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The Missing Vision for a New Economy
Jan 06, 2011
This is the first of a series of blogs based on excerpts adapted from the 2nd edition of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. I wrote Agenda to spur a national conversation on economic policy issues and options that are otherwise largely ignored. This blog series is intended to contribute to that conversation. -DK
New and fortunate are those whose lives have not been directly touched by the 2008 Wall Street meltdown and its consequences. People want to understand what went wrong and how we can set it right. Yet the public commentary continues to center primarily on finger-pointing. Who knew what when? Which regulators were asleep at the switch, and why?
Most calls for action seek only to limit the excesses and deceptions of greedy bankers and complicit regulators. We have yet to engage in a much-needed national conversation that addresses essential, yet unasked, questions. For example:
- Do Wall Street institutions do anything so vital for the national interest as to justify opening the national purse strings and showering them with trillions of dollars in order to save them from the consequences of their own excess?
- Is it possible that the whole Wall Street edifice is built on an illusion that has no substance yet carries deadly economic, social, and environmental consequences for the larger society?
- Might there be other ways to provide necessary and beneficial financial services with greater effectiveness and at less cost?
Ultimately, it comes down to a question of the values we believe the economy should serve. Should it give priority to money, or to life? To the fortunes of the few, or the well-being of all?
The existing Wall Street-led economy is highly effective and efficient at converting real living wealth to phantom financial wealth to make rich people richer. It is a path to collective suicide.
Our future and that of our children depend on replacing the values and institutions of the Wall Street economy with the culture and institutions of a New Economy designed to provide an adequate and satisfying livelihood for all people in balanced relationship to Earth's biosphere. I believe that an honest public examination of these questions will lead to a unifying national political consensus that Wall Street institutions produce nothing of value to the society and fulfill no need not better served in other ways. They can and should be replaced with institutions that act like mature, caring adults and serve real needs in ways appropriate to the realities of the twenty-first century.
We cannot, however, simply let the Wall Street financial institutions collapse, as would have happened in 2008 without the federal bailout. Wall Street controls the creation and flow of the money that facilitates the economic transactions on which we depend for meeting most all our material needs. If its institutions suddenly shut down with no alternative in place, we would be left only the money in our pockets and instantly reduced to barter for most essentials of daily life, including food and water.
The process of shutting down Wall Street properly proceeds in parallel with action to put in place the institutions of a New Economy, including a new system for creating and allocating national currencies in ways more responsive to society's needs.
Leadership for institutional transformation rarely comes from within the institutions of Empire, which bring special privilege to the few and hardship to the many. It invariably comes from authentic grassroots movements that self-organize from outside the establishment to challenge the status quo and create alternative institutions that ultimately displace those that no longer serve.
Efforts to form a social movement to confront the Wall Street-Washington axis are handicapped, however, by the absence of a broadly shared vision of an economic system structured to achieve and maintain financial stability, ecological balance, prosperity for all, and full democratic participation.
As I will elaborate in a future blog, the true alternative to the Wall Street capitalism that is imposing an intolerable burden on society is not totalitarian Soviet-style socialism. It is a system of locally rooted, self-reliant market economies that honor true market principles, operate by clear rules maintained and enforced by truly democratic governments, and mimic the structure and dynamics of Earth's biosphere.
This Agenda for a New Economy blog series is co-sponsored by CSRwire.com and YesMagazine.org based on excerpts from Agenda for a New Economy, 2nd edition.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
This article was written for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
David Korten
Dr. David C. Korten is a former Harvard Business School professor, a member of the Club of Rome, a founding member of the Alliance for Ecological Civilization, president of the Living Economies Forum, author of the international best-selling books When Corporations Rule the World; The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism; and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community; and the white papers “Ecological Civilization” and “Eco-nomics for an Ecological Civilization,” which expand on the concepts presented here.
This is the first of a series of blogs based on excerpts adapted from the 2nd edition of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. I wrote Agenda to spur a national conversation on economic policy issues and options that are otherwise largely ignored. This blog series is intended to contribute to that conversation. -DK
New and fortunate are those whose lives have not been directly touched by the 2008 Wall Street meltdown and its consequences. People want to understand what went wrong and how we can set it right. Yet the public commentary continues to center primarily on finger-pointing. Who knew what when? Which regulators were asleep at the switch, and why?
Most calls for action seek only to limit the excesses and deceptions of greedy bankers and complicit regulators. We have yet to engage in a much-needed national conversation that addresses essential, yet unasked, questions. For example:
- Do Wall Street institutions do anything so vital for the national interest as to justify opening the national purse strings and showering them with trillions of dollars in order to save them from the consequences of their own excess?
- Is it possible that the whole Wall Street edifice is built on an illusion that has no substance yet carries deadly economic, social, and environmental consequences for the larger society?
- Might there be other ways to provide necessary and beneficial financial services with greater effectiveness and at less cost?
Ultimately, it comes down to a question of the values we believe the economy should serve. Should it give priority to money, or to life? To the fortunes of the few, or the well-being of all?
The existing Wall Street-led economy is highly effective and efficient at converting real living wealth to phantom financial wealth to make rich people richer. It is a path to collective suicide.
Our future and that of our children depend on replacing the values and institutions of the Wall Street economy with the culture and institutions of a New Economy designed to provide an adequate and satisfying livelihood for all people in balanced relationship to Earth's biosphere. I believe that an honest public examination of these questions will lead to a unifying national political consensus that Wall Street institutions produce nothing of value to the society and fulfill no need not better served in other ways. They can and should be replaced with institutions that act like mature, caring adults and serve real needs in ways appropriate to the realities of the twenty-first century.
