(Commentary originally published by YES! Magazine, October 23, 2020)
A few days ago, I shared with YES! Executive Editor Zenobia Jeffries Warfield an insight that felt both fresh and important: “I’m coming to the conclusion that the United States has never been a democracy.” This insight was sparked by my reflection on the […]
We need true democracy if we’re to halt the slide into self-extinction.
(Commentary originally published by YES! Magazine, posted Feb 7, 2019)
This is part two of a two-part series. See part one here.
Economic power is—and always has been—the foundation of political power. Those who control the peoples’ means of living rule.
In a […]
The founders of the United States have the society they wanted—one that keeps people like them in power.
(Commentary originally published by YES! Magazine, posted Feb 1, 2019)
This is part one of a two-part series. See part two here.
We grow up in the United States proud of our nation’s […]
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 […]
There is one cause that can and must unite us all.
(Originally published by YES! Magazine, October 11, 2017)
The Las Vegas massacre focused national attention once again on the National Rifle Association’s ability to thwart democracy and the desire of an overwhelming majority of Americans, […]
This gathering was for me a very exciting moment. In my long association with the foundation community, it is the first time I’ve seen such […]
by Maude Barlow
Many people know about how the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
force developing countries into the unregulated free-market global economy by a
process of structural adjustment. Countries seeking new loans to meet old debt
obligations must privatize social security, deregulate their transportation and
resource sectors, allow transnational […]
PCDForum Article #6, Release Date February 1, 1994
By David C. Korten
Much of the world has rejoiced in recent years at the important gains that democracy has made around the world. Yet few people are aware that the world’s governments are at this very moment falling in line to ratify an international agreement that could seriously […]
by David Korten
Something must happen so as to touch the hearts and souls of men that they will come together, not because the law says it, but because it is natural and right.
— Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom, 1958
The American Experiment is being placed in peril by a small […]
A plutocracy is a system of rule by people of wealth, which describes our situation in the United States far more accurately than the term democracy. We have been an Empire ruled as a plutocracy since our founding. This is David Korten’s video commentary on American Plutocracy and the transition to Deep Democracy.