Newsletter – August 29, 2023
(For more Newsletter Essays, visit HERE…)
Dear Friends,
Having recently celebrated my 86th birthday, I’m focused on what I want to accomplish in what time remains to me. With that in mind, my current priority is completing a white paper framing an “Eco-nomics for an Ecological Civilization.”
The underlying thesis is both simple […]
This article was written, by invitation, for the FEZANA (Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America) Journal, Vol. 34, No. 3 Fall/September 2020.
Poverty is not a new issue and ending it is not a new cause. In his January 1949 inaugural address, President Harry Truman launched the U.S. foreign aid program, then called Point Four, […]
Soil, not money, is the source of wealth, and our economic system needs to reflect that.
(Commentary originally published by YES! Magazine, April 23, 2019)
For many years, I have been seeking to understand why we get our economic policies so terribly wrong and how we might get them right. I have long believed […]
Ask an economist “What is Money?” and the answer will likely be: “A medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a storehouse of value.” As a unit of account, money is useful in facilitating the market exchange of goods and services. Used for this purpose, money is one of humanity’s most important and beneficial […]
This report, for which David is the primary author, makes the case that the institutional structure of the system by which money is created and allocated determines whether America is governed as a democracy or an oligarchy. It presents a series of proposals to create […]
Seattle Green Festival 2011
Qwest Event Center
May 21, 2011
This is the keynote address by David Korten, delivered to the First Annual Earth Charter Community Summit in Tampa, Florida, September 29, 2001, connected via live, interactive satellite links to community summits in 11 other U.S. cities.
Debt slavery is an ancient institution that traces back to the beginning of Empire. In earlier times, it was more explicit and visible, because it was more personal. The hapless borrower became the bonded servant or slave of the lender—a condition that prevails today in many low-income countries. In the contemporary United States, it is […]
The debt-based money system that is the foundation of Wall Street’s control of the economy and society is based on an underlying logic. So long as its practice is true to that logic, the debt model of money creation can be a driving engine of real-wealth production—up to the point at which the economy encounters […]
When I step back and look at the incredible mismatch between the economic system we have and the economic system we need, I find myself wondering whether we humans are victims of a dangerous spell induced by a mischievous Greek God. Here is the story as I imagine it: The Greek Gods are meeting in council on Mount Olympus to discuss what to do about those silly humans down on that little planet called Earth...