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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of sustainable resources that can regenerate over time, contrasting them with money, which is merely a representation of value.
David Korten's quote critiques the fundamental flaw in capitalism where the drive for monetary profit often leads to the destruction of living capital, such as the environment and community resources. He argues that this destruction, motivated by the pursuit of wealth, is a form of collective insanity because it undermines the very foundation of true wealth, which lies in sustainability and the health of ecosystems and societies.
In practice
In a debate on environmental policy, this quote can highlight the importance of protecting natural resources.
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.
We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
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.
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.
Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.
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.
If developed countries' citizens want to feel slightly better about their economies' slow growth and high unemployment, they should contemplate how much worse matters could be without the institutions that they have.
Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism .
Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.
The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws.
Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.
If you paid Americans a living wage, they would be able to pay for products made by Americans in America.
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