We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
David KortenRead
When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the prioritization of financial interests over human welfare.
David Korten's quote highlights the troubling trend of money dominating societal institutions, suggesting that when profit motives overshadow people's needs, it leads to a fundamental distortion of human values and priorities. He warns that this shift not only harms individuals but also represents a collective failure that could have catastrophic consequences for society as a whole.
Themes
MoneyHumanitySocietyValuesInsanityInstitutions
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about economic reform, one might quote this to emphasize the dangers of prioritizing financial profits over human welfare.
More from David Korten
All quotes →In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.
David KortenRead
As corporations gain in autonomous institutional power and be-come more detached from people and place, the human interest and the corporate interest increasingly diverge. It is almost as though we were being invaded by alien beings intent on colonizing our planet, reducing us to serfs, and then excluding as many of us as possible.
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Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.
David KortenRead
Living capital, which has the special capacity to continuously regenerate itself, is ultimately the source of all real wealth. To destroy it for money, a simple number with no intrinsic value, is an act of collective insanity - which makes capitalism a mental, as well as physical pathology.
David KortenRead
The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
David KortenRead
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