David Korten famous quotes

As long as you have a system that is based on the rational that if you are making money you are thereby making a contribution to society, these financial rogue practices will continue.
-- David Korten

#Practice #Long #Rogues

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.
-- David Korten

#Community #United States #Needs

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.
-- David Korten

#Rights #Giving #World

If there is to be a human future, we must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth.
-- David Korten

#Inspirational Life #Earth #Balanced

To create a world in which life can flourish and prosper we must replace the values and institutions of capitalism with values and institutions that honor life, serve life's needs, and restore money to its proper role as servant. I believe we are in fact being called to take a step to a new level of species consciousness and function.
-- David Korten

#Inspiring #Believe #Honor

Our defining gift as humans is our power to choose, including our power to choose our collective future. It is a gift that comes with a corresponding moral responsibility to use that power in ways that work to the benefit of all people and the whole of life.
-- David Korten

#Responsibility #People #Use

An economic system can remain viable only so long as society has mechanisms to counter abuses of either state or market power and the erosion of the natural, social, and moral capital that such abuses commonly exacerbate.
-- David Korten

#Erosion #Long #Abuse

Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.
-- David Korten

#Enemy #Democracy #Capitalism

Money is a mechanism for control.
-- David Korten

#Money

If you look internationally over the last 50 years there have been improvements in the third world, but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened, with debt crises and increased poverty.
-- David Korten

#Years #Looks #Debt

To achieve true sustainability, we must reduce our "garbage index" - that which we permanently throw away into the environment that will not be naturally recycled for reuse - to near zero. Productive activities must be organized as closed systems. Minerals and other nonbiodegradable resources, once taken from the ground, must become a part of society's permanent capital stock and be recycled in perpetuity. Organic materials may be disposed into the natural ecosystems, but only in ways that assure that they are absorbed back into the natural production system.
-- David Korten

#Zero #Taken #Ecosystems

When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity.
-- David Korten

#Suicidal #Acceptance #People

Moreover, statistics can be deceiving: the growth of jobs in the US in the 90s was due to many part-time jobs, with no benefits and generally low pay.
-- David Korten

#Jobs #Lying #Growth

Living capital, which has the special capacity to continuously regenerate itself, is ultimately the source of all real wealth. To destroy it for money, a simple number with no intrinsic value, is an act of collective insanity - which makes capitalism a mental, as well as physical pathology.
-- David Korten

#Inspiring #Real #Simple

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.
-- David Korten

#Suicide #Goal #People

Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way.
-- David Korten

#Hands #People #Choices

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.
-- David Korten

#Reality #People #Community

Our global economy is out of control and performing contrary to basic principles of market economics.
-- David Korten

#Principles #Economics #Economy

We should be moving toward local currencies not global or European currencies.
-- David Korten

#Moving #Europe #Currency

An active propaganda machinery controlled bv the world's largest corporations constantly reassures us that consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess is the cause our distress, and economic globalization is both a historical inevitability and a boon to the human species.
-- David Korten

#Historical #World #Corporations

There are actually very few US politicians who have integrity and vision.
-- David Korten

#Integrity #Vision #Politician

In the US, most progressives start to see the differences between internationalism and economic globalization.
-- David Korten

#Differences #Economic #Globalization

The professional study of economics has become ideological brainwashing. It is a defense of the excesses of the capitalist system.
-- David Korten

#Defense #Excess #Study

There is no visible sign that the current politicians in the US are willing to see the need for change.
-- David Korten

#Needs #Politician #Currents

Wall Street sees a social fabric or social contract as inefficiencies, which need to be removed.
-- David Korten

#Wall #Needs #Fabric

It will take some time before a politician will capture the imagination of the American people and have the vision and understanding to do what is necessary for a better future for the people of America and the world.
-- David Korten

#America #Imagination #People

So, there is enormous instability in the global economy with a shift of winners and losers.
-- David Korten

#Loser #Winner #Economy

I am in favor of increased communication and cooperation between countries, but it is more important that each country becomes responsible for its own actions, its own communities, its own economies, before starting to integrate in large regional or global supranational organizations.
-- David Korten

#Country #Communication #Organization

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.
-- David Korten

#Mean #Views #Tests

Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.
-- David Korten

#Democracy #Way #Communism

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.
-- David Korten

#Strong #Views #Years

Europeans say they are proud of their social fabric, of strong rights for workers and the weak in society.
-- David Korten

#Strong #Rights #Fabric

Global competition is about winners and losers.
-- David Korten

#Competition #Loser #Winner

If you look at the US economy over the last 15-20 years wages have been stagnating or even declining.
-- David Korten

#Years #Looks #Wages

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.
-- David Korten

#People #Corporations #Gains

As an economy measures performance in terms of the creation of money, people become a major source of inefficiency.
-- David Korten

#People #Creation #Economy

We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
-- David Korten

#Democracy #Humans #Prosperous

It is interesting to note that the 200 richest people have more assets than the 2 billion poorest.
-- David Korten

#Interesting #People #Notes

More humane societies are usually smaller, like the Scandinavian countries and Holland, where it is much easier to reach consensus and cooperation.
-- David Korten

#Country #Cooperation #Scandinavians

Money is not wealth. Money is a claim on wealth.
-- David Korten

#Wealth #Claims