead to a superficial knowledge of the world. Their exposure to different parts of the world is limited to a few hours or days at various airport terminals and hotels. This results in warped perceptions about the cultures of the world. Overall, cosmocrats value material goods and accomplishments within their field over more fundamental and traditional values like family and country.

Limited loyalty - Cosmocrats are only truly loyal to themselves. They are loyal to the company only as long as they are paid to be loyal. This is a paradox for companies because they do not want employees to have strong convictions towards issues outside the company (this is seen as a distraction from company goals), but they do expect string conviction towards company goals.

So, companies and employees face are continually at odds over whose needs are most important. It is ironic that the very values companies wish to instill in employees are the same values that present a threat to employee loyalty.