We cannot, however, simply let the Wall Street financial institutions collapse, as would have happened in 2008 without the federal bailout. Wall Street controls the creation and flow of the money that facilitates the economic transactions on which we depend for meeting most all our material needs. If its institutions suddenly shut down with no alternative in place, we would be left only the money in our pockets and instantly reduced to barter for most essentials of daily life, including food and water.
The process of shutting down Wall Street properly proceeds in parallel with action to put in place the institutions of a New Economy, including a new system for creating and allocating national currencies in ways more responsive to society's needs.
Leadership for institutional transformation rarely comes from within the institutions of Empire, which bring special privilege to the few and hardship to the many. It invariably comes from authentic grassroots movements that self-organize from outside the establishment to challenge the status quo and create alternative institutions that ultimately displace those that no longer serve.
Efforts to form a social movement to confront the Wall Street-Washington axis are handicapped, however, by the absence of a broadly shared vision of an economic system structured to achieve and maintain financial stability, ecological balance, prosperity for all, and full democratic participation.
As I will elaborate in a future blog, the true alternative to the Wall Street capitalism that is imposing an intolerable burden on society is not totalitarian Soviet-style socialism. It is a system of locally rooted, self-reliant market economies that honor true market principles, operate by clear rules maintained and enforced by truly democratic governments, and mimic the structure and dynamics of Earth's biosphere.
This Agenda for a New Economy blog series is co-sponsored by CSRwire.com and YesMagazine.org based on excerpts from Agenda for a New Economy, 2nd edition.
David Korten
Dr. David C. Korten is a former Harvard Business School professor, a member of the Club of Rome, a founding member of the Alliance for Ecological Civilization, president of the Living Economies Forum, author of the international best-selling books When Corporations Rule the World; The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism; and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community; and the white papers “Ecological Civilization” and “Eco-nomics for an Ecological Civilization,” which expand on the concepts presented here.
This is the first of a series of blogs based on excerpts adapted from the 2nd edition of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. I wrote Agenda to spur a national conversation on economic policy issues and options that are otherwise largely ignored. This blog series is intended to contribute to that conversation. -DK
New and fortunate are those whose lives have not been directly touched by the 2008 Wall Street meltdown and its consequences. People want to understand what went wrong and how we can set it right. Yet the public commentary continues to center primarily on finger-pointing. Who knew what when? Which regulators were asleep at the switch, and why?
Most calls for action seek only to limit the excesses and deceptions of greedy bankers and complicit regulators. We have yet to engage in a much-needed national conversation that addresses essential, yet unasked, questions. For example:
- Do Wall Street institutions do anything so vital for the national interest as to justify opening the national purse strings and showering them with trillions of dollars in order to save them from the consequences of their own excess?
- Is it possible that the whole Wall Street edifice is built on an illusion that has no substance yet carries deadly economic, social, and environmental consequences for the larger society?
- Might there be other ways to provide necessary and beneficial financial services with greater effectiveness and at less cost?
Ultimately, it comes down to a question of the values we believe the economy should serve. Should it give priority to money, or to life? To the fortunes of the few, or the well-being of all?
The existing Wall Street-led economy is highly effective and efficient at converting real living wealth to phantom financial wealth to make rich people richer. It is a path to collective suicide.
Our future and that of our children depend on replacing the values and institutions of the Wall Street economy with the culture and institutions of a New Economy designed to provide an adequate and satisfying livelihood for all people in balanced relationship to Earth's biosphere. I believe that an honest public examination of these questions will lead to a unifying national political consensus that Wall Street institutions produce nothing of value to the society and fulfill no need not better served in other ways. They can and should be replaced with institutions that act like mature, caring adults and serve real needs in ways appropriate to the realities of the twenty-first century.
We cannot, however, simply let the Wall Street financial institutions collapse, as would have happened in 2008 without the federal bailout. Wall Street controls the creation and flow of the money that facilitates the economic transactions on which we depend for meeting most all our material needs. If its institutions suddenly shut down with no alternative in place, we would be left only the money in our pockets and instantly reduced to barter for most essentials of daily life, including food and water.
The process of shutting down Wall Street properly proceeds in parallel with action to put in place the institutions of a New Economy, including a new system for creating and allocating national currencies in ways more responsive to society's needs.
Leadership for institutional transformation rarely comes from within the institutions of Empire, which bring special privilege to the few and hardship to the many. It invariably comes from authentic grassroots movements that self-organize from outside the establishment to challenge the status quo and create alternative institutions that ultimately displace those that no longer serve.
Efforts to form a social movement to confront the Wall Street-Washington axis are handicapped, however, by the absence of a broadly shared vision of an economic system structured to achieve and maintain financial stability, ecological balance, prosperity for all, and full democratic participation.
As I will elaborate in a future blog, the true alternative to the Wall Street capitalism that is imposing an intolerable burden on society is not totalitarian Soviet-style socialism. It is a system of locally rooted, self-reliant market economies that honor true market principles, operate by clear rules maintained and enforced by truly democratic governments, and mimic the structure and dynamics of Earth's biosphere.
This Agenda for a New Economy blog series is co-sponsored by CSRwire.com and YesMagazine.org based on excerpts from Agenda for a New Economy, 2nd edition.
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