David Korten Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

If I would need to make a prediction I still believe Kaplan’s scenario is very plausible.

Global competition is about winners and losers.

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

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.

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

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.

But in the past, US companies have been able to increase their profits through downsizing in the US, through colonizing other people’s resources, and through the increase of globalization.

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.

And each of these perspectives comes to the same conclusion, which is that our global economy is out of control and performing contrary to basic principles of market economics.