AZspot

So what is real wealth? We might say it is anything that has a real intrinsic value: land, labor, knowledge, food, education. Most valuable of all are those forms of wealth that are beyond price: Love, a healthy, happy child, a job that provides a sense of self-worth and contribution, membership in a strong caring community, a healthy vibrant natural environment, peace—none of which find any place on Wall Street balance sheets or in our calculations of GDP. David Korten ☀

Consider the dynamics inherent in a dominator system. With a few on the top and the many on the bottom, everyone is placed in competition with everyone else for the favored positions and the bonds of caring and sharing are broken. The creative energy of the species is redirected from securing the well-being of the tribe to advancing the technological instruments of war and the social instruments of domination. The winners expropriate the available resources to maintain the system of domination. Positions of power are too often claimed by the most ruthless and psychologically damaged members of society. And so it has been for 5,000 years If this discussion of Empire sounds familiar, it is for good reason. The kings and emperors have been replaced by corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers, but we are still living in the Era of Empire—and the basic dynamics still hold. In the past 100 years, we humans have achieved technological mastery beyond the imagination of previous generations. Yet, lacking in the wisdom of place and community that is the heritage of indigenous peoples, the cultures we call mainstream have lost their way—forgetting what it means to be human and denying our connection to the web of planetary life. The time has come to rediscover our humanity and bring ourselves back into balance with our living Earth Mother. Creation has presented us with our final examination to determine whether we are a species worthy of survival. We must not, need not, fail. David Korten ☀

It is sometimes difficult for progressives to understand just how inherently threatening our message can be to those whose sense of identity depends on clinging to their position in the collapsing hierarchy of power and privilege. Even if we call only for a world of love for all people and all beings, skilled propaganda masters of the right easily take our words and spin them in a way that make them feel threatening to their followers. Of course Van’s language is not so restrictive, and appropriately so. His honesty without malice or blame is why we love him and look to him as a leader. We on the progressive side best respond by being strong and centered in the artful manner of Joanna Macy’s Shambhala warrior, deflecting the thrusts of the forces of hateful violence in ways that disarm them without responding in kind. I believe the culture is shifting at a deeper level. Ever more people are awakening to the possibilities of a world beyond the old social ordering, a world that truly fulfills the American ideal of liberty and justice for all, and they are redefining their personal identities accordingly. The shift is only partially visible, however, because those who navigate it are less inclined to respond in kind to the voices of fear and hate and thus get less media attention. David Korten ☀

The financial collapse has revealed the extreme corruption of the Wall Street financial system and created an extraordinary opening for change. We cannot, however, expect the leadership to come from within the political system. There is good reason why both the Bush and Obama administrations, different as they are, have responded to the Wall Street crash with bailouts for the guilty rather than face up to the need for a radical restructuring of the financial system. No president can stand up against Wall Street absent massive popular demand. To move forward, we the people must build a powerful popular political movement demanding a new economy designed to serve our children, families, communities, and nature. It begins with a conversation to demystify money and expose the lie that there is no alternative to the present economic system. It continues with action to rebuild our local economies based on sound market principles backed by national political action to transform the money system and broaden participation in ownership. This is our moment of opportunity. David Korten ☀

Corporate interests drove a policy agenda that rolled back taxes on high incomes, gave tax preference to income from financial speculation over income from productive work, cut back social safety nets, drove down wages, privatized public assets, outsourced jobs and manufacturing capacity, and allowed public infrastructure to deteriorate. They envisioned a world in which the United States would dominate the global economy by specializing in the creation of money and the marketing and consumption of goods produced by others. As a result, manufacturing fell from 27 percent of U.S. gross domestic product in 1950 to 12 percent in 2005, while financial services grew from 11 percent to 20 percent. From 1980 to 2005, the highest-earning 1 percent of the U.S. population increased its share of taxable income from 9 percent to 19 percent, with most of the gain going to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. The country became a net importer, with a persistent annual trade deficit of more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars financed by rising foreign debt. Wall Street insiders congratulated themselves on their financial genius even as they turned the United States into a national economic basket case and set the stage for global financial collapse. David Korten ☀

Bank lending at interest isn’t the only way to create money. Critics of our present money-debt system have long called for a system of nondebt government issuance. A government institution would create needed money the same way that private banks now do, with an accounting entry. Instead of lending it into existence, however, government would spend it into existence to meet a public need, preferably a public investment in infrastructure, education, or technology development. David Korten ☀

The government needs to take over the big banks now, as many leading economists are advocating. Sorting out the tainted assets after the banks are nationalized will be a great deal easier and cheaper. Once cleaned up, government should sell the banks to private investors, but not to Wall Street predators to run into the ground again. Break them up and sell the pieces to local investors to operate as community banks, mutual savings and loan associations, and credit unions within a strict regulatory framework that restores the concept of individual local banks devoted to meeting the financial service needs of their communities. Never again should any private bank be accountable only to Wall Street or be too big to fail. David Korten ☀

Our most certain military threats come from weather chaos, oil dependence, the disruption of food supplies, water scarcity, the social stress of community disintegration and extreme inequality, catastrophic health care costs, and financial collapse. Our primary national security commitment has been to maintain an outsized military establishment, to engage in pointless foreign wars, and to construct new prisons — all of which in the bigger picture make us less secure. We, the United States, account for roughly half of the world’s military expenditures and devote more than half of our federal government’s discretionary budget to maintaining our military establishment — to the neglect of education, health, infrastructure, environmental, and other needs. Yet our primary military threats are from a handful of terrorists armed with little more than a willingness to die for their cause. David Korten ☀

Under a socialist system, government consolidates power unto itself. Under a capitalist model, government falls captive to corporate interests and facilitates the consolidation of corporate power. In a true market system, democratically accountable governments provide an appropriate framework of rules within which people, communities, entrepreneurs, and responsible investors self-organize in predominately local markets to meet their economic needs in socially and environmentally responsible ways. David Korten ☀

As individuals, we humans appear to be an intelligent species. Collectively, however, our behavior ranges from supremely wise to suicidal. Our current collective economic insanity is the product of an illusion—a belief, cultivated by the prevailing economic orthodoxy, that money is wealth and that making money is the equivalent of creating wealth. David Korten ☀

…we need to realize we’ve been told that there are only two economic models. One is the capitalist model, and the other is the communist or socialist model. One, the capitalists own everything, and the other, the government runs everything. The real alternative is, in fact, a real market economy that looks a whole lot more like what Adam Smith had in mind, which is—which looks more like a farmers’ market. And I think—you know, we talk about Wall Street and Main Street, and really the solution is to rebuild a new economy based on Main Street, which means local businesses and people who are rooted in their community and working within a framework of community values and a set of public rules that enforce basic conditions of market efficiency. David Korten ☀

Creating a fair distribution of wealth by restoring progressive tax rates, increasing the minimum wage, containing health care costs, and regulating mortgage and credit card interest rates is an essential element of a post-bailout economic agenda. This will help those at the bottom, restore household savings and purchasing power, and, combined with the debt-free money system proposed below, eliminate Main Street dependence on Wall Street financing. The financial services needs of Main Street economies are best served by a federally regulated network of independent, locally owned community banks that fulfill the classic textbook banking function of acting as intermediaries between local people looking for a secure place for their savings and local people who need loans to buy a home or finance a business. Evidence that people with savings are moving their accounts from the giant banks with questionable balance sheets to smaller local banks is a positive step. David Korten ☀