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.
When you want a nation, that's called nationalism... Black nationalism. A revolutionary is a Black nationalist. He wants a nation.
I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations.
I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.
There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.
When Estonia reestablished its sovereignty after a half century of successive thuggish, totalitarian, foreign occupations by the Soviets, the Nazis, and then again the Soviets, we knew we wanted to create a democratic country characterized by rule of law and respect for human rights.
Legislative language is governed by a law of etymology that is also the ancient code of the bureaucracy: It doesn't have to be right, it just has to be close enough for government work. If they understand what you mean, it doesn't matter what you say or how you say it.
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