We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
Interpretation
Democracy and corporate rule cannot coexist; one must prevail for a just future.
This quote by David Korten emphasizes the stark choice between maintaining a democratic society that supports equality and sustainability versus succumbing to corporate rule that prioritizes profit over people. Korten warns that allowing corporate interests to dominate governance undermines the potential for a fair and thriving future for humanity, suggesting that true progress can only be achieved through democratic means.
In practice
In a speech about environmental policy, one might say, 'We can have democracy and a sustainable human future, as David Korten reminds us.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
The 20th century shows that the form of government that we take for granted, a constitutional democratic republic with checks and balances and a rule of law - that form of government is usually temporary.
Ours is a fully democratic government, which in our language we call a people's government.
The deep problems that afflict the Middle East are not easy to fix, but they must be dealt with if we are not to see a son of ISIS, or even a grandson of ISIS, developing in the years to come.
Restore, without delay, the equilibrium between revenue and expenditures, which has done so much to destroy our credit and derange the whole fabric of government. If that should not be done, the government and country will be involved, ere long, in overwhelming difficulties.
In every society in human history, including the United States, those in power seek to imbue themselves with the attributes of religion and patriotism as a way of getting greater support for their policy and insulating themselves from any criticism.
Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.
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