David Korten
David Korten
David C. Kortenis an American author, former professor of the Harvard Business School, political activist, prominent critic of corporate globalization, and "by training and inclination a student of psychology and behavioral systems". His best-known publication is, When Corporations Rule the World. In 2011, he was named an Utne Reader visionary...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
CountryUnited States of America
community needs credit
There was a time in the United States when most of our financial institutions were local. Which essentially meant that local communities were able to create their own credit, or their own money, in response to their own needs. We still depended on banks, but it was a much more democratic process.
american-activist bankers claims fact productive taking traders wealth
The fact is that these bankers and traders are taking claims of wealth out of the system; they are not doing any productive work.
inspirational-life earth balanced
If there is to be a human future, we must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth.
caring should-have people
If you're living in the community and you own your local businesses and you're engaged in the local economy you should have a definite interest in the strength and health of your community, the caring relationships that bind people together.
wealth claims
Money is not wealth. Money is a claim on wealth.
defense excess study
The professional study of economics has become ideological brainwashing. It is a defense of the excesses of the capitalist system.
people corporations gains
As corporations gain in autonomous institutional power and be-come more detached from people and place, the human interest and the corporate interest increasingly diverge. It is almost as though we were being invaded by alien beings intent on colonizing our planet, reducing us to serfs, and then excluding as many of us as possible.
differences economic-globalization internationalism
In the US, most progressives start to see the differences between internationalism and economic globalization.
integrity vision politician
There are actually very few US politicians who have integrity and vision.
suicide people goal
The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
strong years views
There is a huge shift taking place in the global awareness in the last 5 years with strong views about globalization and the power structures of major corporations.
reality people community
Not exclusively, but the bulk of our local economy should be covered by local currencies, which is more efficient than having global currencies which lose connection with reality in the markets, shops and communities of the people.
mean views tests
But we can also take the radical view that the test of an economy has to do with the extent to which it is providing everybody with a decent means of living.
kings luxury long
Entranced by promises of a material paradise of limitless luxury, humanity has too long ignored the mismatch between the imperatives of our existence as living beings on a finite planet and the imperatives of the institutions of money that chart our path to the future. Created to build colonial empires in service to kings, global corporations are ill suited to the task of building just, sustainable, and compassionate civil societies that nurture sufficiency, partnership, and respect for the whole of life.