David C. Korten

Marjorie Kelly

Offers examples of new and alternative forms of business ownership from around the world that are aimed at transforming existing models, which are largely based on maximizing financial income for the few.

The Emerging Ownership Revolution

Owning Our Future

Illustrates the harmful effects of globalization on politics, society, and the environment, profiling the "transnational corporation" and warning readers that once-beneficial companies have become dangerously powerful.

When Corporations Rule the World

from empire to Earth community

The great turning

Today's economic crisis is the worst since the Great Depression. However, as David Korten shows, the steps being taken to address it do nothing to deal with the reality of a failed economic system. Korten identifies the deeper sources: Wall Street institutions that have perfected the art of creating "wealth" without producing anything of real value: phantom wealth. Our hope lies not with Wall Street, Korten argues, but with Main Street, which creates real wealth from real resources to meet real needs. He outlines an agenda to create a new economy--locally based, community oriented, and devoted to creating a better life for all, not simply increasing profits. It will require changes to how we measure economic success, organize our financial system, even the very way we create money.--From publisher description.

from phantom wealth to real wealth

Agenda for a new economy

"We humans live by stories. This defining human quality distinguishes us from other intelligent species and gives us a capacity to rapidly change our individual and group behavior in response to changing circumstances. On the downside, when we get our story wrong, the consequences can be devastating. In this extraordinary work, David Korten identifies three cultural stories ways of understanding the world that have contributed to our current economic, political, and environmental crisis. Korten explains how these stories, however arguably well intentioned, have led us to value life by its market value, view nature as a commodity, and see ourselves as separate from our world. To find a path to a viable human future Korten offers a new story, one consonant with both modern science and spiritual traditions, that acknowledges the reality that we are living beings born of a living Earth that itself is born of a living universe. He shows how we can choose our actions and design our institutions based on this understanding"--Publisher's description.

A Living Economy for a Living Earth

Change the Story, Change the Future

The international bestselling author of When Corporations Rule the World shares a vital new vision for changing humanity’s self-destructive course. We humans live by stories, says David Korten, and the stories that now govern our society have set us on a self-destructive path. In Change the Story, Change the Future, Korten offers a new story that lets us reimagine society and navigate the critical needs of our time. Korten calls our current story Sacred Money and Markets. Money, it tells us, is the measure of all worth and the source of all happiness, while inequality and environmental destruction are unfortunate but unavoidable. Although many recognize that this story promotes bad ethics, bad science, and bad economics, it will remain our guiding story until replaced by one that aligns with our deepest understanding of the universe and our relationship to it. To guide our path to a viable human future, Korten offers a story he calls Sacred Life and Living Earth. It is grounded in a cosmology that affirms we are living beings born of a living Earth itself born of a living universe. Our health and well-being therefore depend on an economy that works in partnership with the Earth's community of life. Offering a hopeful vision, Korten lays out the transformative impact adopting this story will have on every aspect of human life and society.

Prompted by the 1998 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Korten's book indicts the world's governments for failing to address growing hunger, housing shortages, unemployment, poverty, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation. He examines the causes of this global crisis and offers fresh solutions reflecting sustainability, community, and equity--the only principles that can assure a healthy future for the world's people.

Reclaiming Our Right to Power

Globalizing Civil Society

the post-corporate world

Kehidupan setelah kapitalisme

Population Growth and the Quality of Life in Nicaragua

Nearly two years after the economic meltdown, joblessness and foreclosures are still endemic, Wall Street executives are once again getting massive bonuses, and our leaders in Washington lack the will to make desperately needed fundamental changes to the economy. Change will have to come from below. Agenda for a New Economy is the handbook for that revolution. In this revised and updated edition David Korten has fleshed out his vision of the alternative to the corporate Wall Street economy: a Main Street economy based on locally owned, community-oriented “living enterprises” whose success is measured as much by their positive impact on people and the environment as by their positive balance sheet. We will lose nothing in the process because, as Korten ably demonstrates, the supposed services Wall Street offers are simply a con game. And Korten now offers more in-depth advice on how to mount a grassroots campaign to bring about an economy based on shared prosperity, ecological stewardship, and citizen democracy.

From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth

Agenda for a New Economy

This work investigates the growing gap between the promises of new global capitalism and the reality of insecurity, inequality, social breakdown, spiritual emptiness and environmental destruction. It looks at what went wrong and offers solutions based on examples from new biology.

Life After Capitalism

The Post-Corporate World

David Korten’s classic bestseller When Corporations Rule the World was one of the first books to articulate the destructive and oppressive nature of the global corporate economy. In The Great Turning he argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely one manifestation of what he calls “Empire”: the organization of society through hierarchy and violence that has largely held sway for the past 5,000 years. The Great Turning traces the evolution of Empire from ancient times to the present day but also tells the parallel story of the attempt to develop a democratic alternative to Empire, beginning in Athens and continuing with the founding of the United States of America—although elitists with an imperial agenda have consistently sought to undermine the bold and inspiring “American experiment.” Finally, Korten draws on evidence from sources as varied as evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and religious teachings to make the case that “Earth Community”—a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable alternative to Empire based on democratic principles of partnership—is indeed possible. And he outlines a grassroots strategy for beginning the momentous turning toward a future of as-yet-unrealized human potential.

David C. Korten

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