Agenda For A New Economy: From Phantom Wealth To Real Wealth (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
"Corrective action begins with a recognition that our economic crisis is, at its core, a moral crisis. Our economic institutions and rules, even the indicators by which we measure economic performance, consistently place financial values ahead of life values. They are brilliantly effective at making money for rich people. We have tried our experiment in unrestrained greed and individualism. Our children, families, communities, and natural systems of Earth are paying an intolerable price."I agree with Korten that the abstraction of our economic system cannot exist outside of the physical limitations imposed by living on a finite world, so we might as well stop pretending. This is not to say that we can't have an economy based in money etc. but there must be a true value attached to that money. Setting unending growth as the framework to our economic system is a recipe for disaster. A system pitting people in isolation, competition, and fear of one another is a shame especially when as a species we excel at cooperation and creative problem solving. We cannot pretend that our actions, if they don't directly hurt us but hurt others have no effect on us. We must start to accept just how interconnected we are on this planet. My father believed Earth could provide more than enough for us of what we truly need. But, he wondered if we'd ever be wise enough to "reclaim Eden" as he called it, and "alleviate most human suffering" if we could just put our priorities in the right order (money isn't at the top of the list).I liked his arguments that no matter how entrenched it can feel, institutions / cultural norms can crumble or change. We must think about what we want to replace them. For the same reason trickle down is bullshit, these systemic changes must come from the bottom up. Once politicians realize the populace is serious about environmental issues or creating an economy based on true value (quality of life value / sustainability), they will eventually fall in line. He makes a good point that left and right aren't necessarily as divided as you'd believe. For example, the majority of citizens see the Citizens United ruling (even Orwell would blush at this case's name) as the blatant democratically corrupting Pandora's box it is. People on the right generally blame the government and people on the left generally blame big business. The thing to realize currently is government and big business are essentially one in the same with power players switching roles in and out of each. With unifying understanding such as this, maybe the population can start to corner what the real problem is (big money people making their own rules regardless of the consequences on the rest of us).And, he talks convincingly about the power of the story and the endurance of the story built with truth at its core. Truth will not die and with eventually trump whatever efforts are put forth to challenge it. Segregation was wrong. Separate but equal was wrong. The system was challenged and dismantled because in the end the truth was black people were human just like white people and therefore they could not be treated any differently. He makes a strong case for education and changing the cultural narrative with effective, authentic storytelling. Korten's "The Great Turning" took a broad view of the deeper issue of the 5000 year reign of Empire as the historical foundation to our current crises. In it, he called for a decisive end to Empire and a turn toward Earth Community; from relations of domination, destruction, and exploitation to a true democratic political economy that recognizes the conditions of ecological sustainability.In contrast to that broad view, "Agenda for a New Economy" is immediate and timely. It outlines Korten's agenda of specific actions needed today to begin to realize the living economies of Earth Community. Written just after Obama's first election, Korten takes a look at the Wall Street practices and government policies that led to crisis, frames them briefly within the larger context of Empire, and then offers a concrete plan of action to replace the phantom wealth-generating institutions of Wall Street with real wealth democratic alternatives that recognize that economy is a subset of ecology and not vice versa and that economic success is measured in terms of human and environmental well-being rather than GDP.Korten excoriates Wall Street and lays out in no uncertain terms the strategies by which it captures economies and governments in order to transfer wealth to an elite and powerful few. Korten's alternative vision is to depose Wall Street and build instead a global network of bioregional local living economies, each self-reliant and resilient on its own terms, each operating within the constraints of local ecosystems. Political and economic democracy are ideals realizable only at the scale of living human community and accountability. Korten's basic threefold strategy for effective change is 1) at the cultural level, change the defining stories that frame the collective life of society, 2) at the institutional level, create a new economic reality from the bottom up, and 3) at the policy level, change global rules to support the values and institutions of politically and economically democratic societies. The book is jam-packed with hard-hitting critiques of our current economic and political dependence on Wall Street and with ideas about how to make the transition to viable, living economies. Highly recommended.
What do You think about Agenda For A New Economy: From Phantom Wealth To Real Wealth (2009)?
Author of "When Corporations Rule The World"
—moncerath
