January 27, 2025
Dear Friends,
We have a billionaire problem.
Back in 1995, when I published When Corporations Rule the World, there was an awakening to the dangers of transnational corporations. Right now, in 2025, there is an awakening to the dangers of oligarchy—when a few billionaires rule the world. In his farewell speech, outgoing President Biden left us […]
This talk was delivered on October 28, 2000, as part of the 20th Annual E.F. Schumacher Lecture, at the Salisbury Congregational Church in Salisbury, CT, with an introduction by David Ehrenfeld, ecologist, author, and member of the Board of Directors of the Schumacher Center for a New […]
Our future depends on bridging the partisan divide that elevates corporate interests above our personal well-being.
(This commentary was originally published by YES! Magazine on July 23, 2018.)
We the people of the United States find ourselves in a political crisis and resurgent tribalism that pits left against right, hard-left against moderate-left, and extreme-right against everyone […]
Tariffs on imports could be part of reorienting the global economy. Now is a good time to talk about it.
(This commentary was originally published by YES! Magazine on March 19, 2018.)
Those who pay attention to trade and economics saw President Trump’s imposition of new tariffs—25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum—as just […]
Some CEOs are getting the message that even though the economy is growing, they need to serve their communities, too.
(This commentary was originally published by YES! Magazine on February 20, 2018.)
Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest institutional investor, recently set the financial world abuzz with a
Roughly 20 percent of U.S. workers are in a high-paying finance, technology, and electronics sectors. The other 80 percent face a daily struggle to survive.
(Originally published by YES! Magazine, December 19, 2017)
As 2017 draws to an end, it is perhaps fitting that Congress chose to close out the year with the passage of […]
David Korten’s presentation to the Summit on the Future of Corporations, Faneuil Hall, Boston MA, November 13, 2007.
It is fitting that we hold this conversation on the future of the corporation in historic Faneuil Hall, the Cradle of Liberty. Deliberations in this very room more than 200 years ago were the first step on […]
Call it populism versus corporatism or democracy versus corporate rule. Either way, it is a far more meaningful political division than the current division between two big-government political parties debating big versus small.
By David Korten
Published by YES! Magazine, June 25, 2015
Only a few […]
April 17, 2015
Yesterday, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), and Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) struck a deal to introduce […]